3 About this time the enemy's rifle fire became very heavy and particularly accurate. Only the men on the upper floors of the houses A B and C had sufficient command to be able to see much of the enemy; those lining the ditch and the main barricade behind the bridge being too low to see much. None of these houses were shelled by the enemy, but every window and doorway was subjected to heavy rifle fire and casualties began to increase. Meanwhile a party of Royal Engineers had been preparing the bridge for demolition, working from a boat under the bridge itself. It had been previously arranged by the Royal Engineers officer that as soon as the charges had been fixed, a man should go back to headquarters of the Field Company to get electric firing apparatus from the wagon which was somewhere in the street of the town in rear of us. At about it was reported that the platoon holding the advanced barricade was losing a great many men and that Lieutenant Stiven had been wounded. Orders were then issued for the advanced platoon to retire man by man across the canal on the main position. The bridge had been covered with a wire entanglement by the Royal Engineers on the previous afternoon, and it was intended that the advanced platoon should retire by the lock gates, each of which had a narrow footway about 10 inches wide running along the top of the gate. By this time, however, the enemy's rifle fire had become so heavy that it was quite impossible for the men of the advanced platoon to retire by so exposed a route. They were therefore compelled to crawl across the