of his troops and the bad autumn weather which was affecting their health; . . . the German General Staff fully concurred in the decision."
Meanwhile on the 2ist the British were withdrawn from the Ypres salient. French troops took over the front line; the I. Corps and Cavalry Corps remained in reserve; the two bri- gades of the II. Corps which had been sent up to the N. were also moved back to rest.
The battle of Flanders was at an end, and the armies, their front stabilized along all the line from the sea to Switzerland, settled down with the approach of winter to trench warfare.
(X.)
II.. BATTLES N. OF THE LYS, 1915
The five weeks' pause in active operations which had followed the battle of Neuve Chapelle was due mainly to the necessity of accumulating ammunition, of which the supply was still far from adequate, but also to the need of timing the next attack to coincide with General Foch's great attack against the Germans N. of Arras. Meanwhile a minor operation carried out by the II. Corps S.E. of Ypres led to extremely fierce local fighting. Where the Ypres-Comines railway cuts through one of the southern spurs of the Broodseinde ridge there is a mound which was of considerable tactical value especially as an artillery observation post. On April 17 1915 this " Hill 60 " was success- fully stormed by the 2nd K.O.S.B. and ist Royal West Rents of the sth Div., but its capture provoked prolonged and vigorous counter-attacks. The hill was lost and retaken more than once and not only the whole of the ijth Bde. but the ist Dcvons and ist E. Surreys of the i4th Bde. and the 2nd Camerons of the 27th Div. had to be thrown into the fight. By the end of a week the Germans had apparently acquiesced in the loss of the posi- tion for their counter-attacks died away.
But the struggle for Hill 60 was soon to be eclipsed. During April the British had gradually relieved the French in the Ypres salient. First the 27th Div. took over the line from Zwartelen to Polygon Wood, then the 28th came in on the left to and beyond the Broodseinde cross-roads, by April 17 the Canadian Div., now allotted to the V. Corps, occupied the N.E. face of the salient as far as the Ypres-Poelkapelle road. Thence to the Ypres- Yser canal were French troops, chiefly Africans. It was against this last section that on April 22 the Germans delivered the first gas attack. Some suspicions of this new weapon seem to have reached the Allied Headquarters, but there had been no time for preventive measures, and to the unfortunate Africans the gas-clouds came as a complete surprise. Luckily for the Allies the efficacy of their new weapon surprised the Germans themselves: they hastened to fall upon the Canadians whose left flank the rout of the French had completely exposed, but they had not enough troops to exploit their success. i The Canadians stood the strain of their first serious engage- ment splendidly. Their front line maintained their positions unshaken; a line was hastily improvised along the Poelkapelle road toward St. Julien to cover the exposed flank and rear of the front line, while local reserves manned the second-line trenches near " Shell Trap Farm " N. of Wieltje in time to check the further advance of the Germans. Divisional and corps reserves were hurried up at once and that evening a counter- attack by the loth and i6th Batts. temporarily recovered a wood W. of St. Julien. But the position was critical in the extreme. Between " Shell Trap Farm " and the canal a 2-m. gap lay open, Ypres itself was dangerously exposed and all the troops in the salient might have been cut off by a rapid German ad- vance in force. Moreover, during the night of April 22-23 the Germans succeeded in capturing the bridge at Steenstraate over the Yser canal and established themselves on the western bank.
The first need was therefore to close the gap between the Canadians and the French right. But conditions were all against counter-attacks. There was little time for reconnoitring or for coordinating advances, there was hardly any heavy artillery to support them for over 50 French guns had fallen into the enemy's hands. In the course of April 23 attacks were made
by a detachment drawn from the reserves of the 2 Sth Div. by the Canadian ist and 4th Batts. and by the i3th Bde. (sth Div.) hastily fetched up from the rest camp where it was recuperating after its heavy fighting for Hill 60. These attacks did not dis- lodge the Germans from the position they had already dug and wired along the ridge running westward past Pilckem, but they prevented further advance and by the evening a continuous line had been established from the canal to St. Julien. Else- where the position remained unchanged; though heavily shelled and under reverse and enfilade fire the Canadians stuck stub- bornly both to their original trenches and to the new flank thrown back to cover St. Julien, and more than one German advance was beaten off.
But with the Germans on the Pilckem ridge their guns could not only enfilade all the roads leading east ward into the " Salient " but could fire into the backs of the troops S. and E. of Ypres whose situation was therefore rendered most unsatisfactory. However, encouraged by promises of large French reinforce- ments, Sir John French endeavoured to maintain his original position until the French could reestablish theirs. He had brought up a brigade of the 4th Div. and the newly arrived Northumbrian Territorial Div. (later numbered Soth), while in the course of April 24 the Lahore Div. reached Ouderdom. But before a systematic counter-attack could be launched a successful German attack on the Canadians had changed the position for the worse. On the morning of April 24 an ex- tremely heavy bombardment developed on the original Canadian trenches, followed by the discharge of gas and by infantry attacks in force. The troops N. of St. Julien were overwhelmed and in the course of the morning the Germans, pressing on, made themselves masters of St. Julien and drove its defenders back upon Fortuin. Between Fortuin and the trenches of the Can- adian 2nd Bde., which still held out, there was for a time an open gap, but the German efforts to advance were checked by artillery fire at short range and before dark the gap was filled mainly by units of the 28th Div. to whose position, around Broodseinde, the German attacks had now extended though without success. But St. Julien was gone and the next counter-attack had to make the recovery of St. Julien its objective.
This, delivered early on April 25 by the loth Bde. and various attached units, advanced the line a little, but failed to recover the village. With equal gallantry and equally heavy casualties the Lahore Div. and the French attempted on April 26 to regain the Pilckem ridge, but just as success seemed within reach gas drove the French back and the advanced troops of the Lahore Div., overcome by this new weapon, could not maintain the positions they had reached. The Northumberland Fusilier (T.F.) Bde. attacked St. Julien with the same ill-fortune and meanwhile the Germans had managed despite the stubborn resistance of the Canadian 2nd Bde. to capture most of the Gravenstafel ridge. The 28th Div.'s left, N. of Broodseinde, was thus seriously exposed while simultaneously its infantry attacked it in front, but the arrival of the nth Bde. (4th Div.) enabled some sort of line to be established across the N. of " the Salient." Still it was only with great difficulty and heavy losses from shell- fire, that the newly arrived units managed to dig themselves in and establish touch with each other. Luckily the German infantry attacks lacked vigour and determination and afforded the defenders welcome opportunities for retaliation. '
By the evening of April 26th, however, the situation had not improved. A second attempt by the Lahore Div. (April 27), though gallantly pressed, achieved nothing; the French had made no progress and with the Pilckem ridge firmly held by the Germans the advanced position of the V. Corps was clearly untenable. Accordingly Sir John French decided upon a withdrawal to a new line running N. of St. Jean, N.E. of Wieltje, by Frezenberg, E. of Hooge, through the woods S. of the Ypres-Menin road to join the original line of the V. Corps N. of Hill 60. This line was much less liable to reverse and enfilade fire, but the evacuation of the Broodseinde ridge and Polygon wood meant losing valuable positions only to be re- captured at a heavy cost in the autumn of 1917. The move
