Through a series of advances, British troops were to extend the line eight kilometres to Passchendaele. To create a diversion, II Anzac Corps prepared to attack the Warneton Line, 10 kilometres from Ypres, but the Germans, watching the preparations from the heights, knew where the real advance was going to come from. On 31 July, the first advance began—to Pilckem Ridge— but the right flank of the British troops’ 27-kilometre front was stopped at Menin Road by machine-gun fire between the shattered remains of two woodlands—Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood. Then rain began falling: the heaviest downpour in 75 years. The complex drainage systems of the low-lying Flanders area had been destroyed by the war, and the rains quickly turned the land into a sea of mud. Orders were given to halt the attack. Two hours after the British advanced, II Anzac Corps attacked the Warneton Line. Two battalions of the 3rd Division charged outposts while the New Zealanders fought from house to house in La Basse Ville.
