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.

It is necessary now to return to the fortunes of the Third Brigade, commanded by Brig.  Gen. 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 discharge of poisonous gas.  The discharge was followed by two enemy assaults.  Although the fumes were extremely poisonous, they were not, perhaps having regard to the wind, so disabling as on the French lines, (which ran almost east to west,) and the brigade, though affected by the fumes, stoutly beat back the two German assaults.

Encouraged by this success, it rose to the supreme effort required by the assault on the wood, which has already been described.  At 4 o’clock on the morning of Friday, the 23d, a fresh emission of gas was made both upon the Second Brigade, which held the line running northeast, and upon the Third Brigade, which, as has been fully explained, had continued the line up to the pivotal point, as defined above, and had then spread down in a southeasterly direction.  It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that two privates of the Forty-eighth Highlanders who found their way into the trenches commanded by Colonel Lipsett, Ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth Battalion, perished in the fumes, and it was noticed that their faces became blue immediately after dissolution.

The Royal Highlanders of Montreal, Thirteenth Battalion, and the Forty-eighth Highlanders, Fifteenth Battalion, were more especially affected by the discharge.  The Royal Highlanders, though considerably shaken, remained immovable upon their ground.  The Forty-eighth Highlanders, which, no doubt, received a more poisonous discharge, was for the moment dismayed, and, indeed, their trench, according to the testimony of very hardened soldiers, became intolerable.  The battalion retired from the trench, but for a very short distance, and for an equally short time.  In a few moments they were again their own men.  They advanced upon and occupied the trenches which they had momentarily abandoned.