| A Company | 146 |
| B Company | 99 |
| C Company | 149 |
| D Company | 126 |
| Total | 520 |
15 Officers on strength. The effective rifle strength was 358.
The German trenches after the two days’ bombardment were in a bad state. In many places they had been completely destroyed, and when we took them we found them piled deep with German dead. The dugouts, which had been made in the parados, seemed whole, but were full of dead and wounded, probably the work of the bombers. The communication trench was also partially destroyed, and littered with German dead. The whole series of trenches were full of German equipment in great confusion. Like our trenches, they were built of sandbags, but their communication trench was very deep and well traversed, and was probably intended to serve as a fire trench against M 4. There was an abandoned German machine gun in the fire trench in a stretcher carriage, which could not be moved. There was a good amount of German equipment outside the trench about the point Z. This place was the wildest spot, a mass of shell holes and fragments of works. The German barbed wire was very strong, of abnormal thickness in closeness and strength of spikes and in the wire itself. The ditch in front of the sap was heavily wired under the water. The German casualties must have been very heavy. The artillery Officers said they caught the reinforcements coming up on the road first with the 4.5 howitzers, and later with the 9in. guns. Bombers say something of what they saw there, but not all of them agree on the point. The trenches were occupied at the time of the attack by Bavarians, it is said. The counter-attack was made by the reserve Division of the Prussian Guards.
The British trenches suffered severely too. In the morning L 8 was a wreck, most of the trench battered down, and the communication trench, which was revetted with hurdles, also badly damaged. The trench was saved in many cases, though, by the hurdles bending and not collapsing as sandbag revetting would have done. It was at L 8 that the brunt of the firing was. In some places there the trench lines were completely obliterated, and in very many places so badly damaged as to need extensive repair before being of much use again.
The British report of June 16th, as issued by the Press Bureau, read:—
“Yesterday evening, we captured the German front line of trenches east of Festubert, on a mile of front, but failed to hold them during the night against the strong counter-attacks delivered by the enemy.”
The communique issued at the German Main Headquarters says, according to the “Daily Telegraph”:—
“Wednesday.
“Again influenced by Russian defeats, the French and English yesterday attacked with strong forces of men at many points on the Western front.
“On the other hand, two attacks of four English Divisions between the roads of Estaires—La Bassée and La Bassée Canal completely collapsed. Our brave Westphalian regiments and reinforcements, consisting of portions of our Guard, repulsed the attacks after desperate hand-to-hand fighting. The enemy suffered heavy losses. We captured several machine guns and one mine-throwing howitzer.”
JUNE 16th, 1915–JUNE 21st, 1915.