Puits 14 itself was won by a party of Scots Guards, led by an officer
named Captain Cuthbert, which engaged in hand-to-hand fighting,
routing out the enemy from the houses. Some companies of the
Grenadiers came to the support of their comrades in the Scots Guards,
but suffered heavy losses themselves. A platoon under a young
lieutenant named Ayres Ritchie reached the Puits, and, storming their
way into the Keep, knocked out a machine-gun, mounted on the second
floor, by a desperate bombing attack. The officer held on in a most
dauntless way to the position, until almost every man was either
killed or wounded, unable to receive support, owing to the enfilade
fire of the German machine-guns.
Night had now come on, the sky lightened by the bursting of shells and
flares, and terrible in its tumult of battle. Some of the
Coldstreamers had gained possession of the chalk-pit, which they were
organizing into a strong defensive position, and various companies of
the Guards divisions, after heroic assaults upon Hill 70, where they
were shattered by the fire which met them on the crest from the
enemy's redoubt on the northeast side, had dug themselves into the
lower slopes.
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