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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Front Line, by John Masefield
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Old Front Line
+
+Author: John Masefield
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2007 [EBook #20616]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD FRONT LINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by K Nordquist, David Edwards, Jeannie Howse and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and alternate spelling in the    |
+    | original document have been preserved.                    |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this  |
+    | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this     |
+    | document.                                                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+                             THE
+
+                        OLD FRONT LINE
+
+                              BY
+
+                        JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+                 Author of "Gallipoli," etc.
+
+                           New York
+
+                    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+                             1918
+
+                    _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+                       COPYRIGHT, 1917
+
+                      By JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+     Set up and electrotyped. Published, December, 1917.
+                   Reprinted January, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+                              TO
+
+                        NEVILLE LYTTON
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                      FACING
+                                                        PAGE
+
+The Road up the Ancre Valley                              16
+
+Artillery Transport in Bapaume Road                       28
+
+Troops Moving to the Front                                38
+
+An Artillery Team                                         40
+
+View in Hamel                                             42
+
+The Ancre River                                           44
+
+The Ancre Opposite Hamel                                  48
+
+The Leipzig Salient                                       58
+
+Dugouts in La Boisselle                                   66
+
+La Boisselle                                              70
+
+Fricourt                                                  74
+
+Fricourt                                                  76
+
+Sandbags at Fricourt                                      78
+
+Mametz                                                    82
+
+Sleighs for the Wounded                                   88
+
+The Attack on La Boisselle                                94
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD FRONT LINE
+
+
+This description of the old front line, as it was when the Battle of
+the Somme began, may some day be of use. All wars end; even this war
+will some day end, and the ruins will be rebuilt and the field full of
+death will grow food, and all this frontier of trouble will be
+forgotten. When the trenches are filled in, and the plough has gone
+over them, the ground will not long keep the look of war. One summer
+with its flowers will cover most of the ruin that man can make, and
+then these places, from which the driving back of the enemy began,
+will be hard indeed to trace, even with maps. It is said that even now
+in some places the wire has been removed, the explosive salved, the
+trenches filled, and the ground ploughed with tractors. In a few
+years' time, when this war is a romance in memory, the soldier looking
+for his battlefield will find his marks gone. Centre Way, Peel Trench,
+Munster Alley, and these other paths to glory will be deep under the
+corn, and gleaners will sing at Dead Mule Corner.
+
+It is hoped that this description of the line will be followed by an
+account of our people's share in the battle. The old front line was
+the base from which the battle proceeded. It was the starting-place.
+The thing began there. It was the biggest battle in which our people
+were ever engaged, and so far it has led to bigger results than any
+battle of this war since the Battle of the Marne. It caused a great
+falling back of the enemy armies. It freed a great tract of France,
+seventy miles long, by from ten to twenty-five miles broad. It first
+gave the enemy the knowledge that he was beaten.
+
+Very many of our people never lived to know the result of even the
+first day's fighting. For then the old front line was the battlefield,
+and the No Man's Land the prize of the battle. They never heard the
+cheer of victory nor looked into an enemy trench. Some among them
+never even saw the No Man's Land, but died in the summer morning from
+some shell in the trench in the old front line here described.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a difficult thing to describe without monotony, for it varies so
+little. It is like describing the course of the Thames from Oxford to
+Reading, or of the Severn from Deerhurst to Lydney, or of the Hudson
+from New York to Tarrytown. Whatever country the rivers pass they
+remain water, bordered by shore. So our front-line trenches, wherever
+they lie, are only gashes in the earth, fenced by wire, beside a
+greenish strip of ground, pitted with shell-holes, which is fenced
+with thicker, blacker, but more tumbled wire on the other side. Behind
+this further wire is the parapet of the enemy front-line trench, which
+swerves to take in a hillock or to flank a dip, or to crown a slope,
+but remains roughly parallel with ours, from seventy to five hundred
+yards from it, for miles and miles, up hill and down dale. All the
+advantages of position and observation were in the enemy's hands, not
+in ours. They took up their lines when they were strong and our side
+weak, and in no place in all the old Somme position is our line better
+sited than theirs, though in one or two places the sites are nearly
+equal. Almost in every part of this old front our men had to go up
+hill to attack.
+
+If the description of this old line be dull to read, it should be
+remembered that it was dull to hold. The enemy had the lookout posts,
+with the fine views over France, and the sense of domination. Our men
+were down below with no view of anything but of stronghold after
+stronghold, just up above, being made stronger daily. And if the
+enemy had strength of position he had also strength of equipment, of
+men, of guns, and explosives of all kinds. He had all the advantages
+for nearly two years of war, and in all that time our old front line,
+whether held by the French or by ourselves, was nothing but a post to
+be endured, day in day out, in all weathers and under all fires, in
+doubt, difficulty, and danger, with bluff and makeshift and
+improvisation, till the tide could be turned. If it be dull to read
+about and to see, it was, at least, the old line which kept back the
+tide and stood the siege. It was the line from which, after all those
+months of war, the tide turned and the besieged became the attackers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To most of the British soldiers who took part in the Battle of the
+Somme, the town of Albert must be a central point in a reckoning of
+distances. It lies, roughly speaking, behind the middle of the line of
+that battle. It is a knot of roads, so that supports and supplies
+could and did move from it to all parts of the line during the battle.
+It is on the main road, and on the direct railway line from Amiens. It
+is by much the most important town within an easy march of the
+battlefield. It will be, quite certainly, the centre from which, in
+time to come, travellers will start to see the battlefield where such
+deeds were done by men of our race.
+
+It is not now (after three years of war and many bombardments) an
+attractive town; probably it never was. It is a small straggling town
+built of red brick along a knot of cross-roads at a point where the
+swift chalk-river Ancre, hardly more than a brook, is bridged and so
+channeled that it can be used for power. Before the war it contained a
+few small factories, including one for the making of sewing-machines.
+Its most important building was a big church built a few years ago,
+through the energy of a priest, as a shrine for the Virgin of Albert,
+a small, probably not very old image, about which strange stories are
+told. Before the war it was thought that this church would become a
+northern rival to Lourdes for the working of miraculous cures during
+the September pilgrimage. A gilded statue of the Virgin and Child
+stood on an iron stalk on the summit of the church tower. During a
+bombardment of the town at a little after three o'clock in the
+afternoon of Friday, January 15, 1915, a shell so bent the stalk that
+the statue bent down over the Place as though diving. Perhaps few of
+our soldiers will remember Albert for anything except this diving
+Virgin. Perhaps half of the men engaged in the Battle of the Somme
+passed underneath her as they marched up to the line, and, glancing
+up, hoped that she might not come down till they were past. From some
+one, French or English, a word has gone about that when she does fall
+the war will end. Others have said that French engineers have so fixed
+her with wire ropes that she cannot fall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From Albert four roads lead to the battlefield of the Somme:
+
+1. In a north-westerly direction to Auchonvillers and H�buterne.
