_Wednesday, April 17._--Yesterday morning the fortune of war seemed
again in favor of the enemy by the capture of Wytschaete Ridge down to
Spanbroekmolen and by the entry of Meteren, west of Bailleul. The
hard-pressed British troops were forced to give ground at both these
places, after a grand resistance which cost the enemy many lives, but in
the evening counterattacks hurled the enemy back from Wytschaete
village, that pile of brick dust above stumps of dead trees which were
Wytschaete Wood, and in a separate battle west of Bailluel the British
regained, at least for a time, a part of Meteren. This morning renewed
counterattacks gave them back all of Meteren and the enemy garrison
there was destroyed.
I watched the battle last night and again this morning from the centre
of the arc of fire, which was like a loop flung around from Wytschaete
to Bailleul and in a sharp curve around to Merris and the country about
Merville, so that the great gunfire and whole sweep of battle were close
about on three sides.
It was an astounding panorama of open warfare, such as I never dreamed
of seeing on this western front, where for so long both sides were
hemmed in by trenches. Bailleul was still blazing. In the early evening,
after a wet, misty day which filled all this battlefield with a whitish
fog, one could only see that city under a cloud, but as the sky darkened
and the wind blew some mist away enormous flames burned redly in the
poor dead heart of Bailleul, and in their glare there were dark masses
of walls and broken roofs outlined jaggedly by fire.
To the left the village of Locre was aflame under a storm of high
explosives, and the enemy's guns were putting heavy shells down the
roads which lead out to that place.
There were fires of burning farms and hamlets as far southward as
Merville behind one, as one stood looking out to Bailleul, and lesser
fires of single cottages and haystacks, and the wind drifted all the
smoke of them across the sky in long white ribbons.