May 9 and 10 saw the continuation of the hellish bombardment. The enemy, who had lost heavily on the 8th, notably against the 2nd Essex Regiment, which let a party of Germans come close up to their trenches and then simply wiped them out, furiously attacked the trenches of the 2nd Gloucester and the 2nd Cameron Highlanders, but were repulsed with heavy casualties. There was ding-dong fighting of the severest description about the trenches on either side of the Ypres-Menin Road, where a gas attack delivered on the 10th was driven back by the 2nd Cameron Highlanders, the 9th Royal Scots (Territorials), and the 3rd and 4th King’s Royal Rifles. The Rhodesian detachment serving with the 3rd K.R.R.’s had their baptism of fire in this fight, and suffered very heavily. The following day the Germans concentrated their artillery fire on a point a little more to the north, against the 2nd Cameron Highlanders and the 1st Argyll and Sutherland; but the Scotsmen, as tenacious as ever, gave a good account of themselves, though the Germans attacked in force. A brilliant charge by the Royal Scots “Terriers” ejected them from a section of trench in which they had gained a footing. In the afternoon there were two more spells of shelling, each followed by an attack, but the first attack was beaten off, and, though the Germans gained ground in the second, the lost trenches were recovered during the night. Meanwhile desperate fighting had been proceeding in the northern part of the salient, where, as has been seen, the Germans were making a tremendous effort to smash in our line. A great rambling Flemish homestead, situated west of the Wieltje-St. Julien Road, and called by our men “Shell-trap Farm,” was the centre of some of the hardest fighting of the war. The place owed its curious name to the sheer incredible number of shells which the Germans fired into the old red-brick buildings surrounded by a deep, broad moat. At one period 117 shells a minute were counted at this spot. Nevertheless, “Shell-trap Farm” proved too much for the authorities who regulate the nomenclature of places on the map, and a fiat went forth that the place should be known as “Mouse-trap Farm.” As “Shell-trap Farm,” however, it will remain in the memory of the men who fought there. The farm changed hands several times during the fighting, finally remaining in our possession. With its wrecked walls, its shell-pitted front and splintered shutters, and its floors strewn with empty cartridge-cases, it reminds one of the _Maison de la Dernière Cartouche_ on the field of Sedan.