October 31 was the crisis of the battle. During the night of October 30 the German flood, lashing in vain against the trenches held by the cavalry across the ridge, swirled in ponderous weight against those held by the 11th Division Infantry at St. Yves, near the point where the British front crossed the Lys. The front here broke under the pressure. The breach, however, was only momentary. With a heroism beyond praise, Major Prowse instantly led the Somersets in a counter-attack. That intrepid corps, despite the enemy's ferociously tenacious resistance, drove him out. It was a bayonet fight, and a bayonet fight at its worst. The sturdy west countrymen, however, proved more than a match for any Prussians. They swept into the combat with the smash of a sledge-hammer added to the keenness of a high-speed tool, and wrought havoc. Against such a spirit and prowess numbers were unavailing.

All through that night, while the thunder of the conflict was heard and its flare seen fifty miles away, the enemy smashed at this section of the front. But it was a front of iron. Weighing his words, Sir John French says in his dispatch:

So far, then, we have this result: that neither the attack through Zandvoorde, the turning movement against Hollebeke and Wytscheate, nor the supporting attack against St. Yves had achieved its object.

Stopped in their advance through Zandvoorde, alike by the strength of the Allied position on the Kleine Zillebeke ridge, and by the reinforcement of the line, which, after this experience made them judge a frontal assault totally impracticable, the Germans determined to turn this barrier by reverting, on October 31, to their first scheme of an advance along the main avenue from Menin. This, indeed, was in this direction the only practicable way through the woodland belt.

When, at daybreak, their intention became evident, General Moussy, in command of the reinforcement sent the previous day from the 9th French Army Corps, tried to anticipate it by a counter-attack. He pushed forward to the south-east of Gheluvelt. There, however, in face of the great strength of the enemy he was brought to a standstill. Along the great road from Menin the Germans advanced in a mass of enormous depth, which was in truth a human battering ram. By this means they meant to smash through into Ypres despite any resistance that could be offered, and despite any losses. The battle developed at this point as a struggle at very short range. It swayed now this way and now that, as attack was followed by counter-attack. At length the pent-up mass of the enemy broke through, and swept along the road. The line of the 1st Division of Infantry at Gheluvelt was broken. Gheluvelt was taken by the Germans; the flank of the 7th Division along the Kleine Zillebeke range was exposed; the Royal Scots Fusiliers, remaining in their trenches, were surrounded. The way open through Gheluvelt and the main road, the enemy rushed up a great force of guns and began shelling the British positions in enfilade right and left. Concurrently an attack was begun from Zandvoorde along the main road leading across the intervening valley, and through the woods past Kleine Zillebeke. The 7th Division were driven back through the woods towards Ypres. It looked this time as though the German thrust had gone home. The situation was assuredly critical. Sir John French earlier in the day had come to Hooge, on the Menin road. There, when the troops fell back, he found himself in the thick of the fighting. But he had taken his measures. Advancing along the Menin road the Germans exposed the flank of their huge column. This was their vulnerable point. The British general at once threw upon it all the force he had within striking distance to the north of the avenue. The 1st and part of the 2nd Division of the 1st Army Corps, some 27,000 men, were swung against the German flank in a mighty counter-attack. The manœuvre turned the tide of battle. It was one of those bold flashes of resource which mark off great commanders from mediocre commanders. The enemy's advance was immediately arrested. Thereupon the retiring British troops rallied. Thus held in front and attacked in flank, the German masses, crowded together in a space too small for their numbers, were destroyed wholesale. Their resistance, though fierce, was brief. The onset broke them. Into and through the woods south of the Menin road they fell back, confused and routed, upon Zandvoorde. Gheluvelt was retaken. Here, to cover the retreat, a large body of the enemy attempted, behind hastily thrown up barricades, to hold out. The gunners of the 42nd Brigade R.F.A. blew the barricades to pieces. Then the Worcestershires rushed the village with the bayonet.

The result of this signal success was that the front was restored nearly to the line it had occupied at the beginning of the day. Many of the enemy still remained in the woods. The 6th Cavalry Brigade was given the work of hunting them out. "They advanced," says Sir John French, "with much dash, partly mounted and partly dismounted; and surprising the enemy, succeeded in killing large numbers and materially helped to restore the line."

