beginning to wear out now. Three "of the most tired" were sent down and replaced by substitutes from the Reinforcement Battalion.
The following officers joined for duty on the 10th April: Lieutenant M. Buller, Lieutenant (Acting Captain) W. Joyce, Lieutenant Hon. B. A. A. Ogilvy, and 2nd Lieutenants T. B. Maughan, P. R. J. Barry, H. J. Lofting, G. C. MacLachlan and J. C. Haydon.
It was on the morning of the 9th April that the enemy opened his second great thrust on the Lys, and the three weeks' fighting that all but wiped out the Ypres Salient won him Messines, Kemmel, Armentières, Neuve Eglise, Bailleul, Merville, and carried him towards the Channel ports, within five miles of Hazebrouck. That the stroke was expected made it none the less severe. Spring on that front had chosen to be unseasonably dry. The lowlands in the Lys valley, normally their own best defences, gave passage to men and guns when they should have been still impassable. Whatever else may have betrayed them, the Germans had no cause to complain of the weather throughout the war, or indeed of the foresight of their adversaries. They had to deal chiefly with divisions that had been fought out in the Somme Push, reinforced with fillings from England and sent northward in a hurry. Sir Douglas Haig's despatches give the relative disparity thus:
In the Lys battle, prior to the 30th April, the enemy engaged
against the British forces a total of 42 Divisions, of
which 33 were fresh and 9 had fought previously on the
Somme. Against these 42 German Divisions, 25 British Divisions
were employed, of which 8 were fresh and 17 had taken
a prominent part in the Somme battle.
These were worn out, and as the days of fighting continued
many of them were so dead to the world that
they laid them down and slept where they dropped
by battalions. When orders came, it was a matter almost
of routine that each senior, handing them on,
should assault his junior into some sort of comprehen-
