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"I have not summoned you," he said, "to pay Guynemer the last homage he has a right to from the First Army, over a coffin or a grave. No trace could be found in Poelcapelle of his mortal remains, as if the heavens, jealous of their hero, had not consented to return to earth what seems to belong to it by right, and as if Guynemer had disappeared in empyrean glory through a miraculous assumption.
I turned a copy of the panoramic sketch over to Major MacDougall of the Toronto Battery, when he went into the loft of a ruined house some distance away to check up his guns as they fired on the Poelcapelle road in front of us. I slipped quietly into a fire trench on the forward slope of the ridge to observe the guns at work also.
The Germans were still attacking the line held by the Seventh on our left along the Poelcapelle road. I watched them attack in open order at about three paces interval through a turnip field, the officer following behind with a drawn sword.
The Oxfords, on their left, had been completely hung up, and were barely beyond our front line. Two platoons of C Company pushed up northwards into the gap at 11.30, but found only small parties of the enemy, who enfiladed them at close range from some disused gun-pits 200 yards west of the Poelcapelle road.
The trenches here for about five hundred yards were held by the Royal Highlanders of Montreal. Major Osborne held several half moons on the far side of the Poelcapelle Road. Then our battalion lines continued southerly, running for about eight hundred yards till there came a gap which occurred between us and the Winnipeg Rifles.
I did not know then that the German Emperor was standing on the slope behind Poelcapelle watching his hosts trying to break through the thin Canadian line. Every time the foe fell back discomfited they turned the full fury of their thousands of guns on our front line. Volleys of shells fell in rapid succession along the thin French parapets.
We learned that fragments of the 2nd Canadian Brigade still held their trenches near Gravenstafel Ridge, that the valiant Suffolks were still in part of our supporting trenches, and that the Hun had made no progress along the line of the Poelcapelle Road east of St. Julien. The Red Watch had not held in vain. The Hun was just as far away from Ypres and Calais as ever.
On the front between the railway and Houthulst Forest, due north of Poelcapelle, the 149th Infantry Brigade had attacked and advanced the line slightly. A further attack by battalions of the 150th Brigade had partially failed, and about the beginning of November the battalion moved up to occupy the left sector of the line which was just inside the forest.
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.
I could see battalion after battalion coming down the Fortuyn road in extended order, and I knew that in a short time there would be an advance of these troops north-easterly towards the Poelcapelle road, closing the dangerous space held by the remnant of the 7th Battalion and taking over our supporting trenches and the crest of the gap along the Gravenstafel ridge to the 8th Batt.
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