Meanwhile, in the headquarters’ dug-out, messages come pouring in “by telephone, by lamp-signal, by wireless, by pigeon, by runners, and reports dropped from aeroplanes.”  The progress of the battle is marked on the maps spread out on a table in the dug-out, and the Brigadier has to decide when his reserve battalion must be sent forward to assist.  Information is scanty and contradictory, but “at half-hourly intervals the situation, as we believed it to be, was telephoned to our Divisional Headquarters and to the brigades on either flank.”  Reports come in of success at certain places and a check at others; also of a German counter-attack.  All reports agree that casualties have been heavy.  The ravine, indeed, has been taken with seven hundred prisoners, but the situation is still so obscure that “the Brigadier sent me out to find out the real situation.”

“So I started out with an orderly.”  The direct route to be taken was under fire and had to be circumvented.  “I was making for an old dug-out in a small ravine, where some men of our left attacking battalion had suffered heavily whilst assembling prior to the attack.  The area was still being shelled, and we made a bolt for the dug-out, which we reached safely.”  In the dug-out is the commander of the support battalion, who reports that the commanders of the attacking battalions have gone forward to the big ravine.  “I found out all I could from him, and then went forward with him to the ravine.”  On the way the Staff officer notices that the wire entanglements in front of the German trenches are still formidable and have not been properly cut by our artillery.  “When we reached the big ravine we crawled down the steep bank to the bottom of it, and the first sight that we saw was the entrance to a German dug-out, with its previous occupants lying at the mouth of it....  I then found the commander of the left attacking battalion, who had established his headquarters in an old German dug-out.”  From him the Brigade-Major hears a ghastly tale of casualties.  Not a single officer left, with any of his four attacking companies!  Yet in spite of the loss of all their company officers, and of the fact that the left company of the battalion had been practically wiped out before the attack started, the greater portion of the battalion, led by their regimental sergeant-major, had reached their final objective....  “It was certainly,” says the Brigade-Major quietly, “a very magnificent performance.”

Meanwhile he finds the commander of the right battalion further up the ravine.  The greater portion of the support battalion is also in the ravine.  Here there were elements of three battalions, considerably disorganised, suffering from want of sleep and a terribly hard time.  The commanders, dead beat, want reinforcements, and take a pessimist view.  The Brigade-Major, coming fresh, thinks, on the contrary, that there are already too many men on the ground, who only want reorganising.  To satisfy himself he goes forward, with the adjutant of the right battalion, to find out “exactly where our leading troops were and in what condition.”