During the night all available reinforcements were pushed up to the perimeter, where they had to face a strong enemy attack. In the southern area the Germans advanced as far as Buchanan Street and Princes Street, and drove the South Africans out of some of their new trenches. A counter-attack cleared the ground, but only at the cost of heavy casualties. At a quarter to four the 76th Brigade of the 3rd Division succeeded in obtaining a footing in the orchard between Flers Road and North Street. At eight in the morning Thackeray was ordered to send up patrols to get in touch with this brigade, and directed the company of the 1st Regiment, then occupying the Strand and the western part of Princes Street, to move forward for the purpose. They were not seriously opposed, and presently they joined hands with the 1st Gordons just west of the orchard.

On that morning, the fourth of the battle, came the crisis for the defenders of Delville. The arrival of the company of the 1st Regiment at the outskirts of the wood was the signal for the enemy to open a bombardment of unprecedented fury. Every part of the area was searched and smothered by shells, but the fire was most intense around the perimeter and down the Strand. Major Burges, the officer in command of the company, was wounded, and shortly afterwards killed. At the same time the 76th Brigade was driven in, and the Germans began to enter the wood on the exposed left flank of the South Africans. About nine o’clock an officer and fifty other ranks were dispatched as reinforcements. All through the morning the wearied handful, now rapidly thinning, held out as best they could. Their one relief was when the enemy came on to reap the fruits of his shelling, for then their admirable rifle-fire took heavy toll of him.

About half-past two in the afternoon the position had become desperate. Lieutenant-Colonel Dawson was ordered to take forward as reliefs all the men available under his command—a total of 150 from the 1st Regiment. These men had just been withdrawn after having been continuously in action for four days; they had had no rest; but their one thought when they were ordered forward was to get to grips with the enemy. On arriving at Longueval Dawson placed his men in a trench at the south-east corner of the village, and went into the wood to find Thackeray. At the same time the men of the Trench Mortar Battery, numbering three officers and some eighty other ranks, under Lieutenant Phillips, were brought up from Montauban and placed at Dawson’s disposal. Dawson found Thackeray in serious straits. In many parts of the wood the garrisons had been utterly destroyed, and everywhere north of Princes Street the few survivors had been forced back. Thackeray was now holding only the south-west corner, defined by Buchanan Street and the western part of Princes Street. The wounded filled the trenches, for it was impossible to remove them, since all the stretcher-bearers of the 3rd Regiment were casualties, and no men could be spared to take their places. Dawson, acting under Lukin’s instructions, did his best to cope with the situation. He sent Lieutenant Phillips and the Trench Mortar Battery men to reinforce Thackeray, and through the division procured additional stretcher-bearers from the cavalry, in addition to those from the 1st Regiment.

At 6.5 p.m. that evening came the welcome intelligence that that night the South Africans would be relieved by the 26th Brigade. But a relief under such conditions was a slow and intricate business. By midnight the work had been partially carried out, and portions of the two companies of the 1st Regiment and the two companies of the 4th were withdrawn.

But, as at Flodden, when

The enemy had brought up a new division—the 8th of the 4th (Magdeburg) Corps—and made repeated attacks against the Buchanan Street line. For two days and two nights the little remnant under Thackeray clung to the south-west corner of the wood against impossible odds, and did not break. The German method of assault was to push forward bombers and snipers, and then to advance in massed formation simultaneously from the north, north-east, and north-west. The three attacks on the night of the 18th were repelled with heavy losses to the enemy; but in the last of them the South Africans were assaulted on three sides. Thackeray’s adjutant, Captain M’Donald, had been wounded, and he was left with only two officers—Lieutenant Garnet Green of the 2nd and Lieutenant Phillips of the 3rd—to assist him, who, though wounded themselves, were able to keep on their feet. All through the 19th the gallant handful suffered incessant shelling and sniping, the latter now from very close quarters. It was the same on the 20th, but still relief tarried. At last, at six o’clock that evening, troops of the 76th Brigade in the 3rd Division were able to take over what was left to us of Longueval and the little segment of Delville Wood. Thackeray marched out with two officers, both of whom were wounded, and 140 other ranks, made up of details from all the regiments of the Brigade. He spent the night at Talus Boise, and next day joined the rest at Happy Valley.

