At a conference of C.O.'s held at Brigade Headquarters at 3.40, we were
informed that a battalion of the Royal Naval Division was arriving to
deliver an attack on the right of the 155th Brigade with the object of
securing some gaps in the line between that Brigade and the French. This
was preceded, at 4.30, by the usual bombardment. There would appear to
have been some ghastly blundering in connection with the arrangements
for this attack. We heard afterwards that the battalion was quite
ignorant of the ground; that it only arrived a few minutes before the
attack was timed to commence; and that it had difficulty in finding the
trench from which it was to move on its objective. There must have been
similar uncertainty about the objective itself, for the troops advanced
across the open, suffering severely from shell-fire, into a trench
already held by the 155th Brigade, a trench which--had they known it was
so held--they might have walked into by a communication sap with little
if any loss. Afterwards they pushed on some distance beyond this trench
but found no other to take, and when they fell back on the existing
front line the position remained exactly as it had been before the
attack, except for the terrible casualties they had so unnecessarily
sustained. In his published despatch, Sir Ian Hamilton, referring to
this attack, explains its necessity by stating that "about 7.30 a.m. the
right of the 157th Brigade gave way before a party of bombers, and our
grip upon the enemy began to weaken." He must have been entirely
misinformed as to the position, unless the "giving way" to which he
refers was the mistaken retirement from the trench which Captain John
MacDonald had occupied, as previously narrated. If this is so, the
officer who issued the orders to the Naval Battalion cannot have been
informed that the "giving way" was only temporary and that the 157th
Brigade had almost immediately reoccupied its trenches and was actually
holding them when this unfortunate attack was launched.

About four o'clock we received the bad news that Captain John MacDonald
had been killed--shot through the head by a sniper's bullet--in the
front trench which his company was still assisting to hold. This brought
the total of our officers' casualties in the two days' fighting to
seven; three killed (Captain MacDonald and Lieutenants Malcolm and May)
one missing (Captain Morton), and three wounded (Majors Jowitt and
Downie and Lieutenant J.