The transports Megantic, Oriana, Scotian, and Tintoretto, carrying the Brigade, left Alexandria between the 13th and 15th of April, and reached Marseilles during the night of the 19th, about the same time as the Russian division dispatched to the aid of France from Vladivostok. Owing to a case of contagious sickness on board the Oriana, the 4th Regiment and part of the 1st were placed in quarantine, while the remainder of the troops entrained at once for Flanders. Steenwerck was reached on the morning of the 23rd, and the 2nd and 3rd Regiments marched to their billeting area along roads wholly under water. It was the first sight which the South Africans had of the delectable land in which for four years the British Army made war. Headquarters were established at Bailleul, and the Brigade was attached to the 9th (Scottish) Division, under Major-General W. T. Furse. For three weeks detachments of the two regiments took their place in the trenches for instruction, and on 11th May the 4th Regiment and the rest of the 1st arrived from their quarantine at Marseilles. On 14th May the 28th Brigade of the 9th Division disappeared, being absorbed in other divisions, and the South African Brigade took its place in the fighting unit to whose glory it was so worthily to contribute.⁠[9]

The 9th Division belonged to the “First Hundred Thousand” of the New Army, and at the start was wholly Scottish. The famous Scottish battalions of the old regulars had drawn their men from every quarter of Britain; but the 9th Division had few in its ranks who did not hail from north of the Tweed. It had already made a name for itself at Loos, where, under Major-General George Thesiger, who fell in the battle, it had captured the Hohenzollern Redoubt and the ill-omened Fosse 8, and held the latter till it was utterly outflanked. It had fought in the toughest part of the whole line, and all the troops, Highland and Lowland, had borne themselves like veterans. The division had spent the winter in the Ypres salient as part of Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second Army, and during the spring had occupied the front around Armentières. It was a proof of the respect in which the South African Brigade was held by the British Command that it should be made part of so notable a division; and it was not less fortunate for the 9th Division that it received a brigade so competent to sustain its record.

The April of 1916 was a critical month in the Western campaign. On the 9th the first and deadliest stage of the German assault on Verdun had closed with the failure of the attackers. Pétain’s thin lines had held their ground; the little city was still inviolate; and, though France had lost terribly, she had wrecked the plans of her enemy, inflicted upon him irreparable loss, and by her heroism won that quiet confidence which is the surest guarantee of victory. When the Imperial Crown Prince opened the battle, one part of his purpose had been to induce a British counter-offensive. That counter-offensive did not come, for General Joffre did not desire it. He preferred to wait until Germany had spent her strength, and to use the armies of France and Britain in a great movement against a weakened foe. Our task, therefore, during the first months of 1916 had been to wait. The duty had been costly, for on our front the average daily toll of loss in trench fighting was not far from 1,000. It was a difficult time, for there was no great objective to quicken the spirit, and those indeterminate months imposed a heavy strain upon the moral of our troops. Yet the apparent stagnation was not without its advantage, for it gave the new British Commander-in-Chief time to complete his field army and perfect its education. When Sir Douglas Haig took over the supreme command he set himself to the work which Sir John Moore had undertaken more than a century before. He had to train his men for a new kind of warfare, and the whole British front became one vast seminary. To quote from his dispatch at this date: “During the periods of relief all formations, and especially the newly-created ones, are instructed and practised in all classes of the present and other phases of warfare. A large number of schools also exist for the instruction of individuals, especially in the use and theory of the less familiar weapons, such as bombs and grenades. There are schools for young staff officers, and regimental officers, for candidates for commissions, etc. In short, every effort is made to take advantage of the closer contact with actual warfare, and to put the finishing touches, often after actual experience in the trenches, to the training received at home.”

Moreover, during these months of waiting our strength in munitionment had grown beyond belief. The Allied offensives of 1915 had failed largely because there was no sufficient weight of shells and guns behind them. But by June of 1916 Britain was manufacturing and issuing to the Western front weekly as much as her whole pre-war stock of land service munitions. In heavy guns the output in the year had increased six-fold. The weekly production of machine guns had increased fourteen-fold, and of rifles three-fold—wholly from home sources. In small-arm ammunition the output was three times as great, and large reserve stocks had been accumulated. The production of high explosives was sixty-six times what it had been in the beginning of 1915, and the supply of bombs for trench warfare had been multiplied by thirty-three. At last we were providing a machine which would put our infantry on equal terms with the enemy.

