The attack had most certainly begun; and it began, as was expected, at the weakest and most critical point of the line, the canal loop, which was held by the Third Division. This division had the heaviest share of the fighting throughout the day, maintaining, longer than seemed humanly possible, a hopeless position against hopeless odds, the Second Royal Irish and Fourth Middlesex of the Eighth Brigade, and the Fourth Royal Fusiliers of the Ninth Brigade, particularly distinguishing themselves. The bridges over the canal, which our men held, after some preliminary shelling, were attacked by infantry debouching from the low woods which at this point came down to within three hundred or four hundred yards of the canal. These woods were of great assistance to the enemy, both here and at other points of the canal, in providing cover for their infantry and machine-guns. The odds were very heavy. One company of the Royal Fusiliers, holding the Nimy Bridge, was attacked at one time by as many as four battalions. The enemy at first came on in masses, and suffered severely in consequence. It was their first experience of the British "fifteen rounds a minute," and it told. They went down in bundles--our men delighting in a form of musketry never contemplated in the Regulations. To men accustomed to hitting bobbing heads at eight hundred yards there was something monstrous and incredible in the German advance. They could scarcely believe their eyes; such targets had never appeared to them even in their dreams. Nor were our machine-guns idle. In this, as in many other actions that day and in the days that followed, our machine-guns were handled with a skill and devotion which no one appreciated more than the enemy. Two of the first Victoria Crosses of the war were won by machine-gunners in this action of the bridges: Lieutenant Dease, of the Royal Fusiliers, who, though five times wounded,--and, as it turned out, mortally wounded,--continued to work his gun on the Nimy Bridge until the order came for retirement, and he was carried off; and Private Godley, of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, who, lower down the loop, at the Ghlin Bridge, in the face of repeated assaults, kept his gun in action throughout.