It contained
Sherwood, Leicester, and Lincoln men, who, on the afternoon of October
13th, went forward to the assault with very desperate endeavor.
Advancing in four lines, the leading companies were successful in
reaching the Hohenzollern redoubt, smashed through the barbed wire,
part of which was uncut, and reached the Fosse trench which forms the
north base of the salient.
Machine-gun fire cut down the first two lines severely and the two
remaining lines were heavily shelled by German artillery. It was an
hour in which the courage of those men was agonized. They were exposed
on naked ground swept by bullets, the atmosphere was heavy with gas
and smoke; all the abomination of battle--he moaning of the wounded,
the last cries of the dying, the death-crawl of stricken beings
holding their broken limbs and their entrails--was around them, and in
front a hidden enemy with unlimited supplies of ammunition and a
better position.
The Robin Hoods and the men of Lincoln and Leicestershire were
sustained in that shambles by the spirit that had come to them through
the old yeoman stock in which their traditions were rooted, and those
who had not fallen went forward, past their wounded comrades, past
these poor, bloody, moaning men, to the German trenches behind the
redoubt.
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