volunteers in a perilous adventure, with bottles of hot soup in
mackintoshes. They brought a touch of human warmth to the brigade
staff, made those hours of the night more endurable, but the men farther
forward had no such luck. They were famishing and soaked, in a cold hell
where shells tossed up the earth about them and spattered them with the
blood and flesh of their comrades.

On Monday morning the situation was still more critical, all along the
line, and the Guards were ordered up to attack Hill 70, to which only
a few Scots were clinging on the near slopes. The 6th Cavalry Brigade
dismounted--no more dreams of exploiting success and galloping round
Lens--were sent into Loos with orders to hold the village at all cost,
with the men of the 15th Division, who had been left there.

The Londoners were still holding on to the chalk-pit south of Loos,
under murderous fire.

It was a bad position for the troops sent into action at that stage.
The result of the battle on September 25th had been to create a salient
thrust like a wedge into the German position and enfiladed by their
guns. The sides of the salient ran sharply back--from Hulluch in the
north, past the chalk-quarries to Givenchy, and in the south from the
lower slopes of Hill 70 past the Double Crassier to Grenay. The orders
given to the Guards were to straighten out this salient on the north by
capturing the whole of Hill 70, Puits 14, to the north of it, and the
chalk-pit still farther north.

It was the 2d Brigade of Guards, including Grenadiers, Welsh and Scots
Guards, which was to lead the assault, while the 1st Brigade on the
left maintained a holding position and the 3d Brigade was in support,
immediately behind.

As soon as the Guards started to attack they were met by a heavy storm
of gas-shells. This checked them for a time, as smoke-helmets--the old
fashioned things of flannel which were afterward changed for the masks
with nozzles--had to be served out, and already men were choking and
gasping in the poisonous fumes. Among them was the colonel of the
Grenadiers, whose command was taken over by the major. Soon the men
advanced again, looking like devils, as, in artillery formation (small
separate groups), they groped their way through the poisoned clouds.
Shrapnel and high explosives burst over them and among them, and many
men fell as they came within close range of the enemy's positions
running from Hill 70 northward to the chalk-pit.

The