the other to move out upon the right and get close touch with the Australians so as to cover one side of their dangerous salient. Each object was effected in the midst of fighting which was local and intermittent, but none the less very desperate and exhausting. During a week continual counter-attacks moving up from Riencourt broke themselves upon either the British or Australian lines. The 9th and 10th Devon battalions of the 20th Brigade, and their comrades of the 2nd Borders and 2nd Black Watch, were especially hard pressed in these encounters, With inexorable pressure they enlarged their lines however, and by May 17 the British Fifty-eighth Division of London Territorials (Cator), which had taken over the work, could claim to have the whole of Bullecourt in their keeping, while their brave Oversea comrades had fairly settled into the gap which they had made in the Hindenburg front line. Though the operations were upon a small scale as compared with great battles like Arras, no finer exploit was performed upon the Western front during the year than this successful advance, in which the three British divisions and the Australians shattered no less than fifteen attacks delivered by some of the best troops of Germany. Sir Douglas Haig, who is not prodigal of praise, says in his final despatch: "The defence of this 1000 yards of double trench line, exposed to attack on every side, through two weeks {93} of constant fighting, deserves to be remembered as a most gallant feat of arms." The losses were naturally heavy, those of the three British divisions--the Seventh, Fifty-eighth, and Sixty-second--being approximately the same. They had been opposed by Guards Regiments and Brandenburg Grenadiers, the very cream of the Prussian Army, and had rooted them out of their carefully prepared position. {94} CHAPTER IV THE BATTLE OF MESSINES June 7, 1917 Plumer's long vigil--The great mines--Advance of Australians--Of New Zealanders--Of the Twenty-fifth Division--Of the Irish Divisions--Death of Major Redmond--Advance of Nineteenth Division--Of the Forty-first Division--Of the Forty-seventh Division--Of the Twenty-fourth Division--General results.