The South African Brigade was inspected on 29th April by Sir Douglas Haig, and on 4th May by Sir Herbert Plumer. The next two months were devoted to its initiation in the methods of trench warfare, which were wholly new to it. During May it held a portion of the front line, and on 4th June the whole Brigade and the Field Ambulance moved into the Steenbecque and Morbecque training area. Battalion training was followed by skeleton Brigade training until 14th June, when orders were received for the division to move to the Somme. The Brigade was quartered in the neighbourhood of Ailly-sur-Somme, whence parties of officers and N.C.O.’s visited the front line in the Maricourt region. Meantime the 2nd and 3rd Regiments were attached to the 30th Division, to assist in the work of preparation for the coming attack.

Few men who were then in Picardy will ever forget that strange month before the great battle opened—the pleasant summer weather, the quiet of the front, the endless activity of the British hinterland, where every road was thronged with guns and transport, the curious breathless sense of expectation. On 23rd June the Brigade moved to Corbie and Sailly-le-Sec, where it was within a few miles of the line. Next morning, Saturday, the 24th, in grey, cloudy weather with flying showers of rain, the main bombardment opened.

The South Africans, as they moved east from Corbie along the Picardy downs, beheld a landscape which, in the heat and dust of midsummer, must have recalled their own country. The Somme, with its acres of swamp and broad lagoons, was not unlike some river of the bushveld. The “tawny ground,” which Shakespeare’s Henry V. had summoned his men to colour with their blood, had something of the air of the high-veld—yellow-green ridges and slopes falling away to an infinite distance. As they topped the hill behind Méaulte and faced the long lift of land towards Bapaume, they had the kind of spectacle which is common enough beyond the Vaal. In the hollows around the water-courses was the light green of crops; then a great stretch of unfenced country patched with woods, which were curiously clean-cut like the coppices in the park of a country house. It was such a view as a man may see from Haenertsberg, looking north towards the Woodbush. The weather, too, was the soft, shimmering mist which one meets on the edge of the Berg. Our bombardment had only just begun, and the countryside was not yet devastated. Fricourt was still a pleasant woodland village, Bernafay and Trônes were as yet little forests, and the spire of Mametz church was more than a tooth of masonry.

The story of the Battle of the Somme belongs to history written on a larger scale than this, for here we are concerned with only a part of it. But to understand that part it is necessary to grasp the purpose of the whole action. The enemy was suffering from a lack of immediate reserves, and the depression of moral due to his failure at Verdun and the recent successes of Brussilov in Galicia. He had boasted so loudly of his “war map,” and the amount of conquered territory which he held, that he dared not resort to the expedient of shortening his long line. He trusted to the great natural and artificial strength of his positions in the West to repel the Allies, whatever weight of men and guns might be brought against him. In no part of the Western front were these positions stronger than between Arras and the Somme, where he held in the main the higher ground, and had in the rear many fortified woods and villages which could be linked together into reserve lines.

The Allies had learned the lesson of the futile offensives of 1915, and of the long-drawn contest at Verdun. They no longer dreamed of breaking the enemy’s front by a sudden bound, for they realized the depth of his fortified zone. They had accepted the principle that an attack should proceed by stages, with, as a preliminary to each, an elaborate artillery “preparation;” and they realized, too, that, since the struggle must be protracted, fresh troops must be used for each stage. Their new plan was simply attrition on a colossal scale. It was like the mighty head of water which hydraulic engineers apply to a mountain in order to wash it away. The governing idea was not a breach in the front, though that might come incidentally, but such a steady, unrelenting pressure as would first cripple and then destroy the enemy’s machine. Their method was that of “limited objectives,” with new troops and a new bombardment for each phase, and they had certain tactical devices in reserve which they hoped to apply with good effect at the right moment. To quote what I have written elsewhere, the scheme might be suggested by the metaphor of a sea-dyke of stone in a flat country where all stone must be imported. “The waters crumble the wall in one section, and the free reserves of stone are used to strengthen that part. But the crumbling goes on, and to fill the breach stones are brought from other sections of the dyke. Some day there must come an hour when the sea will wash through the old breach, and a great length of the weakened dyke will follow in the cataclysm.” This method of attrition presupposed the continuance of the war on two fronts. When Russia fell out of line the situation was utterly changed, and the plan became futile against an enemy with a large new reservoir of recruitment. But at the time of its inception, uninspired and expensive as it was, it was a sound plan, and ceteris paribus would have given the Allies victory before the end of 1917. Even as things turned out, in spite of the unlooked-for débâcle in the East, the Battle of the Somme struck a blow at the heart of Germany’s strength from which she never wholly recovered.

