“The enemy owes his success ... entirely to the use of asphyxiating gas. It was only a few days later that the means, which have since proved so effective, of counteracting this method of making war, were put into practice. Had it been otherwise, the enemy’s attack on May 5 would most certainly have shared the fate of all the many previous attempts he had made.” On the morning of the 20th, in the small hours, the 13th Brigade, exhausted by its spell of hard fighting, was relieved by the arrival of another brigade, which took over the hill. The East Surreys and the Bedfordshires went into the trenches, and forthwith had to bear the brunt of a whole series of most desperate efforts made by the Germans to recapture the hill, or, failing that, to prevent us from consolidating the positions gained. Desperate hand-to-hand fights, bombing encounters, and point-blank rifle and machine-gun fire, together with an incessant stream of shells, marked the whole of that day and the following night, when the Devons came up and relieved. The East Surreys and the Bedfords fought most gallantly, and were splendidly seconded by the 6th King’s Liverpools, a Territorial battalion, which, notwithstanding the terrific fire, rendered very real support to the regulars in the front line by carrying up stores of all kinds throughout the fighting. A quartermaster-sergeant of the Bedfordshires paid a fine tribute to the work of these gallant Territorials. “The approaches to our positions,” he wrote to me, “were swept by a storm of bullets and shells of all kinds, and they (‘The King’s’) had a large number of casualties, but they never flinched, and it was largely owing to the manner in which they kept up the supply of hand-grenades and ammunition of all kinds that we were able to hang on and finally drive back the enemy’s attacks.” The losses of the East Surreys and the Bedfordshires were very severe, but two V.C.’s and many other decorations were afterwards awarded to the two battalions in recognition of their fine behaviour. In the meantime the 13th Brigade had marched off to its rest-billets, looking forward to a spell of well-earned repose. But it was not to be. Hardly had the brigade settled down in its new quarters before urgent orders reached the Brigadier to push it up with all speed through Ypres to the Pilckem Road in support of the French, who had been driven in by the German gas attack, and of the Canadians, whose flank had been left “in the air” by the French withdrawal.