WINTER IN THE TRENCHES. We must now return to the Western front and briefly follow the course of the fighting down to the end of the year. With the failure of the Kaiser's great and costly effort to break through the thin British lines before Ypres the critical moment had passed. Thenceforward through the rain and sleet and snow of winter the armies faced each other in trenches, and though the guns were rarely silent, and there were attacks and counter-attacks without number, nothing decisive took place. On both sides the combatants were more anxious to make their positions secure than to win new points of vantage. During the closing days of November there were several gallant assaults on the German trenches by British troops, and in some of them Victoria Crosses were won. On the 23rd the Germans captured 800 yards of the trenches held by the 34th Sikh Pioneers, but a desperate counter-attack across the frosty snow in the darkness won them back again. It was in this fighting that Naik Darwan Sing Negi, as related on page 170, won the highest award of valour. In December the trench fighting was keener and more frequent. In the first days of the month the French captured the ferryman's house on the east bank of the Ypres Canal, between Dixmude and Bixschoote. For weeks they had striven to secure this post, and it was only won by much bloodshed. Shortly afterwards information was received that the German lines had been weakened by the withdrawal of troops sent to help von Hindenburg in the East, and that a good opportunity afforded itself for an attempt to improve the Allied position, especially where it was weakest--that is, from Klein Zillebeke to Messines, where the Germans were posted on low ridges which gave them good gun positions. On 14th December at seven in the morning, our guns heavily bombarded two wooded spurs to the north of Messines, which were then in possession of the enemy. The Royal Scots advanced against one of these spurs, and the Gordon Highlanders against the other; but though they showed the greatest gallantry in the attack, only the western edge of one position was won. Neither we nor the Germans could make headway in this direction. It was in the neighbourhood of La Bassée that the most extensive operations were undertaken. On the first two days of December Maud'huy's left wing carried the Château of Vermelles,[186] three miles south of the canal. Guns posted at the château forced the Germans to retire behind the railway and abandon a village. It was at once occupied, and a gain of a mile and a half was registered. [Illustration: The Fighting near La Bassée, December 19, 1914.]