Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

114 HISTORY OF THE WAR.

and driving rain, but before midday, when the bom- | bardment began, it had cleared to a bright autumn day. The area selected was from the Hohenzollern to a point 60o yards south-west of Hulluchroughly, the area which the gth, 7th, and 1st Divisions had operated in on 25th September. At one o'clock a gas attack was launched from our front trenches, a dense cloud, pure white on top, and mottled with red and green below. It muffled the German lines, while our artillery continued the ‘ preparation.” At 2 p.m. the infantry crossed the parapets.

The Germans had not been idle during the past days, and their machine guns chattered along their front, while their guns sprayed the British advance. On the right we captured 1,000 yards of trenches south-west of Hulluch, but the arullery fire, exactly ranged, forbade us to remain in them. Farther north we took and held the section of German trenches south-west of Cité St. Elie, in the angle between the Vermelles-Hulluch and the HulluchLa Bassée roads, carried the south-western edge of the famous Quarries, and won a trench on their north-western face.

But the heaviest contest was on the left, where General Stuart-Wortley’s 46th (North Midland) Division of Territorials were engaged at the Hohenzollern, and showed themselves not less resolute in attack than the Londoners at Loos a fortnight earlier. At the moment we held only the western and southern rims of the Redoubt. The communicaticn trenches, Big Willie and Little Willie, were in German hands, and the whole of Fosse 8, the houses behind it, and the Fosse trench, running east of the Re-