+
+2. In a northerly direction to Authuille and Hamel.
+
+3. In a north-easterly direction to Pozi�res.
+
+4. In an easterly direction to Fricourt and Maricourt.
+
+Between the second and the third of these the little river Ancre runs
+down its broad, flat, well-wooded valley, much of which is a marsh
+through which the river (and man) have forced more than one channel.
+This river, which is a swift, clear, chalk stream, sometimes too deep
+and swift to ford, cuts the English sector of the battlefield into two
+nearly equal portions.
+
+Following the first of the four roads, one passes the wooded village
+of Martinsart, to the village of Auchonvillers, which lies among a
+clump of trees upon a ridge or plateau top. The road dips here, but
+soon rises again, and so, by a flat tableland, to the large village of
+H�buterne. Most of this road, with the exception of one little stretch
+near Auchonvillers, is hidden by high ground from every part of the
+battlefield. Men moving upon it cannot see the field.
+
+H�buterne, although close to the line and shelled daily and nightly
+for more than two years, was never the object of an attack in force,
+so that much of it remains. Many of its walls and parts of some of its
+roofs still stand, the church tower is in fair order, and no one
+walking in the streets can doubt that he is in a village. Before the
+war it was a prosperous village; then, for more than two years, it
+rang with the roar of battle and with the business of an army.
+Presently the tide of the war ebbed away from it and left it deserted,
+so that one may walk in it now, from end to end, without seeing a
+human being. It is as though the place had been smitten by the plague.
+Villages during the Black Death must have looked thus. One walks in
+the village expecting at every turn to meet a survivor, but there is
+none; the village is dead; the grass is growing in the street; the
+bells are silent; the beasts are gone from the byre and the ghosts
+from the church. Stealing about among the ruins and the gardens are
+the cats of the village, who have eaten too much man to fear him, but
+are now too wild to come to him. They creep about and eye him from
+cover and look like evil spirits.
+
+The second of the four roads passes out of Albert, crosses the railway
+at a sharp turn, over a bridge called Marmont Bridge, and runs
+northward along the valley of the Ancre within sight of the railway.
+Just beyond the Marmont Bridge there is a sort of lake or reservoir or
+catchment of the Ancre overflows, a little to the right of the road.
+By looking across this lake as he walks northward, the traveller can
+see some rolls of gentle chalk hill, just beyond which the English
+front line ran at the beginning of the battle.
+
+A little further on, at the top of a rise, the road passes the village
+of Aveluy, where there is a bridge or causeway over the Ancre valley.
+Aveluy itself, being within a mile and a half of enemy gun positions
+for nearly two years of war, is knocked about, and rather roofless and
+windowless. A cross-road leading to the causeway across the valley
+once gave the place some little importance.
+
+  [Illustration: The Road up the Ancre Valley through Aveluy Wood]
+
+Not far to the north of Aveluy, the road runs for more than a mile
+through the Wood of Aveluy, which is a well-grown plantation of trees
+and shrubs. This wood hides the marsh of the river from the traveller.
+Tracks from the road lead down to the marsh and across it by military
+causeways.
+
+On emerging from the wood, the road runs within hail of the railway,
+under a steep and high chalk bank partly copsed with scrub.
+Three-quarters of a mile from the wood it passes through the skeleton
+of the village of Hamel, which is now a few ruined walls of brick
+standing in orchards on a hillside. Just north of this village,
+crossing the road, the railway, and the river-valley, is the old
+English front line.
+
+The third of the four roads is one of the main roads of France. It is
+the state highway, laid on the line of a Roman road, from Albert to
+Bapaume. It is by far the most used and the most important of the
+roads crossing the battlefield. As it leads directly to Bapaume, which
+was one of the prizes of the victory, and points like a sword through
+the heart of the enemy positions it will stay in the memories of our
+soldiers as the main avenue of the battle.
+
+The road leaves Albert in a street of dingy and rather broken
+red-brick houses. After passing a corner crucifix it shakes itself
+free of the houses and rises slowly up a ridge of chalk hill about
+three hundred feet high. On the left of the road, this ridge, which is
+much withered and trodden by troops and horses, is called Usna Hill.
+On the right, where the grass is green and the chalk of the old
+communication trenches still white and clean, it is called Tara Hill.
+Far away on the left, along the line of the Usna Hill, one can see the
+Aveluy Wood.
+
+Looking northward from the top of the Usna-Tara Hill to the dip below
+it and along the road for a few yards up the opposite slope, one sees
+where the old English front line crossed the road at right angles. The
+enemy front line faced it at a few yards' distance, just about two
+miles from Albert town.
+
+The fourth of the four roads runs for about a mile eastwards from
+Albert, and then slopes down into a kind of gully or shallow valley,
+through which a brook once ran and now dribbles. The road crosses the
+brook-course, and runs parallel with it for a little while to a place
+where the ground on the left comes down in a slanting tongue and on
+the right rises steeply into a big hill. The ground of the tongue
+bears traces of human habitation on it, all much smashed and
+discoloured. This is the once pretty village of Fricourt. The hill on
+the right front at this point is the Fricourt Salient. The lines run
+round the salient and the road cuts across them.
+
+Beyond Fricourt, the road leaves another slanting tongue at some
+distance to its left. On this second tongue the village of Mametz once
+stood. Near here the road, having now cut across the salient, again
+crosses both sets of lines, and begins a long, slow ascent to a ridge
+or crest. From this point, for a couple of miles, the road is planted
+on each side with well-grown plane-trees, in some of which magpies
+have built their nests ever since the war began. At the top of the
+rise the road runs along the plateau top (under trees which show more
+and more plainly the marks of war) to a village so planted that it
+seems to stand in a wood. The village is built of red brick, and is
+rather badly broken by enemy shell fire, though some of the houses in
+it are still habitable. This is the village of Maricourt. Three or
+four hundred yards beyond Maricourt the road reaches the old English
+front line, at the eastern extremity of the English sector, as it was
+at the beginning of the battle.
+
+These four roads which lead to the centre and the wings of the
+battlefield were all, throughout the battle and for the months of war
+which preceded it, dangerous by daylight. All could be shelled by the
+map, and all, even the first, which was by much the best hidden of the
+four, could be seen, in places, from the enemy position. On some of
+the trees or tree stumps by the sides of the roads one may still see
+the "camouflage" by which these exposed places were screened from the
+enemy observers. The four roads were not greatly used in the months of
+war which preceded the battle. In those months, the front was too near
+to them, and other lines of supply and approach were more direct and
+safer. But there was always some traffic upon them of men going into
+the line or coming out, of ration parties, munition and water
+carriers, and ambulances. On all four roads many men of our race were
+killed. All, at some time, or many times, rang and flashed with
+explosions. Danger, death, shocking escape and firm resolve, went up
+and down those roads daily and nightly. Our men slept and ate and
+sweated and dug and died along them after all hardships and in all
+weathers. On parts of them, no traffic moved, even at night, so that
+the grass grew high upon them. Presently, they will be quiet country
+roads again, and tourists will walk at ease, where brave men once ran
+and dodged and cursed their luck, when the Battle of the Somme was
+raging.
