"So long as you stick it I will keep my guns here!" he shouted, and the crouching men {252} cheered him in return. He was as good as his word, and only withdrew what was left of his battery, man-handling it across almost impossible ground, when he had not a shell in his limbers. This brave officer received the Victoria Cross, but unhappily never lived to wear it. The 8th North Staffords, still lying opposite Messines, extended their left down the Messines-Wytschaete Road in an endeavour to join up with the men at Pick House. Thus a frail curtain of defence was raised in this direction also. Shortly after mid-day things began to look better, for the gallant South African Brigade (Tanner) of the Ninth Division was despatched to the rescue. So severe had been its losses, however, that it numbered only 1600 bayonets, and had hardly been re-organised into battalions. Late in the afternoon it advanced, the 1st Battalion on the left, 2nd on the right, and though it had not the weight to make any definite impression upon the German front it entirely re-established the line of the road from Messines to Wytschaete, and reinforced the thin fragments of battalions who were holding this precarious front. The South Africans incurred heavy losses from machine-gun fire in this very gallant attack. The Ninth Division had hardly relinquished its Reserve Brigade when it found that it was itself in urgent need of support, for about 2 o'clock on August 10 the attack spread suddenly to the northern end of the line, involving the 25th, 26th, and 58th Brigades, all under General Tudor, who was now responsible for the Wytschaete front. So infernal was the barrage which preceded the attack, that the right of the Ninth Division in the vicinity of Charity {253} Farm was driven in, and the 58th Brigade, with both flanks in the air and smothered under a rain of shells, was compelled also to fall back upon its support line. About 4 P.M. the 58th Brigade was broken near Torreken Farm, and the 6th Wiltshires, who were the flank battalion on the right, were cut off and lost heavily. The enemy were driving hard at this period towards Wytschaete, but the 9th Welsh stood fast in a cutting to the south of the village, and held the Germans off with their rifle-fire. So ended a most trying and unfortunate day, where the overborne troops had done all that men could do to hold their ground, fighting often against five times their own number. The prospects for the morrow looked very black, and the only gleam of light came with the advent, about midnight, of the 108th Brigade (Griffiths) from the Ulster Division, with orders to fight alongside the exhausted 57th, whose commander, General Cubitt, was now directing the local operations to the west of Messines. The Wytschaete front was also strengthened by the inclusion in the Ninth Division of the 62nd and later of the 64th Brigade of the Twenty-first Division. Farther south the 75th Brigade north of