If the chance of victory passed from the German arms with their fatal hesitancy on the preceding day, this crushing defeat of their main attack made efforts to retrieve their fortunes hopeless. The attacks against Hollebeke and round Messines continued all through this day, and as already said, through the following night. They were wasted. The hammering went on too against the front down to Givenchy. Though by one of their battering-ram assaults the enemy had driven the Indian troops out of and to the west of Neuve Chapelle, the hope of piercing the front was not realised. The Indians, probably thought an easy proposition by comparison, turned out also to be stuff too tough to be broken. The Gurkhas and the famous Corps of Sappers and Miners were brilliant, and justly won the honourable mention given them in the Commander-in-Chief's dispatches.

  CHAPTER VII

THE BATTLE OF YPRES—FINAL PHASE

In its final phase the great battle lasted for another eleven days. Holding now the main ridge of hills from Zandvoorde to near Wytscheate on the Ypres-Lille road, a distance of five miles, and in possession of the village of Hollebeke, or rather of its site, the Germans appear to have decided that the effective direction for their attack was through Wytscheate and the sector of the Allied front following the Lille road from near Wytscheate through the village of Messines to Armentières. And this decision on their part was without question strategically sound. Could they have carried it out, they would not only have compelled the British forces to fall back from the west of Lille, but to evacuate Ypres. They would have won the battle. Moreover the victory must have been decisive, for on the north it would have cut off an important part of the British and French forces, together with the Belgians, from the remainder of the Allied line, and on the south it would have turned the flank of that line. The mistake, a fatal mistake, lay in not having made this the real objective from the first, and in wasting force and incurring defeat, with its inevitable demoralisation, in attempts to break through into Ypres across the belt of woods on the east and the south-east.

There the only lines along which attacks in great strength could be thrown were roads running into Ypres like spokes into the hub of a wheel, but the farther in any one of these attacking columns moved, the more were its flanks exposed. The precaution against flank attack, advance in echelon, was made by the character of this woodland belt out of the question. We have seen that, appreciating these capabilities of defence, the British Commander-in-Chief had crushed a gigantic onset. It is manifest now that the Germans had believed that by weight of numbers they could prevail over the difficulties, and the chances those difficulties gave of holding this sector with a comparatively small force, but that had merely involved them in enormous losses, a risk inseparable from their tactics.

Having now realised their mistake, they attempted to throw an immense wedge of troops against the two miles of British line between Wytscheate and Messines. Here again, however, they found themselves anticipated. The front was no longer held merely by a single rank of cavalry. The bemudded, dirty, unshaven ragged, and almost unrecognisable yet victorious survivors of that band of heroes had been relieved. Part of the 16th French Army Corps, General Conneau's cavalry, a division of the Indian Army Corps, and a part of the British 2nd Army Corps were on or behind it. Sir John French was taking no unnecessary risks. To these troops, some 50,000 in all, therefore, he added as a reserve units of the Territorials recently arrived from England. It was certain that they would have to meet German forces four if not five times as numerous, and it was certain that those German troops would fight to the last gasp.

The Germans lost no time. Their attack against Wytscheate and Messines was made concurrently before daybreak. They had taken advantage of the darkness to carry out mass movements which could not be sighted from aeroplanes. The onset was both heavy and sudden, and it formed probably the greatest night operation on record. Darkness, it was now held, afforded the best protection against British rifle power. As this was an attack which had to succeed at all costs, the enemy took the heavy punishment inflicted by a furious resistance. A proportion of these German troops were lads of 17 and even younger. They had been used to fill up the gaps left by casualties, and mingled with the older men drove forward on the order of their officers and faced death at the muzzles of British rifles and the massed guns of the British Horse Artillery by hundreds. Both Wytscheate and Messines fell into the enemy's hands. At the same time with the evident object of arresting the movement of reserves assaults were made along the British line to the south of Messines past Armentières and along the valley of the Lys. This part of the attack was, of course, no more than strategical. For the purpose it was useless. Round both Wytscheate and Messines the enemy found himself confronted by quite unexpected forces. He could make no further advance from either. So costly indeed had been his attack upon Wytscheate, that the French infantry, launched upon a counter-attack with the aid of a British cavalry force, cleared him out of the place at the point of the bayonet.

