icerbox 0850526248 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

During the day and evening of 6 June, as the first rain for some time fell heavily, the Irish, English, Welsh, New Zealand and Australian troops in the training and resting camps set off for their assembly trenches, in accordance with carefully calculated timetables. About 80,000 troops filed along cross-country tracks and down the long communication trenches which had been produced by the Canadians in 1915 and 1916, and still bore their names: Medicine Hat Trail, Beaver, Calgary Avenue, P&O Trench. The Australians, on their way from camps around Pont de Nieppe, approached through Ploegsteert Wood as the Germans were bombarding the wood with gas shells (knowing the gas would be slow to disperse in the trees) and about 500 men were killed or disabled.

Eventually all the troops were in their assembly positions all along the British front and trenches immediately behind. In the dark smoking and noise was forbidden. All present were instructed to lie down to prevent being thrown off their feet by the ground tremors expected from the mines. Zero hour – 3.10 am – had been carefully chosen as 1½ hours before dawn, and a visibility of 100 metres had been estimated as the first light glimmered. Troops and onlookers on vantage points at Hill 63 and Kemmel Hill waited nervously as the minutes ticked away. Later German accounts relate how nightingales could be heard singing in the remains of the woods as the almost full moon shone in the clear sky.

German officers with camouflaged trench periscope. As the British were preparing for the offensive the Germans were watching the build-up of arms and men: although they knew the attack was imminent they could not guess the actual date it was to start.

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