machine guns. They were agreeably disappointed, however, for the German resistance was not strong. It was only when the Canadians gained the first houses in the outskirts that really strenuous fighting began. There was one point where the enemy was strongly intrenched in concreted cellars where a struggle of the deadliest description developed.

Lens before the war had a population of 30,000, but was now a mass of ruins. The Germans had constructed strong subterranean defenses, undermining the whole place with tunnels and dugouts reenforced with concrete. Such bits of ruined buildings that remained standing had been used for gun emplacements. It was through this stronghold that the Canadians had to force their way. The tremendous bombardment that preceded the attack had quite unnerved the Germans, and numbers were seen to desert their posts and flee to the rear, but in many parts of the outer defenses north and west of the city the garrison fought fiercely. In an hour and a half the Canadians had pushed forward 1,500 yards, having gained most of the outward bastion of Lens formed by the separate colonies, or "cités," so called, consisting of blocks of miners' cottages and works united in one big mining district.

The most important operation during the day, however, was the capture of Hill 70, which the British had taken and lost two years before, for the hill commanded a wide territory and was the last dominating position in this section that had remained in German hands.

August 16, 1917, marked another important advance for the French and British. Early in the morning the Allies, striking together on a nine-mile front east and northeast of Flanders, carried all their objectives excepting those on the right flank. French troops on the left drove the Germans from the tongue of land between the Yser Canal and the Martjevaart and won the bridgehead at Dreigrachten. Langemarck, which had been strongly held by the Germans since the Allied attack early in the month, was captured by Haig's troops, who swept forward half a mile beyond. On the right the British tried to win the high ground almost directly east of Ypres, lying north of the Menin road, but the Germans in face of appalling losses attacked in such fury that the British were forced to abandon the attempt.

More than 1,800 prisoners, including thirty-eight officers and a number of guns, were captured by the Anglo-French forces in this advance.

On the Lens battle front there was continuous fighting, the Germans making desperate efforts to recover their lost positions. The Canadians still clung tenaciously to Hill 70, having beaten off ten furious attacks directed by Prince Rupprecht. The Prussian Guard, so active in the fighting, here lost heavily. A Canadian machine-gun officer stated that his men had killed more Germans than they had ever seen together at any one time since fighting began here, having had as a target for an hour and a quarter enemy reenforcements coming up in columns of fours for use in counterattacks. The Seventh Prussian Division was completely annihilated. The fire of the Canadian guns was so intense that German ration parties refused to go to the relief of their comrades on the hill, and the hundreds of prisoners taken were in a half-famished condition, all the fighting spirit gone out of them.

It was noted in the struggle here that many of the Germans were mere children. A large number of boys, not over seventeen were in the thick of the battle, and some were even younger, belonging evidently to the 1919 class.

The attitude of the civilians who had been living in the suburbs of Lens would have puzzled a master psychologist. In the midst of terrors they remained calm and undismayed. Some had lived there since the beginning of the war, in houses that were repeatedly shelled and often wrecked. Death stalked them day and night. Yet they continued their peaceful vocations in cellars, their children being protected by gas masks going to school. When the British soldiers appeared, and while the shells were bursting a few yards away, young girls and women, for the most part neatly dressed and generally in black, were there to greet with cheerful faces the welcome visitors.

On August 17, 1917, the French completed their conquest of enemy territory south of the St. Jansbeek River and the Breenbeek River by the capture of two strong German redoubts which had held out against all attacks since the beginning of the great offensive on the 16th. One redoubt, Les Lilas, was a large concrete and steel structure strongly armed with machine guns. It was impregnable against infantry attacks, and it was only when the French brought heavy guns to bear on the stronghold that the German garrison surrendered. Mondovi Farm, the other redoubt, lay in an angle formed by the St. Jansbeek and the Breenbeek Rivers. The French bombarded the redoubt during the night of the 17th, and after the concrete walls were shattered and crumbling the enemy surrendered. Attempts were made later by the Germans to shell the French out of the captured stronghold, but were not successful.

On this date the Germans counterattacked in force against the Canadian positions northwest of Lens. According to prisoners the German troops had been ordered to retake Hill 70 at any cost. In the afternoon of the 17th the first great attack was made, a fierce and determined onslaught accompanied by a storm of flaming projectiles and gas shells. The Canadians met the attack with cold steel, and the Germans were driven back in confusion with heavy losses. Another assault made in the evening against the suburb of St. Emilie and at Hugo Wood to the north failed with serious losses to the attackers.

At 1.30 in the morning of the 18th the Germans were again in action. Along the entire line north of Lens their infantry attacked, supported by a concentrated artillery fire. They fought with reckless bravery, hurling themselves again and again upon the Canadians in hand-to-hand conflicts of the fiercest description. The latter held their ground, though sorely beset by superior numbers. The Germans were loath to give ground, clinging to every foot, but were slowly forced back, their ranks shattered, leaving many dead and wounded on the field. This was the most sanguinary fighting in which the Canadians had engaged since the capture of Hill 70. Never before had they used the bayonet so freely or met the enemy in such a man-to-man grapple to the death.

During the day French and British aviators were engaged in many successful combats in the air. The British downed thirty German aeroplanes, twelve of which were known to have been destroyed. Twelve British machines were missing, two having collided during the fighting and fallen within the enemy lines. On this day, and during the night of August 17-18, 1917, French aviators shot down seven German airplanes and a captive balloon and forced down eight other machines, which, badly damaged, fell in the German lines. A bombing raid in which 111 French machines took part in various sorties dropped 13,000 kilograms (28,600 pounds) of projectiles on aviation grounds at Colmar, Friedrichshafen, and Habsheim. Aviation camps and railway stations at other points were showered with projectiles, producing fires and explosions.

British troops on the front northeast of Ypres made a further advance in an attack made in the morning of August 18, 1917, in the vicinity of the Ypres-Poelcappelle road east of Langemarck. By this operation the British advanced their lines 500 yards on a like front, winning all their objectives, including a series of strongly fortified farms. Southeast of Epihy a successful local operation was carried out by the British troops in the early morning of the following day, when German trenches in the neighborhood of Guillemont Farm were captured and a considerable number of prisoners.

It was in this the fourth