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Wilde told me of the German sniper they had found shot just before the advance to this village; the adjutant narrated the magnificent gallantry of an officer who had relinquished his job of Reconnaissance officer to the C.R.A. in order to join a battery, and had now gone home with his third wound since Zillebeke.
In the mess the colonel gave me kindly greeting, and told me something of the Brigade's ups and downs since I had left France in August 1917, wounded at Zillebeke: how all the old and well-tried battery commanders became casualties before 1917 was out, but how, under young, keen, and patiently selected leaders, the batteries were working up towards real efficiency again.
We are too far off to see what is actually happening between the opposing trenches, but one of the chief fields of past and present battle, scenes which our children and our children's children will go to visit, lie spread out before us. Half the famous sites of the earlier war can be dimly made out between us and Ypres. In front of us is the gleam of the Zillebeke Lake, beyond it Hooge.
I recalled how he and I had carried a stretcher and searched for a dying officer at Zillebeke the day I was wounded, and how, when I was in hospital, he had written saying he was glad we had done our bit that day; I thought of his happy faith in a Christmas ending of the war.
The Germans themselves now needed reinforcements and time to recover, and for some days there was little fighting except an unequal artillery duel. On the 6th a German attack on Zillebeke nearly succeeded, but was eventually repulsed by a charge of the Household Cavalry.
As soon as it was dark we left Kruisstraat and marched by Bridge 14 and Zillebeke to Maple Copse, where we were told to bivouac for the night, still being ready to move at very short notice if required. Here we found a Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters, from whom we were at last able to learn the truth of the morning's battle.
Under orders, I and my partner started for Zillebeke, about 400 yards back from Maple Copse, where we established an observation station, with the necessary telephonic communication to headquarters, which, when done, was taken in charge by a relief party from another battery, and I returned to Belgian Gardens at 11:30 A.M., where I was put in charge of another gun crew.
Meanwhile the battalions in support were holding firm in spite of the shell-fire, which raged above them also, and it was against this second line of Canadians that the German infantry came up and broke. In the center the German thrust was hard toward Zillebeke Lake.
Julien, Frezenberg, Verlorenhoek, Westhoek, and Hooge, the banks of the Steenbeck and the woods on the Menin road; and below that blood-stained highway Plumer's Second took Klein Zillebeke, Hollebeke, and Basse Ville on the Lys. It was, however, Von Arnim's plan to hold his front lines lightly and rely upon counter-attacks, and before the end of the day we had lost St.
As I stand looking over the black stretches of riddled earth, at the half-demolished pill-boxes in front, at the muddy pools in the shell-holes under a now darkening sky; at the flat stretches between us and Kemmel where lie Zillebeke and St.
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