The 146th Brigade of the 49th Division had crossed the Ancre during the morning. At three p.m. it received orders to attack Thiepval village under a barrage, after an intense bombardment. The attack failed completely under terrific machine-gun fire. It was, in fact, stopped after the leading battalion, the 1/6th West Yorks, had seen the platoons which strove to deploy wither away. It was about this time that the Germans launched a counter-attack in the open on the left flank. Two companies emerged from the trees of the river valley and advanced on C 11. Caught on the hill by our artillery and the Lewis guns of the 8th Rifles, they were destroyed. There was a grave misunderstanding about the employment of the 146th Brigade. At four o'clock the 36th Division was informed that it was at its disposal. General Withycombe, the senior Brigadier in Thiepval Wood, was ordered to send two of its battalions to the Schwaben Redoubt, to rally the troops beginning to be forced back. But two battalions of the Brigade were already committed to the attack on Thiepval, while the two others had moved up behind them into the trenches of the 32nd Division. Not till 7-18 did six companies move up towards the "C" line, and now it was too late. On this flank it was already lost, and the Yorkshiremen were beaten off by German machine-gun fire. Meanwhile the situation had grown desperate. Major Peacocke, second-in-command of the 9th Inniskillings, had managed to cross "No Man's Land" at noon into the front line about A 12, and after beating off attacks by Germans bombing their way up from Thiepval, collected a little bodyguard and worked forward to the Crucifix. He speedily discovered that the holding of the ground here, now slipping from our hands, was an impossibility unless Thiepval were taken. The men were still determined, but at their last gasp from fatigue. There was scarcely any ammunition or water for the Vickers guns, and it was all but impossible to send it up. A similar report was brought to General Griffith by Major Blair Oliphant, second-in-command of the 11th Rifles, who carried out an admirable reconnaissance. A final counter-attack, launched in the dusk by fresh troops that had come into Grandcourt by train during the evening, drove our men in from the "B" line. By ten o'clock it did not appear that we had any troops in the German lines. That which had been won at a sacrifice so vast, had been lost for lack of support. Fresh troops for a further attack on Thiepval were put at the disposal of the 36th Division in the middle of the night. General Withycombe, at 11-30 p.m., received the 4th York and Lancs, of the 148th Brigade, with the intimation that the 4th and 5th K.O.Y.L.I.'s of the same Brigade would follow, to retake the Schwaben Redoubt, with the assistance of the remnants of the 107th and 109th Brigades. At one o'clock the latter battalions had not arrived. General Withycombe made the following appreciation of the position: