Читать книгу The War History of the 1st/ 4th Battalion, 1914-1918. The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment онлайн

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Lieutenant Ord was admitted to hospital on June 17th. The men were very exhausted, and the days passed in resting and cleaning-up and reorganising. All the Companies needed reorganising. B Company was without an Officer until Lieutenant Gregson came back from the Bomb School on June 19th. There was a great shortage of N.C.O.’s, since most of them were casualties. B, C, and D Companies had an average of five or six each, and A Company was not much better. Platoons were very weak in strength. A few odd men rolled up during the first few days. One, Corporal Smalley, of D Company, came in from the German lines wounded, with German field dressings on his wounds.

The system of Officers messing by Companies had to be abandoned, and a Battalion mess was reinstituted. This system was abandoned on the 9th July, when three messes were constituted: Headquarters, A and B, and C and D, when out of the trenches.

Brigadier-General Hibbert inspected the Battalion, together with the 1/8th Liverpool Regiment, on June 18th, and conveyed to Officers and Men the appreciation of himself and of the Corps Commander for the services they had rendered. He said that though the attack had failed in its immediate object, yet it had been instrumental in attracting to itself reinforcements which might otherwise have been directed against the French, attacking further south. The G.O.C. Division held an inspection on June 19th, and conveyed to us a message from Field-Marshal Sir John French, congratulating the Brigade on the fight it had made.