Facts are plain.

During afternoon Sanctuary Wood taken over by  1/5th Lincolns Royal Fusiliers. fourth company remained at battalion headquarters inside the wood itself.
 1.30 p.m. several high calibre shells fired into S.W. corner of wood, one falling directly into newly occupied trench 7. This trench contained machine-gun post,. Two men killed instantly, Privates Tom Burtwhistle from Scunthorpe and 18-year-old drummer Harold Laurence from Aswell Street in Louth. Both men now commemorated on the Menin Gate memorial to missing Ypres.
 Both men recorded as casualties in the 1/5th Lincolns War Diary

The wood was not a sanctuary