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Its hold on the left bank of the Lys north of Armentières was strenuously disputed; on the 20th the Germans seized Le Gheir at the south-east corner of Ploegstreet Wood, but were immediately driven out. They took it again on the 29th and some trenches in the wood with no more permanent success, but managed on the 30th to take and retain St. Yves a little farther north.
Again in a thin House, during some discussion on Estimates, Willie Redmond got up and spoke out of the fullness of experiences which had profoundly affected his imagination. He told the House of what he had seen in Flanders, where the two Irish Divisions had at last been brought into contact, so that the left of the Ulster line in front of Ploegstreet touched the right of ours in front of Kemmel.
The advance here was checked for some weeks, but it went steadily on along other fronts. The salient on the Lys was melting away: Bailleul fell on 30 August, Mount Kemmel on the 31st, and Ploegstreet wood on 4 September. Lens was evacuated on the 3rd. South-west of Cambrai the British were approaching their old lines, and east of the Somme the Germans were retreating to St. Quentin.
Between November 20 and 25, 1915, the British employed their time in bombarding the German positions in several places, destroying wire entanglements and parapets. The Germans made but little reply, contenting themselves with holding tight to their trenches. They were more active north of Loos, Ploegstreet, and east of Ypres.
On the 10th Bois Grenier fell, Armentières was evacuated, and the Germans poured across the Lys, taking Estaires, Steenwerck, and Ploegstreet and threatening the Messines ridge. That, too, followed on the 11th, while farther south the Germans secured Neuf Berquin and Lestrem.
The Germans had closed in to some extent round Ypres during the two big battles, and the trenches now ran in a semicircle about the city at a distance of from two and one-half to three miles. The line turned south at St. Eloi, skirted the west of the Messines ridge, turned east again at Ploegstreet Wood, and south to the east of Armentières.
The 7th Division bore the brunt of the attack, and Haig's 1st Corps was precluded from a counter-offensive by the need of detaching supports to the south-east of Ypres, where long stretches of line were only held by cavalry, and Pulteney was being pressed in front of Ploegstreet.
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