About a week after leaving Bray Dunes the Battalion arrived in the Second Army training area, some miles to the west of St. Omer. This naturally fostered the idea that a period of intensive training was to be carried out before the men moved into battle. But, the very next day, advanced billeting parties were sent forward, and on the 30th of September the Battalion was again on the move. On October 3rd the frontier was passed, the night being spent at Clyde Camp, not far from Watou. An early start was made the next morning, and, as the distance was short, it was still early when the Battalion arrived at Red Rose Camp near Vlamertinghe. That day the weather broke; it rained pretty steadily throughout the march, and was the beginning of a long spell of wet. The men were fairly comfortably housed in the camp, but accommodation for officers was very bad. As things turned out this mattered little, for only B Echelon and the Transport spent a night there. At last the Battalion was to be rushed into battle at the shortest possible notice. CHAPTER IX. THE BELLE VUE SPUR. (_a_) October 4th–8th. The Third Battle of Ypres opened on July 31st, 1917, with an attack by two British Armies--the Second Army on the right and the Fifth Army on the left--supported by a French Army Corps to the north. At first a considerable advance was made, but the unusually wet weather of August greatly hampered operations. During September the weather improved and progress continued, but the fighting was exceptionally severe, the enemy stubbornly defending every inch of the ground. Notwithstanding all difficulties, by the beginning of October the Second Army was in touch with the Passchendaele Ridge, which was the last natural barrier between the British and the fertile, low-lying plains of Belgium. Though this ridge proved so serious an obstacle to the British advance, it is by no means conspicuous. At no point is it as much as sixty metres above sea level, and its average height is little more than fifty metres.