It was during the fighting on this day, a Sunday, that there occurred the episode which earned for the London Scottish Territorials the special acknowledgment of the Commander-in-chief. Transported in motor omnibuses from the base at Boulogne to Ypres, where, on arrival, they were quartered for the night in the Hôtel de Ville, they had been sent forward in the first instance to Neuve Eglise, and then to Messines to support the front line. This was during the crisis of the German attack on October 31. The battalion fought its way forward from Messines to a position east of the Ypres-Lille main road. There, under heavy fire, it dug itself in, and for five hours repulsed a series of determined assaults. Resolved at any price to be rid of these fellows in kilts who had thrown themselves right athwart the line of advance upon Messines, the Germans, at two o'clock in the morning of November 1, renewed the onset with a crushing superiority of numbers. While the battalion was resisting the attack in front, another force of the enemy developed an attack in flank. Others, getting between the first and second British lines of trenches opened an assault from the rear. These set on fire an adjacent house. The flare from this building lit up the combat and the bayonet charges in which the companies of the reserve dashed into and defeated the Germans who had got round the position. By their gallantry the reserve prevented the battalion from being surrounded.

Unable to carry the position by assault, the Germans now tried to wipe out the battalion by an enfilade fire from machine guns. This had now at length made retirement imperative. The corps had to cut its way out with the bayonet. Inevitably the losses were heavy. The striking fact, however, is that the first unit of the Territorial Force which had taken part in battle had saved itself in a situation and in a manner which would have done honour to the most famous and veteran regiment in the Service. Indeed there are few episodes in British military annals more dramatic or more brilliant. Naturally this episode, apart from its immediate military effect, attracted great attention because it afforded a proof of the quality of the Territorial Force, a proof which that Force has since amply upheld.

The effect of the delay opposed to the German advance by this unlooked for and obstinate resistance was serious. Without question it upset their plans and prevented the attacks upon Wytscheate and Messines from being, as they had been designed to be, simultaneous. The result was both that the attack upon Wytscheate failed to stay, and that the attack upon Messines effected nothing more than the occupation of the ruins of that village. That trifling outcome needless to say was not the German aim.

The upshot of the German operations for this day proved for all practical purposes negative. On November 2 the effort to break through was renewed. Wytscheate was once more attacked and carried. This time the place was set on fire, and as night fell at the end of the short dim November day the burning ruins cast round a mighty glare, lighting up the fierce and repeated bayonet charges with which time and again the French infantry threw back the efforts of the enemy to make headway.

Meanwhile, finding that strong forces of the Allies had been ranged against them, the Germans to the south of Messines tried to open up a road for their columns with an artillery fire of great intensity. On the other side the British and French ranged a powerful force of guns in a wide arc, and concentrating the fire of these towards one comparatively limited fire-zone on the German front, moved that fire-swept area up and down the hostile line. The effect may be compared to playing the point of a ray of sunlight focussed through a burning glass. In face of such a fire no advance could be along this section attempted. The Germans had to retire their troops out of range to save them from annihilation.

And this in effect was the defeat of their scheme. Next day (November 3) the attack was towards Hollebeke, in combination with another attempt to debouch from Wytscheate. The diversion was tantamount to a confession of failure.

In face of it Sir John French knew that he had definitely won the battle. His first step was to issue an Army Order thanking the troops. Every word of this historic document is justified. It ran:

But though in truth decided, the battle was not yet over. The Germans refused to accept defeat. They now adopted different tactics. These were a tremendous bombardment of the British lines alternating with repeated attacks. The latter were not as before directed against one or two decisive points of the front, but distributed all round and included the part of the front to the north of Ypres. There four hostile army corps were employed. The attacks were not only made with smaller masses and more numerous, but they were delivered both by day and by night and almost without cessation. It was, in fact, a tactic of wearing down. This went on for six days and nights without cessation. The struggle was marked by many remarkable episodes due to the fact that the Germans, conscious of defeat, now fought with redoubled bitterness and with much of the spirit of bravado and revenge.

One instance of this was the extraordinary attempt to carry a French trench by a charge of cavalry. This, of course, was no better than suicide. "Every horse," says "Eye Witness," in recording the affair, "was killed, but those riders who were not hit continued the charge on foot. The last survivors were slain on the very parapet of the trench."

At another point, where the bodies of a company of Germans enfiladed by machine-gun fire lay as they had fallen in a regular row, a second body of the enemy advanced at nightfall, and along the line of corpses dug themselves in.

By dint of these attacks, and while the British troops were strengthening their line, turning their hasty pre-cover into trenches of systematic make, with zigzag communication ways, and supports trenches and "dugouts" in the rear, the Germans in many places advanced their positions so close that the occupants of the trench on one side were within earshot of those on the other. It became the enemy's practice to bring up heavy artillery in the night, to shell a British position, and while the troops were sitting tight under the bombardment to "dig in" close by.

