On the night of August 19–20, the 25th Battalion moved from their positions in Cité St. Laurent to the comparative peace and quiet of the front line. At daybreak the 6th Brigade on our immediate right were to attack and tighten the pressure already exercised on Lens. The Hun also divulged his reason for the systematic and furious shelling of our positions during the past six days when he launched an attack in force on the 6th Brigade and extending into our right (“D” Company’s front). The O.C. “D” Company, being in an advanced position and close to our own artillery barrage line, was ordered to place his men under cover, which he did, leaving only sentries at the entrances to shelters. [Illustration: CAPT. OWEN C. DAUPHINEE.] Zero hour for the 6th Brigade’s and the German attack coincided and both were demoralized by the intensity of the artillery fire they encountered before the assembly positions could be cleared. The result was that neither the 6th Brigade nor the Prussians opposite them left their trenches. But the artillery was not so active on the Front of our “D” Company, with the result that the Huns were throwing grenades down on our dugout steps before our men realized that they were trapped. Lieutenant Dauphinee was killed in a gallant attempt to clear the entrance to the dugout in which the whole Company was sheltered. Captain W. A. Livingstone, M.C., O.C. “D” Company, managed to force his way out by another entrance, and with a Lewis Gun spitting .303 bullets from his shoulder, he managed to clear the trench of those who escaped his fusilade. But the trench was literally filled with corpses from the attacking hordes. Nor was the situation normal as yet. A party of Huns had got in on the right of our boundary, and Lieutenant Spurr and Sergeant Jordan, after expelling them, organized the survivors of the Company of a Western Battalion, who had lost all their officers and were in a precarious condition. The boys of “D” Company, reinforced by a platoon from “B” Company, which had been led up through the intense shelling by Lieutenant Bell, were busy all day repelling bombing parties which stubbornly attempted to force their way into our lines at the Battalion boundary-the junction of Nun’s Alley and Commotion Trenches.