Timeline of key moments - 1st July, 1916
07:23 - 17th battalion Highland Light Infantry start moving across No man's land.
07:30 - The 16th battalion Highland Light Infantry begin their attack at Thiepval. The 2nd Gordon Highlanders in the south begin their attack on Mametz. The 15th Royal Scots move off on their attack towards Fricourt and Contalmaison. The four battalions of the Tyneside Scottish attack on both sides of La Boiselle.
07:34 - 16th Royal Scots (McCrae’s) begin their advance behind the 15th RS.
07:40 - 16 HLI cannot progress any further, survivors shelter in shell holes. By ten minutes after zero hour, they have lost half their strength.
07:52 - 1st KOSB Battalion attack under heavy machine gun fire and shelling at Beaumont Hamel.
07:55 - 2nd Gordon Highlanders reach the second enemy position at Shrine Alley by 7.55am but are stopped by enfilade fire to their left.
08:05 - 1st King’s Own Scottish Borderers are pinned down by machine gun fire with heavy casualties at Beaumont Hamel. The attack cannot progress.
08:15 - 17 HLI Leading lines advancing towards Hindenberg trench are mown down. Every company officer was a casualty.
08:30 - 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers attacking behind Liverpool and Manchester pals battalions go forward in the attack on Montauban in the South.
08:45 - 1st King’s Own Scottish Borderers war diary records "The attack ceased." 15th and 16th Royal Scots have pushed as far as Peake Trench towards Contalmaison, only to come under heavy German counter-attack.
09:00 - 17 HLI “It was now 9 o'clock and the Battalion casualties now amounted to 22 officers and 400 other ranks.”
The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion). Record of War Service, 1914-1918
09:15 - The Royal Newfoundland Regiment attack at Beaumont Hamel. Out of ca. 800 men going into action, more than 700 were killed, wounded or missing.
09:30 - 2nd Seaforth Highlanders advance against German held positions to the north of Beaumont Hamel.
10:15 - 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers take Montauban.
12:00 - Royal Scots are holding on in Wood Alley and Birch Tree trench but can’t take Contalmaison.
Drummer Ritchie of the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders sounds the charge in the battle for the German redoubt called The Quadrilateral to rally men on the verge of retreating. He will be awarded the VC for his heroism, as will Sergeant Turnbull of the 17 HLI helping to hold trenches in the Leipzig Redoubt. When Turnbull ran out of grenades, he took the enemy’s captured machine guns and turned them back on them. He was killed in a counter attack later that day.
14:00 - Many men injured and uninjured are trapped in shell holes in no man’s land, some try to try to fight back.
15:45 - The attempts of the 2nd and 3rd Tyneside Scottish to advance fail. They hold an enemy frontline trench at the rim of the giant Lochnagar mine crater under increasingly desperate conditions.
16:00 - 2nd Gordon Highlanders take Mametz.
17:00 - 17 HLI “At 5pm the shattered unit was ordered to consolidate the ground taken. This was done and two strong enemy counter attacks repulsed.”
Seaforths withdraw at about 5pm to their original front line positions south of the Quadrilateral. At this time there were about 40 men of the battalion left.