bombs, were employed except by the regular bombing sections and moppers-up who cleared the underground shelters), and the hardest sort of personal attention from the officers and N.C.O.'s. All four companies reached the final objective mixed up together and since their right was well in the air, by the reason of the delay of the flanking troops, they had to make a defensive flank to connect with a battalion of the next division that came up later. It was then that they were worst sniped from the shell-holes, and the casualties among the officers, who had to superintend the forming of the flank, were heaviest. There was not much shelling through the day. They waited, were sniped, and expected a counter-attack which did not come off, though in the evening the enemy was seen to be advancing and the troops on the Battalion's right fell back for a while, leaving their flank once more exposed. Their position at the time was in a somewhat awkward salient, and they readjusted themselves—always under sniping-fire—dug in again as much as wet ground allowed, and managed in the dark to establish connection with a battalion of Hampshires that had come up on their right.
They spent the night of the 9th October where they lay, in the front line, while the enemy sniped them, shelled their supports, or put down sudden wandering barrages from front to back. Every company commander had been killed or wounded during the day; their medical officer (Captain P. R. Woodhouse, M.C.) was wounded at duty on the 10th, the men were caked with mud and ooze, worn to their last nerves and badly in need of food and hot drinks. There was no infantry action on their front, however, throughout the 10th, and in the evening they were relieved by two companies of the 1st Grenadiers; the other two companies of that battalion relieving the 2nd Grenadiers in the support-line. The battle, which counted as "a successful minor operation" in the great schemes of the Third Battle of Ypres, had cost them four officers killed in action on the 9th, one died of wounds on the 11th, seven officers and their doctor wounded in the two days;
