A bombing-party of North Staffordshire men cleared thirty yards of the trench by the rapidity with which they flung their hand-grenades at the German bombers who endeavored to keep them out, and again and again they kept at bay a tide of field-gray men, who swarmed up the communication trenches, by a series of explosions which blew many of them to bits as bomb after bomb was hurled into their mass. Other Germans followed, flinging their own stick-bombs.

The Staffordshires did not yield until nearly every man was wounded and many were killed. Even then they retreated yard by yard, still flinging grenades almost with the rhythm of a sower who scatters his seed, each motion of the hand and arm letting go one of those steel pomegranates which burst with the noise of a high-explosive shell.

The survivors fell back to the other side of a barricade made in the Big Willie trench by some of their men behind. Behind them again was another barrier, in case the first should be rushed.