Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 6, 2025
From being what amounted to auxiliaries in these actions the new troops became hardened to actual fighting conditions. For this reason the personnel of the British troops on this part of the line was changed frequently. This was especially true at Hooge. Princess Patricia's Canadian Regiment occupied the Château and village of Hooge on May 8, 1915.
Eloi in front of it trenches ran curving up to Hooge and back again to within, on the north, a mile and a half of Ypres, enclosing the level, sodden farmland four miles across its base, two from base to nose, which is the Ypres salient. A reluctant dawn was turning the darkness to a dull and threatening day, and as it grew lighter the famous miles slowly came into view.
It was, however, an anxious night, and great interest was taken in widening our wire entanglements as more and more details of the Hooge affair trickled down to us. How we longed for a supply of the iron stakers that our patrols brought in time after time from the German wire! We got them, too later.
When the bombardment was well under way the tanks were opened. The ensuing cloud was five miles long and forty feet high; and it floated over the British trenches from 3 a. m. to 7 a. m. The cloud was followed by three columns of infantry, who dashed forward under the protection of the shells of their artillery. But the Germans made gains in only two places at Hooge and to the north of Wieltje.
That board was also shot to pieces, but the message caused some laughter, and men repeating it said: "There's a deal of truth in those words. Why should this go on? What's it all about? Let the old men who made this war come and fight it out among themselves, at Hooge. The fighting-men have no real quarrel with one another. We all want to go home to our wives and our work."
Even there a strong, fetid smell came from him. "Hooge," he said, in a thoughtful way, "is not a health resort." He was more cheerful after his bath and did not feel quite such a leper. He told one or two stories about the things that happened at Hooge, and I wondered if hell could be so bad. After a short stay he went back again, and I could see that he expected to be killed.
I wrote to Tommy's mother that night and told her that I thought Tommy had a Blighty, and she came all the way out from Canada to see him. But he didn't get farther than our base hospital, and he was back to the trenches again in six months, so his mother did not see him after all. Well, after Tommy left us, we were sent back to rest billets, and it was then that the Battle of Hooge started.
The enemy had gradually increased his customary bombardment and then, assisted by some mines, had swept forward, in broad daylight, overwhelming the defenders of the first and second lines by sheer force of numbers and had only been checked after he had driven through our lines to a depth of at least seven hundred yards over a front of nearly a mile, including the village of Hooge, and was firmly established in a large forest called Sanctuary Wood and in other woods to the south.
Before saying good-by he touched some flowers on the mess-table, and for a moment or two listened to birds twittering in the trees. "Thanks very much," he said. "I've enjoyed this visit a good deal.. . Good-by." He went back through Ypres on the way to Hooge, and the mine-crater where his Irish soldiers were lying in slime, in which vermin crawled.
Their task was to remain behind and to give a continuous rapid-fire from as many different spots as possible in a given time, thereby keeping up the illusion of a heavily manned trench. Then, they too had faded quietly away, following us. Our new trenches were three miles behind those we had just evacuated in Polygon Wood. Zillebeke lay just to the left and beyond that, Hooge.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking