About half-past two in the afternoon the position had become desperate. Lieutenant-Colonel Dawson was ordered to take forward as reliefs all the men available under his command—a total of 150 from the 1st Regiment. These men had just been withdrawn after having been continuously in action for four days; they had had no rest; but their one thought when they were ordered forward was to get to grips with the enemy. On arriving at Longueval Dawson placed his men in a trench at the south-east corner of the village, and went into the wood to find Thackeray. At the same time the men of the Trench Mortar Battery, numbering three officers and some eighty other ranks, under Lieutenant Phillips, were brought up from Montauban and placed at Dawson’s disposal. Dawson found Thackeray in serious straits. In many parts of the wood the garrisons had been utterly destroyed, and everywhere north of Princes Street the few survivors had been forced back. Thackeray was now holding only the south-west corner, defined by Buchanan Street and the western part of Princes Street. The wounded filled the trenches, for it was impossible to remove them, since all the stretcher-bearers of the 3rd Regiment were casualties, and no men could be spared to take their places. Dawson, acting under Lukin’s instructions, did his best to cope with the situation. He sent Lieutenant Phillips and the Trench Mortar Battery men to reinforce Thackeray, and through the division procured additional stretcher-bearers from the cavalry, in addition to those from the 1st Regiment. At 6.5 p.m. that evening came the welcome intelligence that that night the South Africans would be relieved by the 26th Brigade. But a relief under such conditions was a slow and intricate business. By midnight the work had been partially carried out, and portions of the two companies of the 1st Regiment and the two companies of the 4th were withdrawn. [Sidenote: _July 20._] But, as at Flodden, when “they left the darkening heath More desperate grew the strife of death.”