A strategy of active attrition demands a battle, and a battle requires certain definite objectives. Our aim was to crumble the enemy’s defences on the Bapaume Ridge so completely that he could not find an alternate position of equal strength, and would be slowly forced into open warfare. The British front of attack was from Gommecourt in the north to Maricourt in the south, whence the French carried the battle across the Somme to a point opposite the village of Fay. It was Sir Douglas Haig’s intention to make his main attack between the Ancre and Maricourt, and it is clear from his dispatch that he regarded the movement of his left wing as a subsidiary operation. The final campaign of 1918 proved that in this he judged wrongly, and that the Bapaume Ridge was most vulnerable to a flanking attack from the north. The effort of the British left on the first day failed, and thereafter the battle became a stubborn frontal attack up the slopes from the west. The enemy’s fortress was assaulted on its most formidable side, and when after six months he admitted defeat and fell back, he yielded not to any strategical brilliance in our plan, but to the incomparable valour and tenacity of the Allied troops.

On 30th June, the day before the battle began, the South African Brigade, comprising the four infantry battalions, the 64th Field Company R.E., the 28th Brigade M.G. Company, and the South African Brigade Trench Mortar Battery, moved to Grove Town, a large dump on the outskirts of Bray, the 9th Division being in general reserve to Sir Walter Congreve’s XIII. Corps. That night the weather suddenly cleared to a blue midsummer evening. Next morning, Saturday, 1st July, at half-past seven, under a cloudless and windless sky, the Allied infantry went over the parapets, and the battle began.

The result of that day was that the German first line was carried almost everywhere from the Ancre southward. In no part of the field was the success more notable than in the area of Congreve’s XIII. Corps, which took Montauban, and came to the edge of Bernafay Wood. For the next few days, while our centre was struggling for Ovillers and Contalmaison, Congreve, on the British right wing, working in co-operation with the French, was endeavouring to clear the woods of Trônes and Bernafay, which intervened between the first and second German positions. Bernafay soon fell; but Trônes Wood, being commanded from the south by the Maltzhorn Ridge and from the north by the German position at Longueval, was a hard nut to crack, and though we took most of it, we could not hold it. The place became a Tom Tiddler’s ground, which neither side could fully claim, since it was at the mercy of both the British and German artillery fire. That was the position by the 13th of July, when the capture of Contalmaison allowed Sir Douglas Haig to begin the second stage of the action.

Meantime the South Africans had entered the fringes of the battle. On the night of 2nd July the Brigade moved forward to Billon Valley to relieve the 27th Brigade, which was advancing into the line. On 4th July General Furse ordered Lukin to relieve the 21st Brigade in divisional reserve, and the 89th Brigade in the Glatz sector of the front.⁠[10] This relief was completed by 3.15 a.m. on the morning of 5th July. The position now was that the 1st and 4th South Africans held the line from the junction with the French to Briqueterie Trench east of Montauban, the 2nd South Africans were in divisional reserve at Talus Boise, and the 3rd South Africans were in support in the old British and German front-line trenches immediately to the north-west of Maricourt.

The first experience of the South Africans in the battle was the difficult task of holding a piece of captured front in the face of heavy enemy shelling. The 27th Brigade had cleared Bernafay Wood on the night of the 4th, and during the following days the French (General Nourrisson’s 39th Division of the famous XX. Corps⁠[11]) were assiduously attacking towards Maltzhorn Farm, while the British right division, the 30th, was labouring to secure the wood of Trônes. The South Africans were stationary except for the contingent which, as we shall see, assisted the 30th Division in Trônes Wood. Their position was uncomfortable, for they were close to the angle of our front, where it bent southward, and were thus exposed to sniping and gun-fire from both front and flank. On the 5th General Lukin began those faithful pilgrimages along the front-line trenches which from the first marked him out among brigade commanders. He was on his feet that day for no less than fifteen hours. Next day, the 6th, there was a great shelling, and the two South African regiments suffered some twenty casualties, among the killed being Lieutenant Oughterson at Glatz Redoubt, and Lieutenant W. N. Brown in Chimney Trench. On the 7th the shelling continued, and that afternoon, in pouring rain, the relief began of the 1st South Africans by the 18th Manchesters of the 21st Brigade. That evening came the preliminary orders from General Headquarters for the second stage of the battle, which for the 9th Division was an attack upon the German line at Longueval.