+
+Then, indeed, those roads were used. Then the grass that had grown on
+some of them was trodden and crushed under. The trees and banks by the
+waysides were used to hide batteries, which roared all day and all
+night. At all hours and in all weathers the convoys of horses slipped
+and stamped along those roads with more shells for the ever-greedy
+cannon. At night, from every part of those roads, one saw a twilight
+of summer lightning winking over the high ground from the
+never-ceasing flashes of guns and shells. Then there was no quiet, but
+a roaring, a crashing, and a screaming from guns, from shells bursting
+and from shells passing in the air. Then, too, on the two roads to the
+east of the Ancre River, the troops for the battle moved up to the
+line. The battalions were played by their bands through Albert, and up
+the slope of Usna Hill to Pozi�res and beyond, or past Fricourt and
+the wreck of Mametz to Montauban and the bloody woodland near it.
+Those roads then were indeed paths of glory leading to the grave.
+
+During the months which preceded the Battle of the Somme, other roads
+behind our front lines were more used than these. Little villages, out
+of shell fire, some miles from the lines, were then of more use to us
+than Albert. Long after we are gone, perhaps, stray English tourists,
+wandering in Picardy, will see names scratched in a barn, some mark or
+notice on a door, some sign-post, some little line of graves, or hear,
+on the lips of a native, some slang phrase of English, learned long
+before in the wartime, in childhood, when the English were there. All
+the villages behind our front were thronged with our people. There
+they rested after being in the line and there they established their
+hospitals and magazines. It may be said, that men of our race died in
+our cause in every village within five miles of the front. Wherever
+the traveller comes upon a little company of our graves, he will know
+that he is near the site of some old hospital or clearing station,
+where our men were brought in from the line.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So much for the roads by which our men marched to this battlefield.
+Near the lines they had to leave the roads for the shelter of some
+communication trench or deep cut in the mud, revetted at the sides
+with wire to hinder it from collapsing inwards. By these deep narrow
+roads, only broad enough for marching in single file, our men passed
+to "the front," to the line itself. Here and there, in recesses in the
+trench, under roofs of corrugated iron covered with sandbags, they
+passed the offices and the stores of war, telephonists, battalion
+headquarters, dumps of bombs, barbed wire, rockets, lights,
+machine-gun ammunition, tins, jars, and cases. Many men, passing these
+things as they went "in" for the first time, felt with a sinking of
+the heart, that they were leaving all ordered and arranged things,
+perhaps forever, and that the men in charge of these stores enjoyed,
+by comparison, a life like a life at home.
+
+Much of the relief and munitioning of the fighting lines was done at
+night. Men going into the lines saw little of where they were going.
+They entered the gash of the communication trench, following the load
+on the back of the man in front, but seeing perhaps nothing but the
+shape in front, the black walls of the trench, and now and then some
+gleam of a star in the water under foot. Sometimes as they marched
+they would see the starshells, going up and bursting like rockets, and
+coming down With a wavering slow settling motion, as white and bright
+as burning magnesium wire, shedding a kind of dust of light upon the
+trench and making the blackness intense when they went out. These
+lights, the glimmer in the sky from the enemy's guns, and now and then
+the flash of a shell, were the things seen by most of our men on their
+first going in.
+
+In the fire trench they saw little more than the parapet. If work were
+being done in the No Man's Land, they still saw little save by these
+lights that floated and fell from the enemy and from ourselves. They
+could see only an array of stakes tangled with wire, and something
+distant and dark which might be similar stakes, or bushes, or men, in
+front of what could only be the enemy line. When the night passed, and
+those working outside the trench had to take shelter, they could see
+nothing, even at a loophole or periscope, but the greenish strip of
+ground, pitted with shell-holes and fenced with wire, running up to
+the enemy line. There was little else for them to see, looking to the
+front, for miles and miles, up hill and down dale.
+
+The soldiers who held this old front line of ours saw this grass and
+wire day after day, perhaps, for many months. It was the limit of
+their world, the horizon of their landscape, the boundary. What
+interest there was in their life was the speculation, what lay beyond
+that wire, and what the enemy was doing there. They seldom saw an
+enemy. They heard his songs and they were stricken by his missiles,
+but seldom saw more than, perhaps, a swiftly moving cap at a gap in
+the broken parapet, or a grey figure flitting from the light of a
+starshell. Aeroplanes brought back photographs of those unseen lines.
+Sometimes, in raids in the night, our men visited them and brought
+back prisoners; but they remained mysteries and unknown.
+
+In the early morning of the 1st of July, 1916, our men looked at them
+as they showed among the bursts of our shells. Those familiar heaps,
+the lines, were then in a smoke of dust full of flying clods and
+shards and gleams of fire. Our men felt that now, in a few minutes,
+they would see the enemy and know what lay beyond those parapets and
+probe the heart of that mystery. So, for the last half-hour, they
+watched and held themselves ready, while the screaming of the shells
+grew wilder and the roar of the bursts quickened into a drumming. Then
+as the time drew near, they looked a last look at that unknown
+country, now almost blotted in the fog of War, and saw the flash of
+our shells, breaking a little further off as the gunners "lifted," and
+knew that the moment had come. Then for one wild confused moment they
+knew that they were running towards that unknown land, which they
+could still see in the dust ahead. For a moment, they saw the parapet
+with the wire in front of it, and began, as they ran, to pick out in
+their minds a path through that wire. Then, too often, to many of
+them, the grass that they were crossing flew up in shards and sods and
+gleams of fire from the enemy shells, and those runners never reached
+the wire, but saw, perhaps, a flash, and the earth rushing nearer, and
+grasses against the sky, and then saw nothing more at all, for ever
+and for ever and for ever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It may be some years before those whose fathers, husbands and brothers
+were killed in this great battle, may be able to visit the battlefield
+where their dead are buried. Perhaps many of them, from brooding on
+the map, and from dreams and visions in the night, have in their minds
+an image or picture of that place. The following pages may help some
+few others, who have not already formed that image, to see the scene
+as it appears to-day. What it was like on the day of battle cannot be
+imagined by those who were not there.
+
+It was a day of an intense blue summer beauty, full of roaring,
+violence, and confusion of death, agony, and triumph, from dawn till
+dark. All through that day, little rushes of the men of our race went
+towards that No Man's Land from the bloody shelter of our trenches.
