“Various articles were drawn from a dump when we got to the trench.  We got to the trench about 11 p.m.”

There my diary of the period abruptly closes.  For the events which followed it is necessary to turn to the long letter describing the whole operations which I wrote home from Worsley Hall a few days later.  That letter describes the Third Battle of Ypres which is the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BATTLE OF YPRES

(July 31st, 1917)

  “’Tis Zero!  Full of all the thoughts of years! 
  A moment pregnant with a life-time’s fears
  That rise to jeer and laugh, and mock awhile
  The vaunted courage of the human frame,
  Till Duty calls, till Love and beck’ning
    Fame
  Lead forth the heroes to that frenzied line. 
  The creeping death that, searching, never stays;
  To brave the rattling, hissing streams of lead,
  The bursting shrapnel and the million ways
  That war entices death; when dying, dead
  And living, mingle in the ghastly glare
  That taints the beauty of a night once fair,
  And seems to flout the Majesty divine.” 
                            F. SHUKER (Zero).

Safely ensconced beneath the sheets of a very comfortable hospital bed at Worsley Hall, I wrote the following letter in which I described the Third Battle of Ypres up to the time when I left the battlefield.  For the progress of the battle beyond that it will be necessary to quote other documents.  Here is my own account of the operations written on August 3: 

“I will now endeavour to tell you the story of the Third Battle of Ypres.  As you are aware, we were preparing for this battle the whole time I was at the Front.  It was part of Haig’s general plan of campaign for 1917.  When I first arrived in the Prison at Ypres, the day before Messines, Captain Andrews had me in his cell and explained to me the plan of campaign.  He opened some maps and explained to me that Plumer’s Second Army was, very shortly, going to attack on the south of the Ypres Salient with the object of taking Hill 60 and the Messines Ridge.  If that attack should prove successful we should, a few days afterwards, do a little ‘stunt’ on a German trench named Ice Trench.  We were issued with photograph maps of this trench and many conferences were held with regard to it.  Further, he explained that this was only a preliminary operation:  the main campaign of the year was to be fought on the front between Ypres and the Sea, and Sir Hubert Gough was coming to Ypres to take command.  Well, the Battle of Messines was fought the following morning; all Plumer’s objectives were gained; it was a perfect ‘stunt’; but, still, our Ice Trench affair was cancelled!  We left Ypres soon afterwards and went into rest billets at Millain and then training billets at Westbecourt.  Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps became a reserve corps behind the line