advancing by the main Doncaster road. Their advance guard, which had already occupied Rotherham, had also seized the bridge which the invaders had neither time nor material to demolish, and now swept on across it, although exposed to a heavy onslaught from that line of the British position between Tinsley and Brinsworth. Those sturdy, stolid Westphalians and bearded men of Lorraine still kept on. Numbers dropped, and the bridge was quickly strewn with dead and dying. Yet nothing checked the steady advance of that irresistible wave of humanity.
Down the River Rother, at Kanklow Bridge, a similar scene was being enacted. The railway bridge at Catcliffe was also taken by storm, and at Woodhouse Mill the 14th Division, under Von Kehler, made a terrific and successful dash, as they also did at Beighton.
The river itself was about an average distance of a mile in front of the British position, and although as heavy a fire as possible was directed upon all approaches to it, yet the Germans were not to be denied. Utterly indifferent to any losses, they still swept on in an overwhelming tide, leaving at the most not more than ten per cent, of casualties to be dealt with by the perfectly equipped ambulances in their rear. So, for the most part, the various regiments constituting the divisions of the two German commanders found themselves shaken, but by no means thwarted. On the west bank of the river, the steep slopes rising from Beighton to Woodhouse gave a certain amount of dead ground, under cover of which the foreign legions took refuge, in order to dispose themselves for the final assault.
A similar state of things had taken place to the south. General Graf Haesler had flung both his divisions across the river, with but little opposition. The 15th, composed mainly of men of the Rhine, under Von Kluser, crossed at Killamarsh and Metherthorpe Station, while the 16th, under Lieut.-General Stolz, crossed at Renishaw, and, striking north-easterly in the direction of Ridgeway, closed in as they advanced, till at length
