On Sunday, the 18th, Mr. Underwood's brigade had its baptism of fire at a village a little to the north-east of Gheluvelt, where a British battery silenced the guns of the enemy. All night they waited for an attack, but the Germans left them alone until the morning. Then the fighting was continued, and thus began that series of desperate conflicts--"ten Waterloos a week"--known as the Battle of Ypres. I shall give you a full account of this gigantic struggle in a later chapter. The enemy against whom the 7th Division was now fighting consisted of four reserve corps which had left Germany on 11th October. Three of the corps had assembled in Brussels, and without losing an hour had been sent on an eighty-mile march westwards. They largely consisted of Landwehr[38] and new volunteers, and ranged from boys of sixteen to stout gentlemen in middle life. Though quite new to the work of war, they soon showed themselves as desperate in attack as the most seasoned veterans. Mr. Underwood says: "On questioning one of the prisoners, he informed me that they were all Landwehr men, fathers of families, about the age of thirty-nine and forty, who had been called up quite recently. There was no doubt that the Germans were well equipped; all their clothes were in excellent order and brand new. They seemed relieved, and evidently overjoyed, when I told them that they would probably be sent to England. They were afraid that the report which had been made to them that we shot all prisoners was true." [Footnote 30: Inhabitants of Brittany, a former province of France, forming the extreme north-west. The people are of Celtic stock, and their language is allied to the Welsh. Brittany was partly settled from England and Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries, and thereafter was called Britannia Minor. Brittany has always been famous for its sailors. Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of the St. Lawrence, was a Breton.] [Footnote 31: _Ron´ark._] [Footnote 32: French sailors wear a red pompom on the top of their caps.] [Footnote 33: _Teelt_, 15 miles south-east of Bruges.] [Footnote 34: _Too-roo´_, 11 miles south-south-west of Bruges]. [Footnote 35: _Roo-lare´_, 20 miles south by west of Bruges, a textile manufacturing town of 25,000 inhabitants.] [Footnote 36: In _Blackwood's Magazine_, March 1915.] [Footnote 37: Village on the Ypres-Menin road, four miles east of Ypres.] [Footnote 38: See Vol. I., p. 146.] CHAPTER VII. THE LONG, THIN LINE OF STEEL AND VALOUR.