As already shown the Givenchy bastion was held firm, which meant that the Fifty-first Division was also to some extent helped to resist attack, since an enfilade fire from the Fifty-fifth would beat upon any advance against them. Such advances were repeatedly made upon April 11 and were splendidly countered. North of this point the Fiftieth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirty-first Divisions had all suffered heavily, while the line had been bent back in a curve from the La Bassée Canal to a maximum depth of ten miles, ending on the night of April 12 in a position from west of Merville through the two Berquins to Merris. The Twenty-ninth Division, which is a particularly good comrade in a tight place, had been very hard pressed, with its brigades sent {248} hither and thither wherever a leak was to be stopped. It was in this action that Colonel Forbes Robertson, one of the heroes of Cambrai, earned the coveted Cross by fighting on horseback at the head of his men like some knight of old, and repeatedly restoring the line when it was broken. In spite of all valour, however, the general movement was westwards. Whilst these misfortunes had occurred in the southern sector, others not less serious had occurred in the north, owing to the great extension of the German attack. It is to these that we must now turn. The enemy had achieved a considerable success upon April 9 when they succeeded in establishing themselves across the Lys at Sailly and Bac St. Maur, because by doing so they had got to the south-west of Armentières. They had prepared another attack in the north, and it was evident that if it had any success the Armentières position would be impossible. Early in the morning of April 10 the usual shattering and pulverising bombardment which preceded a full-dress German attack broke out upon the right of the Second Army, involving the front from the Ypres-Comines Canal in the north down to the Lys River at Armentières, thus joining up with the battle of yesterday, and turning the ten-mile front into one of twenty. The chief points in this line are Hollebeke in the north, Wytschaete in the centre, and Messines in the south, with Ploegsteert Wood and village and Nieppe as the final connecting links with Armentières. It was all classic and sacred ground drenched with the blood of our bravest. There can be few regiments in the British Army which have not at one time or another left their dead upon this shell-pitted slope, or upon the levels which face it. {249}