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Sir Herbert Plumer realized by the middle of the afternoon that a counterattack was necessary. He had held two battalions in reserve along the Ypres-Menin Road. He also had five battalions with him and reenforcements in the form of a brigade of infantry had arrived at Vlamertinghe Château, back of Ypres.
My diary of that night reads as follows: "As it began to get dark the bombardment became louder and louder and the flashes more vivid. Shells were falling at Vlamertinghe, half way between Poperinghe and Ypres, exploding with a great sound. They were falling here yesterday!
I had seen in some of our Intelligence papers that the 14th Division was in a Corps immediately on our left, and I therefore knew that I might have a chance of getting in touch with my brother George. Accordingly I walked to Vlamertinghe next day and heard that his battalion was stationed in a camp at St. Jean.
We were now making for Vlamertinghe, which is a place about half-way between Locre and Ypres, and we all felt sure enough now that Ypres was where we were going; besides, passers-by gave some of us a tip or two, and rumours were current that there was a bit of a bother on in the salient. Still, there was nothing told us definitely, and on we went, up the dusty, uninteresting road.
The wind was blowing steadily from the northeast. Soon the French troops were staggering back from the front, blinded and choking from the deadly German gas. Many of their comrades had been unable to leave the spot where they were overtaken by the fumes. Those who fled in terror rushed madly across the canal, choking the road to Vlamertinghe.
None of us had ever been to the "Salient," but it was a well known and much dreaded name, and most of us imagined we were likely to have a bad night, and gloomily looked forward to heavy casualties. Starting at 6-40 p.m., we went by motor bus with four hundred Sherwood Foresters through Reninghelst, Ouderdom, and Vlamertinghe to Kruisstraat, which we reached in three hours.
It was a somewhat pretentious mansion, in Continental flamboyant style, standing just off the Vlamertinghe road about half a mile our side of Ypres.
So I walked into Ypres and passed the Cathedral and the Cloth Hall and reached the remains of the Prison which is now the central aid-post for Ypres. There was a pleasant padre there; and he got me a refreshing cup of tea. Then I went on again. I got on a lorry and was taken to the mill at Vlamertinghe, which is known as the 2/1 Wessex Dressing Station.
In the afternoon I went, with Sergeant Baldwin, to reconnoitre the trench on the right of the main road between Vlamertinghe and Ypres, where we are to spend 'XY night'! It was a very hot day. I got back at 4 p.m.... I wrote two or three letters and then had dinner. To bed at 9.30. At 10.15 a zeppelin came over and dropped a big bomb a few hundred yards away, causing a loud explosion.
The approach to it was sinister after one had left Poperinghe and passed through the skeleton of Vlamertinghe church, beyond Goldfish Chateau... For a long time Poperinghe was the last link with a life in which men and women could move freely without hiding from the pursuit of death; and even there, from time to time, there were shells from long-range guns and, later, night-birds dropping high-explosive eggs.
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