The situation was most complicated, and yet all was well. The Division, as a Division, had swept everything in front of it, although not quite in the order in which it should have moved. But parts of the German trenches remained untouched, and these had to be dealt with before any farther progress could be made. When the 1st Battalion Coldstream began to swing to the left, a gap was made between the two front battalions of the 2nd Guards Brigade, which widened out as the advance progressed. Observing this, Captain Oliver Lyttelton pushed up 100 men of the 3rd Battalion Grenadiers to fill the intermediate space, but as the gap gradually extended, and the smoke and dust made it impossible for them to see where they were going, these hundred men were able to keep touch with the 1st Battalion Coldstream only, and became detached from the rest of the Battalion.
Progress towards the first objective was made very difficult by the failure of the Sixth Division to take the Quadrilateral. As soon as the attacking lines showed themselves they were met by a sweeping fire from the enemy’s machine-guns on the right flank, and were mown down. After the first objective had been entered, and Lieut.-Colonel Campbell, Coldstream Guards, was organising an attack upon the second objective, it was discovered that the whole of the first objective was not entirely secured. An attack was immediately made on that portion of the line still occupied by the enemy, and Lieut.-Colonel Guy Baring, who commanded the 1st Battalion Coldstream, in attempting to gain touch with the remainder of the Brigade from which he had, for the moment, been separated, left the trench to advance over the top of the ground when he was struck by a bullet in the head and instantly killed.
Lieut.-Colonel Campbell then ordered Captain Lyttelton to bomb down the trench together with a party of the 2nd Irish Guards under Lieutenant Mylne. But hardly had they started when the Germans came running down the trench, holding up their hands. They were being pursued by another bombing party, composed, not of the 3rd Battalion Grenadiers as might have been expected, but the 2nd Battalion Grenadiers.
Now that the whole of the first objective was in our hands the advance towards the second objective at once took place. On the extreme right no ground could be gained, but farther towards the centre the 3rd Battalion Grenadiers reached a position which it assumed to be the second objective, but was in fact, according to the report from the aeroplanes, half-way between the first and second objectives.