+Some hardly left our trenches, many never crossed the green space,
+many died in the enemy wire, many had to fall back. Others won across
+and went further, and drove the enemy from his fort, and then back
+from line to line and from one hasty trenching to another, till the
+Battle of the Somme ended in the falling back of the enemy army.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those of our men who were in the line at H�buterne, at the extreme
+northern end of the battlefield of the Somme, were opposite the enemy
+salient of Gommecourt. This was one of those projecting fortresses or
+flankers, like the Leipzig, Ovillers, and Fricourt, with which the
+enemy studded and strengthened his front line. It is doubtful if any
+point in the line in France was stronger than this point of
+Gommecourt. Those who visit it in future times may be surprised that
+such a place was so strong.
+
+All the country there is gentler and less decided than in the southern
+parts of the battlefield. H�buterne stands on a plateau-top; to the
+east of it there is a gentle dip down to a shallow hollow or valley;
+to the east of this again there is a gentle rise to higher ground, on
+which the village of Gommecourt stood. The church of Gommecourt is
+almost exactly one mile northeast and by north from the church at
+H�buterne; both churches being at the hearts of their villages.
+
+Seen from our front line at H�buterne, Gommecourt is little more than
+a few red-brick buildings, standing in woodland on a rise of ground.
+Wood hides the village to the north, the west, and the southwest. A
+big spur of woodland, known as Gommecourt Park, thrusts out boldly
+from the village towards the plateau on which the English lines stood.
+This spur, strongly fortified by the enemy, made the greater part of
+the salient in the enemy line. The landscape away from the wood is not
+in any way remarkable, except that it is open, and gentle, and on a
+generous scale. Looking north from our position at H�buterne there is
+the snout of the woodland salient; looking south there is the green
+shallow shelving hollow or valley which made the No Man's Land for
+rather more than a mile. It is just such a gentle waterless hollow,
+like a dried-up river-bed, as one may see in several places in chalk
+country in England, but it is unenclosed land, and therefore more open
+and seemingly on a bigger scale than such a landscape would be in
+England, where most fields are small and fenced. Our old front line
+runs where the ground shelves or glides down into the valley; the
+enemy front line runs along the gentle rise up from the valley. The
+lines face each other across the slopes. To the south, the slope on
+which the enemy line stands is very slight.
+
+  [Illustration: Artillery Transport crossing a Trench Bridge into
+  the Bapaume Road]
+
+The impression given by this tract of land once held by the enemy is
+one of graceful gentleness. The wood on the little spur, even now, has
+something green about it. The village, once almost within the wood,
+wrecked to shatters as it is, has still a charm of situation. In the
+distance behind Gommecourt there is some ill-defined rising ground
+forming gullies and ravines. On these rises are some dark clumps of
+woodland, one of them called after the nightingales, which perhaps
+sing there this year, in what is left of their home. There is nothing
+now to show that this quiet landscape was one of the tragical places
+of this war.
+
+The whole field of the Somme is chalk hill and downland, like similar
+formations in England. It has about it, in every part of it, certain
+features well known to every one who has ever travelled in a chalk
+country. These features occur even in the gentle, rolling, and not
+strongly marked sector near H�buterne. Two are very noticeable, the
+formation almost everywhere of those steep, regular banks or terraces,
+which the French call remblais and our own farmers lynchets, and the
+presence, in nearly all parts of the field, of roads sunken between
+two such banks into a kind of narrow gully or ravine. It is said, that
+these remblais or lynchets, which may be seen in English chalk
+countries, as in the Dunstable Downs, in the Chiltern Hills, and in
+many parts of Berkshire and Wiltshire, are made in each instance, in a
+short time, by the ploughing away from the top and bottom of any
+difficult slope. Where two slopes adjoin, such ploughing steepens the
+valley between them into a gully, which, being always unsown, makes a
+track through the crops when they are up. Sometimes, though less
+frequently, the farmer ploughs away from a used track on quite flat
+land, and by doing this on both sides of the track, he makes the track
+a causeway or ridge-way, slightly raised above the adjoining fields.
+This type of raised road or track can be seen in one or two parts of
+the battlefield (just above Hamel and near Pozi�res for instance), but
+the hollow or sunken road and the steep remblai or lynchet are
+everywhere. One may say that no quarter of a mile of the whole field
+is without one or other of them. The sunken roads are sometimes very
+deep. Many of our soldiers, on seeing them, have thought that they
+were cuttings made, with great labour, through the chalk, and that the
+remblais or lynchets were piled up and smoothed for some unknown
+purpose by primitive man. Probably it will be found, that in every
+case they are natural slopes made sharper by cultivation. Two or three
+of these lynchets and sunken roads cross the shallow valley of the No
+Man's Land near H�buterne. By the side of one of them, a line of
+Sixteen Poplars, now ruined, made a landmark between the lines.
+
+The line continues (with some slight eastward trendings, but without a
+change in its gentle quiet) southwards from this point for about a
+mile to a slight jut, or salient in the enemy line. This jut was known
+by our men as the Point, and a very spiky point it was to handle. From
+near the Point on our side of No Man's Land, a bank or lynchet, topped
+along its edge with trees, runs southwards for about a mile. In four
+places, the trees about this lynchet grow in clumps or copses, which
+our men called after the four Evangelists, John, Luke, Mark, and
+Matthew. This bank marks the old English front line between the Point
+and the Serre Road a mile to the south of it. Behind this English
+line are several small copses, on ground which very gently rises
+towards the crest of the plateau a mile to the west. In front of most
+of this part of our line, the ground rises towards the enemy trenches,
+so that one can see little to the front, but the slope up. The No
+Man's Land here is not green, but as full of shell-holes and the ruin
+of battle as any piece of the field. Directly between Serre and the
+Matthew Copse, where the lines cross a rough lump of ground, the enemy
+parapet is whitish from the chalk. The whitish parapet makes the
+skyline to observers in the English line. Over that parapet, some
+English battalions made one of the most splendid charges of the
+battle, in the heroic attack on Serre four hundred yards beyond.
+
+To the right of our front at Matthew Copse the ground slopes southward
+a little, past what may once have been a pond or quarry, but is now a
+pit in the mud, to the Serre road. Here one can look up the muddy road
+to the hamlet of Serre, where the wrecks of some brick buildings stand
+in a clump of tree stumps, or half-right down a God-forgotten kind of
+glen, blasted by fire to the look of a moor in hell. A few rampikes of
+trees standing on one side of this glen give the place its name of Ten
+Tree Alley. Immediately to the south of the Serre road, the ground
+rises into one of the many big chalk spurs, which thrust from the main
+H�buterne plateau towards the Ancre Valley. The spur at this point
+runs east and west, and the lines cross it from north and south. They
+go up it side by side, a hundred and fifty yards apart, with a
+greenish No Man's Land between them. The No Man's Land, as usual, is
+the only part of all this chalk spur that is not burnt, gouged,
+pocked, and pitted with shell fire. It is, however, enough marked by
+the war to be bad going. When they are well up the spur, the lines
+draw nearer, and at the highest point of the spur they converge in one
+of the terrible places of the battlefield.
