N.W. corner. The lake is triangular and entirely artificial, being
surrounded by a broad causeway, 6 feet high, with a pathway along the
top. On the western edge the ground falls away, leaving a bank some
twenty feet high, in which were built the "Lake Dug-outs,"--the home of
one of the support battalions. From the corner house to the trenches
there were two routes, one by the south side of the Lake, past Railway
Dug-outs--cut into the embankment of the Comines Railway--and Manor Farm
to Square Wood; the other, which we followed, along the North side of
the Lake, where a trench cut into the causeway gave us cover from
observation from "Hill 60." At Zillebeke we left the trench, and crossed
the main road at the double, on account of a machine gun which the Boche
kept at the "Hill 60" end of it, and kept moving until past the
Church--another unpleasant locality. Thence a screened track led to
Maple Copse, an isolated little wood with several dug-outs in it, and on
to Sanctuary Wood, which we found 400 yards further East. Here in
dug-outs lived the Supports, for whom at this time was no fighting
accommodation except one or two absurdly miniature keeps. At the corner
of the larger wood we passed the Ration Dump, and then, leaving this on
our left, turned into Armagh Wood on our right.

From the southern end of Zillebeke village two roads ran to the front
line. One, almost due South, kept close to the railway and was lost in
the ruins of Zwartelen village on "Hill 60"; the other, turning East
along a ridge, passed between Sanctuary and Armagh Woods, and crossed
our front line between the "A" and "B" trenches, the left of our new
sector. The ridge, called Observatory, on account of its numerous
O.P.'s, was sacred to the Gunners, and no one was allowed to linger
there, for fear of betraying these points of vantage. Beyond it was a
valley, and beyond that again some high ground N.E. of the hill,
afterwards known as Mountsorrel, on account of Colonel Martin's