"At seven o'clock on the morning of 29th October I had just started to have my breakfast, when a man to the right of me shouted, 'Look out, sir, look out; they're coming,' and began firing as fast as he could. I looked over the parapet, and saw about 250 of the enemy with fixed bayonets approaching the trench at the double, firing as they came on, and making a peculiar wailing noise. Before the Germans reached the trench we shot down something like 150 of them. With only such a short distance to cross from their trenches to ours, about 100 of the enemy managed to reach our trench and jump into it. By sheer weight of numbers they carried the trench, and killed about twelve of my men. [Illustration: How Lieutenant Leach and Sergeant Hogan recaptured a Trench from the Germans. (_From the picture by F. Matania. By permission of The Sphere._)] "At nine o'clock I called up the communication trench, and asked how far the enemy had got, and found they were occupying three of the four traverses.[75] When I went up again by myself two hours later, I found the Germans were occupying all the four traverses. Well, I thought, if we leave it much longer they will be down the communication trenches into the main trench. "The same evening we heard we were to be relieved by the Gurkhas, and I felt it would be rather bad on my part to leave the recovery of the trench to them. I therefore determined about two o'clock to regain the trench before dark. Calling for volunteers, Sergeant Hogan and ten others came forward, and we began to crawl up the communication trench. I fired anywhere with my revolver, only exposing my hand, with the intention of pushing back the enemy along the trench as far as we could. The idea was to force them to run back to their own trenches, so that we could shoot them down as they went. "All along the trench we crawled over dead and wounded Germans, so you see my revolver had been doing some execution. When we got to the left traverse I was surprised to hear an English voice round the corner shout, 'Don't shoot, sir.' I chanced this being a bit of treachery, and was surprised to see one of my own men coming round the corner. He had been captured in the morning rush, and he said a wounded German officer round the corner had asked him to tell me that they wanted to surrender. "I went round the corner, and found sixteen Germans on their knees with their hands up, shouting, 'Mercy.' I told the officer that he and his men had got to go into the main trench. This they did after they had taken off their equipment, holding up their hands as they went. About twenty wounded Germans crawled in with them. . . . Was I surprised when I heard I had been awarded the Victoria Cross? Yes, I was. I was mentioned in dispatches, and there I thought the matter had ended." Sergeant Hogan, when interviewed, showed the same pleasing modesty as Drummer Kenny. "I only did," he said, "what others would have done, and what others have done."