In November the struggle at Ypres reached its close. On Tuesday, the 6th, the Canadians carried the last fragment of the Passchendaele Ridge, and wiped out the Salient, where for three years we had been at the mercy of the German guns. Sir Douglas Haig had not come within measurable distance of his major purpose, and that owing to no fault of plan, but through the maleficence of the weather in a terrain where weather was all in all. He gambled upon a normal August, and he did not get it. The sea of mud which lapped around the Salient was the true defence of the enemy. Consequently the battle, which might have had a profound strategic significance in the campaign, became merely an episode in the war of attrition, a repetition of the Somme tactics, though conspicuously less successful and considerably more costly than the fighting of 1916. Yet it will remain in history as a proof of the superb endurance and valour of the armies of Britain, fighting under conditions which for horror and misery have not been surpassed in war. CHAPTER VII. THE EVE OF THE GREAT GERMAN ATTACK. (November 1917-March 1918.) The New German Tactics—The Experiments at Riga, Caporetto, and Cambrai—The 9th Division moves to Gouzeaucourt—The South African Brigade in the Front Line—Hardships of this Period—The 3rd Regiment disbanded—General Lukin leaves the Division—The Memorial Service at Delville Wood—The Brigade again enters the Line—The British Scheme of Defence—The Quiet before the Storm—The Morning of the 21st March.