General Nugent for a time contemplated a second attack with a new barrage, to take at least the Green Line. The reports of Brigadiers and Staff Officers visiting the line in the afternoon made it clear that the troops were in no fit state for any such attempt. Disorganization was still considerable; a high proportion of officers and N.C.O.'s had fallen, and the men were utterly exhausted. Moreover, neither the 108th nor the 109th Brigade could have mustered five hundred men for a new attack. General Nugent accordingly decided against this course, and instead ordered the relief of the two attacking Brigades by the 107th that night. This was carried out in circumstances of great difficulty, some platoons not quitting the front line till after five o'clock next morning. The weary remnants were moved straight back by 'bus to Winnizeele, and that night a Brigade of the 61st Division relieved the 107th Brigade in the line.
It is impossible to arrive at the exact casualties during the hours of the actual assault. Between 6 a.m. on the 16th and 9 a.m. on the 18th, however, there passed through the Divisional Dressing Stations 58 officers and 1,278 other ranks, wounded or gassed. These casualties do not include those of the attached artillery. They are very high if the depleted state of the infantry prior to the attack be taken into consideration. But they are almost insignificant if compared with the total casualties suffered in the holding of the line in the Salient, from August the 2nd to the 18th. In that period the 36th Division lost 144 officers and 3,441 other ranks killed, wounded, or missing. That is to say, it had more than two thousand casualties ere launched to the attack. Two other commanding officers, besides Colonels Somerville and Maxwell, were among the casualties. Colonel A. C. Pratt, 11th Inniskillings, had been killed at the entrance to Wieltje dug-outs early on the morning of the 16th, while Colonel Macrory, 10th Inniskillings, had been severely wounded a few days earlier. The difficulties of evacuating wounded during the action were extraordinary. Stretcher cases had to be brought by hand at least two thousand yards, and it took eight men to each stretcher. There were 433 stretcher-bearers, of whom rather more than half were R.A.M.C., the remainder being men of a Tunnelling Company and the Divisional Salvage section. Among many who displayed great bravery in the work of evacuating wounded under heavy shell-fire was the Assistant Chaplain-General of the Division, the Rev. F. J. Halahan, M.C., who by precept and personal example encouraged the stretcher-bearers to new efforts. Search parties, sent out after dark, brought in about a hundred wounded men from in front of our line. The conduct of the medical officers with the battalions, tending their wounded under the very heavy shell-fire that was maintained throughout upon the Black Line, was beyond praise. Captain Gavin, R.A.M.C., attached to the 14th Rifles, did splendid work at Rat Farm, where two other medical officers were killed. This gallant officer, who earned a bar to his Military Cross on that occasion, and had escapes little short of miraculous, was to be killed a few months later by no more serious an accident than a fall from his horse.