It was now imperative to hold the Germans at all costs. There were two highly critical periods in the battle, and the first began now with April 24. On the canal bank Geddes’s detachment, reinforced by some battalions of the 13th Brigade, had been making a series of small attacks on the Germans at a heavy price but with good effect, for the Germans never got through here. The Lahore Division of the Indian Corps subsequently relieved Geddes’s gallant troops at the very moment that their intrepid leader, his work done, paid the supreme sacrifice. He was killed by a shell on the 26th in the upper room of a house in which the General commanding the 13th Brigade had established his headquarters, and where Geddes spent the night. The shells were bursting continually about the vicinity when Colonel Geddes arrived, and he was killed by one which entered the breakfast-room the next morning. The General commanding the 13th Brigade had a providential escape, as he had left the room to fetch a map a few seconds before. The retirement of the Canadian left from St. Julien on the 24th had exposed the flank of the Canadian Brigade on the right, and it was essential to stop the gap. By this time General Hull’s 10th Brigade of the 4th Division, which was coming up to reinforce the Canadians, had reached the canal, and was on its way to Wieltje, where it arrived at 2.30 a.m. the following morning. It had been placed under the orders of the General commanding the Canadian Division, who sent an urgent message asking the brigade to attack St. Julien immediately. It was a desperately difficult undertaking. The night was extremely dark, the ground, which had not been reconnoitred, was honeycombed with trenches and strewn with barbed wire, and, moreover, the artillery had not been able to “register”--that is to say, get its range of the _terrain_. Just before the attack was launched word came back that some Canadians were still holding out in the village of St. Julien. Therefore the place could not be shelled. The guns, however, opened on the wood west of the village. It was half-past four in the morning when the attack got away. The 7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a Territorial battalion that was on its trial that day, led with splendid dash on the right, the 1st Warwicks on the left. They were followed on right and left respectively by the 1st Royal Fusiliers and the 2nd Dublins, whilst the 2nd Seaforths were ordered to connect with General Riddell’s Brigade of the Northumbrian Division, which had been sent up to relieve the Canadians.