The casualties among all ranks were heavy. The officers, sharing every hardship and being foremost in every danger, suffered most grievously. "Our Brigadier, our colonels, our company commanders, were badly wounded. Every officer, with the exception of two subalterns, was hit. Some were hit in no less than three places. Yet they carried on. Those too weak to walk crawled until they eventually gave up through loss of blood. The losses among the N.C.O.s were just as large." This is the testimony of Captain Downey. Lieut.-Colonel L. Meredith Howard of the Tyneside Irish was severely wounded, and died two days afterwards. Among the officers of the Brigade who fell in action was Second-Lieutenant Gerald FitzGerald. A brother officer says, "He died shouting to his men: 'Come on.'" His father was Lord Mayor of Newcastle the year in which the Brigade was raised. Other officers killed were Captain Kenneth Mackenzie of Kinsale, co. Cork, whose father was formerly an Irish Land Commissioner; Lieutenant Louis Francis Byrne of Newcastle, who was serving his articles as a solicitor when war broke out; and Lieutenant J.R.C. Burlureaux, a journalist. The disappearance of so many of the officers was enough to have dispirited and confused any body of men. Would it be possible for them to extricate themselves from the fearful labyrinth in which they were involved? Would there be any of them left for the final dash at their objective? The non-commissioned officers rose splendidly to the emergency. One battalion had not far advanced when all the officers were shot down. Quartermaster-Sergeant Joseph Coleman took command and continued onward. Soon he found himself with only three men left. Everything seemed lost in his part of that scene of tumult and death but for his coolness and gallantry. He went back, gathered up the remnants of other scattered companies, and led a willing and eager band to the capture of the position put down to the battalion in the scheme of operations. For this Coleman got the Distinguished Conduct Medal, and had it pinned on his breast by General Munro, the Brigadier.