This closeness of the opposing entrenched positions in many places led to repeated night raids; a form of activity in which more especially the Indian troops proved adepts. An Indian night raid, which recovered a line of trenches the enemy had taken, is thus described by those who witnessed it:

Besides this a variety of ruses were resorted to. Men dressed in French or British uniforms stole singly through the British lines to cut field telephone wires. Others employed themselves as eavesdroppers. Germans dressed in imitation uniforms of the British staff more than once appeared and tried to give false orders.12

On the main ridge to the south-east of Ypres, the Germans massed a number of batteries with which they tried to rake the British lines. The ridge, however, was an exposed position, and both the French and British guns were concentrated upon it with marked effect. Describing this "Eye Witness" states:

There can be no doubt the change in tactics was due in part to the fact that owing to the shock of defeat a continuance of the mass attacks had become for the time impracticable. Of the feeling, at any rate, on the part of some of the enemy the following extract from a German soldier's diary picked up on the battlefield throws a certain light:

As the effect of this week of day and night wearing down work, it was apparently on November 10, judged that the British were ripe for the enemy's last effort—the attack of the Prussian Guard. This, preceded by the most intensive artillery fire the Germans had yet achieved, began on November 11 soon after daybreak. They had clearly, in regard to the massing of their guns, taken a leaf out of the book of the French and British artillerists, and they tried against the entrenched positions north and south of the Menin-road, the effect which had been successfully used against them at Messines. The way having thus been, as it was supposed, opened up, 1st and 4th Brigades of the Prussian Guard rolled forward.

The line of attack lay diagonally across part of the British front, and on it was turned the united fury of field guns, machine guns and rifles. It has been affirmed by all who saw the onset that the Guard stood against this terrible hail like rock. The grey-green mass, at the outset some 20,000 strong, moved forward in close formation, and almost as though on parade. As one man fell another stepped into his place. Their losses were enormous, but the mass kept its formation and its momentum. At three places despite the desperate resistance of the British they broke the line, and penetrated into the woods. There, however, the British reserves, brought up for the counter-attack, fell upon them. In a bayonet fight with a brigade of Irishmen, the Guards met not only their equals, but their superiors. Those who held together were driven back, enfiladed by the fire of machine guns. The rest broke into scattered bodies; these when rounded up fought to the last where they stood. Only a miserable remnant of this mass of brave men reached the lines of the enemy.

That was the supreme effort and the end. On the farther side of Belgium beyond the sight of the beaten army flared the monstrous pyres of paraffin-soaked timber in which, tied together, four by four, and standing upright, the bodies of the unfortunate German slain were burned by tens of thousands. Such was the aftermath of this mighty tragedy.

  CHAPTER VIII

THE BATTLE ON THE YSER

As we have seen, the gigantic Battle of Ypres presented four phases.

During the first phase, from October 11 to October 17, the British Army, pivoting upon Givenchy, drove the Germans from Hazebrouck to Lille.

During the second phase, from October 18 to October 24, the Germans, resuming the offensive, hurled the weight of their attack against the sector of the British front to the west of Lille. The British positions had meanwhile been extended round Ypres to the south and east, and the line of the Allies formed as far as the coast.

The third phase was marked by the effort of the enemy, now enormously reinforced, to break through into Ypres from the south-east, aided by a turning movement from the south. The fighting during the three days, October 29 to October 31, formed the crisis of the battle. It has been stated in the French Army Bulletin summarising the operations from October 21 to November 15, that the Emperor of Germany, who had at this time taken up his head-quarters at Courtrai, "announced that he wanted to be in Ypres by November 1, and every preparation had been made for the proclamation on that day of the annexation of Belgium."

In the fourth and final phase of the battle the Germans tried to pierce the Allied line between Ypres and the Lys through Wytscheate and Messines. That defeated, the great mass assault was made against Ypres from the east by the Prussian Guard on November 11.

While German infantry attacks continued to be made until November 15, they were no more than the sullen efforts of a baffled but still bitter foe. The stress of the fighting lasted from October 11 to November 11, that is exactly one month. For a second time in this Western campaign there had been in a great pitched battle, a trial of strength, and for a second time the forces of Germany had, as on the Marne, gone down.

