"Silence that Hun machine! Put it out of action!" roared one of our officers. And a machine-gun officer, Lieutenant Hamilton, ran backwards with a single private, armed with bombs, and charged the Boche offender in the dark, guided only by his own fire. Their first bomb killed the sergeant, but another sprang in his place, and the crew had to be beaten off with fists and the butt of a revolver. The gun was captured, mounted, and trained on the enemy. Meanwhile Lieutenant Giveen, the bombing officer, having been killed, his place was filled by Lieutenant Saunders, who led a bombing party up the communication trench to the fourth and foremost trench, which was the front Canadian line of ten days ago. Having rapidly issued instructions to his men to establish blocks, the gallant Saunders could not refrain from raising a cheer of triumph. At that very moment he was struck down, probably by a bomb. He had led the way, and others followed, and a red rocket, sent up by Major McCuaig’s orders, announced to those behind that the final objective of the counter-attack had been reached. In less than ten minutes a party of engineers and a company of pioneers, armed with picks and shovels, were on the spot, and the work of digging in--of "consolidating"--began. All this while another force had been toiling madly at digging out the third line of trenches. Communication was established at dawn with the battalions to right and left, who had also advanced under the same difficulties, and suffering heavy losses, which were to be heavier during that terrible day when the Germans began their bombardment. The rain continued to descend pitilessly, there was nothing visible anywhere but a sea and watersheds of mud, ploughed and churned by shells and bombs, and strewn with corpses and the litter of a battlefield. When the men sat down to rest, their hips were sunk in heavy brown slime. Yet even under such conditions the spirit of the men was amazing. As one of their officers has declared-- "Even men who had joined as reinforcements a month ago behaved like old and seasoned soldiers." A Vancouver officer bears similar testimony. "When we reached the German front line," he states, "there was no trench left. We met with no opposition, the Germans at first seeming to be too dazed by the heavy fire to which they had been subjected to do anything. The ground, as we advanced, was in a frightful state, all in holes, which were made the more trying by the pouring rain. We should never have got through had it not been for the splendid work of the artillery, for progress through this ploughed up mud was slow. We took some fifty to sixty prisoners. All the men were keen as mustard. Some of the newly-joined had never been in a serious engagement before, but they were just as steady as the old hands."