The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1917Doyle, Arthur Conan
History
The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1917
Doyle, Arthur Conan
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front
To the right of the Midland men the New Zealanders--that {205}
splendid division which had never yet found its master, either on
battlefield or football ground--advanced upon the Gravenstafel spur.
Once more the record of success was unbroken and the full objective
gained. The two front brigades, drawn equally from the North and
South Islands, men of Canterbury, Wellington, Otago, and Auckland,
splashed across the morass of the Hannebeek and stormed their way
forward through Aviatik Farm and Boetleer, their left co-operating
with the Midlanders in the fall of the Winzic strong point. The
ground was thick with pill-boxes, here as elsewhere, but the soldiers
showed great resource and individuality in their methods of stalking
them, getting from shell-hole to shell-hole until they were past the
possible traverse of the gun, and then dashing, bomb in hand, for the
back door, whence the garrison, if they were lucky, soon issued in a
dejected line. On the right, the low ridge magniloquently called
"Abraham's Heights" was carried without a check, and many prisoners
taken. Evening found the whole of the Gravenstafel Ridge in the
strong hands of the New Zealanders, with the high ruin of
Paschendaale Church right ahead of them as the final goal of the Army.
These New Zealanders formed the left unit of Godley's Second Anzac
Corps, the right unit of which was the Third Australian Division.
Thus October 4 was a most notable day in the young, but glorious,
military annals of the Antipodean Britons, for, with the First Anzac
Corps fighting upon the right, the whole phalanx made up a splendid
assemblage of manhood, whether judged by its quality or its quantity.
Some 40,000 infantry drawn from the islands of the {206} Pacific
fronted the German and advanced the British line upon October 4. Of
the Third Australians it can only be said that they showed themselves
to be as good as their comrades upon either flank, and that they
attained the full objective which had been marked as their day's
work. By 1.15 the final positions had been occupied and held.
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{207}
[Illustration: ORDER OF BATTLE, October 4, 1917]
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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