Almost at the outset Captain A. K. Mackenzie was hit and fell, as he led his company to the attack. Though mortally wounded, he got up again and struggled on, still waving his men forward. Once more he fell, and this time was unable to rise, but even then he managed to raise himself on one knee and cheer the company on. Afterwards he was carried down on a stretcher, but never recovered and died in the ambulance on the way. About the same time Lieutenant Raymond Asquith was shot through the chest and killed as he led the first half of No. 4 Company. He had endeared himself to both officers and men in an extraordinary degree since he joined the regiment at the beginning of the war, and his preference of service with his Battalion to the good staff appointment which he had just given up had won the admiration of all ranks. Lieutenant E. H. J. Wynne was mortally wounded by a German officer in one of the intermediate lines, and Lieutenant C. G. Gardner was killed soon afterwards. Captain G. G. Gunnis, Lieutenant A. Whitehead, Second Lieutenant H. Williams, and Second Lieutenant J. Worsley were wounded. While these intermediate lines were being cleared, an extremely heavy machine-gun fire was opened from the right flank, where the Sixth Division had been held up at the start. The tanks which were to have flattened out the wire and helped the advance never appeared, and so it came about that, from the moment it crossed over the Ginchy ridge and came within view of the enemy’s lines, the 2nd Guards Brigade was committed to hard and continuous fighting in a position of much difficulty. By now the Brigade had got very much mixed up, and, though still all together, continued its advance as a brigade rather than as four battalions. Whenever the leading wave met with any check, those in rear, impatient to get at the enemy, closed in on them, and thus companies and even battalions became intermingled. As an inevitable result of this quick advance the right flank of the Brigade was completely exposed, and Lieut.-Colonel Sergison-Brooke deciding that some protection was essential, threw out a company as a defensive flank to within 200 yards of the enemy’s flanking trench, to keep down the fire, while the rest of the 3rd Battalion Grenadiers pressed on to the main assault.