The new front line included the village of Poelcappelle, which consisted now of a few "pill-boxes" and naught besides. The area behind it had been the scene of the most savage fighting on the British front, and was simply a waste of shell-holes, traversed by "duck-board" tracks. In rear, however, camps had sprung up amidst the desolation. Ypres, of all places under the sky, boasted an officers' club. There was a railway station at St. Jean, which those who had seen the campaign of 1917 remembered as one of the most unpleasant spots upon the front, and a mass of sidings at Wieltje, which had been infinitely worse. Not for long was the area to enjoy these amenities, nor Ypres its unwonted isolation from the enemy. On the 9th the troops heard a tremendous bombardment to the south. The enemy's offensive on the Lys had opened. From Givenchy, where they were magnificently held, to the neighbourhood of Gapaard, on a front of some twenty miles, the Germans had broken through. On the front of the Portuguese Corps the line was shattered, and the German wave flowed up the low valley of the Lys. The battered city of Armentières fell. For two or three days no real resistance could be organized across the gap, and the Germans pushed west upon Hazebrouck, a most important railway junction. Estaires, ten miles west of Armentières, was occupied by the evening of the 10th. By that time troops of the 36th Division were upon the scene of action. The 108th Brigade was in II. Corps reserve. At noon on the 10th it received orders to move at once to Kemmel, with "C" Company of the Machine-Gun Battalion. 'Buses were provided for dismounted personnel. The 'bus column, moving _via_ La Clytte, reached Kemmel village at 4-15 p.m., the Brigade coming under the orders of the G.O.C. 19th Division. That Division, with the 9th, had been fighting hotly for the defence of the Messines Ridge. The admirable steadiness of their young recruits and the gallant fashion in which their counter-attacks had been launched form a brilliant page in the history of the war, and helped to turn the Lys offensive, huge as were its gains, into one of the most expensive and fruitless of the great series of German assaults. General Griffith was ordered to put his Brigade into the Kemmel defences. His headquarters were established in Kemmel Château.