The Brigade people, quite unable to communicate with them themselves, the rest of the attack hung up by fire, and things looked rotten.
I had collected odds and ends--food, cookers, everything I could--but at my wit's end to know what to do as I realized only too well the impossible position the Regiment was in. Wounded came trickling in; to make matters worse, it was pitch black night and beastly cold, with heavy rain--not a light or a sign or a road or a path, only dykes, knee-deep in mud and slime, and always the German rifle fire and ours, intermittent, and flames shot up like rockets by them.
It was 10 o'clock before the Brigadier's orders got to me to get orders out to them to retire, and even by then I had not a single unwounded man left of all the four companies that had gone out at 7 a.m. to show me where they had got to. Once more I called on my trusty six who had located them at dusk, and sent them out in three parties, again with definite orders to come back to me at a certain point where I was alone but for a few stray men and no officers.
By midnight, to my relief, I got the remnant of the four companies in, worn out, scattered, and starved, as their officers had fallen and many men in the advance. All they could do was to follow my guides in. I fed them and put them away. Result--wounded and some others left out. I called for volunteers and took a party out with stretchers and got some in, but we drew a blank for the Colonel and Major Thomson. The Adjutant had come in not wounded, but dead beat, and could not quite say where the Colonel was. At 2 a.m., or nearly 3, I think it was, I went round again and collected the exhausted non-commissioned officers who had come in, called for volunteers again, put the machine-gun officer in charge, and said, "Do not come back without the Colonel and Major Thomson." I had some bad suspense until the party returned carrying the Colonel wounded and poor Thomson dead. All the rescue work was done under rifle fire and many wounded brought in. All next day we could not get more, the ground so swept by fire. At dusk I moved them to a village 1-1/2 miles in rear of Brigade Reserve. From that day on we have two companies out of four at a time always in trenches about one mile from our disaster; eternal sniping and shooting, no one can move up to the trenches by day. Rain had fallen still, in torrents, the trenches knee-deep in water. I have had many sick since Christmas Day. Last night I had three killed in relieving. To-night I took the two relieving companies up myself, right off the road into bog and dirt, but off the beaten track, and got the relief through with no loss. The Colonel is at Boulogne and doing well there. Of the officers the last two regulars left have knocked up since Christmas and must go home.