The Germans could not do without Hill 60. They wanted it notably as a vantage-point from which to sweep the Ypres salient with a rain of fire to support the tremendous effort, which they were just developing, to pierce the Allied line. “Necessity knows no law” is a saying that served to justify in German eyes the murder of Belgium. It served equally well to explain (if the moral aspects of the question were ever discussed, which I doubt) the employment of gas to wrest from our grasp the hill we had won and held with untarnished weapons. On May 1 the gas appeared on Hill 60. The Dorsets held the line. It was in the early hours of the morning that a low greenish cloud came rolling over the top of the hill on to our trenches. Our men were taken unawares, unprepared. Of respirators they had none. Respirators were only just beginning to arrive at the front as the result of an appeal made to the women of England after the gas attack against the French and Canadians on April 22 and 24. In a minute or two the gas had got the Dorsets in its grip, and they were choking with its stifling fumes. The Germans came on at them behind their gas-cloud, but the Dorsets were ready for them. Half-asphyxiated as they were, they scrambled on the parapet of the trench and swept down the advancing files with machine-gun and rifle-fire. That day the spirit of England, as enshrined in the begrimed and mud-stained exterior of these Dorsetshire lads, rose superior to the menace of a hideous and long-drawn-out death. Again and again throughout the morning and afternoon messages came down from the Dorsets on the hill to the Devons in support asking for machine-gun ammunition. All day long the Devons waiting in the woods heard the brave tap-tapping of the machine-guns on the hill, and knew that the Dorsets were keeping their end up. The Devons went up in relief that night, cleverly led to our trenches without the loss of a man. They still speak with reluctance of the sights that met their eyes on the way, for the fields were strewn with many gallant Dorsets who had crawled into the fields and ditches to die. The men cursed the Germans savagely as they stumbled over the prostrate forms. The 13th Brigade had not taken “The Duke’s” into action with them at Ypres, and on May 4 this battalion relieved the Devons on the hill. The following morning the Germans made another and stronger bid for the position. At eight o’clock in the morning of a balmy May day they opened their gas-cylinders behind the crest of Hill 60, and presently, “like mist rising from the fields,” in the words of an eyewitness, the vapours came creeping up in greater volume than ever. At the same time the German guns opened a heavy bombardment.