Hobson picked up his rifle.
"I'll keep them back," he said to Fuller, "if you fix the gun!"
He ran towards the advancing enemy, a lonely, wounded, desperate man against many and with bayonet and clubbed rifle barred their passage. No man knows how many Germans were killed by Sergeant Hobson in that fierce encounter; dead and wounded were heaped in front of him when a shout from Fuller intimated that the gun was again ready for action.
And just at that moment a German pushed his rifle forward and fired point blank at the Canadian Horatius.
As Hobson fell Gunner Fuller pressed the trigger of his Lewis gun and threw a stream of death into the German mob. A few minutes later reinforcements from "B" company took the enemy in the flank and chased them back across No Man's Land; and the machine-guns of "B" company cleaned them up as they ran.
They found Sergeant Frederick Hobson where he had fallen, still grasping his deadly rifle. His enemies were sprawled around him, silent witnesses to his prowess. His heroism had saved the situation—and he had fought his last fight.
[PRIVATE MICHAEL JAMES O'ROURKE, 7TH BATTALION]
Down by the docks of the city of Victoria, B.C., you may observe a man who keeps a fruit stall and wears about an inch of dark red ribbon on his left breast. That fruit vendor is Michael James O'Rourke, late of the 7th Canadian Battalion; and the inch of dark red ribbon means that he has won the Victoria Cross.
O'Rourke gained the decoration when he was a stretcher-bearer in the 7th Battalion during the big attack on the German positions near Lens which began on the 15th August, 1917, and continued for several days.