The next serious fighting in which the Guards were involved was to the south, in the wet and dreary black country opposite La Bassée. In December the First Division was ordered up to Givenchy to relieve the Indian Corps, which had been having a very bad time, and on December 21 the First Brigade found itself holding the trenches from Givenchy down to the La Bassée Canal. The prompt intervention of this fine division enabled our line, from which the Indians had been partially forced back, to be re-established. This ugly and sinister region from Givenchy to Cuinchy, situated on the other side of the La Bassée Canal, was destined to be the home of the Guards for many months, and the scene of some of their most heroic exploits in this war. On January 24 the First Brigade, under Brigadier-General Cecil Lowther, found itself holding the line in the Cuinchy brick-fields opposite the famous La Bassée Railway triangle formed by the Béthune-La Bassée line and the Lens-La Bassée line, which joins the first in two branches. The 1st Scots Guards and the 1st Coldstreams were in the trenches. On the 25th the Germans opened a heavy bombardment of the Guards’ trenches, which were practically destroyed. The line was broken, and the Germans managed to secure a footing in the brick-fields. A counter-attack, delivered with great gallantry by the Black Watch, the Cameron Highlanders, and the King’s Royal Rifles, succeeded in partially clearing our second line. The First Brigade lost heavily, and was relieved during the night. On February 1 Cavan’s Guards Brigade was holding the line through the Cuinchy brick-fields. At half-past two in the morning the 2nd Coldstreams were driven out of their trenches, but managed to hold out till daylight in a position close to their old trench. A counter-attack launched in the small hours by some of the Irish Guards and Coldstreams was checked by the enemy’s rifle-fire. Another counter-attack was arranged for 10.15 a.m. It was preceded by a splendid artillery preparation--the kind of ruthless and accurate rain of high-explosive projectiles that puts a fine heart into men waiting to attack. Then the storming-party went forward, a grand array of big, stalwart men in whose great hands their rifles with bayonets fixed seemed as light and as inconsiderable as toothpicks. Captain A. Leigh Bennett led the way at the head of fifty of the 2nd Coldstreams, bent on “getting their own back”; following came Second-Lieutenant F. F. Graham with thirty Irish Guards, with whom went one Michael O’Leary in the front line, and a party of Royal Engineers with barbed wire in rolls, and sandbags, to “organize” the trenches that might fall into our hands.