Having repulsed the counter-attack of the French and of the Twenty-fifth Division, the enemy tried with great energy to improve his advantage, and Von Armin thundered during the whole of April 26 against the Allied line, trying especially to drive in the northern sector at Wytschaete and Eloi. The fighting on this line was very desperate during the day, and in spite of every effort the troops were pushed back from their forward positions. The strain fell chiefly upon the remains of the 26th Brigade of the Ninth Division, the Twenty-first Division, the 21st Brigade of the Thirtieth Division, and the Thirty-ninth Division. The 21st Brigade defended the northern portion of the line, and one of the outstanding feats of the day was the defence of the Old Bluff from morning to dusk by that grand battalion, the 2nd Bedfords. Farther south the two points called the Brasserie and the Spoil-Bank were eventually {304} won by the Germans, but they were defended with great determination by units of the Thirty-ninth Division, the 1st Herts, the Cambridgeshires, and the Sussex battalions. It was a day of struggle, and the most that the Allies could say was that they had prevented a break in their line. That night there was another general withdrawal along the front which brought the Allied position into very much the same trenches as had been occupied in the autumn of 1914. Such a result of four years' fighting might well have caused depression, and yet these brave hearts never for one instant relinquished their high hopes of the victory to come. [Sidenote: Northern Area. April 26 onwards.]