The order of battle in this attack showed the XIII. Corps on the right, the III. Corps on the left and the XV. Corps in the centre. The two flank Corps successfully gained their objectives, as did also the right of the XV. Corps, but the 33rd Division was held up partly by flank machine-gun fire and partly by hostile machine guns which had, after all, succeeded in pushing forward into shell holes in No Man's Land, and had thus avoided our barrage. The objective of the 33rd had been Wood Lane Trench, from about 150 yards north-west of its junction with Orchard Trench to the cross-roads just outside the western corner of High Wood; at 3.15 P.M., when the failure of the infantry to gain the objectives was realised, the batteries of the 162nd and 166th brigades dropped their range from the protective barrage they had established four hundred yards beyond Wood Lane Trench, and put down a heavy barrage along a line two hundred yards north-east of the trench. This was maintained throughout the afternoon until, the position on the right being somewhat obscure, the batteries were requested by the 14th Division to lengthen their range by one hundred yards. A situation report was received shortly afterwards, however, which entirely justified the original shortening of the range, and this was resumed till half-past seven in the evening when normal night firing was begun. Once again the attack had been beaten off by the deadly and ubiquitous machine guns, and once again our infantry looked at the grim and forbidding Wood Lane Trench across a No Man's Land thick with dead and wounded.
On the 19th the zones of the batteries side-slipped two hundred yards to the right, and for two days registration, in addition to the usual harassing fire, was carried out on the new zones. Teams were at work day and night to replenish ammunition which the past few days had seen so lavishly expended, and, thus reinforced, a further effort was made on the 21st to advance our line in the neighbourhood of Wood Lane and Tea Trench (running N.E. from Wood Lane), while the 14th Division advanced to the capture of the last line of enemy defences in Delville Wood.
Once again we were defeated; after a short preliminary bombardment Wood Lane was assaulted at 3.30 P.M., while at 1.30 A.M. on the following morning (22nd) the attack on Tea Trench was carried out, but in neither case were we able to advance. The enemy front line was stiff with men and machine guns, and our troops were swept away by a blast of fire before they were even able to get to grips with the enemy. Thus ended a tragic series of short attacks on portions of the enemy trenches, attacks which failed in their objects, which wore out our troops—infantry and gunners alike—and which cost us many thousands of lives that we could ill spare.
On the afternoon of August 22nd signs and portents were not lacking of a new and great effort all along the line to continue the advance which latterly had been so severely held up. The previous day Lieut.-Colonel Harris (162nd Brigade) had been ordered to reconnoitre a position for a forward gun which should be able, at a range of not more than 2,000 yards, to enfilade the new German trench running north-east from Wood Lane, and such a position had, after taking bearings from various O.P.'s, been chosen. Now, at 4 P.M. on the 22nd, the gun was ordered into action, and was accordingly brought into position in a shell-hole on the southern edge of the road which ran east and west due north of Bazentin-le-Grand. Three hundred rounds were dumped alongside it, the whole was placed under command of Lieutenant V. Benett-Stanford (C/162), and a most satisfactory registration was obtained with seventy rounds burst immediately over and into the enemy trench in true enfilade at a range of 1,600 yards. Following on this, on the morning of the 23rd, the 156th Brigade came out of rest and went into action about half a mile south-west of Montauban, as a group under Lieut.-Colonel Rochfort-Boyd; to this group was added A/167 which took up a position in the same area, and later B/167 which, on the 25th, joined the 156th Brigade group in a position near A/167. The 167th Brigade, now under the command of Lieut.-Colonel C. G. Stewart, did not come into action as a unit, but kept its remaining battery out at rest to replace casualties as they might occur.
On the 23rd the orders for the attack were received. This time it was to be the biggest operation since July 14th, the order of battle showing the French to attack on the right from the Somme itself to Maurepas, the XIV. Corps from south of Guillemont to the western edge of Ginchy Village, the XV. Corps from a point in the Longueval-Flers road north of Delville Wood to the western edge of High Wood, and the III. Corps from that point westwards to the extreme left of the attack.
On the immediate front of the batteries (of which the 156th group was attached to the 7th Division, the 162nd and 166th to the 14th Division), the right infantry brigade (100th) of the 33rd Division was to establish itself in Wood Lane, while the 14th Division was to advance the right of its line so as to connect up with the left of the XIV. Corps, to clear the remainder of Delville Wood, to establish a line outside the wood from the position already held by the Division in Beer Trench to the Longueval-Flers road, and there to connect up with the right of the 33rd Division. The bombardment began at 3.45 P.M. on Thursday, the 24th, and, so far as the batteries of the 33rd Divisional Artillery were concerned, consisted in shelling New Trench (behind Wood Lane) and the ground in rear thereof, Tea Trench, Tea Lane and Tea Support (west of the Longueval-Flers road), but chiefly Tea Trench, while the advanced enfilade gun of the 162nd Brigade was ordered to sweep New Trench in enfilade from 5.45 P.M. until the moment of attack. The average rate of fire was one round per gun per minute, but towards the close of the bombardment the rate gradually quickened up until, at zero, the rate of fire became intense.
