grounds on Salisbury Plain at Larkhill, site of the current Royal School of Artillery. In November 1916, the battalion sailed for the Western Front from Portsmouth, England, to Le Havre, France, and moved towards the border area with Belgium near Armentières. The battalion entered the frontline for the first time on Christmas Eve, 1916 at the Mushroom Salient, just east of La Chapelle-d'Armentières, of which four soldiers were killed by artillery fire on the first night. 1917 The battalion rotated through the frontline around Armentieres in France and across the Lys River in Belgium for most of the first half of 1917. The first major offensive of the war occurred in June at the Battle of Messines, where the battalion held the entire 11th Brigade frontage before the mines were set off and the assault began. The battalion was then involved in a series of smaller "Bite and Hold" attacks to exploit the gains from the Battle of Messines. Most notable of these was the assault against the 'Windmill' position of the Germans near Warneton, Belgium. The previous British battalion has stopped short of their intended objective, due to navigational errors on the churned up battlefield. The 41st Battalion thus had to assault across a longer than expected area, then hold on to their gains. The wet and saturated soils meant that trenches were nearly impossible to dig, so the position was merely a series of linked up flooded shell craters, from which the battalion repulsed several counterattacks over the next 18 days. Military Medals were awarded to two soldiers during this action for the heroic and near impossible act of being able to bring rations up to the frontline. After this action, the battalion was withdrawn from the frontline to the northern France and was brought back up to strength and under went further training. The next major battle was the participation in the Battle of Broodseinde, and Passchendaele in September and October. This saw the battalion leap-frogging the 42nd Bn AIF, to continue the assault, north of the Ypres–Roulers railway. It linked up with the 40th Bn AIF near the present day Tyne Cot Cemetery. The battalion then was used to press home further attacks, until relieved by Canadian forces who went on to capture Passchendaele. 1918 In early 1918, the battalion was resting and refitting in northern France, preparing to return to the Belgian battlefields near Ypres,