The 102nd Battalion of the 11th Brigade had 4 officers wounded, 10 other ranks killed, 34 wounded, and 8 missing.
Three officers and 84 other ranks were captured, also 4 machine-guns. About 50 German dead were found in the trench; and, in addition, they lost a number of men who endeavoured to escape across country.
Regina Trench itself proved a disappointment. It was knee-deep in mud, and some of the dug-outs had only been commenced. In addition to the capture of Regina, the advanced salient shown on the map was pushed out in order to secure observation of Coulée and Below Trenches.
All concerned in the operation received the congratulations of the Higher Command. The whole of Regina Trench, which had defied the Canadian Corps for over a month, was now in British hands; and the 4th Canadian Division had earned an enviable reputation for a young Division—-a reputation which was to be further enhanced by the achievement of the 11th Brigade a week later.
On November 18th this Brigade, taking part in the resumed general offensive, carried out its task of capturing and consolidating Desire Trench. The whole operation, which is described in the succeeding chapter, was executed with dash and thoroughness, and brought to a fitting conclusion the strenuous campaign of the Canadian Divisions on the Somme.
[[1]] The II Corps consisted of the 18th, 19th, 25th, 39th British Divisions, and 4th Canadian Division.
CHAPTER X
DESIRE TRENCH
Throughout the closing operations against Regina Trench our Battalions had been forced to pluck every hard success from the teeth of a new foe who had come suddenly to the support of the German defence. This foe was the mud, the hated Somme mud, deep, slithering, tenacious as glue, foul with all the filth left behind by the enemy as he gave back yard by yard. For the weather had turned against us. The rains of the rainiest autumn which had scourged their high plateaus for many a year were a timely reinforcement to the hard-pressed enemy. When it came to the attack upon Desire Trench, on November 17th-18th, the disastrous alliance of mud and rain-drench had reached such a pitch of obstruction that the capture of this line was reluctantly recognised as marking the limit of our possible advance, for the time, upon this sector. The light railways, spread over the vast, red, undulating expanses of naked mud, between the engulfing and omnipresent pits of slime, were being constantly scattered and put out of service by the German shells from north and east—from beyond the Ancre and from the hidden batteries in Lupart Wood; and they were utterly incapable of keeping up the ammunition supply for our valiant advanced batteries of 18-pounders. Our heavies, the great 9.2 howitzers lurking in and around the tossed ruins of Pozières and behind Courcelette, were well supplied, thanks to the indefatigable labours of the road-making companies along the great and crowded artery of the Bapaume Road. But the 18-pounders, in their shallow gun-pits far out across the shell-swept stretches of the mud, had to be fed by pack-mules, carrying shells in panniers slung across the back. Such a method of transport was torturingly slow, and perilous to the last degree, but it was the only one capable of coping with the situation. Under the numbing strain the spirit and humour of our men remained irrepressible, as instanced in the following retort to a sentry's challenge. Under the chill downpour of the unrelenting rain, through the blind night, a soldier, just returned from four days' duty in the front trenches, came stumbling in along the Bapaume Road toward the billets of Albert. Shrapnel helmet, overcoat, pack, everything but his precious rifle, was covered thick with that chalky mud which sticketh closer than a brother, and he waded heavily through the mire of the tormented roadway. He reached a dripping sentry. "Halt! Who goes there?" came the challenge, as the labouring figure lurched up in the gloom. "Submarine U13," grunted the traveller. "Pass, Submarine U13," responded the sentry cheerfully; and the moving shape of mud rolled on toward the shattered billets brooded over by the falling Virgin and Child.