At dawn on the 8th the only South Africans in the line were the 4th Regiment, holding the Briqueterie Trench and the section from Dublin Trench to Dublin Redoubt. The 2nd Regiment, which had been in reserve at Talus Boise, was ordered to relieve the 12th Royal Scots and the 6th K.O.S.B. of the 27th Brigade, which were holding a portion of Bernafay Wood. “A” and “C” Companies were detailed for the task, and the following day they were joined by “D” Company. During the 10th these companies of the 2nd South Africans were replaced by two companies of the 4th. The 2nd during its short time in the line was most severely shelled, and incurred some 200 casualties, including Captain H. E. Clifford and Lieutenants C. L. H. Mulcahy, L. Greene, and B. N. Macfarlane, the first two dying of their wounds.

The 4th Regiment, now the only part of the Brigade in the line, was about to be drawn into the fight for Trônes Wood, where the 30th Division had made a lodgment on Saturday, the 8th. There were heavy counter-attacks all through the Sunday, and on Monday, the 10th, an attack was ordered to clear the place. At 11 p.m., on the 9th, “A” Company of the 4th was sent to support the 90th Brigade, a platoon was dispatched to the garrison of the Briqueterie, and the 3rd Regiment was held in reserve at the disposal of the 30th Division. At dawn on the 10th came the attack, and troops of the 30th Division, together with “A” Company of the 4th South Africans, advanced through the southern half of the wood, and reported it clear of the enemy. But it could not be held. The half-moon of German artillery positions around it made communication with our rear too perilous, and the denseness of the covert, cut only by the railway clearings and the German communication trenches, rendered organized movement impossible within it. In the afternoon a German counter-attack lost us most of our gains, and the company of the 4th, when it returned to its trenches, was subjected to a desperate shelling, in which its commander, Captain Russell, was mortally wounded.

On the 11th the fighting in Trônes continued, and the 4th South Africans, whose “A” and “C” Companies were in the neighbourhood of Glatz Redoubt, and whose headquarters and “B” and “D” Companies were in Bernafay Wood, came under the barrage with which the enemy prepared his counter-attacks. That day the Brigade suffered a grievous loss in the death from a shell-splinter of Lieutenant-Colonel F. A. Jones, the commanding officer of the 4th Regiment. He had served in the old South African War with the Welsh Regiment, and won the D.S.O., and in German South-West Africa had been Brigade major to Colonel Beves, commanding the 1st Infantry Brigade. “Fatty” Jones was beloved throughout the contingent for his gay and imperturbable temper, his ready humour, and his complete coolness and gallantry. It was a tragic fate which cut him off on the eve of a battle for which his whole life had been a preparation. The command of the 4th Regiment now passed to Major D. M. MacLeod.

On the 13th orders were issued for the attack on the German second line, and the 4th Regiment was relieved by the 2nd Royal West Surreys and the 7th Middlesex of the 55th Brigade in the 18th Division. That evening the whole South African Brigade was concentrated at Talus Boise as the reserve brigade of the 9th Division. Its week in the front line had been costly. In the 1st Regiment there were 50 casualties, in the 2nd 205, in the 3rd 91, and in the 4th 191, and these included 7 officers killed and 9 wounded. Almost all the losses were from shell-fire, and the severity of the German bombardment may be gathered from the fact that the 3rd Regiment, which was in the support trenches, had 91 losses, mainly among its working and carrying parties.

In the cloudy dawn of Friday, the 14th of July, Haig launched his attack against a section of the German second position—the four miles of front from a point south-east of Pozières to Longueval and Delville Wood. It was the business of Congreve’s XIII. Corps to take Bazentin-le-Grand, Longueval, and Delville Wood, and to clear Trônes Wood and form a defensive flank. The result of the day was that we carried all our objectives from Bazentin-le-Petit to Longueval, a front of over three miles, and at one moment had all but penetrated the enemy third position at High Wood. Here we are concerned only with the British right flank, the attack of the 9th Division against Longueval, and of the 18th Division, under Major-General Ivor Maxse, on its right at Trônes Wood.

