Into this the moment that the guns had ceased the Rifle Brigade dashed. The German defence had been smashed. Some of the enemy continued to snipe from behind bits of wall, broken tombstones, or the wrecks of carts. Among the ruins of a few outlying houses which had escaped complete destruction others put up a fight with machine guns and potted at the British from window spaces. They were speedily disposed of. The rest, bewildered by the blast, were collected from the cellars and dug-outs in which they had sought refuge, coming up with their hands above their heads.[16] From the opposite direction the village had been stormed by the 3rd Gurkhas of the Indian Brigade. On the way they had got in with their kukris among a German detachment who attempted with machine guns to defend a group of houses by the cross roads at the south end of the place. The two corps, Riflemen and Gurkhas, old comrades in former fights, and each now equally dirty and blood-bespattered, cheered each other with enthusiasm. [16] The correspondent who sent to the London News Agency a picturesque story of the battle (published in the _Daily Telegraph_ of April 19, 1915), says: "Many strange incidents were observed. In one cellar a portly German was found dancing about in an agony of fear, screaming in a high-pitched voice in English: 'Mercy! Mercy! I am married' 'Your missus won't thank us for sending you home!' retorted one of the men who took him prisoner, and his life was spared. A Rifle Brigade subaltern, falling over a sandbag into a German trench, came upon two officers, hardly more than boys, their hands above their heads. Their faces were ashen grey; they were trembling. One said gravely in good English: 'Don't shoot! I am from London also!' They, too, were mercifully used." The artillery tornado against Neuve Chapelle and its environs had been timed to last for half an hour. It began at 8.5 a.m.; it ended at 8.35 a.m. At the same instant the infantry advance against this second German line had swung out with a sledge-hammer energy. Within twenty-five minutes the village of Neuve Chapelle was in the British hands. Thus in the centre this second wave of the onset had been crushingly successful. It was not immediately successful on the flanks. On the left flank, since the 23rd Brigade had been held up on the German first line, the troops of the 25th, who had captured the village, had to face north in order to enfilade the enemy still holding out against the 23rd. It was through this pressure as well as through the redirection of the guns, that these Germans still on that part of the first line were about eleven o'clock in the morning dislodged.