Upon reaching the Aisne River and encountering the trench system, cavalry was found ineffective. While cavalry divisions were still being formed in Britain, cavalry troops quickly became accustomed to fighting dismounted. Britain continued to use cavalry throughout the war, and in 1917, the Household Cavalry conducted its last mounted charge during a diversionary attack on the Hindenburg Line at Arras. On the orders of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the Life Guards and the Blues, accompanied by the men of the 10th Hussars, charged into heavy machine gun fire and barbed wire, and were slaughtered by the German defenders; the Hussars lost two-thirds of their number in the charge. The last British fatality from enemy action before the armistice went into effect was a cavalryman, George Edwin Ellison, from C Troop 5th Royal Irish Lancers. Ellison was shot by a sniper as the regiment moved into Mons on November 11, 1918.