This section was beyond doubt the most difficult in the battle-front. To begin with, we were fighting in a salient, and our attack was under fire from three sides. This enabled the enemy to embarrass seriously our communications during the action. In the second place, the actual ground of attack presented an intricate problem. The land sloped upwards from Bernafay and Trônes Wood to Longueval village, which was shaped like an inverted fan, broad at the south end, where the houses clustered about the junction of two roads, and straggling out to the north-east along the highway to Flers. Scattered among the dwellings were many little enclosed gardens and orchards. To the east and north-east of the hamlet stretched the wood of Delville, in the shape of a blunt equilateral triangle, with an apex pointing northward. The place, like most French woods, had been seamed with grassy rides, partly obscured by scrub, and the Germans had dug lines of trenches along and athwart them. It had been for some days a target for our guns, and was now a mass of splintered tree-trunks, matted undergrowth, and shell-holes. The main German positions were to the north, north-east, and south-east, at a distance of from 50 to 200 yards from its perimeter, where they had strong entrenchments manned by machine guns. It was Sir Douglas Haig’s aim to carry Longueval, and make it the flanking buttress of his new line, from which a defensive flank could be formed running south-east to the junction with the French. But it was obvious that the whole of Longueval could not be held unless Delville were also taken, for the northern part, where the road climbed towards Flers, was commanded by the wood. Nothing short of the whole village would make an adequate pivot; and, with the wood still in German hands, there would be no good leaping-off ground from which to press outward in the direction of Ginchy and Guillemont.

The attack on Longueval on the morning of the 14th was entrusted to the 26th Brigade of the 9th Division—the 8th Black Watch and the 10th Argyll and Sutherlands leading, the 9th Seaforths in support, and the 5th Camerons in reserve. The 27th Brigade moved behind them to “clean up,” and the intention of General Congreve was that day to make good Longueval and also Delville Wood, if the latter should prove practicable—a heavy task for two brigades. Shortly after dawn Lukin received orders to put a battalion at the disposal of the 27th Brigade to assist in clearing the Longueval streets, and the 1st Regiment was sent forward for the purpose. The 3rd Regiment was also allotted to the 26th Brigade, but this order was subsequently cancelled.

The assault of the Highlanders was a most gallant performance. They rushed the trenches outside the village, and entered the streets, where desperate hand-to-hand fighting took place among the houses, for the enemy made a resolute defence. Before noon all the west and south-west part of Longueval was in our hands; but it had become clear that the place in its entirety could not be held, even if won, until Delville Wood was cleared. At 1 p.m. General Furse informed Lukin that, as soon as the other two brigades had taken Longueval, the South Africans should capture and consolidate the outer edge of Delville Wood. For this purpose the whole of the Brigade was available with the exception of the 1st Regiment. Lukin thereupon drew up his orders for the operation. The first hour suggested for the attack was 5 p.m. that afternoon; the time was later changed to 7 p.m., and then to 7.30 p.m.; but owing to the fact that the village was not entirely captured these orders were suspended. A staff officer of the Brigade, Lieutenant Roseby, was sent forward to ascertain the position in Longueval; and from his report it was apparent that the northern part was not in our hands, and that, consequently, it would be impossible to form up on a line west of Longueval and advance to the attack from that direction. At a conference with General Furse at Montauban that evening it was arranged that the attack should take place at 5 a.m. on the following morning. The orders were that the wood was to be taken at all costs, and that the advance was to proceed, even if the 26th and 27th Brigades failed to capture the northern part of the village.

Lukin called together his battalion commanders and gave them instructions. These were that if, on arrival at Longueval, they found the northern part still held by the enemy, they should attack Delville from the south-west corner, moving forward on a one-battalion front. To the 2nd and 3rd Regiments, the latter leading, was entrusted the assault, with the 4th Regiment in support. Meantime during that day the 1st Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Dawson, had been heavily engaged in Longueval. At 2 p.m. it had deployed along the line held by the two Scottish brigades, having been brought through a severe artillery fire in eight lines of sections in file without a single casualty. Its business was to attack the remainder of the village, and its leading companies, “A” and “B,” reached their first objectives about four o’clock, but were unable to advance owing to the machine-gun fire from front and flank. During the night three parties—under Lieutenants Burgess, Henry, and Bate—were sent out to capture the enemy posts which were checking the advance, and found that the whole village in its northern part was a nest of machine guns. On the morning of the 15th, after the other three regiments had started for Delville Wood, the 1st returned to Lukin’s command.

