Rumours

Monday 11th June 1917

The attack at Messines has been a great success and many of the correspondents at the front, your correspondent included, were expecting it to lead to a full breakthrough into the clean countryside beyond this place of war. However, it seems it was only ever intended s a limited action to deny the enemy observation over our lines and to give us observation over his. In that it seems to have succeeded, though it seems the view from the Oostaverne Line is not as good as anticipated and so a further limited advance will be made in the next few days.

This has lead to rumours. The amount of material being brought into the Ypres Salient over the last few weeks has been very large, too large, some say, for even a major attack such as this. The rumour-mongers are saying that this attack at Messines was just a prelude to something much bigger. We shall see(1)

(1) The Third Battle of Ypres, commonly called the Battle of Passchendaele would begin on 31st July and last until 10th November.