Lieut.-Colonel Ambrose Ricardo, D.S.O., of Lion House, Strahane, commander of the Tyrone battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, gives an account of the experience of the Ulster Division which is of the greatest value for the reasons it supplies why the Division lost so heavily and thus were unable to hold the advanced positions they had taken. He first describes how his men set out for their plunge into the terrible unknown. "Every gun on both sides fired as fast as it could, and during the din our dear boys just walked out of the wood and up rumps we had cut through our parapet and out through lanes in our wire," he says. "I shall never forget for one minute the extraordinary sight. The Derrys on our left were so eager they started a few minutes before the ordered time, and the Tyrones were not going to be left behind, and they got going without delay. No fuss, no shouting, no running; everything orderly, solid and thorough, just like the men themselves. Here and there a boy would wave his hand to me as I shouted good luck to them through my megaphone, and all had a happy face. Most were carrying loads. Fancy advancing against heavy fire carrying a heavy roll of barbed wire on your shoulder!" Then dealing with the Division generally, Colonel Ricardo states that the leading battalions suffered comparatively little until they almost reached the German front line, when they came under appalling machine-gun fire which obliterated whole platoons. "And, alas for us," he cries, "the Division on our right could not get on, and the same happened to the Division on our left, so we came in for the concentrated fire of what would have been spread over three Divisions. But every man who remained standing pressed on, and, without officers or non-commissioned officers, they carried on, faithful to their job. Not a man turned to come back, not one." Eventually small parties of all the battalions of the Division--except the two operating towards Beaumont Hamel--gathered together in the section of the German third line, which was their part in the general British advance. They had captured, in fact, a portion of the famous Schwabon Redoubt on the summit of the ridge facing them, and set to work to consolidate it. "The situation after the first two hours was indeed a cruel one for the Ulster Division," continues Colonel Ricardo. "There they were, a wedge driven into the German lines, only a few hundred yards wide, and for fourteen hours they bore the brunt of the German machine-gun fire and shell-fire from three sides, and even from behind they were not safe. The parties told off to deal with the German first and second lines had in many cases been wiped out, and the Germans sent parties from the flanks in behind our boys. Yet the Division took 800 prisoners, and could have taken hundreds more, had they been able to handle them."