In no part of the line was the advance more gallant, and it marks the point at which unalloyed failure began first to change to partial success, ripening into complete victory in the southern section. Some slight cover seems to have helped the troops for the first few hundred yards, and it would appear also that though the small-arm fire was very severe, the actual shell-fire was not so heavy as that which devastated the divisions in the north. None the less, the obstacles were sufficient to test to the highest any {73} troops in the world, and they were gloriously surmounted by men, none of whom had been in action before. "I, their commander," wrote the Divisional General, "will never forget their advance through the German curtain of fire. It was simply wonderful, and they behaved like veterans." The scream of the war-pipes, playing "The Campbells are coming," warmed the blood of the soldiers. Upon the left, the Tyneside Scots penetrated two lines of trenches and found themselves to the north of the village of La Boiselle, where further progress was made impossible by a murderous fire from front and flank. Of the four battalions of the 101st Brigade, the two English units were nearly opposite the village, and though they advanced with great resolution, they were unable to get a permanent lodgment. The two Royal Scots battalions upon the flank got splendidly forward, and some of them made their way deeper into the German line than any organised body of troops, save only the Ulster men, had succeeded in doing, getting even as far as the outskirts of Contalmaison. The valiant leader of the advanced party of the 15th Royal Scots was wounded, but continued to encourage his men and to try to consolidate his desperate position, which was nearly a mile within the German lines. He was again severely wounded, and Lieutenant Hole was killed, upon which the only remaining officer fell back to a point some hundreds of yards westward, called Round Wood or Round Alley. Here the Scots stuck fast, and nothing could budge them. Germans were in front of them, were in La Boiselle upon their left rear, and were behind them in the trenches, which led from the village. By all the laws of war, the detachment was {74} destroyed; but in practice the Germans found that they could not achieve it. A small reinforcement of the 27th Northumberland Fusiliers (from the 103rd of the Brigade), under an experienced soldier, had joined them, and their situation was less forlorn because they were in slight touch with the skirts of the 64th Brigade of the Twenty-first Division, who had also, as will presently be shown, won a very forward position. By means of this division communication was restored with the isolated detachment, and the colonel of the 16th Royal Scots, a very well-known volunteer officer of Edinburgh, succeeded in reaching his men. His advent gave them fresh spirit, and under his leadership