side of Tea Lane. British return fire caused many casualties and forced the attackers to move from shell-hole to shell-hole, eventually being pinned down in no man's land. The survivors withdrew after dark, rallying at Flers. I Battalion, Bavarian Infantry Regiment 5, with a company of Battalion 3, attached flame-thrower and bombing detachments, attacked eastwards towards the 56th Division, along Tea and Orchard trenches, where a bomber killed a British machine-gun crew, by throwing a grenade . A second artillery bombardment was fired at and the managed to take and gain a foothold. The position in the wood was abandoned by the , because the repulse of the 56th Division units, left them isolated and under increasing artillery-fire. Aftermath Analysis Lukin had wanted to defend Delville Wood with machine-guns and small detachments of infantry but prompt German counter-attacks prevented this; Tanner had needed every man for the defence. The British had eventually secured Longueval and Delville Wood in time for the formations to their north to advance and capture High Wood ready for the Flers–Courcelette and the later Somme battles. Over the southern part of the British front, there had been for a small "tongue" of ground a few miles deep. The Allies and Germans suffered many casualties in continuous piecemeal attacks and counter-attacks. Gallwitz recorded that from guns of the the Somme had been destroyed, captured or made unserviceable, along with the guns. In 2005, Prior and Wilson wrote that an obvious British remedy to the salient at Delville Wood was to move the right flank forward, yet only twenty attacks were made in this area, against the wood and to the left. The writers held that British commanders had failed to command and had neglected the troops who were frittered away, such that the attrition of British forces was worse than the effect on the Germans. It was speculated that this was perhaps a consequence of the inexperience of Haig and Rawlinson in handling forces vastly larger than the British peacetime Army. Prior and Wilson also wrote that divisions engaged divisions, most of which suffered casualties greater than to the fired by the British from September, despite shell-shortages and problems in transporting ammunition when rain had soaked the ground. German failings were also evident, particularly in counter-attacking to regain all lost ground, even when of little tactical value, which demonstrated that commanders on both sides had failed to