Leggatt’s 156th Infantry Brigade was temporarily attached.  The latter brigade was given the important task of capturing Umbrella Hill and El Arish Redoubt.  Umbrella Hill was to be taken first, and as it was anticipated the enemy would keep up a strong artillery fire for a considerable time after the position had been taken, and that his fire would interfere with the assembly and advance of troops detailed for the second phase, the first phase was timed to start four hours earlier than the second.  For several days the guns had opened intense fire at midnight and again at 3 A.M. so that the enemy should not attach particular importance to our artillery activity on the night of action, and a creeping barrage nightly swept across No Man’s Land to clear off the chain of listening posts established 300 yards in front of the enemy’s trenches.  Some heavy banks of cloud moved across the sky when the Scottish Rifle Brigade assembled for the assault, but the moon shed sufficient light at intervals to enable the Scots to file through the gaps made in our wire and to form up on the tapes laid outside.  At 11 P.M. the 7th Scottish Rifles stormed Umbrella Hill with the greatest gallantry.  The first wave of some sixty-five officers and men was blown up by four large contact mines and entirely destroyed.  The second wave passed over the bodies of their comrades without a moment’s check and, moving through the wire smashed by our artillery, entered Umbrella Hill trenches and set about the Turks with their bayonets.  They had to clear a maze of trenches and dug-outs, but they bombed out of existence the machine-gunners opposing them and had settled the possession of Umbrella Hill in half an hour.

The 4th Royal Scots led the attack on El Arish Redoubt.  It was a bigger and noisier ‘show’ than the Royal Scots had had some months before, when in a ‘silent’ raid they killed with hatchets only, for the Scots had seen the condition of some of their dead left in Turkish hands and were taking retribution.  Not many Turks in El Arish Redoubt lived to relate that night’s story.  The Scots were rapidly in the redoubt and were rapidly through it, cleared up a nasty corner known as the ‘Little Devil,’ and were just about to shelter from the shells which were to answer their attack when they caught a brisk fire from a Bedouin hut.  A platoon leader disposed his men cleverly and rushed the hut, killing everybody in it and capturing two machine guns.  The vigorous resistance of the Turks on Umbrella Hill and El Arish Redoubt resulted in our having to bury over 350 enemy dead in these positions.