Finding it impossible to stay in the front trench any longer, No. 4 Company retired to the brickyard. Captain Rennie, who commanded them, was never heard of again. Still the Grenadiers held doggedly on to their support trench for another hour, until it was found that the Germans had got round their left and were enfilading the whole trench. Bullets seemed to be coming out of the mist from all directions, and the enemy to be on every side. Captain Rasch, who was now the only officer left above the rank of lieutenant, decided to get out of the trench and retire to the small wood near the brickyard. The order was given, and the Grenadiers—what was left of them—retired to the wood and formed up on the other side.
In the meantime the First Division on the left, almost annihilated by superior numbers, had been forced back. This made the position of the Grenadiers still more untenable, but General Capper was gathering together what reinforcements he could to save the line.
Seeing what straits the Grenadiers were in, the Gordon Highlanders on the right sent what reserves they had to help, and a company arrived under Captain Burnett. The Grenadiers and Gordons formed one line, and advanced gallantly, but when they got near the wood they came under the fire of a German machine-gun, which enfiladed them. Undaunted by this bad start, and determined to regain their former trenches, Captain Rasch and Captain Burnett led their men on through the wood. There was something particularly gallant in the way this remnant of a battalion, with one reinforcing company, was not content to hold its own, but actually undertook a counter-attack when it knew the enemy was in vastly superior numbers. It was the men themselves, inspired by the few remaining officers, that were carrying out this counter-attack.
Back through the wood they went, and gained the north side of the brickfields, but the Germans, at first taken by surprise at this bold stroke, rallied and drove them out. A second time our men counter-attacked, and this time they forced their way past the brickfields to a hedge running parallel with the road. They got into the ditch on the south side of the Menin road, and were joined there by two platoons of the Gloucester Regiment, which came up as a reinforcement. In that ditch they remained till the order came to retire. Captain Rasch and Lieutenant Pilcher took their handful of men—all that remained out of the splendid Battalion nearly 1000 strong, which had marched out from Ypres less than a fortnight before—and got into a trench some three hundred yards east of the windmill.
The Scots Guards meanwhile, supported by the Queen's, were sent through the south of Gheluvelt, and succeeded in driving the enemy back and almost regaining the ground originally held by the Grenadiers and Gordons. When night fell, the 20th Brigade was holding precisely the same ground that it had occupied in the morning.
There can be no doubt that the Germans were completely deceived as to our strength, and that what misled them was the more than gallant manner in which the Grenadiers held on to the trenches in the morning, and the almost reckless audacity with which the Grenadiers and Gordons attacked later. The enemy was apparently quite unaware how threadbare this part of the line was. These continual counter-attacks gave the impression that there must be large reserves in rear, which made the Germans think it unwise to push on. Had they only known that there were no reserves at all, and that all that lay between them and Ypres were just the remains of a battalion, with hardly an officer or non-commissioned officer left alive, the result of the battle, and all that depended on it, would undoubtedly have been very different.
The losses among the officers of the Grenadiers were very heavy. Lieutenant-Colonel Earle was severely wounded during the engagement, and, while dressing his wounds, Lieutenant Butt, R.A.M.C., was shot through the head. Colonel Earle was afterwards reported to be lying in a house some two hundred yards in rear of the Battalion Headquarters dug-out. Several men volunteered to carry him back, but as the enemy were within a couple of hundred yards of the house this would have meant certain death, not only for the stretcher-bearers but for Colonel Earle himself. So it was decided to leave him where he was. The total list of casualties among the officers of the Battalion was:
Lieut.-Colonel M. Earle, (Commanding Officer), wounded and prisoner.
Major H. St. L. Stucley, (Second in Command), killed.
Lieut. J. G. Butt, (Medical Officer), killed.