The troops made a desperate 'last-ditch' effort to keep the town from being captured.
The negotiations were a 'last-ditch' attempt to prevent a labor strike.
His girlfriend 'ditched' him. = He 'got ditched' by his girlfriend.
(..) - Go! Go! He would never count me as one of the dead. And he had loved me as much as he could. Her body was found in a drainage ditch, by the side of the road. She was already dead when he dumped her body in the river. Lana Johnson. . Bucks County, Pennsylvania. (..)2009 The Lovely Bones