[79] _Accurate details of the fighting which went on through the night of 31st October-1st November round Wytschaete are extremely difficult to disentangle. It seems that the 4th Cavalry Brigade was forced out of the village somewhere between 2 and 3 a.m., that the advance of the Germans was then held up west of the village, counter-attacks by two battalions of the 3rd Division, which had just arrived from La Bassée-Neuve Chapelle area, assisting to check them. Subsequently these battalions (1st Northumberland Fusiliers and 1st Lincolnshires) were also forced back, but by this time more French reinforcements were coming up with some of the 5th Cavalry Brigade, and their counter-attacks, though not wholly successful, prevented further German progress. But the admission of this account that two whole German regiments (six battalions) were engaged in the attack is a fine testimony to the resistance made by the 2nd Cavalry Division and attached infantry at Wytschaete with odds of more than two to one against them._ [80] _The forces available for the defence of Messines were the 1st Cavalry Division, much reduced by the previous fighting, assisted by portions of the 57th Rifles (Lahore Division) and two battalions of the 5th Division (the 2nd King's Own Scottish Borderers, 2nd King's Own Yorkshire L.I., both recently relieved from the trenches near Neuve Chapelle and much below strength). The twelve battalions of the 26th (Würtemburg) Division were thus in overwhelming superiority. The only artillery available to assist the defence were the 13-pounders of the R.H.A. batteries attached to the Cavalry Corps._ [81] _i.e. Würtemburg._ [82] _This is not accurate. Poezelhoek Château had to be evacuated during the night of 31st October-1st November, owing to the withdrawal of the line made necessary by the loss of Gheluvelt; but the Germans did not molest the retirement to the new position, and such attempts as they made in the course of 1st November to press on westward beyond Gheluvelt were unsuccessful. The British accounts do not give the impression that the German attacks on this day were very heavily pressed in this quarter; at any rate they failed to make any ground._ [83] _The hardest fighting of 1st November in the Ypres salient was in the area north-west of Zandvoorde where the detachments under Brigadier-Generals Bulfin and Lord Cavan were sharply engaged, as were also the remnants of the 7th Division, now holding a position south-east and south of the Herenthage Wood. A feature of this day's fighting was a counter-attack by the 26th Field Company R.E., acting as infantry in default of any infantry reserves, which checked the efforts of the Germans to advance north of Groenenburg Farm (north-west of Zandvoorde)._