er of shot and shell which began
to play upon the advancing troops. They suffered terrible casualties.
For a short time every other man seemed to fall, but the attack was
pressed ever closer and closer.

[Sidenote: Enemy's first line trenches taken.]

The Fourth Canadian Battalion at one moment came under a particularly
withering fire. For a moment--not more--it wavered. Its most gallant
commanding 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 for ever in
the memories of soldiers--was carried to the first line of 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 battalions was
relieved by fresh troops.

[Sidenote: The poisonous gas attack.]

It is necessary now to return to the fortunes of the Third Brigade,
commanded by Brigadier General Turner, which, as we have seen, at 5
o'clock on Thursday was holding the Canadian left, and after the first
attack assumed the defense of the new Canadian salient, at the same time
sparing all the men it could to form an extemporized line between the
wood and St. Julien. This brigade also was at the first moment of the
German offensive, made the object of an attack by the di