e second line of
trenches. Again the British bayonet and bomb had won, though in this
attack the greater credit must be given to the bomb. The Germans made
an attempt to retrieve the day by battering the British out of the
trenches they had won. To do this the German artillery used a
plentiful supply of high-explosive shells. They continued the attempt
for twenty-four hours; but all they succeeded in doing was driving the
British back to the first line of German trenches where they waited
for the inevitable attack of the infantry which was repulsed. Finally
the Germans seemed inclined to give up trying to accomplish much on
this part of their front.

In the first week of July, 1915, the British took two hundred yards of
German trenches, eighty prisoners and three trench mortars. The German
commander now turned once more to Hooge. An additional reason for his
renewed interest in that place was the fact that the British
engineers, on July 20, blew up a mine west of the Chateau, thereby
making a great crater in which the British infantry made themselves
comparatively secure. The crater was one hundred and fifty feet wide
and fifty feet deep.

The Germans made an unsuccessful attempt to take the crater on July
21, 1915; and tried again on July 24. The Duke of Wuerttemberg found
his men making comparatively little progress. It is true that the
British had not made much more. The gas attacks had gained ground
before the British had learned how to avoid the more severe effects of
the poison. The result of experience brought into existence a new
device. It has been called a flame projector, and has been described
as a portable tank which is filled with a highly inflammable coal-tar
product. The contents of the tank were pumped through a nozzle at the
end of which was a lighting arrangement. The flame could be thrown
approximately forty yards.

A large supply of these flame projectors arrived in the German
trenches on July 30, 1915. The action began with the usual bombardment
of high-explosive shells. Other shells filled with the burning liquid
were also used. At the height of the bombardment, the British lines
were flame swept. No preparation had been made for such an attack; and
the only thing that the British could do was to get out of the way of
the flame. Thus they lost their trenches in the crater and at the
Chateau and village of Hooge. The method of attack so infuriated the
British that they made a desperate countera