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Updated: May 12, 2025
Early in August an unlucky shell deprived the Battalion of one of its best officers. Lieutenant Tiddy had joined the Infantry in a spirit of duty and self-sacrifice, which his service as an officer had proved but to which his death more amply testified. The regrets of friends and comrades measured the Battalion's loss.
From that time onward the 2/4th Oxfords were a changed unit, whose roots were set no longer in England but in France, for in France had come to it the officers and men of whom it was afterwards constituted. On the eve of this great change importing battle a short review is not amiss of the Battalion's constitution.
It was our Battalion's turn to lead, and we went for the main objective, the Hill of Shafa, at the extreme end of the ridge about one and a half miles away. We started the advance just after dark, and all went well until we had almost reached the objective.
"The 31st July should for all time be remembered by your Battalion and Regiment and observed with more reverence even than Minden Day. It was no garden of roses that you fought in. I have heard some of the stories of your Battalion's doings and they are glorious. And I have heard of your own doings too, and the close shave you had.
The next day the Battalion was relieved, and by small stages the remnants of the companies made their way to Buire-sur-Ancre. This was the Battalion's last time in action on the Somme, and it presented a very changed aspect to its first arrival on this battlefield. Companies were reduced to the size of platoons, and platoons to sections or less.
We held a short Conference, and the Colonel decided that if there was any more fog or difficulty of any sort, Company Commanders should make their way at once to their places in the "dotted blue" line. Scouts were sent out to reconnoitre Canal crossings, and as soon as the barrage started for the 4th Battalion's advance, we moved forward in rear of the 5th Lincolnshires.
It was only an incident of every day; the sun had set or was setting, the air turned chill, and a battalion's bugles were playing ``Retreat'' when this knightly stranger, a British aëroplane, dipped, and went homeward over the infantry.
The Boers who had crept round the crest of the eastern steep, which I have called by its Kaffir name Intombi, were even then almost up to the camp that Colonel Hamilton had quitted half an hour earlier, but screened from the Manchester battalion's fire by a swell of the ground in front.
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