On the 5th October, then, so far as the Guards Division was concerned, the line of our working front ran through Poelcappelle and thence back to the Ypres-Staden railway at a point some thousand yards north of Langemarck. From that point it merged into the old line gained on the 20th of September which followed the Broembeek River at a short distance to the south of it, towards our junction with the French, and thence lost itself in the flooded areas beyond Noordschoote. No weight of attack had fallen on that sector of the front since September 20 when Langemarck had been captured, and the French line, with ours, advanced in the direction of Draibach and Houthulst Forest.
It was decided to renew the attack, in combination with the French here, on the 9th October, from north-west of Langemarck across the Ypres-Staden railway down to a point in the line gained on the 4th October, east of Zonnebeke, on a front of six miles. The weather prepared itself in advance. Rain began punctually on the 7th, continued through the 8th, and made the going more than usually unspeakable. It affected the Guards Division principally, since their share of the work involved crossing the little valley of the Broembeek River which, should it continue to flood, offered every possible opportunity for holding up troops under fire, loss of direction (since men never move straight across bogs) and engulfment of material. The Broembeek was a stagnant ditch, from twenty to thirty feet wide and from two to five deep, edged with shell-holes and, in some parts, carrying vertical banks four or five feet deep. There was, mercifully, no wire in it, but night-patrols sent out the week before the battle of the 9th reported it could not be crossed without mats.
The 1st Brigade of the division, which lay in reserve while the 3rd Brigade held the front line, had trained for several days at Poll Hill Camp over ground “marked” to represent the ground that the Battalion would have to attack over. The certainty of being drenched to the skin on a raw October night as a preliminary to tumbling from shell-hole to shell-hole till dawn between invisible machine-guns and snipers was left to the imagination of the men.