ed the front
with his glasses. Then he said, 'Marner's dead.'

The Leicestershires' attack was held up in the hills. They asked for
support, but none was available. They were told to advance as far as
they could, and then hold their line till help could come. The hills
were thick with excellent positions. Every fold and dip was utilized by
a scattered and numerous foe, to whom the ragged ground was like a
cloak of invisibility. No artillery help could be given. We could only
seize the ground's advantage and make it serve as help to the attack as
well as to the defence. It was here that Marner fell. C Company was
sheltering in an ancient canal. Seeing a man fall, Captain Hasted
called out, 'Keep your heads down.' Almost at that moment Marner looked
over, having spotted a sniper who was vexing us, and fell dead at
Grant-Anderson's feet. Though in falling he brushed against Hasted, the
latter could not pause to see who it was; nor did he know till he cried
out, a minute later, that Marner was to move round the flank of the
position immediately before them. Some two hundred yards farther on
Second-Lieutenant Otter was struck by a bullet which went through both
left arm and body, a bad but not fatal wound. But a gracious thought
came to the Turkish gunners. Seeing us without artillery support from
our own guns, they put two rounds of shrapnel over, the only shells on
these ridges during the fight. These burst directly on the Turkish
snipers, who did not wait for the hint to be repeated, but went. The
Leicestershires topped the last ridge, and were on the plain before the
station. Fowke and Service remained to guard the left flank, while
Hasted went forward with the bayonet to clear the hills to the left.
Fowke, watching benevolently the evolutions of certain horsemen on his
left, received a message from our cavalry, 'Those are Arabs on your
left, and are hostile to you.'

And now it would have meant a bloody advance for A and B Companies
against those trenches in the open. But the Turks, held by the
Leicestershires' strong steady attack, had given insufficient attention
to the movement threatening their left. The two Sikh regiments, though
checked and held from time to time by rifle and machine-gun fire, used
the broken ground with extraordinary skill. Their experience on the
Afghan frontier had trained them for just such work as this. Rising
ground was used as positions for covering fire, and every knoll and
hummock becam