[Illustration:  POSITION ON FRIDAY MORNING]

As shown above, it became necessary for Brig.  Gen. Turner, commanding the Third Brigade, to throw back his left flank southward to protect his rear.  In the course of the confusion which followed upon the readjustments of position, the enemy, who had advanced rapidly after his initial successes, took four British 4.7 guns in a small wood to the west of the village of St. Julien, two miles in the rear of the original French trenches.

The story of the second battle of Ypres is the story of how the Canadian Division, enormously outnumbered—­for they had in front of them at least four divisions supported by immensely heavy artillery—­with a gap still existing, though reduced, in their lines, and with dispositions made hurriedly under the stimulus of critical danger, fought through the day and through the night, and then through another day and night; fought under their officers until, as happened to so many, those perished gloriously, and then fought from the impulsion of sheer valor because they came from fighting stock.

The enemy, of course, was aware—­whether fully or not may perhaps be doubted—­of the advantage his breach in the line had given him, and immediately began to push a formidable series of attacks upon the whole of the newly-formed Canadian salient.  If it is possible to distinguish when the attack was everywhere so fierce, it developed with particular intensity at this moment upon the apex of the newly formed line, running in the direction of St. Julien.

It has already been stated that four British guns were taken in a wood comparatively early in the evening of the 22d.  In the course of that night, and under the heaviest machine-gun fire, this wood was assaulted by the Canadian Scottish, Sixteenth Battalion of the Third Brigade, and the Tenth Battalion of the Second Brigade, which was intercepted for this purpose on its way to a reserve trench.  The battalions were respectively commanded by Lieut.  Col.  Leckie and Lieut.  Col.  Boyle, and after a most fierce struggle in the light of a misty moon they took the position at the point of the bayonet.  At midnight the Second Battalion, under Colonel Watson, and the Toronto Regiment, Queen’s Own, Third Battalion, under Lieut.  Col.  Rennie, both of the First Brigade, brought up much-needed reinforcement, and though not actually engaged in the assault were in reserve.

All through the following days and nights these battalions shared the fortunes and misfortunes of the Third Brigade.  An officer who took part in the attack describes how the men about him fell under the fire of the machine guns, which, in his phrase, played upon them “like a watering pot.”  He added quite simply, “I wrote my own life off.”  But the line never wavered.  When one man fell another took his place, and with a final shout the survivors of the two battalions flung themselves into the wood.  The German garrison was completely demoralized, and