hampered preparations for the attack. The limited nature of the attack quickly became obvious to the German commanders. A German report on 30 July, recorded that captured officers said that the Australians made a fundamental mistake in trying to hold the German second trench, rather than falling back to the front trench and consolidating. When the 15th Australian Brigade was pinned down in no man's land, the continuity of the attack broke down and lost protection against flanking fire from the right, which enabled German troops to counter-attack, regain the first trench and cut off the Australian troops further forward. A German assessment of 16 December, called the attack "operationally and tactically senseless" and that prisoner interrogations revealed that the Australian troops were physically imposing but had "virtually no military discipline" and "no interest in soldiering as it was understood in Europe". A communiqué, released to the press by British GHQ, was not favourably received by the Australians. "Yesterday evening, south of Armentières, we carried out some important raids on a front of two miles in which Australian troops took part. About prisoners were captured". Australian casualties and doubts about the judgement of higher commanders, damaged relations between the AIF and the British, with doubts about the reliability of British troops spreading in Australian units. In 2008, Jeffrey Grey wrote that McCay also made errors in judgement that contributed to the result, citing McCay's order not to consolidate the initial gains and that poor planning, ineffective artillery support and Australian inexperience of Western Front conditions, contributed to the failure. A number of senior Australian officers were removed after the and the recuperation of the 5th Australian Division took until late summer, when it began trench-raiding. In October, the 6th Bavarian Reserve Division, with morale high after the defensive success at Fromelles, was sent to the Somme front and never recovered from the ordeal; Bavarian Reserve Regiment 16 spent ten days in the line and suffered . In 2012, Michael Senior wrote that the objective of the attack was contained in the First Army Operational Order 100 (15 July), Haking had ordered that the troops due to attack were to be told that Senior wrote that historians generally judged the attack to have failed in its objective, to prevent German troops being transferred to the Somme. Wilfid Miles, the British official historian, wrote that the IX Reserve Corps and the Guard