The 75th Brigade formed the fighting line of the Twenty-fifth Division on this day of battle. They found themselves on the western side of the Kemmel Brook, while the 3rd Prussian Guards lay on the farther side and advanced to the attack. To do this they had to pass over the smooth slope which led down to the stream, and they fell in heaps in the attempt. They huddled for shelter behind a group of huts, but the guns got on to them and blew them to pieces. Four distinct attacks were all equally murderous and unsuccessful. The 8th Border Battalion was particularly conspicuous in the defence. Next to them, near Ridge Wood, were the well-tried Yorkshiremen of the Forty-ninth. For some reason the Germans at this point advanced in close formation with bayonets fixed. Such tactics received the slating which they deserved. Both the West Riding Battalions of the 147th Brigade and the York and Lancasters of the 148th were in the firing-line, and they amply repaid themselves for many a distressful hour. Once for three minutes the Germans made a lodgment, but at the end of that time a rush of bayonet-men pitchforked them out of their only gain. The Twenty-first Division held the line above Ridge Wood and on towards Voormezeele. Upon them came the heaviest attack of all, and the slaughter {306} of the Germans, coming on at a range of 400 yards under machine-gun and rifle-fire, was very murderous. The Leicester Brigade did particularly well this day, and so did the worn 89th Brigade of the Thirtieth Division, which had come under the orders of General Campbell of the Twenty-first Division. The German attack struck very hard against the front of this unit near the Brasserie on the Vierstraat-Ypres Road, and all three battalions, the 17th, 18th, 19th King's Liverpools, had desperate fighting, the 17th coming in for particularly rough treatment. It had each flank penetrated and one company surrounded, but still managed to shake itself clear. The Belgians were also involved in this wide-spread attack, and both their lines in the north and those of the French round the Sharpenberg and Mont Rouge were held intact. This severe check, inflicted upon a force which was not less than twelve divisions, marked the beginning of the collapse of the great German offensive in Flanders, which had now lasted for twenty days of constant battle.