The enforced retirement of the Third Brigade (and to have stayed longer
would have been madness) reproduced for the Second Brigade, commanded by
Brig. Gen. Curry, in a singularly exact fashion, the position of the
Third Brigade itself at the moment of the withdrawal of the French. The
Second Brigade, it must be remembered, had retained the whole line of
trenches, roughly 2,500 yards, which it was holding at 5 o'clock on
Thursday afternoon, supported by the incomparable exertions of the Third
Brigade, and by the highly hazardous deployment in which necessity had
involved that brigade. The Second Brigade had maintained its lines.

It now devolved upon General Curry, commanding this brigade, to
reproduce the tactical maneuvres with which, earlier in the fight, the
Third Brigade had adapted itself to the flank movement of overwhelming
numerical superiority. He flung his left flank around south, and his
record is, that in the very crisis of this immense struggle he held his
line of trenches from Thursday at 5 o'clock till Sunday afternoon. And
on Sunday afternoon he had not abandoned his trenches. There were none
left. They had been obliterated by artillery. He withdrew his undefeated
troops from the fragments of his field fortifications, and the hearts of
his men were as completely unbroken as the parapets of his trenches were
completely broken. In such a brigade it is invidious to single out any
battalion for special praise, but it is, perhaps, necessary to the story
to point out that Lieut. Col. Lipsett, commanding the Ninetieth Winnipeg
Rifles, Eighth Battalion of the Second Brigade, held the extreme left of
the brigade position at the most critical moment.

The battalion was expelled from the trenches early on Friday morning by
an emission of poisonous gas, but, recovering in three-quarters of an
hour, it counter-attacked, retook the trenches it had abandoned, and
bayoneted the enemy. And after the Third Brigade had been forced to
retire Lieut. Col. Lipsett held his position, though his left was in the
air, until two British regiments filled up the gap on Saturday night.

The individual fortunes of these two brigades have brought us to the
events of Sunday afternoon, but it is necessary, to make the story
complete, to recur for a moment to the events of the morning. After a
very formidable attack the enemy succeeded in capturing the village of
St. Julien, which has so often been referred to in describing the
fortun