It is important to keep these phases of the Battle of Ypres in mind. They throw light on the battle which was concurrently, from October 17 to October 31, being fought on the Yser.

From its source in the hills west of Ypres to the sea the whole course of the Yser does not exceed 20 miles. It is a stream, however, of a quite exceptional character. Running through a tract of country for the most part below sea level, it is more like two streams flowing in the same direction, and connected by winding cross channels. On a smaller scale the like effect may be seen in the channels on stretches of flat shore at ebb tide. The Yser was of course nothing more originally than a network of such channels running through the mud flats, and though all this part of the Lowlands was more than a thousand years ago finally reclaimed from the sea, the waters continued to flow along the ancient beds. They have been connected besides by canals. In the Middle Ages when Ypres was a great centre of trade, and one of the most populous cities of Europe, these canals were busy arteries of commerce. The country between Ypres and the coast, one of the most fertile tracts in the world, was at the outbreak of this War full of quaint and picturesque memorials of its former importance. In modern days, and more especially under the wise and beneficial rule of the present Royal House of Belgium, it was a picture of peaceful and settled wealth.

On the Yser half-way between Ypres and the sea was the old town of Dixmude, with a church and a hôtel de ville which were masterpieces of Gothic architecture. Towards the coast, where the line of sand dunes has in part covered the ancient dykes, the river takes a sharp bend to west. A tract about two miles wide and three miles long is thus enclosed on the east between the river channels on the one side and the sea on the other. This was occupied by the little sea-side residential places, Lombartzyde and Westende. Nieuport lay on the west bank of the river a mile or more inland. The Yser here becomes one channel, deep enough to be navigated by shipping of moderate draught. It was crossed at Nieuport by five bridges, Between them lay the series of locks dividing the tidal part of the Yser from the inland reaches. The locks were those used to regulate the river overflow at low tide while keeping out the sea when the tide was at flood.

There are two points of some importance on the west bank of the Yser between Dixmude and Nieuport—the villages of Pervyse and Ramscappel. Both are on the main road connecting the two towns. Five miles farther to the west lies the town of Furnes, already mentioned as the meeting place of the great road from Ypres with that running along the coast from Ostend through Nieuport and on to Dunkirk and Calais. The great roads, and indeed most of the main roads and canals in this part of Flanders are carried along embankments. Before the war these were mostly bordered with trees, affording in winter shelter from the cold winds which sweep over the country from the North Sea, and welcome shade in summer. It was a land of deep repose, and for nearly 100 years and until the coming of the Goth, nothing save the mellow chime floating distantly from some tall and noble spire reared in far off days by pious hands, had broken in upon its dreaming.

General Joffre issued the first orders directed towards his great scheme of military envelopment on September 11. This promptitude was essential. When in the first phase of the battle of Ypres the British drove the Germans back upon Lille, the strategical effect was to tear in the German front a gap from Lille to beyond Thourout, a distance of nearly thirty miles. The Germans had to mass their forces at Lille in order to keep their hold on that place.

Through the gap thus made the French pushed forward four divisions of cavalry, two divisions of their Territorial troops, and a division of marines, 6,000 strong. Already, however, on October 15, the Germans had, north of the gap towards the coast, two army corps, and these were in the course of the next two or three days reinforced by two others. The objective of these troops was to seize Nieuport and the crossing of the Yser.

The Belgian Army reached Nieuport from Antwerp on October 16. That army was, however, not immediately fit for further service. In these circumstances the line of the Yser from Nieuport to Dixmude was held by the French cavalry and marines, while the 1st division of British infantry was thrown forward to Bixschoote, with the 2nd division in support. Later along the Yser and round Ypres, where after November 20 they relieved the British, the French forces on this part of the front were brought up to five army corps. At this date in mid October, however, all that could be opposed to the German mass aggregating 240,000 men detailed to seize the crossings of the Yser, were these French cavalry, one division of marines, and two divisions of British infantry, not 45,000 in all.

The first German thrust against Nieuport was made on October 17, and it must inevitably have succeeded had it not been that the enemy came within range of and were enfiladed by the fire of a British flotilla. This equivalent to a destructive attack in flank wrecked the attempt. The shells of the warships raked the German lines as far inland as Dixmude.

