It did not seem that
any human being could live in the shower 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.
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, Lieut. Col. 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.
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