“With a hoarse cry of anger they sprang forward (for, indeed, they loved him) as if to avenge his death. The astonishing attack which followed, pushed home in the face of direct frontal fire, made in broad daylight by battalions whose names should live forever in the memories of soldiers, was carried to the first line of German trenches. After a hand-to-hand struggle the last German who resisted was bayoneted, and the trench was won. “The measure of this success may be taken when it is pointed out that this trench represented in the German advance the apex in the breach which the enemy had made in the original line of the allies, and that it was two and a half miles south of that line. This charge, made by men who looked death indifferently in the face, for no man who took part in it could think that he was likely to live, saved the Canadian left. But it did more; up to the point where the assailants conquered or died, it secured and maintained during the most critical moment of all the integrity of the allied line. For the trench was not only taken, it was thereafter held against all comers, and in the teeth of every conceivable projectile, until the night of Sunday, the 25th, when all that remained of the war-broken but victorious battalions was relieved by fresh troops. FORTUNES OF THIRD BRIGADE “It is necessary now to return to the fortunes of the third brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General Turner, which, as we have seen, at five o’clock on Thursday was holding the Canadian left and after the first attack assumed the defense of the new Canadian salient, at the same time sparing all the men it could to form an extemporized line between the wood and St. Julien. This brigade also was, at the first moment of the German offensive, made the object of an attack by the discharge of poisonous gas. The discharge was followed by two enemy assaults. Although the fumes were extremely poisonous, they were not, perhaps, having regard to the wind, so disabling as on the French lines (which ran almost east to west), and the brigade, though affected by the fumes, stoutly beat back the two German assaults. “Encouraged by this success, it rose to the supreme effort required by the assault of the wood, which has already been described. At 4 A. M. on the morning of Friday, the 23d, a fresh emission of gas was made both upon the second brigade, which held the line running northeast, and upon the third brigade, which, as has been fully explained, had continued the line up to the pivotal point, as defined above, and had then spread down in a southeasterly direction. It is perhaps worth mentioning, that two privates of the forty-eighth Highlanders, who found their way into the trenches commanded by Colonel Lipsett, ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, eighth battalion, perished of the fumes, and it was noticed that their faces became blue immediately after dissolution.