wind). Walter Guinness wrote of the slipshod staff planning, engineering and signalling arrangements of Fifth Army in 1917: "None of the lessons taught by Plumer's success seem to have been learned." He recorded in his diary (23 July 1917) that there was "little confidence" in Gough. On 31 July the attack was relatively successful on the left (Anthoine's French, Cavan's XIV Corps (which took its objectives up to the Black Line before running into counterattacks), and to some extent Maxse's XVIII and Watts' XIX (both of which reached beyond the Green Line in places, although they did not take St Julien, and were driven back to the Black Line by counterattacks in places), but less so in Jacob's II Corps attacking the Gheluveld Plateau, where counterbattery work had not been good enough to silence German artillery). Despite initial German concerns at the success of the British attack in the left and centre, the German counterattack was conducted by Eingreif divisions which had survived further back towards Passchendaele Ridge, and artillery operating from and behind Passchendaele Ridge and the Gheluveld Plateau. British infantry training had proven relatively effective, but German artillery and the poor light and state of the ground caused a breakdown in communications, making it hard to bring up reinforcements. Edmonds later stressed in the Official History that after four days Gough's men were less than halfway to their first day objectives and had lost 30–60% of their fighting strength. Prior & Wilson point out that the attack had captured 18 square miles, including two of the German defensive lines on the left, at a cost of 27,000 casualties and inflicted approximately equal German casualties (as opposed to the First Day of the Somme, which had captured 3.5 square miles, for a cost of 57,000 British casualties, with minimal German losses). Ypres had been almost entirely removed from enemy observation. However, the attack had failed to capture the Gheluveld Plateau, and infantry pushing too far ahead had been vulnerable to counterattack. Farrar-Hockley writes that at the time "the results were not considered disappointing." John Lee writes that the results on 31 July were "mixed", with much of the ground taken lost, even on the first day, to "stupendous" counterattacks and that attempts to push forward after initial success led to "less than happy results". Andy Simpson writes of "the limited nature of the debatable success". It came on to