Two hours before dawn the three other regiments of the Brigade had moved forward from Montauban. It was a cloudy morning, but as the sun rose the sky lightened above the Bapaume Ridge, and men noticed amid the punctual shelling how small birds still sang in the ruined coverts, and larks rose from the battered ridges. Before them on their right front lay the shadow which was Delville Wood, and the jumbled masonry, now spouting like a volcano, which had been the hamlet of Longueval. On the way orders came from the division to put two companies at the disposal of the 26th Brigade in Longueval, and accordingly “B” and “C” Companies of the supporting battalion, the 4th, were instructed to report to the officer commanding the 5th Camerons there. The rest of the Brigade, under Lieutenant-Colonel Tanner, who was in charge of the attack, moved over the broken ground under heavy fire till they were close on the southern edge of the village.

It was Tanner’s first business to find out the situation. His patrols reported that the Germans still held the northern part of Longueval and all the wood adjoining the streets, but that the position in the rest of the wood was obscure. Some of the 5th Camerons were holding a trench running into Delville from the south-west corner, and in rear of this trench the 2nd and 3rd Regiments assembled about six o’clock. In such a posture of affairs, Lukin’s instructions had been to attack the wood from the south-west. As the coming action was fought in a narrow area where the smallest landmark had its importance, it is necessary to understand the nature of the place. From the road junction in Longueval there ran nearly due east a long ride which our men called Princes Street. Subsidiary rides branched off it to the north and south extending to the perimeter; these were in order from west to east, on the north side the Strand, Regent Street, and Bond Street; and on the south side Buchanan Street, Campbell Street, and King Street—an odd mixture of the nomenclature of London and Glasgow. Another ride, parallel to Princes Street and about half-way between it and the southern edge, ran from Buchanan Street to the eastern perimeter, and was named Rotten Row. Tanner decided to occupy the wood by first clearing the southern part—that is, the area south of Princes Street—and then pushing north from Princes Street, and occupying the Strand and the perimeter from its northern end round to the south-west corner. This would give him the whole of Delville except the north-west corner, which abutted on the uncaptured part of Longueval village.

At first the attack moved swiftly. By seven o’clock the 3rd South Africans, supported by one company of the 2nd, held everything south of Princes Street. Thereupon Tanner sent the remaining three companies of the 2nd to occupy the Strand and the northern perimeter. This proved to be a heavy undertaking. The three weak companies reached their objective, and found themselves compelled to hold a front of some 1,300 yards on which it was almost impossible to maintain connection. They were well supplied with shovels, and did their best to dig themselves in and wire the ground they had won; but as soon as they reached the edge the whole wood was violently shelled by the enemy, while machine-gun and rifle fire broke out from the strong German lines around the perimeter. Meantime, in the southern and eastern parts, two patrols of the 3rd Regiment, under the command of Captains Medlicott and Tomlinson, had managed to get to close quarters with the enemy, and had captured three officers, 135 other ranks, and a machine gun.

At 2.40 p.m. Tanner reported to Lukin that he had won the whole wood with the exception of strong points in the north-west abutting on Longueval and the northern orchards. He had succeeded brilliantly in the first part of his task, but the problem of Delville was far less to carry the wood than to hold it. Lukin’s plan had been to thin out the troops in the wood as soon as the perimeter was reached, leaving it to be held by small infantry detachments with machine guns. But now came the enemy’s counter-attack which made this plan impossible, for every available man was needed to resist the German pressure. About three o’clock elements of the 6th Bavarian Regiment of the 10th Bavarian Division attacked in force from the east, but were driven back by rifle-fire. At 4.40 p.m. Tanner reported that the enemy was also massing for an attack at the northern end, and at 6.30 he again reported an enemy concentration to the north and north-east. He informed Lukin that his casualties had been heavy, one company of the 2nd South Africans having virtually been destroyed, and he asked for reinforcements. He had already received a company of the 4th South Africans, and another company of that regiment was sent forward to reinforce the 3rd South Africans. The 1st Regiment had now returned to Lukin’s command, and one of its companies was dispatched to reinforce the 2nd. At 7 p.m. Lukin sent a staff officer to obtain full details of the position in the wood. The officers commanding the 2nd and 3rd Regiments were urged to see that their battalions, in spite of their fatigue, dug themselves in, since heavy shell-fire might be expected on the morrow. This had already been done, for unless the men had been well dug in they could not have lived where they were. The officer commanding the 1st Regiment was ordered to detail special carrying platoons to keep up the supply of ammunition, and to put up a Vickers and a Lewis gun at the south-west corner of the wood to command the southern edge.

