The moment the German guns stopped their fusilade, the German infantry rushed forward, the attack developing all along the 5th Corps front. St. Eloi itself, the southern re-entrant of the Ypres Salient, was soon in enemy hands.
By two o'clock on the morning of the 15th, a British counter-attack was launched. By daybreak each force held some part of St. Eloi, and the fighting grew fierce and fiercer. By night all the town was in British hands save one point, a mound which had been transformed into a kind of fort by the enemy.
During that fighting, the 4th Battalion Rifle Brigade was sent up to take a section of trench out of which one of the other 27th Division Battalions had been shelled. Once before, within the hour, another battalion had essayed to recapture the lost position, and had "retired" in considerable confusion.
The Rifle Brigade set its teeth and started for the hottest part of the fray.
"You must cross that road," its commander was told, "though Heaven only knows how anyone can get across it alive."
Sixteen Hun machine-guns were playing on the open space over which the battalion must pass.
Over it they went. In less than sixty seconds eleven officers and two hundred and fifty men were down, but the rest pushed on.
They reached the trench, some of them, cleared out the Huns with the cold steel, and consolidated the position—a splendid performance.
The 5th Corps made good the ground the Germans had won without calling on the 1st Cavalry Division troops for assistance, and thus ended the last chance of our Division for active fighting during the month of March.
Inspections in the Flemish mud, bright sunshine and spring zephyrs one day, and snow the next, and more than once snow and sunshine alternating throughout the span of a day, marked the passing of the month.