A "Gaspipe Officer,"[36] writing in _Blackwood's Magazine_, tells us that, on the evening of 17th April, a group of officers standing on a little rise watched the shrapnel bursting over Hill 60, three and a half miles away. "They were half joyful and half sick at heart. Not one of them would have confessed it, yet each had a great pride in the old division, and a great anxiety that it should do well. Had the charge been successful? Had the gains been made good? They went back into their hut, and sang . . . until it was time to go to bed.
"In the morning news came that the position had been rushed; the Germans had been filled with such panic that they had fled from the trenches on either side of the crater; they were heavily attacking; their guns and bombs were sweeping the new position; there was no wire down yet.
"About nine the same night there was much cheering in the darkness of the camp. The remains of two battalions had returned from the hill. Then first we learned the names of the fallen. Still there was no wire down. . . . It took five or six days before the wire was down and trenches properly made. During those days no battalion could remain for more than fifteen hours on the hill, and at the end of its shift it would return broken. The men could see the guns that were firing at them. . . . The hill was death. But the 5th Division never let go. They stuck to the hill while the sappers put up wire and made it defensible."
Before I close this chapter I will give you some account of the soldiers who won the Victoria Cross for deeds of outstanding gallantry during the period between the Battle of Neuve Chapelle and the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres.
Private Robert Morrow, 1st Battalion, Princess Victoria's (Royal Irish) Fusiliers.
Near Messines, on 12th April, some of our trenches were destroyed by the enemy's shell fire, and several of our men were buried in the ruins. Without waiting for orders, and under a very heavy fire, Private Morrow dug out the men and carried them one by one to places of shelter. A score of times he hazarded his own life in rescuing his comrades, and the highest award of valour was the King's tribute to such fearless self-devotion.