As the sun went down the activity of the enemy’s guns increased, and the darkness of night was turned by shells and liquid fire into a feverish and blazing noon. The German rate of fire was often as high as 400 shells a minute. The position that evening was as follows:—The north-west corner of the wood was in the enemy’s hands. The north-east corner was held from left to right by one and a half companies of the 2nd Regiment, with one company of the 1st in support, and by one company of the 3rd Regiment, with one company of the 4th in support. The south-east corner was held by two companies of the 3rd Regiment. The southern face from left to right was held by one company of the 2nd Regiment and by one company of the 3rd, with one company of the 4th in support. A half company of the 2nd Regiment held the western third of Princes Street, with two companies of the 1st forming a defensive flank on the side of the village. The headquarters of the 2nd and 3rd Regiments were at the junction of Buchanan Street and Princes Street. Machine guns were in position round the perimeter—four at the northern apex, four at the eastern end of the north-eastern face, and two in the eastern half of the southern face. It will be seen that twelve companies of infantry, now gravely weakened, were holding a wood little less than a mile square with a long, rambling perimeter—a wood on which every German battery was accurately ranged, and which was commanded at close quarters by a semicircle of German trenches. Moreover, since the enemy held the north-west corner, he had a covered way of approach into the place. The only reserves of the South African Brigade were one company of the 1st Regiment and the two companies of the 4th which had been lent to the 26th Brigade, and were due to return the following morning.

To complete the story of the day, we must record the doings of these two companies. On the 14th the 18th Division had cleared Trônes Wood, and established their line up to Maltzhorn Farm. They joined hands with the 9th Division just west of Waterlot Farm, where, in the ruined sugar factory, the enemy had a position of great strength. On the morning of the 15th the 5th Camerons were attacking this point, and the two companies of the South African Scottish were to be used as troops to follow and consolidate. Major Hunt, who was in charge of the companies, sent a platoon from each to occupy the trenches close to the farm, which they did under heavy fire from the concealed posts to the south and east. The farm was not taken till the following day, and the work of the South Africans was therefore less that of consolidation than of protecting the skirts of the Cameron attack under a heavy German barrage. About six in the evening an enemy force was detected coming from Guillemont, but this was checked by our artillery barrage. An hour later the two companies were ordered to fall back and construct a strong point, and at 2.30 on the morning of the 16th they were relieved by the Camerons and withdrawn to the sunken road behind Longueval.

All through the furious night of the 15th the troops in Delville Wood were working for dear life at entrenchments. At the time it was rumoured that the South Africans were a little negligent in digging, trusting rather to their courage and their marksmanship than to trenches. The criticism was unjust. No soldiers ever worked harder with the spade, but their task was nearly impossible. In that hard soil, coagulated by incessant shell-fire, and cumbered with a twisted mass of roots, wire, and tree trunks, the spade could make little way. Nevertheless, when the Sunday morning dawned, a good deal of cover had been provided.

At 2.35 a.m. Lukin received orders from the division that at all costs the northern entrance into Longueval must be blocked, and that for this purpose his Brigade must complete the capture of the northern perimeter of the wood, and advance westward till they joined hands with the 27th Brigade. There was a lane called North Street, which was a continuation of the main street of Longueval from the point where the Flers Road branched off to the north-east. Between these roads lay an orchard, the tactical importance of which will be obvious from the map. The plan was for the 27th Brigade to push north through the village and capture that orchard and the other enclosures east of North Street, and to join hands with the South Africans on the Flers Road. This was to be the work of the 11th Royal Scots; while two companies of the 1st South Africans (those which, as has been already explained, had formed a defensive flank at the south-west corner of the wood) were to push north from the Princes Street line. The situation did not allow of a previous artillery bombardment; but it was arranged that a “preparation” by trench mortars should precede the infantry attack.

