^* A full list of senior officer casualties appears in Appendix 3.

^* Public Record Office, CAB 45/190.

^† For his determination on this day Lieut-Col. Reginald Bastard received a bar to the Distinguished Service Order he had won at Neuve Chapelle in 1915.

^* Bugler W. Caunt, Soar’s friend, was taken prisoner but had to have a foot amputated. He was repatriated to England through the Red Cross in December 1916. Nothing is known of the fate of the other three men.

^* One report says that a party of the 16th Royal Scots also reached Contal-maison and were killed or captured. The Tyneside Irish story is told in such detail because, starting from the Tara–Usna Line, they had come twice as far, under fire, as the Royal Scots. It is hoped that the 16th Royal Scots (2nd Edinburgh City Battalion) will excuse this.

^* As far as is known, this man’s bravery was not recognized by the award of a medal, but Walter Ritchie, a young drummer of the Seaforth Highlanders, was awarded the Victoria Cross for standing on the parapet of a captured trench near the Quadrilateral and repeatedly sounding the ‘Charge’ when nearby men were beginning to retire without orders. Drummer Ritchie survived the heavy fire of the Germans and the remainder of the war.

^* Probably due to lack of witnesses and an uncertainty at that time of the exact identity of 2nd Lieut Arthur (a native of Halifax, Yorkshire), no medal was awarded for this action.

^* A knobkerrie was a spiked iron ball on the end of a stick.

^* Public Record Office, CAB 45/188.

^* Public Record Office, CAB/189. Breslau Trench was held by the 6th Bavarian Reserve Regiment. Some books attribute the incident of the chained machine-gunner to the 6th Royal Berks but the capture was made by the 7th Queens.

^† When interviewed, German soldiers indignantly denied this possibility; the garments and perfumes were either souvenirs of past leaves or presents for the next leave. For their part, the Germans heard rumours that the Allies had women in their trenches. The French were believed to be more active in this matter.’ These stories were started by men in German listening posts who claimed they had heard female voices from the opposing trenches.

^* Some accounts give the casualties as twenty-six and 684, but those quoted above are from the battalion War Diary. Possibly the difference of twenty-six may be the officers having been mistakenly counted twice in the later accounts.