It will be remembered that the evacuation of Marcoing had taken place on the night of the 4th. There was still some uncertainty as to the position of the British outpost line. There was more before the relief was complete. The 9th Inniskillings of the 109th Brigade sent its No. 3 Company in advance up on to the Welsh Ridge in the afternoon. This company arrived in the midst of a tremendous bombardment, amid which the bursts of captured English 18-pounder high explosive were only too apparent to the experienced eye. It was greeted by the unpleasant news that the Germans were bombing up the Hindenburg Support Systems, had already made considerable headway, and that the troops awaiting relief, demoralized by utter weariness and exposure, and by the bombardment which had reduced them to a handful, were at that moment retreating only too fast. The company, as was natural in such a bombardment, was spread out with very long intervals between the platoons. The leading platoon was at once pushed along the front line. It had few bombs and no artillery support, so had to rely upon rifle fire. But it stopped the German advance. Three times the enemy pressed up the trench, and thrice was driven back. Moreover, on the report that the enemy was advancing also up the second line, two sections, perhaps ten men, were despatched to the assistance of the troops in that trench. Here likewise the German bombers were checked. The remainder of the battalion moved up, and the whole line was taken over. The night passed fairly quietly. The heroism of this action is not to be measured by ordinary standards, since the men were in a state of fatigue and depression when it started. It was surpassed on the morrow, when the 9th Inniskillings, assisted by a platoon of the 14th Rifles, counter-attacked to restore the ground won by the enemy before their arrival. They were enabled to carry this out by the action of the Brigade transport officer, Lieutenant Vaughan, who had brought up, in the course of the night, by the road through Villers-Plouich, officially reported impracticable for any transport, fourteen limber-loads of ammunition, grenades, and Stokes mortar bombs. The attack was at first successful, winning back most of the lost ground and capturing nine prisoners, but the Inniskillings followed the retiring enemy too far, and parties of Germans, pushing down a sunken road which had been overlooked, cut off and captured the leading men, as well as a section of the 109th Machine-Gun Company, and drove the attack back to its starting point. Of what followed, a graphic account is given by Captain (then Lieutenant) Densmore Walker, of the 109th Machine-Gun Company, who had heard that his guns had been lost and had come forward with the company commander to investigate.