It is not easy to reproduce the circumstances of a battle so that a true impression may be made upon the minds of those who have not for themselves seen the reality of modern war. The six days and five nights during which the South African Brigade held the most difficult post on the British front—a corner of death on which the enemy fire was concentrated at all hours from three sides, and into which fresh German troops, vastly superior in numbers to the defence, made periodic incursions only to be broken and driven back—constitute an epoch of terror and glory scarcely equalled in the campaign. There were positions as difficult, but they were not held so long; there were cases of as protracted a defence, but the assault was not so violent and continuous. The closest parallel is to be found, perhaps, in some of the incidents at Verdun, and in the resistance of units of the old British regulars at the point of the Ypres salient in 1914; but even there we shall scarcely find an equal feat of tenacity, and certainly none superior. Delville Wood was not finally taken till the 25th of August, a month later, when the 14th Light Division cleared it for good. The high value set upon it by the enemy is proved by the fact that he used his best troops against it—successively the 10th Bavarian Division, the 8th Division of the 4th Corps, and the 5th of the 3rd Corps. The South Africans measured their strength against the flower of the German army, and did not draw back from the challenge. As a feat of human daring and fortitude the fight is worthy of eternal remembrance by South Africa and Britain, but no historian’s pen can give that memory the sharp outline and the glowing colour which it deserves. Only the sight of the place in the midst of the battle—that corner of splinters and churned earth and tortured humanity—could reveal the full epic of Delville Wood.

Let us measure it by the stern register of losses. At midnight on 14th July, when Lukin received his orders, the Brigade numbered 121 officers and 3,032 men. When Thackeray marched out on the 20th he had a remnant of 143, and the total ultimately assembled in Happy Valley was about 750. The casualties were—for the 1st Regiment, 558; for the 2nd, 482; for the 3rd, 771; and for the 4th, 509. These figures included 23 officers who were killed, 7 who died of wounds, 47 who were wounded, and 15 who were prisoners or missing. All the commissioned ranks of the 2nd and 3rd Regiments who were in the wood became casualties, as did all the officers of the Machine-Gun Company attached to the Brigade.⁠[12] It is such a record as that of the 1st Coldstream or the 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers at First Ypres. But the price was not paid in vain. The Brigade did what it was ordered to do, and did not yield until it was withdrawn.

I take two quotations from personal narratives which, better than any words of mine, reflect the grimness of the battle. One is from Private J. A. Lawson of the 3rd Regiment. He is describing the fight of Tuesday, the 18th—the great German attack when the garrison was forced back to the south-west corner. That morning Thackeray was holding the wood with nine and a half companies, a strength of about 1,500 men; two days later he had 140; so we may judge the fury of the conflict.

The second quotation is from the late Captain Welsh, M.C., D.C.M., who was then a staff sergeant with the stretcher-bearers. The work of the Field Ambulance and of the regimental medical officers during these days deserved the highest praise, and it was due to their gallantry and resource that the sufferings of the men in the wood were not more horrible. The weather was now hot sun, now drenching rain, and the task of getting out the casualties was one long nightmare.

I quote, too, from the records of the Field Ambulance a bare summary of a very gallant deed:—

There is no more solemn moment in war than the parade of men after battle. The few hundred haggard survivors of the Brigade in the bright sunshine in Happy Valley were too weary and broken to realize how great a thing they had done. Tributes had come to them from high quarters. Sir Douglas Haig had sent his congratulations. The commander of the Fourth Army, Sir Henry Rawlinson, had written that “in the capture of Delville Wood the gallantry, perseverance, and determination of the South African Brigade deserves the highest commendation.” They had earned the praise of their own intrepid commanding officers, who had gone through the worst side by side with their men. “Each individual,” said Tanner’s report, “was firm in the knowledge of his confidence in his comrades, and was, therefore, able to fight with that power which good discipline alone can produce. A finer record of this spirit could not be found than the line of silent bodies along the Strand over which the enemy had not dared to tread.” But the most impressive tribute was that of their Brigadier. When the remnant of his Brigade paraded before him, Lukin took the salute with uncovered head and eyes not free from tears.

NOMINAL ROLL OF OFFICERS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN INFANTRY BRIGADE—DELVILLE WOOD, JULY 1916.

The roll is exclusive of the Machine Gun Company, the Trench Mortar Battery, the Field Ambulance, and the 64th Field Company Royal Engineers, all of which took part in the battle.