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Updated: May 3, 2025
On the evening of the 22nd the gas attack developed, and as the clouds of green vapour moved down on the French Territorials, unprovided with any sort of gas-masks and unprepared for the terrifying effects of poison en masse, they broke and fled, exposing the flank of the Canadians on their right from Langemarck to Grafenstafel.
Colonel Lipsett's Eighth Battalion, however, held fast on the Grafenstafel ridge, remaining in their position two days in spite of the gas of which they got a plentiful supply. By noon of April 24, 1915, the Germans made an attack on the village of St. Julien and that part of the allied front to the east of the village.
Colonel Lipsett's Eighth Battalion at Grafenstafel, in spite of its left being unsupported, held its position which was of great importance to the British front. For, had that part of the front been lost, the Germans in an hour could have worked their way back of the Twenty-eighth Division and the entire eastern sector.
The Tenth Brigade of the Fourth Division were rushed to support the Third Brigade of Canadians who were south of St. Julien. Other British troops were sent to relieve the tense situation at Grafenstafel. An attempt to retake St. Julien was made early on Sunday morning, April 25, 1915, by General Hull's Tenth Brigade and two battalions of the Durham and York Brigade.
On the same day, April 26, 1915, the Lahore Division of the Indian army was marched north of Ypres. The point of the salient was pushed in on that day at Broodseinde, but the German success there was short-lived. The brigade holding Grafenstafel was attacked fiercely by the Germans. The Durham Light Infantry was forced from Fortuin behind the Haanabeek River.
But they made an assault against the northern side of the salient which had by this time become very narrow. A German bomb wrecked a section of the British trenches, and the defenders of that part of the line had to go back of a wood that was a little to the northwest of Grafenstafel, where they were able to stop the German onrush.
The gaping breach on their left was partially filled by reinforcements from the 28th Division on the 23rd, but the Germans were across the canal at Het Sas and Lizerne, and the Canadians between St. Julien and Grafenstafel were fighting on three fronts. A second gas attack followed on the 24th, and presently St. Julien had to be abandoned.
Part of Poelcapelle was taken, Grafenstafel fell into our hands, at Broodeseinde the Australians got a footing on the Passchendaele ridge, Reutel was captured, and Polderhoek château, the hinge of the German position, was stormed only to be lost and retaken more than once before it was finally left in German possession.
Nevertheless the British front had been pushed forward from 600 to 700 yards in some places. By that night, the night of April 26, 1915, the allied front extended from the north of Zonnebeke to the eastern boundary of the Grafenstafel ridge; thence southwest along the southern side of the Haanabeek to a point a half mile east of St.
At Grafenstafel the Eighth Battalion of the Durham Brigade were bombarded with asphyxiating shells before the German infantry attack. The fighting on this section of the front was fierce throughout the afternoon, but finally the British were forced to retire.
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