+
+For months before the battle began, it was a question here, which side
+should hold the highest point of the spur. Right at the top of the
+spur there is one patch of ground, measuring, it may be, two hundred
+yards each way, from which one can see a long way in every direction.
+From this patch, the ground droops a little towards the English side
+and stretches away fairly flat towards the enemy side, but one can see
+far either way, and to have this power of seeing, both sides fought
+desperately.
+
+Until the beginning of the war, this spur of ground was corn-land,
+like most of the battlefield. Unfenced country roads crossed it. It
+was a quiet, lonely, prosperous ploughland, stretching for miles, up
+and down, in great sweeping rolls and folds, like our own chalk
+downlands. It had one feature common to all chalk countries; it was a
+land of smooth expanses. Before the war, all this spur was a smooth
+expanse, which passed in a sweep from the slope to the plateau, over
+this crown of summit.
+
+To-day, the whole of the summit (which is called the Redan Ridge), for
+all its two hundred yards, is blown into pits and craters from twenty
+to fifty feet deep, and sometimes fifty yards long. These pits and
+ponds in rainy weather fill up with water, which pours from one pond
+into another, so that the hill-top is loud with the noise of the
+brooks. For many weeks, the armies fought for this patch of hill. It
+was all mined, counter-mined, and re-mined, and at each explosion the
+crater was fought for and lost and won. It cannot be said that either
+side won that summit till the enemy was finally beaten from all that
+field, for both sides conquered enough to see from. On the enemy side,
+a fortification of heaped earth was made; on our side, castles were
+built of sandbags filled with flint. These strongholds gave both
+sides enough observation. The works face each other across the ponds.
+The sandbags of the English works have now rotted, and flag about like
+the rags of uniform or like withered grass. The flint and chalk laid
+bare by their rotting look like the grey of weathered stone, so that,
+at a little distance, the English works look old and noble, as though
+they were the foundations of some castle long since fallen under Time.
+
+To the right, that is to the southward, from these English castles
+there is a slope of six hundred yards into a valley or gully. The
+slope is not in any way remarkable or seems not to be, except that the
+ruin of a road, now barely to be distinguished from the field, runs
+across it. The opposing lines of trenches go down the slope, much as
+usual, with the enemy line above on a slight natural glacis. Behind
+this enemy line is the bulk of the spur, which is partly white from
+up-blown chalk, partly burnt from months of fire, and partly faintly
+green from recovering grass. A little to the right or south, on this
+bulk of spur, there are the stumps of trees and no grass at all,
+nothing but upturned chalk and burnt earth. On the battlefield of the
+Somme, these are the marks of a famous place.
+
+The valley into which the slope descends is a broadish gentle opening
+in the chalk hills, with a road running at right angles to the lines
+of trenches at the bottom of it. As the road descends, the valley
+tightens in, and just where the enemy line crosses it, it becomes a
+narrow deep glen or gash, between high and steep banks of chalk. Well
+within the enemy position and fully seven hundred yards from our line,
+another such glen or gash runs into this glen, at right angles. At
+this meeting place of the glens is or was the village of Beaumont
+Hamel, which the enemy said could never be taken.
+
+For the moment it need not be described; for it was not seen by many
+of our men in the early stages of the battle. In fact our old line was
+at least five hundred yards outside it. But all our line in the valley
+here was opposed to the village defences, and the fighting at this
+point was fierce and terrible, and there are some features in the No
+Man's Land just outside the village which must be described. These
+features run parallel with our line right down to the road in the
+valley, and though they are not features of great tactical importance,
+like the patch of summit above, where the craters are, or like the
+windmill at Pozi�res, they were the last things seen by many brave
+Irish and Englishmen, and cannot be passed lightly by.
+
+The features are a lane, fifty or sixty yards in front of our front
+trench, and a remblai or lynchet fifty or sixty yards in front of the
+lane.
+
+The lane is a farmer's track leading from the road in the valley to
+the road on the spur. It runs almost north and south, like the lines
+of trenches, and is about five hundred yards long. From its start in
+the valley-road to a point about two hundred yards up the spur it is
+sunken below the level of the field on each side of it. At first the
+sinking is slight, but it swiftly deepens as it goes up hill. For more
+than a hundred yards it lies between banks twelve or fifteen feet
+deep. After this part the banks die down into insignificance, so that
+the road is nearly open. The deep part, which is like a very deep,
+broad, natural trench, was known to our men as the Sunken Road. The
+banks of this sunken part are perpendicular. Until recently, they were
+grown over with a scrub of dwarf beech, ash, and sturdy saplings, now
+mostly razed by fire. In the road itself our men built up walls of
+sandbags to limit the effects of enemy shell fire. From these defences
+steps cut in the chalk of the bank lead to the field above, where
+there were machine-gun pits.
+
+The field in front of the lane (where these pits were) is a fairly
+smooth slope for about fifty yards. Then there is the lynchet or
+remblai, like a steep cliff, from three to twelve feet high, hardly to
+be noticed from above until the traveller is upon it. Below this
+lynchet is a fairly smooth slope, so tilted that it slopes down to the
+right towards the valley road, and slopes up to the front towards the
+enemy line. Looking straight to the front from the Sunken Road our men
+saw no sudden dip down at the lynchet, but a continuous grassy field,
+at first flat, then slowly rising towards the enemy parapet. The line
+of the lynchet-top merges into the slope behind it, so that it is not
+seen. The enemy line thrusts out in a little salient here, so as to
+make the most of a little bulge of ground which was once wooded and
+still has stumps. The bulge is now a heap and ruin of burnt and
+tumbled mud and chalk. To reach it our men had to run across the flat
+from the Sunken Road, slide down the bank of the lynchet, and then run
+up the glacis to the parapet.
+
+The Sunken Road was only held by our men as an advanced post and
+"jumping off" (or attacking) point. Our line lay behind it on a higher
+part of the spur, which does not decline gradually into the valley
+road, but breaks off in a steep bank cut by our soldiers into a flight
+of chalk steps. These steps gave to all this part of the line the
+name of Jacob's Ladder. From the top of Jacob's Ladder there is a good
+view of the valley road running down into Beaumont Hamel. To the right
+there is a big steep knoll of green hill bulking up to the south of
+the valley, and very well fenced with enemy wire. All the land to the
+right or south of Jacob's Ladder is this big green hill, which is very
+steep, irregular, and broken with banks, and so ill-adapted for
+trenching that we were forced to make our line further from the enemy
+than is usual on the front. The front trenches here are nearly five
+hundred yards apart. As far as the hill-top the enemy line has a great
+advantage of position. To reach it our men had to cross the open and
+ascend a slope which gave neither dead ground nor cover to front or
+flank. Low down the hill, running parallel with the road, is a little
+lynchet, topped by a few old hawthorn bushes. All this bit of the old
+front line was the scene of a most gallant attack by our men on the
+1st of July. Those who care may see it in the official cinematograph
+films of the Battle of the Somme.
