Major Thomson, Second in Command, fell across the first German trench, but would not permit himself to be removed; continuing to issue orders from where he lay, he was wounded again, the second wound proving fatal. He met his death unvanquished and unappalled, and his name remains bound in with the great story of the Regiment. Colonel Bent fell in the earlier part of the charge, desperately wounded; Major Day was killed a little later, showing the greatest gallantry; and Captain Hugh O'Brien, a young Irish officer beloved by his men, and who had been proved in the South African War to possess unusual dash and coolness, fell as he shouted to his company, "Get a bit of your own back, boys." Not twenty yards from where Captain O'Brien fell Captain Durand met his death. He had joined the 3rd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers in 1906, having served through the Matabeleland and Mashonaland campaigns in the Rhodesian Horse; he died most nobly, leading at the extreme point of the advance made by C Company, under fierce enfilading fire. The sorrow and the heroism of such death is touched by the great enduring light of glory. Men fell on the right and left, and again and again they rallied and stumbled over the broken ground, holding steadily on under the wail of tearing shrapnel, and at last the Munsters reached their goal, the given point; and in the fierce counter attack they did not lose an inch of what they had taken. So the day passed, and the wounded lay out under the cruel lash of the sleet and the bitter wind. Not one man returned to Headquarters, except some wounded who straggled in, dazed and bleeding. The chorus of the field guns, and the detonation of the great guns, and the crack, crack of rifle fire went on persistently. Lyddite and high explosives rained through the murky evening, and still no orders were issued that reached the Munster Fusiliers. They had gone out, as is their way, to do their bit, and had disappeared into the vast nothingness behind the night. Darkness fell, and great flashes lit the dark; those pale, awful gleams of super-civilisation swept over the ghastly land. The enemy's search-lights were feeling after the mutilated and wounded, showing up the stretcher bearers and Red Cross dressers, and as each slow beam swung in its deadly course, a hail of lead followed it, bearing death on its coming. In a big yawning gap of bog and dyke and mud the Munsters held on, unassisted, supports having failed. The Companies were lying out under fire, pinned to the ground, and with nearly all their officers killed or wounded, they still held on. * * * * * [Illustration: LIEUTENANT-COLONEL G. J. RYAN, D.S.O. 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers, killed near Festubert, January 23rd, 1915