 II Corps with the 23rd and 38th divisions, was to be ready to move forward into the vacated assembly areas.In mid-June II Corps was detached and returned to GHQ reserve and the Reserve Army reduced to a cavalry formation, under the command of the Fourth Army, to give more discretion to Rawlinson as the man on the spot.In the evening of the First day on the Somme, 1 July 1916, the British Commander-in-Chief General Sir Douglas Haig relieved Rawlinson's Fourth Army of responsibility for the northern sector, placing the VIII and X Corps under Gough from on 2 July.