It was here that Jack Lynn won the Victoria Cross, conferred posthumously, for this brave fellow did not survive his gallant action. He was in the machine-gun pit when the deadly cloud approached, but without waiting to adjust his respirator he kept his machine-gun playing on the dense billows of greenish-yellow smoke. The cloud caught him and eddied about him, but his fingers never left the button of the gun, which barked on incessantly as the dimly descried forms of the Germans appeared creeping over the open. Choking and gasping as he was, Lynn hoisted his machine-gun on the parapet, and there, amid a storm of bullets, a lonely figure in a trench full of dead and dying, he kept his gun going on the enemy till he collapsed. The German infantry could not face the storm of fire, and returned to their trenches. Lynn had collapsed by his gun when his comrades found him. They took him to a dug-out, half-conscious, but even then, when a machine-gun started barking near by, that gallant spirit struggled to regain his feet to get back to “his gun.” He died there in the sunset, with the din of battle ringing in his ears, only a Liverpool van-boy, “jes’ a little bet of a chaap,” one of his mates told me afterwards, but a man with a mighty soul. The 2nd Seaforths were also badly gassed, but with true Scottish tenacity they stuck to their trenches until relief came. It was not long delayed. The Cavalry Division in support sent up the 4th Hussars, who executed a splendid charge side by side with the 7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (Territorials), who had already done so well at St. Julien. Hussars and Highlanders went forward, head down, through the gas fumes straight into the Germans, ambling to what they imagined was an easy triumph. There was some swift and silent slaying, and the Germans went back the way they had come with sorely diminished numbers. Said General Hull to me afterwards with a chuckle: “We got the Boches on the hop that time.” Fighting went on all that day and the next. It was essential to conceal from the enemy our withdrawal, which was timed to begin after dark. The continual counter-attacks delivered by these brigades effectually contrived to mask our intentions from him. As a result we were able to withdraw the whole centre of our line and take up the new position we had prepared almost without a casualty, and without the Germans being a penny the wiser. In fact, they continued to pour a devastating fire into our empty trenches until 3.30 on the afternoon following the withdrawal.