For four years on end of trench warfare the main-guard of Oud-Stuyvekenskerke held fast. It held under storms of iron, it held against assailants who, at renewed attempts endeavoured to overrun it. These different rushes, the one of March 1918 against our cyclist carabiniers and the 1^{st} foot jagers as well as that of June of the same year against the 22^{nd} line regiment have disclosed the stubborn energy and enthusiastic courage which moved our men of 1918, classing them amongst the best fighting elements of the great allied armies. 13.—Death Trench and the “Cavalier” field work. When the battle of the Yser was over, our first front line was running along the river in front of Dixmude in a direction due North-West up to the kilometer 16. There the river Yser, makes a sudden bend and our front was leaving the river side to prolonge itself westward, leaning on the Roode-Poort farm thus joining the Nieuport-Dixmude railway line. That particular point of kilometer n^o 16, which ought to have been on the early days of stabilized warfare, a stronghold of our defensive scheme, struck our high command, as being rather weak. The decision was then taken to strengthen it. A line of main-guards already covered the Belgian positions from Nieuport up to Oud-Stuyvekenskerke, when General Jacquet decided, in order to cover himself at the kilometer n^o 16, to prolonge that line by adding to it an element, the advanced posts of which would be placed along the river Reigersvliet and that right up to its mouth. To carry that mission through it was thought necessary to rush the petrol tanks, the mystery of which, more than their power had already given to the sector a fair renown. [Illustration: Death trench and Riders’work-Operations which took place from up May to October 1915 North and East of kilometer 16 of the river Yser. ] The 1^{st} foot jagers, shouldered by the 3^{rd} divisional artillery and accompanied by detachements of pioneers, tried the operations. A keen fight developed for three long days, from up the 9^{th} to the 12^{th} May 1915[2], in a horrible ground, the main part being under water, and cut up by deep and broad ditches and shell holes full of water, offering no shelter whatever to the rafales of machine-guns and the harassing fires of the artillery which were hacking our gallant boys down. The attack failed in spite of their courage, and the losses endured. Footnote 2: