All that is aimed at, then, is to try and bring to the mind of the reader, by a comparison of figures, some grasp of the immensity of the performance of our troops east and south of Ypres, during the desperate efforts of the enemy to break through in the last fortnight of October and the first fortnight of November. It is worthy of note, too, that in spite of the huge reinforcements brought up, no material advance was made on the position taken over from us on November 1st. It is true that on the day following, the newly-arrived French troops re-took Wytschate and Messines, from which we had been driven, but they were unable to hold those places, and the line along which they had found us facing the enemy was never perceptibly advanced. The new line at the beginning of November, held jointly by the French troops and British cavalry, ran--roughly speaking--from Klein Zillebeke to Ploegsteert, with a concave face which skirted Hollebeke, Wytschate, and Messines. Our 1st Cavalry Division, supported by some units from the 2nd A.C., was withdrawn to Wulverghem, and the 2nd Cavalry Division went into reserve at Bailleul. Neuve Eglise became our advanced base for that part of the line, and was very quickly packed with British troops.
We have now taken a permanent farewell, as far as these pages are concerned, of all occurrences south of the canal at Hollebeke. We have seen the 2nd A.C. relieved by the Indians, and the Cavalry Corps relieved by the French, and, with this change of guardianship, we have seen two of the most important points in the line of defence pass out of the keeping of the original Expeditionary Force.
Of that force the 1st A.C. alone (with the 7th Division, which it had absorbed) still remained unrelieved east and south-east of Ypres. The force, however, which now stood between the enemy and the possession of Ypres, had by this time lost many of its distinctive characteristics. The actual battalion units had become in most cases reduced to a mere shadow of their original strength. The 7th Division had become part of the 1st A.C., and several battalions of the 2nd A.C. were acting in concert with this already mixed corps. Many of the brigades had been broken up from their original constituents, and the fragments consolidated into new and temporary brigades. Sir Horace was for the moment an A.C. commander without an A.C., the remnants of his six heroic brigades being scattered here and there along the whole front.