One reads that the endurance of the men was wonderful. But one does not understand. I saw the men who came alive out of that hell in the salient, and they were as men transfigured. Not that they were shaken, depressed, or, on the other hand, exultant. They were just uncannily quiet, sitting about in the sunshine, rather limp, like men recovering from supreme fatigue. Talking to them, one felt somehow that their characters had changed; that they would never look on life again as they had done in the past; that they had acquired a new seriousness of mind, as though their glimpse into the dark valley had sobered them. And they all had a puckered, strained look about the eyes, the look one sometimes sees in men who have spent their lives in the open under a tropical sun. At first these symptoms used to puzzle me. They did after the battle of Ypres. Afterwards I found out that they were the badge of the modern battle, and that, with a week of rest and change of scene, they pass away. The ruthless bombardment with which the Germans occupied the last days of April were the preliminary to a fresh onslaught on the troops holding the northern part of the salient. In the meantime, the French counter-attacks having made no progress, Sir John French, in accordance with his arrangement with General Foch, decided that he could not afford to hold on any longer to our present exposed position. He therefore gave orders to Sir Herbert Plumer, who was directing the operations of the army engaged in defending the salient, to fall back upon a new line which had already been prepared in anticipation of this emergency. The effect of the withdrawal was to diminish considerably the arc of the salient, the whole of the centre falling back to a line starting east of Wieltje on the Ypres-Fortuin Road, running across the Ypres-Frezemberg Road south of Frezemberg, cutting through the Ypres-Thourout railway-line, and then the Ypres-Menin Road east of Hooge. Before the withdrawal could be begun, however--the day was May 2--the Germans, having obtained fresh supplies of chlorine gas in tank waggons from Belgium, launched a gas attack from St. Julien against the 12th and 10th Brigades, which, with the 11th Brigade, were holding the line round this village and down to Fortuin. By this time our men were provided with respirators of a sort, as the result of the appeal made by the army, and magnificently responded to by the women of Britain. Unfortunately the respirators were of rather a rudimentary pattern--they have since been replaced by an entirely efficacious model--and they did not serve wholly to protect our men from the poisonous fumes. Notably the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers and the Essex Regiment got the full blast of the noxious vapours. Despite many acts of individual gallantry shown by officers and men of the Lancashire Fusiliers, they could not hold the trench, and the line was forced back.