The British artillery was concentrated in the neighborhood of Hooge and started a bombardment on June 16. After a fairly adequate preparation by cannonade, the infantry charged the German line for a thousand yards near the Chateau, and took a part of the second line of trenches. Again the British bayonet and bomb had won, though in this attack the greater credit must be given to the bomb. The Germans made an attempt to retrieve the day by battering the British out of the trenches they had won. To do this the German artillery used a plentiful supply of high-explosive shells. They continued the attempt for twenty-four hours; but all they succeeded in doing was driving the British back to the first line of German trenches where they waited for the inevitable attack of the infantry which was repulsed. Finally the Germans seemed inclined to give up trying to accomplish much on this part of their front. In the first week of July, 1915, the British took two hundred yards of German trenches, eighty prisoners and three trench mortars. The German commander now turned once more to Hooge. An additional reason for his renewed interest in that place was the fact that the British engineers, on July 20, blew up a mine west of the Chateau, thereby making a great crater in which the British infantry made themselves comparatively secure. The crater was one hundred and fifty feet wide and fifty feet deep. The Germans made an unsuccessful attempt to take the crater on July 21, 1915; and tried again on July 24. The Duke of Wuerttemberg found his men making comparatively little progress. It is true that the British had not made much more. The gas attacks had gained ground before the British had learned how to avoid the more severe effects of the poison. The result of experience brought into existence a new device. It has been called a flame projector, and has been described as a portable tank which is filled with a highly inflammable coal-tar product. The contents of the tank were pumped through a nozzle at the end of which was a lighting arrangement. The flame could be thrown approximately forty yards. A large supply of these flame projectors arrived in the German trenches on July 30, 1915. The action began with the usual bombardment of high-explosive shells. Other shells filled with the burning liquid were also used. At the height of the bombardment, the British lines were flame swept. No preparation had been made for such an attack; and the only thing that the British could do was to get out of the way of the flame. Thus they lost their trenches in the crater and at the Chateau and village of Hooge. The method of attack so infuriated the British that they made a desperate counterattack with the result that they regained most of what they lost with the exception of about five hundred yards of trenches. CHAPTER XXIV FRANCO-GERMAN OPERATIONS ALONG THE FRONT