Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/267

 *emy dead. It was followed up on the 26th September by another attack, on a six-mile front from south of the Menin road to north-east of St. Julien, in which six divisions (Thirty-ninth, Thirty-third, Fifth and Fourth Australians, Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth) once more moved our line forward along that frontage, in some places nearly half a mile. Our movement clashed, almost to the minute, with German counter-attacks by fresh divisions launched to recover the ground they had lost on the 20th September, and the fighting was none the lighter for that coincidence.

The 3rd October saw the weather break again just as fighting was resumed on a seven-mile front from the Menin road to the Ypres-Staden railway. Twelve divisions went in here (the Thirty-seventh, Fifth, Twenty-first, Seventh; First, Second and Third Australians; the New Zealand; Forty-eighth, Eleventh, Fourth and Twenty-ninth). Reutel, Nordemhock, and Broodseinde villages were taken, Abraham Heights gained, the Gravenstafel spur cleared by the New Zealanders; three fresh German divisions were caught by our guns almost in the act of forming up for attack, and 5000 prisoners were passed back. The enemy's losses here were very satisfactory and mainly due to our gun-fire.

On the 5th October, then, so far as the Guards Division was concerned, the line of our working front ran through Poelcappelle and thence back to the Ypres-Staden railway at a point some thousand yards north of Langemarck. From that point it merged into the old line gained on the 20th of September which followed the Broembeek River at a short distance to the south of it, towards our junction with the French, and thence lost itself in the flooded areas beyond Noordschoote. No weight of attack had fallen on that sector of the front since September 20 when Langemarck had been captured, and the French line, with ours, advanced in the direction of Draibach and Houthulst Forest.