With the two front brigades destroyed and the whole position occupied, the Germans may well have thought that a long advance was within their power, but in this they were soon undeceived. The support brigade, the 177th, still barred their way, and it had been strengthened by Headquarters staffs, bands, transport men and others, and very especially by the pioneer battalion, the 6/7 Scots Fusiliers. These men occupied the third defence line, and from the Hog's Back on which it was sited, they defied every effort of the Germans to get forward from Ecoust. This position was well covered by artillery and supported by machine-guns. So strong was the defence that the enemy were beaten back three times, and on the last occasion, late in the afternoon, fairly took to their heels. Shortly afterwards the 120th Brigade from the Fortieth Division came into support, and the situation was saved for the day. How terrific had been the strain upon the Fifty-ninth {21} Division may be reckoned from the fact that their losses were close upon 5000 out of a ten-battalion unit. It is true that they had been driven by vastly superior numbers out of their two front lines with the attendant villages, but evening found them still defiant, and, for the time, victorious, with their right still linked up with the Sixth Division and their left with the Thirty-fourth. There could not have been a finer recovery under more arduous circumstances. It was the last of the Fifty-ninth Division, however, for many a day to come, for the Fortieth (Ponsonby) taking charge in this sector, gathered to itself the fifteen field-guns still left of the artillery and the only remaining brigade. It was as well, for they would need every gun and every rifle in the dark days to come. Four German divisions, the 111th, 221st, 6th Bavarian, and 2nd Guards Reserve, had been engaged in the attack. Even admitting that some of these divisions were concerned also with the attack upon the Thirty-fourth Division, the latter had the 234th and some smaller units in front of it, so that it is within the mark to say that five German had attacked two British divisions, and by the aid of a vastly superior light and heavy artillery equipment had pushed them back to their reserve line, but had failed to break them. It was not a fight of which either nation need be ashamed.