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Updated: April 30, 2025
Thus an ammunition dump means a point where ammunition is stored, while a ration dump is a place where the ration carrying parties repair at night to procure the rations for the following day. At some points the field cookers or "rolling kitchens" come up at night and the cooked food is carried from there to the front. One such place at Messines, we called "Cooker's Halt."
The corduroy path ran out about four hundred yards across the grassless, sodden field. We then came suddenly to the beginning of a road. A small cottage stood on the right, and in front of it a dead cow. From this point the road ran in a long straight line towards Messines. At intervals, on the right-hand side only, stood one or two farms, or, rather, their skeletons.
We first relieved a battalion of the Middlesex on June 28th opposite a poisonous little spot known as "la Petite Douve." Here a small stream, dignified by the name of the Douve River, wandered lazily across the flat at the foot of the Messines Ridge and coiled like a natural moat in front of the Petite Douve Farm. This, like all farms in Flanders, was a square of strongly-built brick buildings.
Our sector was made up of what were then known as the "C" trenches, running north from the Neuve Eglise-Messines road and directly between Wulverghem and Messines. There had been some very hard fighting all along the Messines Ridge during the preceding year, but for several months things had been quiet.
The sector had been held by the New Zealanders, and was one of the quietest on the whole British front, but orders were now given to liven things up in order to keep as many enemy troops opposite the sector as possible, and distract their attention from the impending operations at Messines on the left. This object was achieved by considerable activity, patrols, and artillery bombardments.
On the 10th Bois Grenier fell, Armentières was evacuated, and the Germans poured across the Lys, taking Estaires, Steenwerck, and Ploegstreet and threatening the Messines ridge. That, too, followed on the 11th, while farther south the Germans secured Neuf Berquin and Lestrem.
Although a man of nearly 45 he made light of every hardship; his constant cheerfulness and devotion to duty were an inspiration to all. Intense bombardments of short trench sections also became more common, as the art of raiding, first practised by the Canadians at Messines, developed.
This relieved the pressure on the 7th Division, and by nightfall their positions had been regained. But the battle was not yet over. On 1 November the Germans renewed their attack on Allenby and captured Hollebeke and Messines, and then in the night Wytschaete. Luckily on that day the French 16th Corps arrived and recovered Wytschaete.
While the Germans collected men and munitions at one spot, the French and British, adopting worrying tactics, suddenly descended and harassed them in another. A successful little enterprise was carried out by a small party of British troops during the night of November 16-17, 1915, with a loss of one man killed and one wounded, just north of the river Douave, southwest of Messines.
She was very grateful for your letters. She sent you a telegram because she could not bear to write." Martin had understood that. He had had little news of her during the two years a few lines about Harry in the crowded obituaries of the newspapers after the attack in 1917 on the Messines Ridge, where he met his death, and six months afterwards the announcement that a son was born.
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