Two hours later a raid was carried out in this sector by a party sent up by the 13th Rifles. The men, now at a pitch of excitement and enthusiasm that rendered them resistless opponents in hand-to-hand fighting, swarmed into the battered German trenches, shooting right and left, and bombing dug-outs. They returned with one German officer and twelve other ranks as prisoners, the first captured by the 36th Division. Their own casualties were six killed and nine wounded, suffered for the most part in the Sunken Road, where, like the 9th Inniskillings, they had to lie for some time ere it was possible to return to their trenches. Captain Johnston, the leader of the raid, brought in all his casualties, as well as his prisoners. He was to fall five days later in the greater venture. The prisoners denied knowledge of our gas, nor did their respirators smell of it. It was occasionally the experience of the Division that the British gas services rated too highly the effects of their devices. On the 27th, "X" day, it rained in sheets, and "Y" day was little better. It was accordingly decided by the Higher Command to postpone the attack for two days. This necessitated a postponement of the assembly also. Instead, inter-brigade reliefs were carried out in the trenches to give some rest to the troops that had endured the early hammering. Their rest, unfortunately, was in huts in Martinsart Wood, huts that trembled and creaked to the terrific roar of siege howitzers firing night and day beside them. Yet it was better than that other wood across the river, which was the following day, now "Y.1" day, visited by the heaviest bombardment yet seen. The trenches were in a terrible state, and the men of the medium trench mortar batteries, engaged in cutting the German wire, suffered more even than the infantry, and earned the admiration of the latter by their devotion to their task. In all the circumstances it must be said that the total casualties for the month of June, approximately seven hundred and fifty, were not heavy. They included the results of a veritable calamity that befell the 13th Rifles. On the evening of the 28th, "Y" day, the battalion was relieving the 11th Rifles in Thiepval Wood, and marching out of Martinsart by platoons at two hundred yards' interval. As number 11 Platoon and battalion headquarters were about to march out together a shell fell right in the midst of the party. Fourteen were killed on the spot, and ten more died later. Almost all the rest were wounded, including the second-in-command, Major R. P. Maxwell, and the adjutant, Captain Wright. The confusion in the pitch darkness, with scarce a man on his feet, was appalling. Fortunately a platoon of the 11th Rifles, just relieved from the trenches, appeared on the scene, and the street was speedily cleared. But the Germans could have had far bigger hauls than this at "Lancashire Dump" on the Albert-Hamel Road in Aveluy Wood any night they had chosen to shell it.