+
+  [Illustration: Troops moving to the Front in the Dust of the
+  Summer Fighting]
+
+Right at the top of the hill there is a dark enclosure of wood,
+orchard, and plantation, with several fairly well preserved red-brick
+buildings in it. This is the plateau-village of Auchonvillers. On the
+slopes below it, a couple of hundred yards behind Jacob's Ladder,
+there is a little round clump of trees. Both village and clump make
+conspicuous landmarks. The clump was once the famous English
+machine-gun post of the Bowery, from which our men could shoot down
+the valley into Beaumont Hamel.
+
+The English line goes up the big green hill, in trenches and saps of
+reddish clay, to the plateau or tableland at the top. Right up on the
+top, well behind our front line and close to one of our communication
+trenches, there is a good big hawthorn bush, in which a magpie has
+built her nest. This bush, which is strangely beautiful in the spring,
+has given to the plateau the name of the Hawthorn Ridge.
+
+Just where the opposing lines reach the top of the Ridge they both
+bend from their main north and south direction towards the southeast,
+and continue in that course for several miles. At the point or salient
+of the bending, in the old enemy position, there is a crater of a mine
+which the English sprang in the early morning of the 1st of July. This
+is the crater of the mine of Beaumont Hamel. Until recently it was
+supposed to be the biggest crater ever blown by one explosion. It is
+not the deepest: one or two others near La Boisselle are deeper, but
+none on the Somme field comes near it in bigness and squalor. It is
+like the crater of a volcano, vast, ragged, and irregular, about one
+hundred and fifty yards long, one hundred yards across, and
+twenty-five yards deep. It is crusted and scabbed with yellowish
+tetter, like sulphur or the rancid fat on meat. The inside has rather
+the look of meat, for it is reddish and all streaked and scabbed with
+this pox and with discoloured chalk. A lot of it trickles and oozes
+like sores discharging pus, and this liquid gathers in holes near the
+bottom, and is greenish and foul and has the look of dead eyes staring
+upwards.
+
+  [Illustration: An Artillery Team taking the Bank]
+
+All that can be seen of it from the English line is a disarrangement
+of the enemy wire and parapet. It is a hole in the ground which cannot
+be seen except from quite close at hand. At first sight, on looking
+into it, it is difficult to believe that it was the work of man; it
+looks so like nature in her evil mood. It is hard to imagine that only
+three years ago that hill was cornfield, and the site of the chasm
+grew bread. After that happy time, the enemy bent his line there and
+made the salient a stronghold, and dug deep shelters for his men in
+the walls of his trenches; the marks of the dugouts are still plain in
+the sides of the pit. Then, on the 1st of July, when the explosion
+was to be a signal for the attack, and our men waited in the trenches
+for the spring, the belly of the chalk was heaved, and chalk, clay,
+dugouts, gear, and enemy, went up in a dome of blackness full of
+pieces, and spread aloft like a toadstool, and floated, and fell down.
+
+From the top of the Hawthorn Ridge, our soldiers could see a great
+expanse of chalk downland, though the falling of the hill kept them
+from seeing the enemy's position. That lay on the slope of the ridge,
+somewhere behind the wire, quite out of sight from our lines. Looking
+out from our front line at this salient, our men saw the enemy wire
+almost as a skyline. Beyond this line, the ground dipped towards
+Beaumont Hamel (which was quite out of sight in the valley) and rose
+again sharply in the steep bulk of Beaucourt spur. Beyond this lonely
+spur, the hills ranked and ran, like the masses of a moor, first the
+high ground above Miraumont, and beyond that the high ground of the
+Loupart Wood, and away to the east the bulk that makes the left bank
+of the Ancre River. What trees there are in this moorland were not
+then all blasted. Even in Beaumont Hamel some of the trees were green.
+The trees in the Ancre River Valley made all that marshy meadow like
+a forest. Looking out on all this, the first thought of the soldier
+was that here he could really see something of the enemy's ground.
+
+  [Illustration: A View in Hamel]
+
+It is true, that from this hill-top much land, then held by the enemy,
+could be seen, but very little that was vital to the enemy could be
+observed. His lines of supply and support ran in ravines which we
+could not see; his batteries lay beyond crests, his men were in hiding
+places. Just below us on the lower slopes of this Hawthorn Ridge he
+had one vast hiding place which gave us a great deal of trouble. This
+was a gully or ravine, about five hundred yards long, well within his
+position, running (roughly speaking) at right angles with his front
+line. Probably it was a steep and deep natural fold made steeper and
+deeper by years of cultivation. It is from thirty to forty feet deep,
+and about as much across at the top; it has abrupt sides, and thrusts
+out two forks to its southern side. These forks give it the look of a
+letter +Y+ upon the maps, for which reason both the French and
+ourselves called the place the "Ravin en Y" or "Y Ravine." Part of the
+southernmost fork was slightly open to observation from our lines; the
+main bulk of the gully was invisible to us, except from the air.
+
+Whenever the enemy has had a bank of any kind, at all screened from
+fire, he has dug into it for shelter. In the Y Ravine, which provided
+these great expanses of banks, he dug himself shelters of unusual
+strength and size. He sank shafts into the banks, tunnelled long
+living rooms, both above and below the gully-bottom, linked the rooms
+together with galleries, and cut hatchways and bolting holes to lead
+to the surface as well as to the gully. All this work was securely
+done, with balks of seasoned wood, iron girders, and concreting. Much
+of it was destroyed by shell fire during the battle, but much not hit
+by shells is in good condition to-day even after the autumn rains and
+the spring thaw. The galleries which lead upwards and outwards from
+this underground barracks to the observation posts and machine-gun
+emplacements in the open air, are cunningly planned and solidly made.
+The posts and emplacements to which they led are now, however, (nearly
+all) utterly destroyed by our shell fire.
+
+In this gully barracks, and in similar shelters cut in the chalk of
+the steeper banks near Beaumont Hamel, the enemy could hold ready
+large numbers of men to repel an attack or to make a counter-attack.
+They lived in these dugouts in comparative safety and in moderate
+comfort. When our attacks came during the early months of the battle,
+they were able to pass rapidly and safely by these underground
+galleries from one part of the position to another, bringing their
+machine guns with them. However, the Ravine was presently taken and
+the galleries and underground shelters were cleared. In one
+underground room in that barracks, nearly fifty of the enemy were
+found lying dead in their bunks, all unwounded, and as though asleep.
