On the following day the Germans did not make a direct attack on our position; but they sent out a host of snipers and skirmishers, who fired on us, causing many casualties, from snow-pits, and heaps of the same material. At first sight it would seem that snow would not prove a very efficacious defence; nevertheless pits and trenches made of it afford splendid protection to infantry, and even to field-guns. We found it impossible to dislodge these skirmishers by artillery fire alone; and individually they offered no mark to our riflemen. On the 14th January we attempted an assault of the German position, but were stopped at their wire entanglement and shot down in such numbers that we were compelled to retreat, leaving 1,000 men behind, mostly dead and dying, but a few of them prisoners of war. In this attempted assault we discovered that the enemy were using their iron shields, fixed upright in the ground, as a protection behind which to shoot from. At long range our rifle-bullets could not penetrate them; but they were an indescribably clumsy contrivance to carry about in the way the Germans first used them. They discovered that themselves, and abandoned their use, except in trenches; nor were they of much use at close quarters; for bullets would pierce them, sometimes at as great a range as 500 yards. Several little adventures happened to us while we were in these trenches. For instance, one night I thought I saw several small pyramids of snow moving about; and watching carefully I presently saw a man clothed in white come right up to our trenches. He knew, or discovered, the spaces left in the wire entanglements to enable us to sally out. His movements were so regular and bold that I was afraid to shoot him, thinking he might be one of our men, but went at once to Colonel Krastnovitz's hut, and reported what I had seen. None of our men were, at this time, clothed in white, or furnished with white cloaks, and the Colonel at once went with me to the spot where I had seen the mysterious figure. It had disappeared; but in about ten minutes several men, scarcely distinguishable from the snow, were dimly discerned moving about, and evidently examining our network of barbed wire. One of them seemed to be looking for something among the dead (all the wounded were very quiet by this time), and was seen to turn a corpse over.