The attack began at 3.15 A.M. on the 16th. The Scots Guards met with little opposition, and easily secured their objective, but the 2nd Border Regiment had hardly started when it came under a murderous machine-gun fire. It lost a large number of men and most of its officers, including the Commanding Officer, Lieut.-Colonel Wood, but it succeeded nevertheless in reaching the enemy's trenches. In the meantime, however, the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards had pushed on beyond the German support line, so that its left was in the air. Even in the support trenches, which were only thirty yards in rear of the front line, the 1st Battalion Grenadiers came in for a great deal of shelling, and one shell burst in the middle of No. 8 Platoon, killing four men and wounding many others, including Lieutenant Dickinson and Lieutenant St. Aubyn, who was struck in the face by a piece of shrapnel. All the time a stream of wounded from the front trenches was passing by, some walking and some on stretchers. The machine-guns under Lieutenant Duberly were sent up to support the Scots Guards, and helped them greatly. With a view to protecting their left flank, the 1st Battalion Grenadiers was now ordered forward. It was about 10 A.M. Lieut.-Colonel Corkran, who saw clearly that his Battalion would share the same fate as the Border Regiment, if they advanced against the machine-guns, which had inflicted such loss, decided to move his Battalion farther to the south, and advance from the original forming-up trench of the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards, where a communication trench was being constructed by the Gordon Highlanders. Down this trench the 1st Battalion rushed, jumping over a mass of wounded men as it went, and when it reached the German front-line trench, the King's Company under Captain Maitland, and No. 3 under Captain Hughes, remained to consolidate it, while No. 4 under Captain Moss, followed by No. 2 under Captain Swaine, pushed on to prolong the left of the Scots Guards.