The advance was made at ten on the Sunday morning and failed completely, since the Royal Scots were held up in their area by a strongly-wired stone redoubt, and the South Africans by machine-gun fire from the ominous orchard between the two roads. It was then that Private W. F. Faulds of the 1st Regiment won the first Victoria Cross which fell to the lot of the Brigade. Lieutenant Craig had attempted to reach a German trench with a bombing section, and had fallen severely wounded half-way between the lines. He was rescued by Private Faulds, who, along with Privates Baker and Estment, crossed the parapet in broad daylight under a drenching machine-gun and rifle fire.

After this failure the attacking troops fell back to the trenches midway in the wood, and for the rest of the day had to endure a steady concentrated fire to which they had no means of effective reply. It was hot, dusty weather, and the enemy’s curtain of shells made it almost impossible to bring up food and water or to remove the many casualties. That afternoon Lieutenant-Colonel Dawson, commanding the 1st Regiment, met Lukin in Longueval, and reported that his men were greatly exhausted. He asked for an early relief; but Lukin could only repeat his divisional commander’s instructions that at all costs the wood must be held. At the same time he was so impressed with the signs of strain and fatigue on the faces of the men that he submitted the matter to General Furse. The situation, indeed, was becoming desperate. Longueval and Delville had proved to be far too strongly held to be overrun at the first attack by one division. At the same time, until they were taken, the objectives of the battle of the 14th had not been achieved, and the stability of the whole right wing of our new front was endangered. Fresh troops could not yet be spared for the work, and the thing must be attempted again by the same weary and depleted battalions. It was a vicious circle. Longueval could not be won and held without Delville; Delville could not be won and held without Longueval; so what strength remained to the 9th Division had perforce to be divided between two simultaneous objectives.

That Sunday evening it was decided to make another effort against the north-west corner next morning. At 10.30 p.m. orders were received to withdraw all the infantry in Longueval village to a line south of Princes Street, and all infantry in the wood to the area east of the Strand, in order that the north-west corner of Delville and the north end of Longueval might be bombarded. The bombardment was to cease at 2 a.m. on the morning of Monday, the 17th, when the 27th Brigade and two companies of the 1st South Africans were to repeat their attack of the Sunday. Lieutenant-Colonel Tanner, commanding in the wood, was instructed to order the men of the 2nd Regiment, who were now holding the Strand, to move slowly forward so as to narrow the front of the 1st Regiment attacking from Princes Street.

The attack was made shortly before dawn, and did not succeed. Once again machine-gun fire from the fatal enclosures blocked any advance from west or south. The enemy, too, was in force just inside the angle of the wood. The 2nd South Africans, moving west from the Strand according to plan, met with a stubborn resistance, and were forced to fall back to their original position.

That morning Lukin visited Delville and discussed the position with his commanding officers. He had now no troops which had not been in action for at least forty-eight hours. It was the most wearing kind of battle, for there was rarely a chance of getting to close quarters with the enemy. Now and then the brilliant marksmanship of the South Africans was given its opportunity; but for the most part they had to wait under a continuous machine-gun and artillery fire, contending with a distant and impalpable foe. Their general was gravely concerned both at the fatigue of the men and the impossibility of making the wood anything but a death-trap. On his return to Brigade Headquarters he discussed the situation on the telephone with General Furse, but could get no hope of relief or reinforcements. General Congreve’s instructions stood that Delville must be held at any cost.

There was no change in the situation during the Monday afternoon. Lieutenant Roseby, the Brigade Intelligence Officer, was sent forward to get information, and was mortally wounded. During the evening Tanner was hit, and Lieutenant-Colonel Thackeray, commanding the 3rd Regiment, succeeded him in charge of the troops in the wood. That afternoon the news came that the 9th Division was drawing in its left flank, and that the 3rd Division, under Major-General Aylmer Haldane, was to attack Longueval that night from the west. About half-past seven Lukin received orders to take before the next dawn the enemy trench parallel to and 200 yards distant from the south-east edge of the wood. The perimeter facing this trench was held by two companies of the 3rd South Africans, and their commanding officer reported that the enemy trench before them was very strongly manned, and contained several machine guns. He added that he could not furnish more than 200 men for the attack without endangering the whole position. On receiving this news General Furse cancelled the operation. At half-past ten that night the Corps informed Lukin that as soon as the 3rd Division completed the occupation of the village they would establish machine guns on the north-west edge of the wood to protect his men. The attack was to take place at 3.45 a.m. on the 18th, and was to advance as far east as the Strand.