The Somersets established themselves in their goal with posts in front of Inverness Copse and Herenthage Castle, but on the left the Cornish lads were held up by machine-gun fire east of "Clapham Junction," where there was another fortified farm with sixty men and six machine-guns inside. A Tank came up and sat outside the place, firing point-blank at its walls, and the Cornwalls followed it and burst the doors in and fought until again not a single German remained alive, after a terrible bayonet contest. So the attack had succeeded, but with forces now heavily reduced. It was now ten o'clock in the morning. The story that follows is one long series of counter-attacks. It began with a barrage which came down with a tempest of shells half-way through Inverness Copse. For miles around the German batteries concentrated their fire on this ground and raked it. From the east of Inverness Copse, and at the same time from the south, storming parties of Germans advanced behind this great gun-fire and, though the first attack was broken and then the second by rifles and machine-guns, a third developed in greater strength. A runner came down from the Somersets--one of those brave runners who all day long and next day worked to and fro through dreadful barrage-fire until many were killed and other men went out to search for those dead boys and look for their dispatches, unless they had been blown to bits. The message from the Somersets reported that they could not hold on. They were being enclosed on both flanks, and proposed to fall back half-way through Inverness Copse, and this was done. Some reserves from light-infantry battalions were thrown in to strengthen the line, and the Cornwalls threw out a defensive flank with strong points. At midday another attack was made on the Somersets, and driven off by rifles and machine-guns, and at two o'clock they reported that the enemy was massing in an attempt to turn their left flank, which was then weak. The artillery answered an urgent call, and the German assembly was destroyed. So the evening came and the night, and the Light Infantry held on east of Stirling Castle and partly in Inverness Copse with many dead and wounded about them, and lines of German dead in front of them, awaiting riflemen coming to their support. In a brigade headquarters a group of officers waited more anxiously for this help, having more responsibility. They sat with wet towels about their heads and eyes, in poisonous fumes and dreadful stenches which crept down from above, where heavy shells burst incessantly, shaking all the earth and blowing out the candles. The concrete ceiling bulged in. Runners came in white-faced and shaking, after frightful journeys, and officers bent to the candlelight to read scribbled messages sent down by hard-pressed men. Outside were the groans of wounded men.