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It's just midsummer madness!" But only one of us went really mad and tried to cut his throat, and died. One of the best, as I knew him at his best. The battles of the Third Army beyond Arras petered out and on June 7th there was the battle of Messines and Wytschaete when the Second Army revealed its mastery of organization and detail.
One can not help wondering at the indiscriminate manner in which French and Flemish names are used in this corner of the world. Neuve Eglise, Bailleul, Dranoutre and Locre are all mixed up with Wolverghem, Ploegstert, Wytschaete and Lindhoek: Ypres and Dickebusch are neighbors; while St. Julian and Langemarck lie side by side, as do Groot Vierstraat and LaClytte.
I arrived in Folkestone about 1.45 P.M. and in London about 3.30 P.M. the same day. Though short, it was a happy time, and I returned on May 26, staying one night in Boulogne and reaching Bailleul about midnight on Saturday, May 27. I found that the battalion was still at Locre, but the Brigade had gone back to the line, holding the same trenches on Wytschaete Ridge.
In March of 1915 I saw the first fifteen-inch howitzer open fire. We called this monster "grandma," and there was a little group of generals on the Scherpenberg, near Kemmel, to see the effect of the first shell. Its target was on the lower slope of the Wytschaete Ridge, where some trenches were to be attacked for reasons only known by our generals and by God.
There was an incessant tumult of guns, and the noise rolled in waves across the flat country of the salient and echoed back from Kemmel Hill and the Wytschaete Ridge. There was a white frost over the fields, and all the battle-front was veiled by a mist which clung round the villages and farmsteads behind the lines and made a dense bank of gray fog below the rising ground.
On June 7th, at the clearing of light, all was in readiness: the Ulstermen and ours still in the centre of the attack from Spanbroekmolen to Wytschaete. Just before the moment fixed, men could see clearly: in half a minute all was blotted out.
Thirteen prisoners, including three officers, were captured in this area. The British during the night also attacked German trenches west of Wytschaete, where they were successful in attaining their objectives and captured a number of prisoners.
The French to the north had been held up by the unexpected strength of the German defence. The 3rd Division on our immediate left had advanced a trifle, for the Gordons had made a perilous charge into the Petit Bois, a wood at the bottom of the Wytschaete Heights. And the Royal Scots had put in some magnificent work, for which they were afterwards very properly congratulated.
Messines was cleared by New Zealanders by 7 a.m., Wytschaete fell by noon before Ulstermen and Irish Nationalists fighting side by side, and Welshmen captured Oosttaverne a few hours later. The battle could not have have been better staged to exhibit the co-operation of the British Empire and of mechanical science and human valour.
Belgium, notwithstanding her passion for liberation, cannot have desired the rest of her soil to be restored in the condition of the Wytschaete ridge a horror of desolation unfit for man or even for nature's growths; and there seemed little prospect of driving the Germans out except by a succession of ruinous tactical victories.
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