unable to maintain
their advantage through failure of reenforcements to come up in time.
The Leicester Brigade were shelled out of their trenches and were
obliged to fall back to the south of the River Lys.

During the following three days--October 26, 27, 28, 1914--artillery
fire was resorted to and desultory fighting and skirmishes along the
entire line resulted in no noteworthy advantage to either belligerent.

Thursday, October 29, 1914, opened with clear and bracing weather which
promised to continue throughout the day. The German attack which had
been preparing for the past three days now broke like an irresistible
wave upon the salient of the Gheluvelt crossroads, where the British
First Corps was stationed. The first division was driven back from its
trenches and after that the line swayed forward and backward for hours,
but by two o'clock in the afternoon the position remained unchanged.

With the coming of the dawn on October 30, 1914, the fighting was
resumed with even more savage determination on both sides. The hottest
engagement centered about the ridge of Zandvoorde. German artillery fire
cleared the allied trenches, burying many of the British soldiers alive
under mountains of earth and debris. This forced the line to retreat a
full mile to Klein Zillebeke to the north. The kaiser witnessed this
engagement and by his presence cheered the German soldiers on to the
most desperate fighting.

On the following day October 31, 1914, the crisis came. The fighting
began along the Menin-Ypres road early in the morning and advanced with
great violence upon the village of Gheluvelt. The First and Third
Brigades of the First Division were swept back and the First Coldstream
Guards were wiped out as a unit. The whole division was driven back from
Gheluvelt to the woods between Veldhoek and Hooge. The allied
headquarters at Hooge were shelled. General Lomas was wounded and six of
the staff officers were killed.

The Royal Fusiliers who desperately stuck to their trenches fighting
savagely were cut off and destroyed. Out of a thousand but seventy
soldiers remained. Between two and three o'clock there occurred the most
desperate fighting seen in the battle of Ypres. At 2:30 o'clock in the
afternoon the Allies recaptured Gheluvelt at the point of the bayonet
and by evening the Allies had regained their position. Ypres had not
been captured by the Germans by this time, but they had secured their
position in all the