Despite the heavy losses which left gaping holes in the Allied line, it was decided that the next stage of the advance was to go ahead. At 08:25, parties from the 34th and 35th Battalions headed out along the south-eastern edge of the ridge towards the outskirts of Passchendaele. Almost immediately, they came under heavy fire from a pillbox close by a railway embankment, at which time Major J.B. Buchanan, the senior brigade officer with the advance party, fell dead, leaving Jeffries to assume control. Gathering a party of eleven men, he set about silencing the machine gun position. Edging across the open ground, the party attacked the position from the west just as the machine gun was firing to the north. Realising that an attack was imminent, the machine gunner switched around, mortally wounding Jeffries in the stomach and sending the rest of the party to ground. When its fire eased, the remaining members of the group worked around the position, rushed it and seized two machine guns in conjunction with thirty prisoners.
