When was it OK to turn round and go back?

[pat]

This is something I have always wondered. You read numerous accounts of battles which go along the lines of: 1) within seconds of going over the top it is a complete shambles with a huge number killed or wounded straight away, 2) a few make it to the enemy wire and get cut down there 3) the person telling the story gets into a shell hole, waits til dark and goes back. Obviously these accounts can only be told by those who did make it back.

What I have always wondered is this. When it was obvious within seconds that the attack was going to fail, with massive waste of life, how far did people have to go before it was OK to take cover and wait til dark? Presumably if you took cover too quickly it would be considered cowardice, but it seems to have been accepted that at some point you would come back if you could. This seems to me to leave quite a lot to individual discretion.

I think the rules were, roughly, 1) you had to follow the officer until he was killed. 2) At this point the NCOs were expected to take over and you had to follow them until they got killed. 3) at this point individual privates were not expected to keep going, but if they did it was considered very heroic. Have I got this right? And if so was it actually written down in orders or was it just a sort of unwritten code of conduct?

I need hardly add I think they were all heroic. Its just something that has puzzled me.