Take another unit of the 49th Division: the 5th Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment, in the 148th Infantry Brigade. We left them proceeding to Aveluy Wood just before midnight on June 30th. The first instalment of their story in the present action is to last almost exactly a week: from 1-30 p.m. on July 1st, when the Battalion moved out of the assembly-trenches, till 8-30 p.m. on July 8th, when they were relieved by the 7th West Ridings, and went into huts in Martinsart Wood. The story makes sad but gallant reading. They sustained in those seven days and nights a total of 307 casualties. Their Commanding Officer was wounded and missing, their Officer 2nd in Command was killed, another Officer had died of wounds, thirteen more were wounded or missing. In other Ranks, 56 were killed and three had died of wounds; 204 were wounded and 44 missing: a heavy toll to be extracted from one Battalion towards the relief of the pressure on Verdun. The price was paid without reckoning the cost, and we shall not follow in detail the experiences of this unit during that week. They moved first to where the British front line touched the left bank of the Ancre. Major Shaw took A and B Companies to the north side of that line; Lt.-Col. Rendall, with C and D Companies was posted on the south side. Captain G. A. G. Hewitt at this juncture retired to hospital suffering from shock. The fighting went on from hour to hour with very varying fortune: at one time, there seemed a possibility of a successful assault on St. Pierre Divion, the next village north of the line; at other times, the utmost efforts were required to extricate the wounded. On July 5th, Aveluy Wood was shelled practically for the first time. High explosive, shrapnel and lachrymatory shells were employed, and found all the assembly-trenches; captured maps and prisoners’ information were no doubt responsible for this disaster. Early in the morning of the 6th, seven officers and eighty other ranks went out in two bombing parties to capture a front-line trench; no Officer and twenty-two other Ranks returned. It was in this action that Lt.-Col. Rendall, D.S.O., Commanding the Battalion, had to be left wounded in a German dug-out, and that Major Shaw, 2nd in Command, was killed. The failure was due to the good German sniping, too heavy bombs for effective throwing, and a communication-trench not deep enough to pass them through. It was stubborn fighting, we see, and very difficult progress was made. But one Division in one Corps of one Army was not the whole fighting force which the Allies brought to the Somme, and some relief may be found by looking through German eyes at the results on July 1st in another sector. We have already referred to the War Diary for this period of the 55th Reserve Infantry Regiment (the 2nd Guard Reserve Division), which was holding the German line in front of Gommecourt six or seven miles north of Hamel. Their experience