The Germans realised that at Nieuport, in face of the guns of the British ships, they could not succeed. They made ready, in consequence, to throw their attack against Dixmude. For that purpose they waited until their whole force could come up. Their first attempt had been made with two army corps only. The respite enabled the Belgian army to be refitted. Both sides meanwhile proceeded to dig themselves in. In this region the water level is not more than two feet below the surface. No sooner were the trenches cut than the water oozed in. These conditions were aggravated by days and nights of heavy and almost incessant rain. A dense mist overhung the country. The nights, too, were now becoming bitterly cold. On the side of the Germans the numbers were large enough to afford reliefs. They were not large enough on the side of the Allies. The Belgians passed days and nights in the trenches under these conditions without respite. It was an effort of endurance that has never been paralleled. But for their unconquerable spirit these heroic men could not have come through such an ordeal. They were defending, however, the last few square miles of their country and they were defending that last bit of territory from foes whose pitiless cruelty they had seen in butchery and outrage. Behind them they had the memory of a happy freedom. Before them lay only the prospect of submitting for ever to the odious tyranny which had laid some of the fairest towns and districts of Belgium in ruins. In that mudded and warworn army there was a fire no hardship could subdue.

On October 21 opened the great German drive. It was directed alike and at once to the seizure of Ramscappel so as to compel the Belgians to evacuate Nieuport; against Dixmude; and farther south against the British positions at Bixschoote. The latter point was as far as natural conditions were concerned the easiest crossing of the three. There is here only one channel of the Yser with a line of canal on either side of it. The three attacks were made simultaneously because they brought into play the vast German superiority in numbers.

The enemy had massed along this front a great weight of guns, including the heavy pieces used in the attack on Antwerp, and his plan was to draw west of the Yser an impenetrable curtain of fire while he constructed pontoon bridges. There were difficulties. First the river channels were in flood. Secondly they were commanded by the French and Belgian guns. Thirdly and along their length they were under the cross fire from the warships. This acute spasm of the battle, lasting without a moment's respite for three days and two nights, was therefore in one of its main features a gigantic artillery duel.

Pontoon bridges constructed by the Germans were destroyed by the French gunners or by the shells from the warships time and again. More than once the bridges were struck and wrecked when they were crowded with troops and these miserable men, thrown in a struggling mass into the water, were drowned by hundreds. Time after time the Germans endeavoured to bridge the river, or rather the network of rivers before the effort at length succeeded.

Then from Ramscappel the Belgians were forced to retire. Once across the river with a considerable force of infantry, cavalry, and guns, the Germans seized Pervyse, and pushed forward to Furnes with such speed that the small Belgian reserve force there, surprised by them, had to quit hastily. A surprise, however, was also in store for the Germans. A division of French Algerian troops, who had been sent forward by forced marches to reinforce the Belgian resistance, were already close at hand. They reached Furnes shortly after the German advance force had established themselves there. The attack was as impetuous as it was unexpected. The Turcos cleared the Germans out of the place at the point of the bayonet. Enemy reinforcements, however, hurried up. In turn the Germans tried to carry the town by storm. The struggle went on from street to street and from house to house. Again and again the Germans were driven out. Again and again they rallied and renewed the fight. As night came on the French commander called upon his men for a supreme effort. It was victorious. Broken by this onslaught, the Germans were not only chased out of Furnes but pursued to Ramscappel and driven out of that village as well. Behind them their bridges over the Yser had in the meantime again been destroyed. Mr. A. Beaumont, special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, who reached Furnes the following day, has recorded that:

Of the attack on Dixmude an account was sent by a German who took part in it to Vorwärts. He relates:

At Bixschoote the Germans succeeded in capturing part of the British trenches held by the 1st Division. These, however, were wrested from the enemy in a brilliantly executed counterattack. To the troops for this service the Brigadier-General in command issued a special order of congratulation. This document gives a clear summary of the operation:

In truth the immediate impetus of the German onset had exhausted itself in the violent and costly efforts put forth. After an interval of not more than six hours Dixmude was retaken, and the Belgians, advancing from Nieuport, took and entrenched themselves in Lombartzyde. Despite its frightful cost in life, the second attempt to get across the Yser had tragically failed.

After reorganising the Germans began the third great attempt on October 9. This was even more determined and more wasteful of life than the second. Again it was persisted in for three days. The scenes were a repetition of those of the week before, if anything, they were still more terrible, for the resistance was as unflinching as the attack was bitter. On the evidence of men who had taken part in the battle, Mr. Frederick de Bathe, special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, wrote: