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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.
It seemed as if they might be rushed now, for the Germans were
swarming up Big Willie with strong bombing-parties, and would soon
blast a way through unless they were thrust beyond the range of hand-
grenades. It was a young lieutenant named Hawker, with some South
Staffordshire men, who went forward to meet this attack and kept the
enemy back until four o'clock in the afternoon, when only a few living
men stood among the dead and they had to fall back to the second
barrier.


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