Yesterday, apart from the knocking of anti-aircraft guns and the drone of our planes, it was all quiet there, and I walked through the silent streets over the broken bricks and glass, and was startled by the utter death of the town. For this quietude and ruin of a place that one has seen full of life gives one a sinister sensation, and one is frightened by one's loneliness.
Our troops attacked this morning before six o'clock on a wide front north and south of the Ypres-Menin road, and have gained important ground all along the line. It is ground from which during the past six weeks there has been that heroic and desperate fighting which I have described as best I could in my daily messages, giving even at the best only a vague idea of the difficulties encountered by those men of ours who made great sacrifices in great endeavours. It is the ground which in the centre rises up through the sinister woodlands of Glencorse Copse and Inverness Wood to the high ground of Polygon Wood and the spurs of the Passchendaele Ridge, which form the enemy's long defensive barrier to the east of the Ypres salient. Until that high land was taken progress was difficult for our troops on the left across the Steenbeek, as the enemy's guns could still hold commanding positions. The ground over which our men have swept this morning had been assaulted again and again by troops who ignored their losses, and attacked with a most desperate and glorious courage, yet failed to hold what they gained for a time, because their final goal was attained with weakened forces after most fierce and bloody fighting. The Empire knows who those men were--the old English county regiments, who never fought more gallantly; the Scots, who only let go of their forward positions under overwhelming pressure and annihilating fire; the Irish divisions, who suffered the most supreme ordeal, and earned new and undying honour by the way they endured the fire of many guns for many days. As long as history lasts, the name of these woods, from which most of the trees have been swept, and of these bogs and marshes which lie about them, will be linked with the memory of those brave battalions who fought through them again and again. They are not less to be honoured than those who with the same courage, just as splendid, attacked once more, over the same tracks, past the same death-traps, and achieved success. By different methods, by learning from what the first men had suffered, this last attack has not as yet been high in cost, and we hold what the enemy has used all his strength and cunning to prevent us getting. He used much cunning and poured up great reserves of men and guns to smash our assaulting lines. For the first time on July 31 we came up against his new and fully prepared system of defence, and discovered the power of it. Abandoning the old trench system which we could knock to pieces with artillery, he made his forward positions without any definite line, and built a large number of concrete blockhouses, so arranged in depth that they defended each other by enfilade fire, and so strong that nothing but a direct hit from one of our heavier shells would damage it. And a direct hit is very difficult on a small mark like one of those concrete houses, holding about ten to twenty men at a minimum, and fifty to sixty in their largest. These little garrisons were mostly machine-gunners and picked men specially trained for outpost work, and they could inflict severe damage on an advancing battalion, so that the forward lines passing through and beyond them would be spent and weak. Then behind in reserve lay the German "Stosstruppen," specially trained also for counter-attacks, which were launched in strong striking forces against our advanced lines after all their struggle and loss. Those blockhouses proved formidable things--hard nuts to crack, as the soldiers said who came up against them. There are scores of them whose names will be remembered through a lifetime by men of many battalions, and they cost the lives of many brave men. Beck House and Borry Farm belong to Irish history. Wurst Farm and Winnipeg, Bremen Redoubt and Gallipoli, Iberian and Delva Farm, are strongholds round which many desperate little battles, led by young subalterns or sergeants, have taken place on the last day of July and on many days since. English and Scots have taken turns in attacking and defending such places as Fitzclarence Farm, Northampton Farm, and Black Watch Corner in the dreadful region of Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood. To-day the hard nut of the concrete blockhouse has been cracked by a new method of attack and by a new assault, planned with great forethought, and achieved so far with high success.