AUSTRALIANS PREPARING FOR MESSINES RIDGE These soldiers are studying a great model of the terrain to be taken, the model "true in every detail" and covering more than an acre of ground FOR I MESSINES RIDGE June 7, 1917-July 28, 1917 NOR twelve months the front between the sea and the Lys River had been all but stagnant, after having been for the first two years of the war the chief fighting area. of the British. In the half-moon of hills around Ypres, and the ridges of Wytschaete and Messines, the Germans had viewpoints which commanded the whole countryside, and especially the British line within the salient, so that any British preparations for attack would be under German eyes. Moreover, the heavy, water-logged clay where the British front was maintained lay at the mercy of weather, and in rain became a bottomless swamp. The Germans were acutely conscious of the importance of the terrain, and there was little chance of taking them by surprize. But now in June war flared up again in this region with all its old-time fury. David Lloyd George arose at 3 o'clock on the morring of June 7, and sat down by an open window in his residence at Halton Heath, England, waiting for an explosion. Presently from across 130 miles of land and water he heard distant thunder, and then knew that a million pounds of explosives had hurled skyward German first-line trenches on the France-Flanders border, and that British soldiers. were charging forward toward the crest of the MessinesWytschaete ridge. Plans for the explosion of this great mine had been long maturing, and Lloyd George had been apprized of the exact moment when it would be set off. When he went to bed the night before, he had left instructions that he should be called at 3 o'clock, in the hope of hearing the crash that was to herald the renewal of a British offensive. Some idea of the magnitude of the explosion may be obtained by comparing it to a series of such blasts as shook New York City when the Black Tom disaster occurred in the summer of 1916 and windows were shattered as far away as Connecticut, the detonation being distinctly heard in Philadelphia, nearly 100 miles away. This Messines attack preceded by gusts of drum-fire and the detonation of a million pounds of high explosives, began beneath a summer moon over a nine-mile front. It led to the capture of more than 5,000 prisoners and many guns. The immediate effect of the victory was to give the British command of a large region in the fighting area. The line of hills between Wytschaete and Messines was only half the height of Vimy Ridge, but it was the only high land left for miles around and controlled a flat agricultural country. "Everywhere we captured our first objectives," Haig reported. By day and night artillery roared an almost continuous bombardment. Haig had kept furious action going elsewhere when he suddenly delivered his biggest blow in the Messines-Wytschaete sector. Until this action his movements had been in suspense over twenty days-isolated struggles back and forth, but no mass-attacks such as those with which he now pounded the Germans. The inception of a deep mining offensive at this point really dated from July, 1915; but the proposal to conduct offensive mining on a large scale had not been definitely adopted till January, 1916. In all, twenty-four mines had been constructed by the British, four of which were outside the front ultimately selected for their offensive. Many of them had been completed for twelve months. Constant and anxious work had been needed to ensure their safety. A total of 8,000 yards of gallery were driven in their construction, and over a million pounds of explosives were used. The simultaneous discharge of such an enormous aggregate of explosive was without parallel in land mining. At the beginning of the war the area behind the British front from Ypres to the Lys had been served by one railway only. This was the trunk line from Calais to Lille by way of Armentières. At Hazebrouck, a line branched off from it which, skirting the western end of the Mont-des-Cats range, connected Ypres with the railroads leading to Ostend, Bruges, and Ghent. Between the first battle of Ypres and the battle of Vimy-Arras these inadequate communications had BEFORE MESSINES RIDGE WAS TAKEN Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer, commander of the Second British Army, who prepared the great explosion of June 7, 1917, is here shown with cap raised, while examining a mine crater. This mine was exploded before the attack on Messines itself as a part of the preliminary training Plumer gave his army |