On the 13th and 14th some of the South Country troops were attacked by strong forces repeatedly, and on the second day for five hours at a stretch the enemy endeavored to come across from houses and inclosures west of Merville toward St. Venant. For those five hours the South Country lads fired with rifles, Lewis guns, and machine guns into solid bodies of Germans, and their field guns tore gaps in the enemy's formations and broke up their assemblies before the attacks could proceed. One advance in five waves was mown down before it could make any progress, and others were dealt with in the same way. _Mr. Gibbs describes the German repulse between Robecq and Givenchy as a "black day for the enemy," and continues:_ April 19.--At the end of the day all the enemy's efforts ended in bloody failure, in spite of the daring and courage of his troops, who sacrificed themselves under the British fire, but were only able to gain a few bits of trench work and one or two outposts below the fortified works at Givenchy, which are quite useless to them for immediate or future use. It was a big attack, for which they had prepared in a formidable way. After the shock of their repulse by the Lancashire men of the 55th Division they increased their strength of heavy artillery by three times bringing up large numbers of howitzers, including eleven-inch monsters. They were massed in divisions in front of us and determined to smash through in the wake of a tremendous bombardment. BRITISH UNDER FIRE For five hours, as I said, this storm went on with high explosives and gas, and the devoted British had to suffer this infernal thing, the worst ordeal human beings may be called upon to bear, this standing to while all the earth upheaved and the air was thick with shell splinters. But when the bombardment had passed and the German infantry came forward the British received them with blasts of machine-gun fire, incessant volleys of rifle fire, and a trench mortar bombardment that burst with the deadliest effect among the attacking troops. This trench mortar barrage of the British was one of the most awful means of slaughter yesterday, especially when the enemy tried to cross La Bassée Canal further north, and in that sector the infantry and gunner officers say more Germans were killed yesterday along the canal bank than on any other day since the fighting in this neighborhood. One battery of trench mortars did most deadly execution until their pits were surrounded, and only two of their crews were able to escape. The machine gunners fought out in the open after some of their positions had been wiped out by gunfire, caught the enemy waves at fifty yards' range, and mowed them down; but the enemy was not checked for a long time, despite his losses, and when one body fell another came up to fill its place and press on into any gap that had been made by their artillery or their own machine-gun sections.