_Thursday, April 11._--Yesterday afternoon and today the enemy exerted
all his strength in men and guns in the battle now raging from the River
Lys to Wytschaete. Once again the British are outnumbered, and it is
only by the courage and stubborn will of battalions weakened by losses
and of individual soldiers animating their comrades by acts of brave
example that the enemy has been unable to make rapid progress and, as at
Wytschaete and Messines, has been flung back with most bloody losses.
The British had to give ground along the Lys Canal south of Armentières,
blowing bridges behind them and the railway bridge at Armentières, and
the enemy is now trying to thrust forward south of Merville by bending
back the British line from Lestrem and getting his guns across the Lys.
This morning there was a ceaseless tumult of gunfire, loud and terrible,
over all this countryside. There were strange and terrible scenes on all
the roads leading to the battle zone where British infantry and gunners
were going forward to stem the tide. Masses of transport moved and
civilians passed them in retreat to villages outside the wide area of
shell range, and wounded men came staggering down afoot, if they could
walk, or were brought down by ambulances, threading their way through
all this surge and swell of war.
Here and there stretcher bearers waited with their burdens on the
roadsides. Among them were men of the Black Watch, with the red hackle
in their bonnets, calm and grave like statues beside their wounded
comrades lying there with white, upturned faces and never a murmur or
groan. They were the heroes who yesterday, with gallant hearts, came up
at a great pace when the enemy was in Wytschaete and Messines, and in a
fierce counterattack drove him off the crest of the ridge and dealt him
a deadly blow there on that high ground, which was won in the battle of
last June, when English, Irish, and New Zealand troops stormed the ridge
and captured thousands of prisoners.
The enemy yesterday fell in great numbers and his dead lie thick, and
though he came on wave after wave, after all his day's agony and
struggle he had not gained a yard of the crest, but was beaten back.