The enemy continued to shell the captured position, killing 2 and wounding 9 men that day, but no counter-attack developed and a few days later it was decided to straighten out the front then held by the 4th (Guards) Brigade. The fighting on the 25th had left it running irregularly through the big brick-yard, before mentioned. Of the dozen or more solid stacks of brick, four or five connected by a parapet of loose bricks and known as the Keep, were in our hands. The other eight, irregularly spaced, made a most awkward wedge into our line. They were backed by a labyrinth of German trench-work, and, being shell-proof, supports could be massed behind them in perfect safety. The nearest were within bombing distance of the Keep, and, in those days, the Germans had more and better bombs than we. On every account, then, the wedge had to be cleared, the stacks and their connecting trenches overrun and the line advanced a hundred and fifty yards or so to get a better field of fire. As a preliminary, a small but necessary piece of German trench on the flanks of the Keep was captured by the Irish on the 5th February with a loss of but 2 killed and none wounded.
At 2 P. M. on the 6th of February the stacks were heavily bombarded for a quarter of an hour--a large allowance. Even “Mother,” a neighbouring 9.2, probably of naval extraction, took part in it, and some French artillery ringed the approaches on the German side with screens of black melenite fumes, while No. 2 Company from the front trenches swept the German parapet facing them with five minutes of that old “rapid fire” which the Germans in the Salient and elsewhere had so often mistaken for machine-gun work. Then two assaulting parties of thirty men each from Nos. 3 and 1 Companies, under 2nd Lieutenant T. Musgrave and J. Ralli, opened the attack on five of the eight stacks. The other three were fairly dealt with on the same lines by the 3rd Coldstream. As there was no wire left on the trench before our stacks, our party got there almost at once, but Musgrave, ahead of his men, was shot by a group of five Germans who showed fight behind a few fatal unbroken strands in the rear. They were all killed a moment later when the men came up. Then the supporting parties under Lieutenant Innes were slipped, together with the Engineers under Major Fowkes, R.E., and the combined attack swept on through the brick-stacks, in and out of the trenches and around and behind them, where the Germans were shot and bayoneted as found, till--fighting, digging, cursing and sand-bagging--our men had hacked their way some seventy yards beyond their objective and dug in under a shelf of raw ground about three feet high, probably the lip of an old clay-pit. Our guns had lifted and were choking off all attempts at possible counter-attacks, but the German supports seem to have evaporated in the direction of La Bassée. There was a ridge in front of the captured position whence a few bullets were still dropping, but the back of the defence had been broken and, as firing diminished, first one and then two out of every three men were set digging in and filling sand-bags. The fortunes of the little campaign had gone smoothly, and when it was necessary, in the rough and tumble of the trench-work, to bring up reinforcements or more shovels and ammunition for the digging-parties, the indefatigable and brotherly Herts Territorials were drawn upon. The Coldstream had carried their share of the front and lay in line on our left, and at dusk, while the Engineers were putting up more wire, under rifle-fire at 150 yards’ range, the position was secure.