not there to
share it.[9]

The part of the 50th Division in the battle was not a small one.
Briefly the Division went into the Somme area on August 17, 1916, and
left it about March 10, 1917. Their first attack was launched on
September 15, 1916, in company with the Guards and some of the finest
divisions in the British Army. After almost continuous fighting they
were withdrawn about October 5, and went back to the rest area around
Henencourt till October 21--after having advanced their line from High
Wood Ridge to the edge of Le Sars.

On October 25 they returned to the same front and made two gallant but
fruitless attacks on the Butte of Warlencourt, in support of larger
operations about Beaumont Hamel. The hardship of the fighting between
October 25 and November 16 cannot be realised by those who did not
actually experience the conditions. From December 28 to January 23 the
Division held the line south of Le Barque and Ligny-Thilloy. After
that they moved farther south and held the line in front of Belloy and
Estrees, trenches that had been captured by the French. No wonder,
after this hard work, that the 50th Division gained the reputation of
a hard fighting division.

I can give no very accurate idea of the casualties suffered by the
Division; but some idea of the losses may be drawn from the casualties
among the bombers of the 7th N.F. Of these I have fairly accurate
details. The bombers of the 7th N.F. went into action on September 15,
1916, about eighty strong--ten N.C.O.s and seventy men. When the roll
was called at Bresle on November 20, 1916, eleven men alone answered.
Of the N.C.O.'s two were wounded and the rest were killed. The bombers
of the 4th N.F. suffered almost as heavily, but I have now no details.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] See Illustration, p. 81.

[8] I allude of course to the New Armies.

[9] These views of the battle, I am told, are unduly pessimistic. But
I let them stand as a record of personal feelings aroused as a result
of the battle.

XIII

HENENCOURT

Brigade Head-quarters were accommodated in wooden huts, but the
battalions were mostly under canvas. Strenuous efforts had now to be
made to complete the training of the men, and to initiate them to a
style of warfare that was quite new and strange to them.

My own task was to train as many men as possible in the use of the
Mills grenade. Each day I had fifty men to train, and they were kept
at it all morning and again in the