19 / 44
battle of loos
17
By 9.30 a.m.
the 7th Seaforths had successfully made contact
with the 8th Black Watch to the immediate left, and 26th Brigade
was holding the Dump, Fosse No. 8 and the Corons – a large
slagheap, pithead and small coalmining village.
In an attempt to exploit 26th Brigade’s success, 9th Cameronians
and 11th Highland Light Infantry, both 28th Brigade, were
ordered to launch a further attack on the 9th (Scottish)
Division’s left front position at 12.15 p.m.
The situation was no different than it was at 6.30 a.m., and as
soon as the support battalions left their trenches the men were
subjected to heavy rifle and machine gun fire. Some seven officers
and 235 other ranks were killed as the attempt collapsed. The
divisional reserve, 27th Brigade, was ordered forward in support
of the increasingly hard-pressed Highlanders still holding
hard-won defensive positions around Fosse No. 8 and the Corons.
The reserve battalions of 27th Brigade, comprising 11th and
12th Royal Scots, 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, and 10th Argyll
and Sutherland Highlanders, found progress difficult. The men
soon discovered that ‘all the carefully drawn-up plans for the
regulation of traffic in the communication trenches broke down
during the stress of battle, and the advance to the front line
was a
dreadful nightmare.
Not only were the troops exhausted by
the halts which they were compelled to make every few minutes,
owing to wounded men pushing their way down the same trench,
but they suffered many casualties from the shells with which
the enemy sprinkled our hinterland’.
21
On finally reaching No Man’s Land, 27th Brigade ‘came under a
deluge of bullets’ from the high ground to the left. Despite
their losses, 11th and 12th Royal Scots established contact
with 26th Brigade by 11.00 a.m., and were advancing against the
village of Haisnes. But it was too late. German reinforcements
had been brought forward, and by dusk the Royal Scots’ position
was untenable. Rain was falling heavily as the exhausted
soldiers withdrew to the area around Fosse No. 8.
18 Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser, Wednesday, 6 October 1915, 3.
19 The Evening Telegraph and Post, Thursday, 21 October 1915, 2.
20 Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser, Saturday, 6 November 1915, 8.
21 J. Ewing, The Royal Scots 1914-1919, Vol 1 (Edinburgh, 1925), 188.