hill. So he moved
large numbers of troops toward the shattered mound, the British
artillery was reenforced, and the hastily constructed sandbag
breastworks were improved with all possible speed.

The Germans then attacked with gas bombs. Projectiles filled with
gas were hurled upon the British from three sides. The East Surrey
Regiment, which defended the hill in the latter part of the battle
for it, suffered severely. Faces and arms became shiny and gray-black.
Membranes in the throats thickened, and lungs seemed to be eaten
by the chlorine poison. Yet the men fought on until exhausted,
and then fell to suffer through a death struggle which continued
from twenty-four hours to three days of suffocating agony.

The German artillery kept up its almost incessant pounding of the
British. In short lulls of the big gun's work the German infantry
hurled itself against the trenches on the hill, using hand grenades
and bombs. The fight continued until the morning of May 5, 1915,
when the wind blew at about four miles an hour from the German
trenches. Then a greenish-yellow fog of poisonous gas was released,
and soon encompassed the hill. The East Surreys, who were holding
the hill, were driven back by the gas, but as soon as the gas passed
they charged the Germans who had followed the gas and had taken
possession of the hill. Notwithstanding the machine-gun fire which
the Germans poured upon them, many of the trenches were retaken by
the Surrey soldiers in their first frenzied rush to regain what
they had lost because of the gas. The battle ended when there was
no hill left. The bombardment and the mines had leveled the mound
by distributing it over the surrounding territory. The British,
however, were accorded the victory, as they had trenches near where
the hill was and made them a part of the base of the salient about
Ypres.

That town has been likened to the hub of a wheel whose spokes are
the roads which lead eastward. It is true that one important road
went over the canal, at Steenstraate, but practically all of the
highways of consequence went through Ypres. Thus the spokes of the
wheel, whose rim was the outline of the salient, were the roads to
Menin, Gheluvelt, Zonnebeke, Poelcapelle, Langemarck, and Pilkem.
And the railroad to Roulers was also a spoke. Hence all of the
supplies for the troops on the salient must pass through Ypres,
which made it most desirable for the Germans to take the town. It
will be remembe