Zero hour was at 6.45 P.M. on the 24th, and, two minutes after the infantry had gone over the top, a general lift was started by the guns. The howitzers lengthened their range straight away and bombarded the Flers-Longueval road, while the 18-pdr. barrage gradually crept forward by 25 yards at a time, until it finally came to rest along a line about 200 yards north-east of the infantry objective. At a quarter-past six the rate of fire dropped to the original one round per gun per minute, while at half-past ten the close barrage was terminated and intermittent searching and sweeping of the enemy zone was adopted in its stead.
Meanwhile, how had the day gone with the infantry? On the extreme right the French had won a great victory and had swept all before them; the XV. Corps had gained all its objectives save the extreme eastern corner of Delville Wood and a small portion of Beer Trench, while on our own immediate zone the infantry had at last swept over the objectives they had for so long striven to capture; the enfilade gun in particular did tremendous damage, the infantry reporting numbers of the enemy found dead in New Trench and thereby testifying to the great effects which may be expected of field guns firing in true enfilade. All night long till 7.30 A.M. on the 25th the batteries stood by to answer S.O.S. calls, and kept a slow rate of fire on their zones whilst the infantry consolidated the position, but no counter-attack materialised, and in the morning we still held firmly the ground we had captured the previous day. Great praise accrued to infantry and gunners for the success of these operations; in particular the G.O.C. R.A. 14th Division sent personal congratulations to Lieut.-Colonel Harris (162nd Brigade) who, from his observation station near Longueval whence all the battle could clearly be viewed, sent back situation reports which reached the General Officer commanding the 33rd Division before reports came in from any other source, thereby enabling him to deal quickly with every new point as it arose. There was only one disappointing feature in the whole of the attack, and that was the enormous number of "dud" shells fired by our heavy artillery. Not more than 40 per cent. of their shells burst properly, whilst the German heavies obtained at least 95 per cent. detonations which caused the most appalling destruction wherever they occurred. It was a sidelight—but an important one—of the battle, nor, for many months, did this serious state of affairs right itself.
Hitherto the enemy had not shown many signs of retaliation for the operations of the past few days, but at 8 o'clock on the morning of Friday, the 25th, the storm broke. Every battery position was heavily bombarded throughout the day with shells of every calibre up to 8 in., and this at a time when it was essential that ammunition wagons should be able to reach the guns to refill their depleted stocks. All day long the storm raged so severely that in certain cases the detachments had to be withdrawn from the guns. Major Johnston of B/162 was killed whilst sending his men into cover—a loss which the brigade ill could suffer—and many of the detachments were killed and wounded; so violent, indeed, was the shell fire that the 18-pdr. battery positions of the 162nd Brigade, churned up from end to end, were rendered quite uninhabitable, and during that night and the following day new positions were taken up about 500 yards further to the north-east.
While this was going on, the batteries of the 156th Brigade group were also changing positions, but this time for tactical purposes. In order to be able to bombard Ginchy, new positions 1,500 yards south-east of Longueval and along the sunken road running from that village to Bernafay Wood had been reconnoitred, and were now taken up, while the zones of the other brigades at the same time side-slipped 800 yards to the right and covered the ground immediately north-east of Delville Wood. Fearful weather, moreover, broke over the whole battlefield. Rain and wind in endless storms turned the countryside into a vast sea of mud, and, catching the batteries of the 156th and 162nd Brigades in their new and only partially prepared positions, caused them not merely extreme discomfort but real difficulty in being able to fight their guns at all. No roads led to the batteries, but merely dry weather tracks across roughly beaten-down shell holes and trenches, and for a time it seemed as though they must be cut off from all sources of ammunition supply. Nevertheless, during the 27th and 28th the wagons of the batteries, aided by our own D.A.C. and the Column of the 7th Division, struggled through the mud with load after load, gunners and passing infantry helping the teams to reach the positions, and by the evening of the 27th not only had all the batteries refilled their normal gun-line dumps, but the 156th Brigade had gone even further and had brought up 6,000 rounds per battery in conformation with an order they had only received 24 hours previously! It had been intended on the 29th to resume the offensive with the French and Fourth Armies, and indeed the 156th Brigade group did actually carry out a seven-hour bombardment of Ginchy before the order to stop reached them; the weather was too bad, no infantry could have attacked with any hope of success, and accordingly the operations were postponed until finer weather should supervene.