The night of the 29th was clear and fine, and the moon was nearly full, the light helping our men to pick their way through to the assembly on the comparatively firm ground between the flooded shell-holes. Soon after 5 o'clock on the morning of the 30th the troops were in position, and at ten minutes to six "A" and "C" Companies went over the top and forward to the attack on Vapour Farm and the outlying defences of Passchendaele. The ground immediately before the 5th C.M.R. was very swampy, and owing to this it had been previously found impossible to send troops straight through Woodland Plantation. Accordingly the waves of our attacking infantry divided, and "A" Company went forward and round the south of the Plantation, while "B" Company attacked on the north. For nearly an hour the smoke covering the plantation prevented any observation of our progress, but soon a wounded runner stumbled into Headquarters with a report that the left of our attack had reached the intermediate objective. On the right the men of "A" Company had encountered the enemy south of the wood, and fierce hand-to-hand fighting was still going on, with the Canadians steadily making their way forward. In this bayonet work, with the opponents waist deep in mud and water, our men won the advantage, for the knowledge that a mis-step or a disabling wound meant a peculiarly unpleasant death in suffocating mud was an incentive to desperate fighting, and the Germans hated it from the start. By the time the smoke had cleared our troops had won their way around the copse, and the two companies, now barely half their original strength, had joined and were resting while our barrage hammered the line of the intermediate objective. But this halt was a mistake. The Germans, retreating before our advance, were given time to re-form, and in a moment or two machine-gun and rifle fire became terribly heavy from the high ground to the east. However, led by Major Pearkes and reinforced by the remaining companies, the 5th C.M.R. went forward again, until our observers lost sight of them as they went over the ridge. Then occurred a time of anxious suspense for the men at Headquarters, until half an hour later a message came through from Major Pearkes saying that he was holding a line near to his final objectives with some fifty men, that the fighting was close and desperate, and that help was required.