Not that Loos was a triumph of attack. Little justice will no doubt be done on our side to the German defence of Lens, but it was a defence which rivalled ours of Ypres. The enemy was driven back on both sides of it during the later campaigns of the war (chiefly in 1917). Technically and theoretically the Germans could be forced to yield it at any moment. But in practice it could not be taken from them. We'd take it were it of iron; they'd hold it were it of butter. Artillery laid the town flat, but artillery could not destroy the cellars, and of every cellar the German, with the reinforcement of iron and concrete, made a machine-gun nest or post for riflemen. For the rest, we held nearly all the Vermelles--Lens road, and the greater part of that from La Bassee to Lens. From Hill 70 one sees geographically a wide landscape of the war. It was a remarkable vantage-ground for beholding the doings of one's own side. One aspect of the fighting on Hill 70 ought not to be forgotten, and that was the work of the stretcher-bearers who for the sake of each wounded comrade they brought in exposed themselves constantly to death. The heavy bodies, the uneven and entangled way down an exposed hillside, the shells howling and bursting, the sniper's bullet whipping through the air--these made up the stretcher-bearers' Calvary-walk. They did their duty and ceased to think of whether they themselves would live or die. And Loos was nothing to the Somme--as those will tell you who came through both. But the battle of Loos was not ended at Loos. All the worst of the fighting was away to the left by Bois de Hugo and Chalk-pit wood where Scots and Coldstream strove again and again to establish a continuous line. The German system of trenches was entered, and Hulluch-ward, La Bassee-ward, a strife more bloody than Loos itself continued. On the night of the 29th September there is a relief on Hill 70--the 22nd Londons come in. The survivors of the Guards march off to billets in Sailly and about. But the fight continues for halves of trenches, for corners, for turnings. German and British are living in the same madhouse together and fighting for complete possession room by room. Now the new British bomb appears--the Mills grenade, the trench-clearer. Germans are fought in the white alleys with bombs, bombs only and bombs ever. October 1915 was the great month of bomb-mania. Its emblem should be the man and the bomb ready to throw. The Guards were soon back in the fray, and on the night when the bombs came up so great was the fascination that "Jocks" and "Bill Browns" were bombing one another--each thinking the other was the enemy.