The Fourteenth Division had advanced upon the immediate right of the Longueval-Flers road, the 42nd Brigade upon the left keeping in touch with the 100th, while the 41st Brigade upon the right had not only to reach its own objective, but to act as a protective flank against the Germans in the village of Ginchy. The 43rd Brigade was in reserve, but contributed one battalion, the 6th Yorkshire Light Infantry, to strengthening the reserve of the 42nd Brigade, whose formidable task was the carrying of the outlying fringe of Delville Wood. At last that tragic grove, the scene of such a prolonged struggle, was to be utterly cleared from our front. Three gallant battalions of the 42nd Brigade--the 5th Oxford and Bucks on the left, the 5th Shropshires in the centre, and the 9th Rifles upon the right--swept forward with the bayonet in the good old {220} style and cleared it from end to end, helped greatly by the accurate barrage behind which they advanced. The German counter-barrage was heavy, but the troops tramped through it with no more deflection than if it had been a rainstorm, though a trail of dead and wounded marked their path. Every officer of the Rifle battalion was hit. The first barrier was a trench cut 150 yards from the north of the wood and called Inner Trench. This was taken at the first rush, the enemy surrendering freely. Two gallant N.C.O.'s of the Rifles, Sergeant Hamp and Corporal Ord, rushed up a machine-gun at the cost of their own lives. One party of 50 men of the enemy seem to have taken up arms again after three of the storming lines had passed, and to have blazed into their backs with a machine-gun, but a fourth line swept over them and all were engulfed. The Oxford and Bucks on the left of the line moved forward splendidly, picking up 200 prisoners as they passed, clearing the edge of the wood and digging in about 200 yards to the north of it, the 89th F Company Royal Engineers and the 11th King's Liverpool consolidating the position. The enemy's opposition upon the right flank had, however, been very much sterner and more successful, so that the flank battalion of the 42nd Brigade and the Rifle battalions of the 41st Brigade had all fallen short of their final objectives. Altogether the day was a great success, for the losses were not excessive, and the gains though not sensational were general all along the line and prepared the way for the successful assaults of the next week. The fact that the right flank had not come on as far as the left, caused each successive battalion to find itself with its right flank exposed, but the line {221} was held by a clever readjustment under heavy fire, by which the flank battalions faced half right with the Oxfords still in the advanced position joining up with the Thirty-third Division, while the line slanting, but unbroken, sloped backwards to Inner Trench upon the right.