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These tracks were supported on wooden piles driven into the mud, and were more like wooden bridges than tracks. Sometimes they rested on firm ground, but mostly they were held up in the air by the wooden piles. Again right through the devastated area ran a good paved road from Ypres towards Zonnebeke.
From there the line ran almost north across Gravenstafel ridge to where Stroombeek Creek crossed the road from St. Julien to Poelcappelle, thence the line ran northwest past Langemarck to Bixschoote, on the Yperlee Canal which runs northwesterly. The British held the southern face of the salient as far east as Zonnebeke.
In the morasses of the Haanebeek flats, in the slimy support lines at Zonnebeke, in the tortured uplands about Flesquieres, and in many other odd places I kept worrying at my private conundrum. At night I would lie awake thinking of it, and many a toss I took into shell-holes and many a time I stepped off the duckboards, because my eyes were on a different landscape.
On seeing the gas approaching, the soldiers in some parts of the line proceeded to execute a flank movement, thereby getting away from the gas and subjecting the Germans to a deadly fire from a direction least expected. Between Fortuin and Zonnebeke and south of St.
These men, for the most part, were from the Twenty-eighth Division, and had been east of Zonnebeke to the southeast corner of Polygon Wood. So great was the pressure at the section where the break had been made in the line that troops were taken from wherever available, so that the units in the gap varied from day to day.
That town has been likened to the hub of a wheel whose spokes are the roads which lead eastward. It is true that one important road went over the canal, at Steenstraate, but practically all of the highways of consequence went through Ypres. Thus the spokes of the wheel, whose rim was the outline of the salient, were the roads to Menin, Gheluvelt, Zonnebeke, Poelcapelle, Langemarck, and Pilkem.
South of Ypres, about four miles away, at St. Eloi, the opposing trenches ran straight south of Armentieres, a city named after Thomas de Armentieres, envoy of Flanders to Philip of Spain of Armada fame. From St. Eloi the German line was bent northeast running to what is called Hill 60, and from there northeast past Chateau Hooge to the village of Zonnebeke.
Julien the allied line broke, but the supports with two cavalry regiments were rushed from Potijze, a mile and a half from Ypres on the Zonnebeke Road, and regained the lost ground. By night the Germans decided to discontinue their attempt to advance and left their dead and wounded on the field. The Germans had only stopped the struggle for a breathing spell.
They had our supporting trenches east of Hennebeke Creek along the Kerrselaer Zonnebeke highway to the ruined houses at Enfiladed crossroads where I had met Captain Victor Currie and the officers of the 7th and 8th Battalions. The 2nd Brigade, all that was left of them, had been kept hard at it in this section and were still in reserve behind the 28th Division.
The Battalion, which was lying in a trench near the road, began to advance about 7 or 8 p.m., moving in artillery formation and following the 7th Durham Light Infantry towards the ridge to the north of Zonnebeke.
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