+They had been killed by the concussion of the air following on the
+burst of a big shell at the entrance.
+
+  [Illustration: The Ancre River]
+
+One other thing may be mentioned about this Hawthorn Ridge. It runs
+parallel with the next spur (the Beaucourt spur) immediately to the
+north of it, then in the enemy's hands. Just over the crest of this
+spur, out of sight from our lines, is a country road, well banked and
+screened, leading from Beaucourt to Serre. This road was known by our
+men as Artillery Lane, because it was used as a battery position by
+the enemy. The wrecks of several of his guns lie in the mud there
+still. From the crest in front of this road there is a view to the
+westward, so wonderful that those who see it realize at once that the
+enemy position on the Ridge, which, at a first glance, seems badly
+sited for observation, is, really, well placed. From this crest, the
+Ridge-top, all our old front line, and nearly all the No Man's Land
+upon it, is exposed, and plainly to be seen. On a reasonably clear
+day, no man could leave our old line unseen from this crest. No
+artillery officer, correcting the fire of a battery, could ask for a
+better place from which to watch the bursts of his shells. This crest,
+in front of the lane of enemy guns, made it possible for the enemy
+batteries to drop shells upon our front line trenches before all the
+men were out of them at the instant of the great attack.
+
+The old English line runs along the Hawthorn Ridge-top for some
+hundreds of yards, and then crosses a dip or valley, which is the
+broad, fanshaped, southern end of a fork of Y Ravine. A road runs, or
+ran, down this dip into the Y Ravine. It is not now recognisable as a
+road, but the steep banks at each side of it, and some bluish
+metalling in the shell holes, show that one once ran there. These
+banks are covered with hawthorn bushes. A remblai, also topped with
+hawthorn, lies a little to the north of this road.
+
+From this lynchet, looking down the valley into the Y Ravine, the
+enemy position is saddle-shaped, low in the middle, where the Y
+Ravine narrows, and rising to right and left to a good height. Chalk
+hills from their form often seem higher than they really are,
+especially in any kind of haze. Often they have mystery and nearly
+always beauty. For some reason, the lumping rolls of chalk hill rising
+up on each side of this valley have a menace and a horror about them.
+One sees little of the enemy position from the English line. It is now
+nothing but a track of black wire in front of some burnt and battered
+heapings of the ground, upon which the grass and the flowers have only
+now begun to push. At the beginning of the battle it must have been
+greener and fresher, for then the fire of hell had not come upon it;
+but even then, even in the summer day, that dent in the chalk leading
+to the Y Ravine must have seemed a threatening and forbidding place.
+
+Our line goes along the top of the ridge here, at a good distance from
+the enemy line. It is dug on the brow of the plateau in reddish earth
+on the top of chalk. It is now much as our men left it for the last
+time. The trench-ladders by which they left it are still in place in
+the bays of the trenches. All the outer, or jumping-off, trenches, are
+much destroyed by enemy shell fire, which was very heavy here from
+both sides of the Ancre River. A quarter of a mile to the southeast
+of the Y Ravine the line comes within sight of the great gap which
+cuts the battlefield in two. This gap is the valley of the Ancre
+River, which runs here beneath great spurs of chalk, as the Thames
+runs at Goring and Pangbourne. On the lonely hill, where this first
+comes plainly into view, as one travels south along the line, there
+used to be two bodies of English soldiers, buried once, and then
+unburied by the rain. They lay in the No Man's Land, outside the
+English wire, in what was then one of the loneliest places in the
+field. The ruin of war lay all round them.
+
+There are many English graves (marked, then, hurriedly, by the man's
+rifle thrust into the ground) in that piece of the line. On a windy
+day, these rifles shook in the wind as the bayonets bent to the blast.
+The field testaments of both men lay open beside them in the mud. The
+rain and the mud together had nearly destroyed the little books, but
+in each case it was possible to read one text. In both cases, the text
+which remained, read with a strange irony. The one book, beside a
+splendid youth, cut off in his promise, was open at a text which ran,
+"And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty
+in word and in deed." The other book, beside one who had been killed
+in an attack which did not succeed at the moment, but which led to the
+falling back of the enemy nation from many miles of conquered ground,
+read even more strangely. It was open at the eighty-ninth Psalm, and
+the only legible words were, "Thou hast broken down all his hedges;
+thou hast brought his strong holds to ruin."
+
+  [Illustration: The Ancre opposite Hamel]
+
+From the hill-top where these graves are the lines droop down towards
+the second of the four roads, which runs here in the Ancre valley
+parallel with the river and the railway. The slope is steep and the
+ground broken with shallow gullies and lynchets. Well down towards the
+river, just above the road, a flattish piece of land leads to a ravine
+with steep and high banks. This flattish land, well within the enemy
+line, was the scene of very desperate fighting on the 1st of July.
+
+Looking at the enemy line in front of our own line here, one sees
+little but a gentle crest, protected by wire, in front of another
+gentle crest, also wired, with other gentle crests beyond and to the
+left. To the right there is a blur of gentle crests behind tree-tops.
+It is plain from a glance that gullies run irregularly into the spurs
+here, and make the defence easy. All through the fighting here, it
+happened too often that the taking of one crest only meant that the
+winners were taken in flank by machine guns in the crest beyond, and
+(in this bit of the line) by other guns on the other side of the
+river.
+
+Well to the back of the English line here, on the top of the plateau,
+level with Auchonvillers, some trees stand upon the skyline, with the
+tower of a church, battered, but not destroyed, like the banner of
+some dauntless one, a little to the west of the wood. The wood shows
+marks of shelling, but nothing like the marks on the woods attacked by
+our own men. There are signs of houses among the trees, and the line
+of a big wood to the east of them.
+
+This church and the buildings near it are parts of Mesnil village,
+most of which lies out of sight on the further side of the crest. They
+are conspicuous landmarks, and can be made out from many parts of the
+field. The chalk scarp on which they stand is by much the most
+beautiful thing on the battlefield, and the sight of Mesnil church
+tower on the top of it is most pleasant. That little banner stood all
+through the war, and not all the guns of the enemy could bring it
+down. Many men in the field near Mesnil, enduring the mud of the thaw,
+and the lice, wet, and squalor of dugouts near the front, were cheered
+by that church tower. "For all their bloody talk the bastards
+couldn't bring it down."
+
+The hill with the lines upon it slopes steeply down to the valley of
+the Ancre. Just where the lines come to the valley, the ground drops
+abruptly, in a cliff or steep bank, twenty-five feet high, to the
+road.
+
+Our line on this slope covers the village of Hamel, which lies just
+behind the line, along the road and on the hill-slopes above it. The
+church and churchyard of Hamel, both utterly ruined, lie well up the
+hill in such a position that they made good posts from which our
+snipers could shoot across the river at men in the Schwaben Redoubt.
