At the close of the day, the front of the 4th Battalion remained intact, but the cost of holding this line against repeated assaults had necessarily been very heavy. No. 2 Company lost 80 men and 1 officer out of 120 who went into action, and No. 4 Company lost 70 per cent of its strength and all the officers. The total casualties in the Battalion were 250, including 8 officers. On the other hand, the enemy lost so heavily that the ground in front of the Battalion was strewn with their dead; in some places there were heaps of bodies piled up in front of the trenches. Some idea of the fierceness of the fighting may be gathered from the fact that during the day the 4th Battalion alone fired off no less than 70,000 rounds of ammunition.
In view of the situation on both flanks, Brigadier-General Butler gave orders on the night of the 12th that the Brigade was to take up a new line. For this the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards was to have its right resting on Pont Tournant, with the 3rd Battalion Coldstream in the centre, and the 4th Battalion Grenadiers on the left, in touch with the 12th Battalion K.O.Y.L.I., which was to join up with the troops of the Twenty-ninth Division. In response to General Butler's request that the line held by his brigade might be contracted, the Fifth Division was ordered to take over the line as far as L'Epinette inclusive.
As soon as this relief was completed, the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards and one company of the Coldstream were withdrawn into Brigade Reserve, and the 210th Field Company R.E. went up, to help the 4th Battalion Grenadiers dig the new line. To replace some of the losses in the Battalion, Captain Minchin, Lieutenant Lyon, and Lieutenant Burt were sent up, and Lieutenant Murray-Lawes went to Battalion Headquarters. Colonel Pilcher's orders were to delay the enemy at all costs, so as to give the Australian Division time to detrain and come up to that part of the line.
The new Battalion frontage was 1800 yards long; the country was absolutely flat, with not a single hedge to mask the trenches, and the line was held by companies in isolated posts. So heavily had the Battalion suffered in the fighting on the 12th that it had only 9 officers and 180 other ranks left—that is to say, one man to every ten yards of front.
As the Battalion Headquarters had been destroyed, Colonel Pilcher assembled the newly-arrived officers at the Irish Guards Headquarters, and explained to them that the new line was to be dug east of the Vieux Berquin—Neuf Berquin road, so that the village of La Couronne and the cross-roads south of it might be protected. When Captain Minchin reached the leading companies, Captain Pryce told him the men were so dead beat that he thought they were quite incapable of digging a new line, and the Adjutant of the K.O.Y.L.I. said his men were in much the same condition. When this was reported to Colonel Pilcher, he went up himself to explain how things stood. He could find no trace of the machine-guns from the Thirty-first Division, which should have been there. The Germans were so close that they could be heard talking quite distinctly. He found Captain Pryce, who was quite worn out from want of sleep, and made it clear that the orders must be carried out, as it was absolutely essential to alter the position of the trenches. The plans had been changed, and the line the Battalion was now to occupy lay between La Couronne and the burnt farm, that had been the Battalion Headquarters.
The men were awakened with difficulty, and led to the new position, where, exhausted as they were, they were set to dig themselves in. Having satisfied himself that the orders were understood, Colonel Pilcher went in search of Captain Minchin, but failed to find him in the dark. The field company of R.E., that was to have been sent up to help, did not appear, and as there were only 14 men left in No. 4 Company, and 30 in No. 2, a continuous line of trenches was out of the question. Captain Minchin, therefore, ordered them to dig rifle-pits, capable of holding three or four men at intervals, and even so there were gaps of considerable length between companies. So utterly weary were the men that it was not at all easy to make them understand what had to be done, and naturally the darkness did not help to simplify matters. No. 1 Company, under Captain H. Sloane-Stanley, had gone too far to the right, and instead of being up to the burnt farm was some 200 yards away. This made it necessary to post a strong sentry group, where it could guard the gap.
It was nearly dawn before the digging was finished; one man in each bay then took turns to watch while the other three slept. One source of constant anxiety to the officers was the ammunition, which had not been sent up. Just before dawn Lieutenant Lyon received a message that it had been dumped near La Couronne, but as it was then getting light he could not send men for it. Captain Pryce, however, succeeded in getting five boxes before daylight.
April 13.
Fog hung thickly round during the early morning of the 13th, and it was found that the Germans had taken advantage of it to work up machine-guns close to our line. Their first attack occurred at 6.30, and was directed against the 3rd Battalion Coldstream. With the aid of a tank, the enemy forced his way between the left and centre companies of the Coldstream, but was soon ejected. A company of the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards went up later to strengthen that part of the line. At 9.15 Colonel Pilcher found that strong German attacks were developing all down the line, and sent orders round to the companies that they must hold on to their line at all costs, and fight to the end. This message was duly acknowledged by all officers commanding companies.
