These operations only partially succeeded, so at 5.30 in the evening of the 15th of September, the 1st Surrey Rifles, who were in reserve, were sent out to attack the western half of the Starfish Line and the strong point known as the Cough Drop. The Civil Service Rifles were to occupy the Starfish when the 1st Surrey Rifles vacated it. The latter, however, on emerging from High Wood in artillery formation, were immediately caught by an intense enemy artillery and machine-gun barrage, and the attack failed.
A similar experiment was tried at 9.0 a.m. the next morning with the 23rd Battalion, but, although they advanced a considerable distance, they were unable to reach the Flers Line. The Boches, however, obliged by withdrawing to the Flers Line, and the 6th and 8th Battalions occupied part of the Cough Drop and the Starfish Line respectively. The 23rd Battalion included two ex-Civil Service Riflemen in Major Kemble and Second Lieutenant J. H. Hunt, who lost his life in this attack. As a sergeant in “D” Company, J. H. Hunt had been exceptionally popular, and the keenest regret was felt among his many friends when he left to take his commission.
When darkness fell on the first night of the battle, the melancholy work of the burial of the dead was begun. The special party told off for this work dug graves in High Wood itself, and all the dead who could be found were buried side by side there.
The night of the 15th September presented a very striking contrast to the previous night, when peace and quiet had reigned in High Wood. The heavy artillery, with which the enemy was so well supplied, pounded away continually at the new trenches and at the supporting field gun batteries on the edge of the wood. Amid the noise of the shells could often be heard the groans of the wounded who had not yet been brought in, the shouts of the search party of stretcher bearers, and the curses of a ration or carrying party who had got lost. But above all was the ceaseless wail of the field guns, echoing over the wilderness. Listening to them on that night one could almost imagine that they, too, were mourning for the gallant fellows who had lost their lives that day, and who were now being laid to rest. To many who were there the peculiar echo of the field gun ever afterwards brought back vivid memories of those terrible nights in High Wood.