The objective of this division was the German position from Beaucourt-sur-Ancre on the north to the northern edge of Thiepval. When the signal was given the two leading brigades, the 108th and the 107th, came away at a deliberate pace which quickened into the rush of a released torrent, and went roaring over the German trenches. "They were like bloodhounds off the leash." Like every one else they were horribly scourged by shrapnel and machine-fire as they rushed across, but whether it was that some curve in the ground favoured part of their line, or whatever the cause, they suffered less than the other divisions, and struck on to the German front line with their full shattering momentum, going through it as though it were paper. The 108th {60} Brigade, consisting of the 9th Irish Fusiliers and the 11th, 12th, and 13th Irish Rifles, was on the left. Two of these, the Fusiliers and one of the Irish Rifle battalions, were on the north side of the Ancre, and were acting rather with the Twenty-ninth Division upon their left than with their own comrades on the right. This detachment fought all day side by side with the regulars, made their way at one time right up to Beaucourt Station, and had finally to retire to their own trenches together with the rest of the line north of the Ancre. Next morning the survivors crossed the Ancre, and from then onwards the Eighth Corps extended so as to take over this ground. South of the Ancre the two remaining battalions of the 108th Brigade, and the whole of the 107th Brigade, consisting of the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 15th Irish Rifles, advanced upon a front of 3000 yards. The men had lost very heavily in the assembly trenches, and two companies of the 10th Irish Rifles had dwindled to two platoons before ever they got clear of the shattered wood in which they gathered. None the less, the fire and fury of their onset was terrific and sustained. "The place was covered with smoke and the explosion of heavy shells," says one who saw the scene from a front observation post. "I felt that no attack was possible, when suddenly out of the clouds I saw men advancing as if on parade, quite slowly. It seemed impossible, and yet they went on, stormed at on the left by high explosive and shrapnel, and on the right by enfilade machine-gun fire. Suddenly they charged, and when I could next see through the clouds on the slope (less than a mile away) I saw that they had taken the front trench, and in another minute the trench behind was taken, {61} as our fellows shouting, 'No surrender!' got through--God knows how! As they advanced the fire of the guns became more and more enfilade, but nothing could stop their steady progress."