Whilst this stern fighting had been in progress, and while the Fifty-fifth kept its iron grip upon {246} Givenchy and Festubert, the Fifty-first Highland Division to its north, along the line of the Lawe Canal, had been very hard pressed. All three brigades had been engaged in most desperate defence and counter-attack, the fighting being so close that two at least of the Brigadiers had been compelled to drop maps and binoculars, while they seized rifles from their orderlies. The canal was half dry and offered a poor front, but it was sustained until the Germans got across in the north where the left flank of the 153rd Brigade was turned and had to fall back. The Gordons and Black Watch of this unit fought most fiercely in the neighbourhood of Vieille Chapelle, and the Germans will long remember their meeting with the clansmen. Finally their line swung back west of Lestrem, keeping in touch with the right flank of the Fiftieth Division. At this period the 184th Brigade was the only one in the Highland Division which was still capable of service, for the others had lost so heavily and were so wearied that rest was absolutely necessary. The Sixty-first Division (Colin Mackenzie), still very weak after its service on the Somme, came up in the Robecq sector, and, with the aid of the surviving Highland Brigade, formed a barrier to the terrific German pressure, the whole coming under General Mackenzie. This line was held by these troops up to the 23rd of April. Meanwhile, to revert to the early days of the battle, the German attack was raging with great fury upon the centre and left of this line, and finding a gap between the Twenty-ninth Division and the 149th Brigade it poured through it with most menacing results, but the 4th Guards Brigade counter-attacked {247} and retrieved the situation west of the Vieux Berquin-Neuf Berquin Road, as will be told in detail in the next chapter. Farther north, however, the German attack made more progress and rolled forward to the south of the village of Merris. The 6th Northumbrians with only two officers left standing--one of them their gallant Colonel, Temperley,--still held on to their old stance at Vierhouck, though reduced to the strength of a company, and in such a state of physical exhaustion that the men fell to the ground fast asleep between the attacks. One young soldier woke up during his nap to find the Germans among them, on which he sprang up, shot the German officer, and organised a charge which re-established the line. As darkness fell on the evening of April 12 the survivors of the Fiftieth Division were drawn from the line, though some were so entangled with other units that they stayed and shared in the severe fighting of April 13.