Over the Yser Canal men were trying to swim, men dripping with blood and too weak to swim, and men who could not swim. Some gallant fellow on the Nieuport side--there is an idea that it was a Lancashire man--swam across with a rope under heavy fire and fixed it so that men could drag themselves across. So the few survivors came over, and so we know, at least in its broad outline, how all this happened. It is a tragic tale, and there will be tears when it is read. But in the tragedy there is the splendour of these poor boys, young soldiers all who fought with a courage as great as any in history, and have raised a cross of sacrifice beyond the Yser, before which all men of our race will bare their heads. The enemy did not reach the canal bank, but stayed some 300 yards away from it. He was beaten back from the trenches south of Lombartzyde, and gained no ground there. IX THE STRUGGLE FOR HELL WOOD JUNE 14 Between Wytschaete and Messines is a wood, horribly ravaged by shell-fire, called on our trench-maps Bois de l'Enfer, or Hell Wood. North of it was a German strong point, with barbed-wire defences and heavy blocks of concrete, called l'Enfer--Hell itself--and south of it, behind a labyrinth of trenches, some broken walls above a nest of dug-outs, known as Hell Farm. These filthy places were central defences of great fortified positions held by the enemy just north of Messines, and just south of Wytschaete, and round them and beyond them was some of the fiercest fighting which happened on that day of battle when we gained the Messines Ridge. Until now I have left out that part of the battle story--one cannot write the history of a battle like that in a day or two--but it must be told, because it was vastly important to the success of the general action, and the troops engaged in it showed the finest courage. They were men of the 25th Division, including Cheshires, Irish Rifles, Lancashire Fusiliers, North Lanes, and Worcesters, and other country lads who were blooded in battles of the Somme, where once I watched them surging up the high slopes under a heavy fire and fighting their way into the German trenches. In this battle of Hell Wood they were so wonderful in the cool, steady way they fought that when an airman came down to report their progress he said to their General, "I knew your fellows, because they advanced in perfect order as though on parade." Before the battle, when they lay about Wulverghem, opposite the fortress positions they had to attack, they did some great digging in the face of the enemy assembly trenches, as plain as pikestaves to German observers, and advertising, as did the enormous ammunition dumps, new batteries and wagon-lines, the awful stroke of attack that was being prepared.