In the evening the 21st Brigade on the right made another advance, in the course of which a Territorial battalion, the 4th Cameron Highlanders, recruited mainly from Inverness-shire, Skye, and the misty Hebrides, pushed on far before their comrades. Under heavy fire, they advanced over country liberally seamed with ditches, one of which was so deep and wide that most of the men had to swim across it. The third company reached the back end of a German communication trench; but being without bombs, and having almost wholly used up its cartridges, was soon in desperate straits. About midnight these gallant fellows were reinforced by two platoons; but as they had no machine guns, and as the Germans were fast closing in on both sides of them, and they were "in the air," they were ordered to retire. In the small hours of the morning they made their way back through a heavy rain of shells, and by the time that the weary, mud-stained battalion had regained the British position it had been reduced to half its strength.
[Illustration: Playing their Comrades up to the Germans: the Pipers of the Black Watch at Richebourg.
(_By permission of The Illustrated London News._)
During the general advance in May the Black Watch suffered very heavily. They assaulted the German trenches a few miles east of Richebourg (point A on the map, page 231). Their first charge in the morning only reached the German wire, and they fell in swathes under the merciless machine-gun fire of the enemy. During the afternoon other companies of the Black Watch dashed up, and by a brilliant charge captured the trenches which had defied them in the morning. It was during this charge that the pipers showed wonderful courage. The two pipers of each company played their comrades right up to the Germans. The skirl of their pipes was heard above the din and crash of Maxims, rifles, and bursting shrapnel. The lads of "brown heath and shaggy wood" rushed on to victory with the pibroch of their sires ringing in their ears.]
Still the fight went on. The Canadians, who had recovered from their terrible ordeal on the Ypres salient, were now sent up to relieve the two brigades of the 7th Division. On the afternoon of 18th May two companies of the 16th (Canadian Scottish) were ordered to advance on the hamlet at C, to the north-west of the orchard already mentioned. One company made a frontal attack, and the other proceeded along the communication trench which had been won by the Welsh Fusiliers. The advance was partly successful, and the companies dug in five hundred yards in front of the starting point.