d 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