As a feat of human daring and fortitude the fight is worthy of eternal remembrance by South Africa and Britain, but no historian’s pen can give that memory the sharp outline and the glowing colour which it deserves. Only the sight of the place in the midst of the battle—that corner of splinters and churned earth and tortured humanity—could reveal the full epic of Delville Wood. Let us measure it by the stern register of losses. At midnight on 14th July, when Lukin received his orders, the Brigade numbered 121 officers and 3,032 men. When Thackeray marched out on the 20th he had a remnant of 143, and the total ultimately assembled in Happy Valley was about 750. The casualties were—for the 1st Regiment, 558; for the 2nd, 482; for the 3rd, 771; and for the 4th, 509. These figures included 23 officers who were killed, 7 who died of wounds, 47 who were wounded, and 15 who were prisoners or missing. All the commissioned ranks of the 2nd and 3rd Regiments who were in the wood became casualties, as did all the officers of the Machine-Gun Company attached to the Brigade.[12] It is such a record as that of the 1st Coldstream or the 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers at First Ypres. But the price was not paid in vain. The Brigade did what it was ordered to do, and did not yield until it was withdrawn. I take two quotations from personal narratives which, better than any words of mine, reflect the grimness of the battle. One is from Private J. A. Lawson of the 3rd Regiment. He is describing the fight of Tuesday, the 18th—the great German attack when the garrison was forced back to the south-west corner. That morning Thackeray was holding the wood with nine and a half companies, a strength of about 1,500 men; two days later he had 140; so we may judge the fury of the conflict.