ned
faces of the grey-clad survivors making but a feeble resistance or
surrendering without striking a blow.

The advance to the second line of German trenches was not so easy.
Here was an inferno of tangled wreckage strewn over mud, smoke-dimmed,
and torn with shrapnel, through which the men could advance but
slowly, with stumbling feet and gasping breath, while their ears were
assailed with horrid noises--screaming, yelling, crashing, pounding,
cheering, screeching. Major Beresford, who led the charge, fell with a
bullet through his lung on the way to the first German trench. Four
officers were killed on the same piece of ground. But the men went
steadily on, though bereft of most of their leaders, and at the second
line trench of the Germans, more strongly held than the first, were
inspired for the ordeal before them by the sight of Captain and
Adjutant A.P. Hamilton, who, though shot through the knee and
suffering great pain, guided the operations as he moved from place to
place, limping heavily. There was desperately fierce hand-to-hand work
here and bomb firing parties were hard at it, clearing out every
corner. One man performed a particularly brave act and a shrewd one to
boot. He came alone into a German communication trench beyond the
reserve line. In a minute a bright thought struck him, and as quickly
as possible he bundled the sandbags down into the trench, and so
formed a barricade. The Germans came back, just as he had anticipated,
and as they clambered over, so he shot them. We got rid of thirteen in
this way, and the enemy gave up that passage and retired Captain
Hamilton remained in this second line trench reorganising and
encouraging the men until the consolidation was well advanced. He was
awarded the Military Cross for his services. The official record says,
"He had to be ordered back for medical attendance." Indeed, the only
way that could be found to prevent Captain Hamilton from stubbornly
going on till he bled to death was to place him under arrest.

The London Irish had thus magnificently succeeded in the task allotted
to them--the capture of a section of the German second line trenches.
Carried away by their excessive impetuosity, they also helped to clear
the Germans out of the village of Loos, which they were among the
first to enter. They were still untroubled and unperplexed. "When the
village was about half cleared," says Rifleman T.J. Culley, in a
letter to Sister Celestine, of the Hom