What was in the favour of the Welsh was that they knew the ground in front of them in every detail from air photographs and from night and day raids, having lived in front of it for several months, digging and tunnelling so as to get cover from ceaseless fire, and storing up a great desire to get even with the enemy for all they had suffered. They had suffered great hardships and great perils, intensified before the battle because of violent shelling by high explosives and gas-shells, so that when the hour for attack came they had been hard tried already. It made no difference to the pace and order of their assault. Our bombardment had been overwhelming, and the heavy barrage which signalled the assault was, according to all these Welshmen, perfect. They followed it very closely, so closely that they were on and over the Cockchafers before they could organize any kind of defence. Many of the enemy's machine-guns had been smashed and buried. Those still intact were never brought into action, as their gunners had no time to get out of the concrete shelters in which they were huddled to escape from the annihilating fire.
It was in these places that most of the prisoners were taken--there and in a big trench, ten feet wide and twelve deep, on the outskirts of Pilkem village, where there is no village at all. The Cockchafers came out dazed, and gave themselves up mostly without a show of fighting. In some of their concrete shelters, like those at Mackensen Farm--don't imagine any buildings there--and Gallwitz Farm and Boche House and Zouave House, there were stores of ammunition, with many shells and trench-mortars.
So the Welsh went on in waves, sending back the prisoners on their way, through Pilkem to the high ground by the iron cross beyond, and then down the slopes to the Steenbeek stream. On the left were the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who took the ground of Pilkem itself. On the right were men of the Welsh Regiment. In the ground beyond Pilkem they found the regimental headquarters in finely built dug-outs, but the staff had fled to save their skins. There was another big dug-out near by used by the enemy as a dressing-station. It had room enough for a hundred men. There were fifty men. The Welsh swarmed round it--thirty wounded and twenty unwounded Germans. The doctor in charge was a good fellow, and, after surrendering his own men, attended to some of the wounded Welsh. Two machine-guns and sixteen prisoners were taken out of a place called Jolie Farm, and thirty prisoners out of Rudolf Farm--concrete kennels in a chaos of craters--and three officers and forty-seven men came out of the ruins of a house somewhere near the Iron Cross. All the Welsh troops behaved with great courage, and a special word is due to the runners, who carried messages back under fire, and to the stretcher-bearers, who rescued the wounded utterly regardless of their own risks. Afterwards the mule drivers and leaders were splendid, bringing up supplies under heavy barrage fire. Wales did well that day, and the Welsh miners, who had already proved themselves as great diggers and great tunnellers and very brave men, showed themselves cool and fearless in the assault.