officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Burchill, carrying, after an old
fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men and, at the
very moment when his example had infected them, fell dead at the head of
his battalion. With a hoarse cry of anger they sprang forward (for,
indeed they loved him), as if to avenge his death. The astonishing
attack which followed--pushed home in the face of direct frontal fire
made in broad daylight by battalions whose names should live forever in
the memories of soldiers--was carried to the front line of the German
trenches. After a hand-to-hand struggle the last German who resisted was
bayoneted, and the trench was won.

The measure of this success may be taken when it is pointed out that
this trench represented in the German advance the apex in the breach
which the enemy had made in the original line of the Allies, and that it
was two and a half miles south of that line. This charge, made by men
who looked death indifferently in the face (for no man who took part in
it could think that he was likely to live) saved, and that was much, the
Canadian left. But it did more. Up to the point where the assailants
conquered, or died, it secured and maintained during the most critical
moment of all the integrity of the allied line. For the trench was not
only taken, it was held thereafter against all comers, and in the teeth
of every conceivable projectile, until the night of Sunday, the 25th,
when all that remained of the war-broken but victorious battalion was
relieved by fresh troops.

CHAPTER XXIX

ZEPPELIN RAIDS ON FRANCE AND ENGLAND

The idea of warfare in the air has been a dream of romancers from a
period long before Jules Verne. Indeed, balloons were used for
observation purposes in the eighteenth century by the French armies. The
crude balloon of that period, in a more developed form, was used in the
Franco-Prussian War, and during the siege of Paris by its assistance
communication was kept up between Paris and the outside world. Realizing
its possibilities inventors had been trying to develop a balloon which
could be propelled against the wind and so guided that explosives could
be dropped upon a hostile army. Partially successful dirigible balloons
have been occasionally exhibited for a number of years.

The idea of such a balloon took a strong hold upon the imagination of
the German army staff long before the Great War, and Count Ferdinand
Zeppelin gave the best years of hi