The Bays, under Lieutenant-Colonel "Algy" Lawson, formerly of the Greys, held on like grim death in spite of the storm of shell that burst over them at four o'clock in the morning and continued hour after hour throughout the day.
The Life Guards were driven back from their trenches with heavy losses, and the Leicestershire Yeomanry had to fall back as well.
This exposed the right flank of the Bays, but still they stuck to their position.
At about half past ten o'clock the commanding officer of the 5th D.G.'s ordered the retirement of his regiment, the men trickling back in two thin lines, one at either end of their section of front.
This resulted in the left of the Bays being uncovered as well as their right, but they put their teeth in and held on. The 11th Hussars came up magnificently on the left shortly after, and shared the glory, with the Bays, of saving the line.
Twice during the day the Huns formed for an infantry attack in front of the Bays, and each time our splendid guns were told of the concentration, and poured shell into the massing Germans with terrible execution, scattering the enemy detachments like chaff before the wind, and thus nipping the attack in the bud.
A strong enemy detachment came down the Zonnebeke Road and deployed to the north of it, immediately in front of the Bays. The Boches were lying in the open, but were protected from our rifle and machine-gun fire by a swell of ground.
A fat German observation officer obtained a place of vantage in a shattered farmhouse just south of the road. No amount of sniping could dislodge him, though the bullets chipped off bits of brick from the slender stack behind which he was sheltered. Up came a Naval Division armoured Rolls-Royce. Opposite the end of the Bays' trenches it stopped and opened fire.
The Hun officer in the farm noted the approach of the car, and fled up the road as fast as he could run.