This left Lieutenant Browning and Lieutenant Westmacott responsible for the whole Battalion front, and to them the success of the attack was largely due. Between them they reorganised and controlled the whole line, making their dispositions with great skill. On reaching the wood, Lieutenant Westmacott faced part of his company to the right flank, to guard against a counter-attack from the south. Hardly had he done so when about seventy Germans appeared; they were met with steady rifle-fire from the wood, and wavered for a moment, uncertain as to what they should do, but they finally made for the wood. Our fire, however, was too steady for them, and accounted for all but a handful of men, who were taken prisoners. Soon afterwards another party of sixty appeared from the same direction, but they also were met with so well-directed a fire that they were staggered, whereupon the men of No. 4 Company charged them with the bayonet.
Lieutenant Westmacott now decided that he must push his men farther forward on the right flank of the wood, so as to command the valley, which lay between the wood and the village of Villers Guislain. He had just moved forward his company, and prolonged the right with two platoons of No. 2 Company, when some dismounted cavalry, consisting of the 18th Bengal Lancers and a detachment of the 7th Dragoon Guards, appeared from the same direction as the enemy attacks. Their orders had not enabled them to attack simultaneously with the 2nd Battalion, and it was in all probability this delayed advance that precipitated the two unfruitful attempts of
the enemy to gain the wood. Their arrival was of the greatest value, and at Lieutenant Westmacott’s suggestion they proceeded to reinforce the other companies, which were meanwhile fighting their way through the wood. Several tanks had by now put in an appearance, although the majority had been knocked out before they reached the wood, by a most accurate shell-fire directed by a low-flying aeroplane. The lack of any particular trench for the surviving tanks to attack made their fire ineffectual, and their presence seemed to attract the shells of all the German batteries in the neighbourhood, causing many casualties in the Battalion.
Lieutenant Layland-Barratt, who had been assisting Lieutenant Browning to reorganise the companies in the wood, was wounded by a splinter of a shell, and had to retire to a dressing-station. This left only Lieutenant Browning in the wood, and Lieutenant Westmacott and Lieutenant Loftus outside.
Lieut.-Colonel Rasch went up to the line, and organised a readjustment of the companies. Lieut.-Colonel E. C. Corbyn, commanding the 18th Bengal Lancers, was asked to withdraw his men to the centre of the wood so as to form a reserve, and dig a support line on some commanding ground in the wood. The dash and fighting spirit of all ranks of this regiment, and the help and experience which Colonel Corbyn gave at that critical moment, made the greatest impression on the Battalion, and enabled the Grenadiers to realise how great a loss his regiment suffered, when he was killed by a shell later in the afternoon.
In a letter describing this attack an officer of the 18th Bengal Lancers wrote:
We then occupied the captured trench sandwiched in between the Grenadiers and Coldstream.… I have now seen His Majesty’s Guards in action and fought alongside of them, and I take off my hat to them. They can die like gentlemen, without a groan. Four of our men were carrying a Guardsman who appeared to be suffering considerably. I asked him who he was, and he instinctively straightened himself as best he could and said, “A Grenadier,” his tone implying how proud he was to be one, and, what I also thought, “how magnificent they were.”
The comradeship between the two regiments was later marked by the presentation of a Grenadier Bugle, with an inscription, which the Battalion gave to the 18th Bengal Lancers. Subsequently the Lancers presented the 2nd Battalion with a silver statuette of a mounted Bengal Lancer, on the plinth of which was the following inscription: “To Lieut.-Colonel G. E. C. Rasch, D.S.O., and Officers of the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards, as a memento of Gauche Wood.”
On the return of Lieut.-Colonel Rasch, Captain Harcourt-Vernon went up to the line, taking with him some ammunition and also a company of the 2nd Battalion Coldstream, under Captain H. Brierley, M.C., which had been sent to prolong the right flank, still dangerously in the air. In the afternoon a party of Strathcona’s Horse began an attack, and made very little headway. Half a squadron came into the wood, but was withdrawn later to link up the right of the Brigade line with the remainder of Strathcona’s Horse.
Shelling continued almost without cessation during the rest of the day, but no further enemy action developed, and about 10 P.M., in heavy rain, the Battalion began to be relieved by the Deccan and Poona Horse and one company of the 3rd Battalion Grenadiers, under Captain Ridley, and marched back to bivouacs in Gouzeaucourt Wood. There it remained until December 5, when the Guards Division was relieved, and retired out of the area of operations. The casualties in the Battalion were 153 killed, wounded, and missing; among the twelve Company Officers who went into action, one was killed, one died of wounds, and seven were wounded. The percentage of N.C.O.’s killed was also very high, including many first-rate sergeants. Three field-guns and twelve machine-guns, in addition to many prisoners, were captured in this attack. The Battalion proceeded by train to Beaumetz, and went into billets at Berneville, where it remained until, the end of the month.