e of the suburbs of Lens--the Cite St.-Auguste. Very few of them
came back with the tale of their comrades' slaughter by sudden bursts of
machine-gun fire which cut off all chance of retreat....

The quietude of Hill 70 was broken by the beginning of a new bombardment
from German guns.

"Dig in," said the officers. "We must hold on at all costs until the
supports come up."

Where were the supporting troops which had been promised? There was no
sign of them coming forward from Loos. The Scots were strangely isolated
on the slopes of Hill 70. At night the sky above them was lit up by the
red glow of fires in Lens, and at twelve-thirty that night, under that
ruddy sky, dark figures moved on the east of the hill and a storm of
machine-gun bullets swept down on the Highlanders and Lowlanders, who
crouched low in the mangled earth. It was a counter-attack by masses of
men crawling up to the crest from the reverse side and trying to get the
Scots out of the slopes below. But the men of the 15th Division answered
by volleys of rifle-fire, machine-gun fire, and bombs. They held on in
spite of dead and wounded men thinning out their fighting strength.
At five-thirty in the morning there was another strong counter-attack,
repulsed also, but at another price of life in those holes and ditches
on the hillside.

Scottish officers stared anxiously back toward their old lines. Where
were the supports? Why did they get no help? Why were they left clinging
like this to an isolated hill? The German artillery had reorganized.
They were barraging the ground about Loos fiercely and continuously.
They were covering a great stretch of country up to Hulluch, and north
of it, with intense harassing fire. Later on that Saturday morning the
15th Division received orders to attack and capture the German earthwork
redoubt on the crest of the hill. A brigade of the 21st Division was
nominally in support of them, but only small groups of that brigade
appeared on the scene, a few white-faced officers, savage with anger,
almost mad with some despair in them, with batches of English lads who
looked famished with hunger, weak after long marching, demoralized by
some tragedy that had happened to them. They were Scots who did most of
the work in trying to capture the redoubt, the same Scots who had
fought through Loos. They tried to reach the crest. Again and again they
crawled forward and up, but the blasts of machine-gun fire mowed them
down, and many