The enemy had brought up a new division—the 8th of the 4th (Magdeburg) Corps—and made repeated attacks against the Buchanan Street line. For two days and two nights the little remnant under Thackeray clung to the south-west corner of the wood against impossible odds, and did not break. The German method of assault was to push forward bombers and snipers, and then to advance in massed formation simultaneously from the north, north-east, and north-west. The three attacks on the night of the 18th were repelled with heavy losses to the enemy; but in the last of them the South Africans were assaulted on three sides. Thackeray’s adjutant, Captain M’Donald, had been wounded, and he was left with only two officers—Lieutenant Garnet Green of the 2nd and Lieutenant Phillips of the 3rd—to assist him, who, though wounded themselves, were able to keep on their feet. All through the 19th the gallant handful suffered incessant shelling and sniping, the latter now from very close quarters. It was the same on the 20th, but still relief tarried. At last, at six o’clock that evening, troops of the 76th Brigade in the 3rd Division were able to take over what was left to us of Longueval and the little segment of Delville Wood. Thackeray marched out with two officers, both of whom were wounded, and 140 other ranks, made up of details from all the regiments of the Brigade. He spent the night at Talus Boise, and next day joined the rest at Happy Valley. It is not easy to reproduce the circumstances of a battle so that a true impression may be made upon the minds of those who have not for themselves seen the reality of modern war. The six days and five nights during which the South African Brigade held the most difficult post on the British front—a corner of death on which the enemy fire was concentrated at all hours from three sides, and into which fresh German troops, vastly superior in numbers to the defence, made periodic incursions only to be broken and driven back—constitute an epoch of terror and glory scarcely equalled in the campaign. There were positions as difficult, but they were not held so long; there were cases of as protracted a defence, but the assault was not so violent and continuous. The closest parallel is to be found, perhaps, in some of the incidents at Verdun, and in the resistance of units of the old British regulars at the point of the Ypres salient in 1914; but even there we shall scarcely find an equal feat of tenacity, and certainly none superior. Delville Wood was not finally taken till the 25th of August, a month later, when the 14th Light Division cleared it for good. The high value set upon it by the enemy is proved by the fact that he used his best troops against it—successively the 10th Bavarian Division, the 8th Division of the 4th Corps, and the 5th of the 3rd Corps. The South Africans measured their strength against the flower of the German army, and did not draw back from the challenge.