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This is the situation after an operation carried out by the XXIXth and two brigades of LIInd Divisions, which was not only successful but even more successful than we anticipated; wherein the initial losses on 28th June were comparatively small, namely 2,000, but as the result of numerous counter-attacks day and night, have since swelled to some 3,500.
The Turks resisted very stoutly, and there was heavy fighting about the trenches just below the top of the hill. By noon the brigade had driven the enemy off, but three determined counter-attacks were delivered that day and the next and the brigade lost 180 killed and wounded. The Turks suffered heavily in the counter-attacks and left over 50 dead behind them; also a few prisoners.
In counter-attacks by 3rd Canadian Division a good deal of trenches recovered not all. Attack made on 3rd Division General Lipsett now in command and part of 1st division. 14th, 15th, and 10th Battalions, 1st Division, made counter-attack this morning Toronto Highlanders did particularly well. 4th and 5th C.M.R.'s said to have lost 500 each.
The French Tanks, here first employed, were disappointing, and Loivre was the only gain. The 17th was spent in beating off counter-attacks west of Reims, while the French offensive spread east to Moronvillers. Here the same tale had to be told; gallantry carried various points of importance, but a month's fighting failed to give the French complete control of their first day's objectives.
But for this, who knows with what cunning counter-attacks he might have foiled the butler's onslaught? As it was, the battle was a walk-over for the enemy. "I've been looking for you, young blighted Albert!" said Keggs coldly. Albert turned a green but defiant face to the foe. "Go and boil yer 'ead!" he advised. "Never mind about my 'ead.
They had shelled all the trenches in the region of the lost trench and had made three determined and unsuccessful counter-attacks when, on the fifth day, we returned to the château to ask if it were practicable to visit the new trench. "At your own risk!" said the staff officer. If we preferred we could sit on the veranda where there were easy chairs, on a pleasant summer day.
Then they tried sweeping over the Ridge from the cover of the reverse slope in counter-attacks, only to be whipped by machine gun fire, lashed by shrapnel and crushed by high explosives themselves mixed with the ruins of the windmill. At last they gave up the effort. It was not in German discipline to make any more attempts.
Heavy fighting continued for several days at the apex of the wedge driven into the German line, especially at Bourlon Wood and the village of Fontaine, where attacks and counter-attacks followed in rapid succession. Up to November 30 the British held their gains near Cambrai and that city lay under their guns.
The 61st Division was left holding a line of snow-bound trenches between Gonnelieu and La Vacquerie, consisting of fragments both of the Hindenburg Line, the old German front line, and our own as it stood before the Cambrai battle opened. Except in the 184th Brigade the casualties suffered by the Division during the heavy German counter-attacks had been heavier than those at Ypres.
The fact is, of course, that he's been here for twenty years, and the Squire couldn't get on for a day without him, or thinks he couldn't. So that his position is, as you may say, strongly entrenched, and counter-attacks are useless. 'The married daughters Mrs. Gaddesden, who, I think, is an Honourable, and Mrs. Strang are coming to-morrow to see their brother before he goes into camp.
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