As soon as we had taken Loos, the enemy opened a steady artillery fire upon the village, in order to prevent its use by us as a _point d'appui_ for further attack, and to hinder observation from the various landmarks it contained. There is so little natural cover that this must have been a serious disadvantage to us, as by this time the communication trenches leading from the German front line trenches that we now held up the slopes of the valley were choked with dead, and reinforcements had to run the gauntlet of a well-directed fire in order to reach our line of attack. This may have something to do with that fatal delay that left the attacking divisions unsupported and checked an advance that might well have resulted in the capture of Lens, which would probably in turn have sealed the fate of Lille. We have learnt from prisoners that the enemy anticipated the worst in the early hours of the morning, and that the feebleness of the final blow amazed them. Had fresh divisions poured down the Lens road through Cité St. Auguste and Cité St. Laurent, rolling the enemy back upon the French who were advancing towards Vimy, who knows what might not have happened? Conjecture is useless, regret of a lost opportunity must take its place. The facts so far as known--and no two accounts, even of those who took part in the struggle, quite agree--are as follows: The 47th Division, London Territorials all of them, the heroes of the day, but of whose performances, because less showy, little has been heard, had by 9.30 a.m. surmounted a series of obstacles, the storming of any one of which would have earned them lasting fame. Like a tide they poured over the western end of the dreaded Double Crassier, utterly regardless of withering machine-gun fire, and swept to the attack of the walled cemetery that stands to the south-west of Loos. From here, after a titanic struggle, they dislodged the strong party of its defenders, and, gaining fresh impetus from the check, irresistibly fought their way through the outskirts of the village, in which every point of vantage was held against them, right up to its heart, the mine buildings that cluster at the foot of the Pylons. This fortress they stormed and won, and the rush of their assault carried them on its crest over the Loos Crassier--another high embankment of refuse and slag--over the exposed surface of the plain, into the copse that stretches westward from Loos Chalk Pit. Here at last for a while they rested, and here for the present we may leave them. May the great city be for ever proud of the achievements of her sons this day, the thousand forgotten deeds of heroism of which her ears will never hear!