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Updated: August 23, 2024
Following closely the retreating enemy, the British made important advances east of Ploegsteert Wood and also in the neighborhood of Gaspard.
Near Bezon one of their reconnoitering detachments brought back several prisoners and one machine gun from short excursions into hostile positions. In the night of January 22, 1917, the Germans attempted two raids on British positions between Armentières and Ploegsteert. In one instance the Germans were driven back before they could reach the British trenches.
One of the German headquarters, however, was shelled effectively by the British on April 1, 1915, and on the following day mortars in the trenches did considerable damage in the Wood of Ploegsteert. A mine blew up a hundred yards of the trenches that were opposite Quinchy, a village to the south of Givenchy, on April 3, 1915. To offset this the Germans bombarded the British line at that point.
While standing in Ploegsteert woods by the car one day I heard somebody singing an aria from Faust; the voice was magnificent and evidently that of a highly trained singer who had sung in grand opera; I listened with great delight while he sang with the utmost abandon, and when he stopped, I watched for the owner of the voice to step out from among the bushes.
Leaving the farm, we made our way on foot to Ploegsteert Wood. A terrible amount of "strafing" was going on here. Shells were exploding all round, and our guns were replying with "interest."
Here, too, we were to learn something of grenade and mine warfare such as the other two battalions of our brigade had been waging all summer near Ploegsteert.
The headquarters of the Canadian corps was in the town and the Canadians occupied the front line at, and north of, Ploegsteert wood, opposite the Messines-Wytschaete ridge. For days and weeks officers and men kept calling to get the news from home in Canada, particularly about recruiting, and they would listen as long as I would talk.
An attack at La Bassée in the first weeks in June, 1915, started with the British Second Army making a pretended advance in the Ypres region. The British in the forest of Ploegsteert drove a mine into the German lines and blew it up. The explosion followed by a British charge, which resulted in the taking of a part of the German trenches.
We also had our mine, which was exploded opposite the Oxfords after two false starts with much pomp and ceremony. A green rocket was sent up one mile west of Ploegsteert 'to deceive the enemy, as the Staff memorandum hopefully remarked. Captain Hadden, of the 1st/4th Oxfords, opposite whose trench the explosion was to occur, was ordered to keep half his company in the fire trench with the rifles and bayonets of the other half. These were to be ostentatiously waved above the parapet. The other half company spent some time marching up and down the corduroy paths in the wood, that the sound of their feet might suggest the arrival of large reinforcements. When the Brigade invited further suggestions of the same deceptive nature Hadden declared that he indented for magic mirrors
Some minor engagements took up my duties after Givenchy, until about September 1, when my battery was instructed to proceed to Ploegsteert. Ploegsteert sets in ruins about two miles northwest of Armentières; there were no buildings that Fritz failed to level with the exception of the tower, which they used for registry purposes, a reference point in artillery technology.
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