In the meanwhile the Guards' Brigade, north of the road, had not been idle, and it is not too much to say that, except for the arrival of this brigade in the very nick of time, the position would have been very nearly desperate. As it was, however, their presence at once made itself felt. The fire of the S. Staffords from the right, the Guards' Brigade from the left, and the 2nd Queen's from in face, was more than the German advance was prepared at the moment to push forward against, and it came to a standstill. The Guards' casualties were considerable, especially in the case of the 3rd Coldstream, who had the Hon. C. Monck and Lieut. Waller killed, and Colonel Feilding, Lieut. Darrell and Lieut. Leese wounded. Lord Feilding was given the D.S.O. for conspicuous gallantry on this occasion. The 52nd Oxford Light Infantry, acting with the Guards' Brigade, proved in every way worthy of the association, and fully lived up to its great fighting reputation. Amongst those who particularly distinguished themselves in this regiment during the fight were Lieut. Spencer, Corpl. Hodges and Pte. Hastings. In the events of these three days is to be found the origin of the singular bulge, or--in military parlance--salient, which throughout October characterized the disposition of our forces east of Ypres. By the unexpected appearance to our front of 80,000 fresh German troops, our contemplated progress eastward had perforce to be replaced, on the spur of the moment, by a grim determination to hold on as long as possible to the ground we had already won. This was, no doubt, a natural desire, but its fruit was unsound. On the evening of October 21st the position was that the 21st Brigade at Becelaere and the 20th at Kruiseik and Zandvoorde were still very considerably ahead of the 22nd, which, as we have seen, had been driven back to Zonnebeke. North of Zonnebeke the line of the 1st Division fell still further back, facing, in fact, very nearly due north, while south of Zandvoorde there was no line at all, the 7th Division here ending in space, for reasons already given. Later on the 3rd Cavalry Division--when released from its duties north of Zonnebeke--were detailed for the duty of keeping up the communication between Zandvoorde and the Cavalry Corps far back at Hollebeke, Wytschate and Messines, but even so, the line they occupied fell back almost at right angles from our true front, and was a constant source of anxiety. For a General voluntarily to relinquish ground already won is probably the supreme act of renunciation, at the same time it is obvious that three sides of a square are longer than the fourth side, and therefore require more men for their defence, and it is no exaggeration to say that between October 20th and 26th the Ypres salient bore a perilous resemblance to three sides of a square.