rain had become torrential. XVIII Corps attacks on the St Julien spur failed (27 August), while that day Inverness Copse (on the Gheluveld Plateau) resisted its fourth assault. Simpson writes that the large attacks on 27 August were, like those on 22 August, "no more successful than those before". Farrar-Hockley blames the attack on Haig's orders to "press the enemy" and on Neill Malcolm's "speaking savagely" to the corps commanders. The Official History writes that the attack resulted in "considerable further casualties and very little gain in ground". Plumer's biographer describes it as "a bloody fiasco" in which some of Gough's men were left standing up to their knees in water for up to ten hours before zero hour. Prior & Wilson write that Gough's troops were exhausted by now after repeated attacks. Gough ordered another attack for 31 August. Haig ordered Gough (28 August) to hand over command of II Corps effective early September, although he initially permitted him to make further limited attacks in the region of Inverness Copse until then which would facilitate the upcoming big push, but otherwise to train and rest his divisions ready to assist Plumer. However, when Gough proposed (30 August) to take this region on 3 September, Haig withheld permission as the weather conditions were not suitable. Rawlinson, who was highly sceptical about the likelihood of the campaign succeeding, told Wilson that the command change was being made because "even he (Haig) began to see that Goughie was quite unable to do the job" (Wilson diary 29 August and 5 September). Haig wrote (diary 7 September) "I decided to stop Gough from going on with ... little attacks" which Haig thought "wasteful". In early September Gough ordered XIX Corps to make small-scale attacks in the St Julien area. Not one of the fortified farmhouses was captured, and after the fourth attack Haig remonstrated with Gough. However, Gough protested (Haig diary, 9 September) that two of the divisions were soon to leave the salient, and that for the sake of their "training and morale" they should be made to retake ground which they had recently lost to counterattacks. Haig permitted a fourth, equally unsuccessful attack on 10 September. Kiggell (Haig diary 10 September) reported that "some of Gough's subordinates" did not give an honest answer as to the likely success of attacks and remarked to Neil Malcolm of the order to make only