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Updated: April 30, 2025
The Messines ridge is a long, low hill, only about 300 feet in height, but it commands the countryside for miles around, and had become the heavily fortified barrier to bar the Allied advance between Ypres and Armentiers. Since December, 1914, the Germans had seamed the western slopes with trenches, a network of tunnels and of concrete redoubts. Behind the ridge lay the German batteries.
He had just been promoted to his captaincy and had received one week's "permission" for a rest in Paris. We had both come down from near Messines Ridge. "Of course," said the English captain, "the French are the greatest soldiers in the world." "Why do you say that?" I answered. "What could be more wonderful than the heroism, the endurance of the British at Vimy Ridge?
Shorty was of the opinion that one could enter the trenches on the Channel coast and walk through to the Alps without once coming out on top of the ground. I am not in a position either to affirm or to question this statement. My own experience was confined to that part of the British front which lies between Messines in Belgium and Loos in France.
I think there must have been something big on: either a further advance of Plumer's Army or a counter-attack by the Crown Prince Rupprecht. It was a big row. "Apropos of Sir Herbert Plumer, the victor of Messines: we were in his Second Army until that battle; now we have been transferred to Sir Hubert Gough's Fifth Army.
The battle of Wytschaete and Messines was a model in organization and method, and worked in its frightful destructiveness like the clockwork of a death machine.
He was the first officer to fall, and was buried by the Bishop of Pretoria in the Battalion cemetery in the wood on the east side of the Messines road, about 200 yards short of Hyde Park Corner. The actual routine of life in the trenches was pleasant enough. The men knew exactly where they were. There was a time to eat, a time to sleep, a time for fatigues, and a time for sentry-go.
The man who had brought it was under arrest as a suspected spy; but after inquiries had been made at Brigade it was discovered that he was perfectly bona fide; So Major Brighten ordered him to be set free. "I found myself next to Verity, so I asked him whatever all this hubbub was about. He replied that it was the expected push on our right 'the Messines push' taking place.
In it the enemy had established concrete machine-gun positions and converted the place into a veritable fort. It projected in a salient from their average line and enfiladed the main road running from our position to Messines. The Middlesex, on our relieving them, had told us a weird tale of the number of rounds of rifle ammunition they expended in a single night.
This, of course, happened every time we "came in." The land where these trenches lay was a vast and lugubrious expanse of mud, with here and there a charred and ragged building. On our right lay the River Douve, and, on our left, the trenches turned a corner back inwards again. In front lay the long line of the Messines ridge.
It was not very many days later that we changed from this brigade area to another, leaving Ploegsteert with its memories, sad and otherwise, behind us. The Second Canadian Division arrived in France during our stay in Ploegsteert, and after a short rest took over a sector on the right of St. Eloi and in front of Messines.
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