Charles Geoffrey Vickers stood there for hours against a horde of men eager for his death, eager to get at the men behind him. But they could not approach. He and his fellow-bombers kept twenty yards or more clear before them, and any man who flung himself forward was the target of a hand-grenade. From front and from flank German bombs came whizzing, falling short sometimes, with a blasting roar that tore down lumps of trench, and sometimes falling very close--close enough to kill. Vickers saw some of his best men fall, but he kept the barrier still intact by bombing and bombing. When many of his comrades were dead or wounded, he wondered how long the barrier would last, and gave orders for another to be built behind him, so that when the rush came it would be stopped behind him--and over him. Men worked at that barricade, piling up sand-bags, and as it was built that young lieutenant knew that his own retreat was being cut off and that he was being coffined in that narrow space. Two other men were with him--I never learned their names--and they were hardly enough to hand up bombs as quickly as he wished to throw them. Away there up the trench the Germans were waiting for a pounce. Though wounded so that he felt faint and giddy, he called out for more bombs. “More!” he said, “More!” and his hand was like a machine reaching out and throwing. Rescue came at last, and the wounded officer was hauled over the barricade which he had ordered to be built behind him, closing up his way of escape. All through October 14th the Midland men of the 46th Division held on to their ground, and some of the Sherwoods made a new attack, clearing the enemy out of the east portion of the redoubt. It was lucky that it coincided with a counter-attack made by the enemy at a different point, because it relieved the pressure there. Bombing duels continued hour after hour, and human nature could hardly have endured so long a struggle without fatigue beyond the strength of men. So it seems; yet when a brigade of Guards came up on the night of October 15th the enemy attacked along the whole line of redoubts, and the Midland men, who were just about to leave the trenches, found themselves engaged in a new action. They had to fight again before they could go, and they fought like demons or demigods for their right of way and home, and bombed the enemy back to his holes in the ground. So ended the assault on the Hohenzollern by the Midland men of England, whose division, years later, helped to break the Hindenburg line along the great canal south of St.-Quentin.