On 8 July, the
17th Division continued to hammer away at Quadrangle Support trench, again
without success although it mounted two full-scale attacks during the day. The 38th Division was
ordered to make a quiet raid during the night of 7th/8th on `something like a company front, not
necessarily by the whole company'. 'The place,' said XV Corps, 'must be chosen by the
commander of the 11 ;th Brigade now holding the line, who should carry out the raid and fix the
exact point. Neither corps nor division, not being on the spot, could fix this.' Shortly after midnight,
corps learned that Brig.-Gen. Price-Davies (113th Brigade) was preparing to make an attack on
Strip Trench using a whole battalion. Horne immediately telephoned 38th Division headquarters to
say that what he wanted that day was a small scale probe of the southern defences and not 'an
isolated attack by one battalion on point H'.56 A few hours later he went over to 38th Division
headquarters to discuss the situation and then ordered a night attack on Strip Trench to be
exploited the following day.57 This attack, timed for 2 am, failed to materialise. Corps demanded
to know why and so did Fourth Army; division asked brigade. Brigade said that orders arrived at
the battalion too late to be executed, the 14th Royal Welsh Fusiliers having reported by orderly
that trenches leading to the starting point of the attack had been so congested that they had failed
to get there in time.58
This was too much
for Lt.-Gen. Home. When Haig and Rawlinson visited XV Corps on the 9th,
he told them that he 'was very disappointed with the work of the 17th Division (Pilcher) and 38th
Division (Philipps)'. 'Both these officers have been removed,' Haig wrote in his diary that
evening. 'In the case of the latter division although the wood had been most adequately
bombarded [on 7 July], the division never entered the wood, and in the whole division the total
casualties for the 24 hours was under 150.'59
Maj.-Gen. Philipps
had in fact received his marching orders at 11 o'clock that morning. At the
suggestion of Fourth Army headquarters, Horne decided to put the 38th Division temporarily
under the command of Maj.- Gen. Watts, commander of the 7th Division, then in reserve. Watts
was given freedom to 'dispose of the 38th Division as he wished, keeping any brigades he
wanted, or using them as required'.6°
News of Ivor Philipps's
removal soon reached Lloyd George, the new Secretary of State for
War, in London. He wrote to his brother, William George, on 11 July giving tidings of the division,
which, he said, was doing 'brilliantly'. `Unfortunately,' he wrote, 'the general has broken down in
health and he returned home last night bringing with him his ADC Lieut. Gwilym Lloyd George.'61
