to do him justice, he utilized to the utmost extent. There is no more unnerving type of battle than such hole-and-corner fighting as is necessary to oust a well-organized defending force from a wood which they are determined to hold. The enemy's rearguards were formed of picked troops, who fought stoutly and with more individuality than was usually shown by the Germans during these last months of the war. In the circumstances, the men of the South Staffords had been set an impossible task and had acquitted themselves well. Let us give honour when honour is due. It may be honestly said that never during the German retreat did their machine gunners fight better, or more stubbornly, than in those days when Riquerval Wood held up the Division.
Day after day for several days in succession, our troops advanced to the attack, only to be denied by a devoted band of men who were willing to sacrifice themselves, in order to permit the demoralized remainder to walk away in comparative immunity. So, the actions of the 10th, 11th and 12th October, and the skirmishing on the following days, left the Germans on the Divisional front masters of the field, while on our right also, the French were unable to capture Retheuil Farm. For the space of a week the pursuit was checked, while some way of circumventing this obstacle and the Forest of Andigny, of which it was an outlier, exercised the ingenuity of the General Staff. The solution of this problem gave rise to the tactical triumph known as the Battle of Andigny, which we will now consider in so far as it affected the 46th Division.
All frontal attacks on Riquerval Wood and the Forest of Andigny having thus been repulsed by the enemy rearguards, orders were issued on the 15th October for a
