To the south of the 36th Division was the 32nd, which was supposed to take the Thiepval plateau high ground, a strong German position that would not fall for another twelve weeks. The division assembled on the lower slopes of the Thiepval spur from Authuille Wood to Thiepval Wood, where the assembly trenches had only been dug in the hard chalk a few days before, and the men had had to carry up supplies too, leaving them, in the words of one of them, ‘dog-tired’.28 The two front brigades, the 97th and 99th, had to attack the whole spur from the Liepzig Salient to Thiepval village, and then, it was hoped, advance further. The southern face of the salient was to be left alone and taken from behind once the other attacks had succeeded. It was a New Army battalion, the 17th Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Commercials) of the 97th Brigade, which left their trenches at 7.23 a.m. and crawled to within 35 yards (32 m) of the German lines won the race to the parapet and took the Leipzig Redoubt, the only gain of the day for the 32nd Division.29 Brig. J. B. Jardine of the 97th had learnt the tactic in the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War where he had been a liaison officer with the Japanese, another example of a senior officer who was much more lion than donkey.

‘The defenders were taken prisoner before they could emerge from their dugouts in the chalk quarry’, recorded Edmonds.30 Yet it was when the 97th Brigade tried to go beyond that, moving onto the trenches known as ‘Hindenburg Strasse’, across an open slope, that machine guns forced them to stop. From his observation post, Jardine ordered Lt.-Col. A. S. Cotton of the 161st Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, which was supporting 97th Brigade, to switch part of his fire to the German defences at the rear of the Leipzig Redoubt, even though this was contrary to GHQ’s orders. This allowed the Highlanders to withdraw successfully. ‘It is the 32nd Division at its best’, wrote an onlooker, Percy Crozier of the 36th Division:

I see rows upon rows of British soldiers lying dead, dying or wounded, in no man’s land. Here and there I see an officer urging on his followers. Occasionally I can see the hands thrown up and then a body flops to the ground. The bursting shells and smoke make visibility poor… Again I look southward from a different angle and perceive heaped up masses of British corpses suspended on the German wire in front of the Thiepval stronghold, while live men rush forward in orderly procession to swell the weight of numbers in the spider’s web.31

The Lonsdale Battalion, part of 97th Brigade, moved to Crucifix Corner near Authuille Wood prior to the attack, in which their task was to assault the Leipzig Salient and capture the German advance HQ at Mouquet Ferme.*3 The men mainly hailed from Cumberland and Westmoreland. Their commanding officer, Lt.-Col. Percy Machell, was under no illusions about how hazardous it was going to be to carry out the complicated order to leave the wood at 8 a.m. and go northwards until they reached the rear of the right company of the HLI and then swing due east, all under what he rightly suspected would be heavy machine gun fire not just from the opposing German trenches but also enfilading fire from machine gun nests that doglegged to the right. ‘If it goes badly,’ he wrote in his final instructions, ‘I shall come up and see it through.’32

‘The Lonsdales wished each other luck and shook hands,’ records their historian, ‘then they started to advance, some cheering and singing as if at a football match.’33 They moved in what was called ‘blob formation’, in small groups slightly to the rear and flank of the group in front, which was considered the best position to adopt under shellfire. Yet it was not shellfire they had principally to worry about as a hailstorm of bullets ‘cut furrows in the earth as the machine-gunners found their range’. Seeing what was happening, Col. Machell ‘rushed to the front to lead his men on’, whereupon he was immediately shot through the head, and his adjutant Lt. Gordon was severely wounded as he stood over the body. By then Maj. Diggle, the second-in-command, was already wounded. Pte. Thomas Hartness, from the village of Skelton in Cumbria, who had joined up aged only sixteen, was killed next to Machell, and watching him die was Richard Hartness, his nineteen-year-old brother, who was to die of wounds six weeks later.*4 The Lonsdales who survived the opening machine gun bursts, all too few of them, nonetheless pressed on, joined up with the HLI as planned and captured the German front trench, which together they managed to defend from counter-attack.

An account of going over the top was left by an unnamed nineteen-year-old member of B Company of the Lonsdales, which deserves repetition:

What a long quarter of an hour it seemed to me. I wished hundreds of times it was up, every minute seemed like an hour. My heart thumped so hard I am sure it could be heard, but others must have felt the same as nobody commented on it. All talking stopped and to this day I can’t say for sure whether the order came to fix bayonets or not, I was so worked up. The suspense ended with the command ‘Come on “B” boys get out’, or something like that. I set my teeth and jumped out of the trench and followed the rest in single file. Captain H was standing at the edge of the trench the same old smile on his face and as cool as if he was on parade.34

It did not last long. Within moments:

A machine gun somewhere opened out. A bullet burned at the back of my neck. TN, my best pal dropped, I looked back to see if he was wounded or what, he raised himself up on his hand, gave a smile and then drooped back—he gave a shudder and then lay still. I knew he was out. This lad was only seventeen… We had barely gone another 5 yards [4.5 m] when it seemed to rain bullets, it was hell let loose. The Corporal dropped, shot through the hand. I made one dive for a shell hole for cover.*5 A few more dropped beside me; we stayed there for a moment, we had only got to our feet again when those cursed machine guns opened up worse than ever.35

Although the young soldier did move closer to the German lines in a small group, they were all killed save him: ‘Men were laying every few yards and some were hanging on the German wire.’ He stayed still in no man’s land, while those who moved were killed by sniper or machine gun fire. ‘A bumblebee buzzed once or twice round my head then settled on a flower,’ he recalled, ‘up above a skylark was singing.’36 At one point ‘A man jumped up screaming “Mother, Mother”, he made towards me tearing at his clothes. I shut my eyes expecting to feel his hands at my throat but he ran past me towards the German trenches. The poor fellow must have went mad with pain or something.’ Afterwards the narrator was wounded in the hand and elbow by shrapnel but got back safely to the British trenches and made his way to the dressing station. ‘The whole place both inside and out was crowded with wounded, some seriously, others, like myself with nice cushy ones. Dead men were laid out all round, some covered but the majority as they had been carried in.’37 Of Col. Machell, he wrote that he ‘died like the man he was, and the way he would have wished, leading his beloved battalion in one last rush against almost impregnable positions.’38

‘Throughout that long blazing summer’s day,’ writes the Lonsdales’ historian, ‘shocked men, their uniforms torn and bloodied, clung to shell holes out in no man’s land as shells fell among them, praying for night.’39 Of the 28 Lonsdale officers and 1,800 men who left Authuille Wood that morning, 23 officers and 500 men failed to attend evening roll-call. Back in the villages and towns around Penrith there was hardly a house which did not have its blinds drawn once the post offices there and in Appleby, Shap and Tebay started to deliver the hundreds of much-feared telegrams, and newspapers published the photographs of local men under the headline: ‘Fallen for their King and Country’.40