+Crocuses, snowdrops, and a purple flower once planted on the graves of
+the churchyard, but now escaped into the field, blossomed here in this
+wintry spring, long before any other plant on the battlefield was in
+bud.
+
+Hamel in peace time may have contained forty houses, some shatters of
+which still stand. There are a few red-brick walls, some frames of
+wood from which the plaster has been blown, some gardens gone wild,
+fruit trees unpruned and more or less ragged from fire, and an air of
+desecration and desertion. In some of the ruins there are signs of
+use. The lower windows are filled with sandbags, the lower stories
+are strengthened with girders and baulks. From the main road in the
+valley, a country track or road, muddy even for the Somme, leads up
+the hill, through the heart of the village, past the church, towards
+our old line and Auchonvillers.
+
+Not much can be seen from the valley road in Hamel, for it is only a
+few feet above the level of the river-bed, which is well grown with
+timber not yet completely destroyed. The general view to the eastward
+from this low-lying road is that of a lake, five hundred yards across,
+in some wild land not yet settled. The lake is shallow, blind with
+reeds, vivid with water-grass, and lively with moor-fowl. The trees
+grow out of the water, or lie in it, just as they fell when they were
+shot. On the whole, the trees just here, though chipped and knocked
+about, have not suffered badly; they have the look of trees, and are
+leafy in summer. Beyond the trees, on the other side of the marsh, is
+the steep and high eastern bank of the Ancre, on which a battered
+wood, called Thiepval Wood, stands like an army of black and haggard
+rampikes. But for this stricken wood, the eastern bank of the Ancre is
+a gentle, sloping hill, bare of trees. On the top of this hill is the
+famous Schwaben Redoubt.
+
+The Ancre River and the marshy valley through which it runs are
+crossed by several causeways. One most famous causeway crosses just in
+front of Hamel on the line of the old Mill Road. The Mill from which
+it takes its name lies to the left of the causeway on a sort of green
+island. The wheel, which is not destroyed, still shows among the
+ruins. The enemy had a dressing station there at one time.
+
+The marshy valley of the Ancre splits up the river here into several
+channels besides the mill stream. The channels are swift and deep,
+full of exquisitely clear water just out of the chalk. The marsh is
+rather blind with snags cut off by shells. For some years past the
+moor-fowl in the marsh have been little molested. They are very
+numerous here; their cries make the place lonely and romantic.
+
+When one stands on this causeway over the Ancre one is almost at the
+middle point of the battlefield, for the river cuts the field in two.
+Roughly speaking, the ground to the west of the river was the scene of
+containing fighting, the ground to the east of the river the scene of
+our advance. At the eastern end of the causeway the Old Mill Road
+rises towards the Schwaben Redoubt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the way up the hill the road is steep, rather deep and bad. It is
+worn into the chalk and shows up very white in sunny weather. Before
+the battle it lay about midway between the lines, but it was always
+patrolled at night by our men. The ground on both sides of it is
+almost more killed and awful than anywhere in the field. On the
+English or south side of it, distant from one hundred to two hundred
+yards, is the shattered wood, burnt, dead, and desolate. On the enemy
+side, at about the same distance, is the usual black enemy wire, much
+tossed and bunched by our shells, covering a tossed and tumbled chalky
+and filthy parapet. Our own old line is an array of rotted sandbags,
+filled with chalkflint, covering the burnt wood. One need only look at
+the ground to know that the fighting here was very grim, and to the
+death. Near the road and up the slope to the enemy the ground is
+littered with relics of our charges, mouldy packs, old shattered
+scabbards, rifles, bayonets, helmets curled, torn, rolled, and
+starred, clips of cartridges, and very many graves. Many of the
+graves are marked with strips of wood torn from packing cases, with
+pencilled inscriptions, "An unknown British Hero"; "In loving memory
+of Pte. ----"; "Two unknown British heroes"; "An unknown British
+soldier"; "A dead Fritz." That gentle slope to the Schwaben is covered
+with such things.
+
+Passing these things, by some lane through the wire and clambering
+over the heaps of earth which were once the parapet, one enters the
+Schwaben, where so much life was spent. As in so many places on this
+old battlefield, the first thought is: "Why, they were in an eyrie
+here; our fellows had no chance at all." There is no wonder, then,
+that the approach is strewn with graves. The line stands at the top of
+a smooth, open slope, commanding our old position and the Ancre
+Valley. There is no cover of any kind upon the slope except the rims
+of the shell-holes, which make rings of mud among the grass. Just
+outside the highest point of the front line there is a little clump of
+our graves. Just inside there is a still unshattered concrete fortlet,
+built for the machine gun by which those men were killed.
+
+All along that front trench of the Schwaben, lying on the parapet,
+half buried in the mud, are the belts of machine guns, still full of
+cartridges. There were many machine guns on that earthen wall last
+year. When our men scrambled over the tumbled chalky line of old
+sandbags, so plain just down the hill, and came into view on the
+slope, running and stumbling in the hour of the attack, the machine
+gunners in the fortress felt indeed that they were in an eyrie, and
+that our fellows had no chance at all.
+
+For the moment one thinks this, as the enemy gunners must have thought
+it; then, looking up the hill at the inner works of the great fort,
+the thought comes that it was not so happy a fate to have to hold this
+eyrie. Sometimes, in winter storms, the Atlantic is heaved aloft and
+tossed and tumbled under an evil heaven till all its wilderness is
+hideous. This hill-top is exactly as though some such welter of water
+had suddenly become mud. It is all heaped and tossed and tumbled as
+though the earth there had been a cross-sea. In one place some great
+earth wave of a trench has been bitten into and beaten back and turned
+blind into an eddy by great pits and chasms and running heaps. Then in
+another place, where the crown of the work once reared itself aloft
+over the hill, the heaps of mud are all blurred and pounded together,
+so that there is no design, no trace, no visible plan of any
+fortress, only a mess of mud bedevilled and bewildered. All this mess
+of heaps and hillocks is strung and filthied over with broken bodies
+and ruined gear. There is nothing whole, nor alive, nor clean, in all
+its extent; it is a place of ruin and death, blown and blasted out of
+any likeness to any work of man, and so smashed that there is no
+shelter on it, save for the one machine gunner in his box. On all that
+desolate hill our fire fell like rain for days and nights and weeks,
+till the watchers in our line could see no hill at all, but a great,
+vague, wreathing devil of darkness in which little sudden fires winked
+and glimmered and disappeared.
+
+Once in a lull of the firing a woman appeared upon the enemy parapet
+and started to walk along it. Our men held their fire and watched her.
+She walked steadily along the whole front of the Schwaben and then
+jumped down into her trench. Many thought at the time that she was a
+man masquerading for a bet, but long afterwards, when our men took the
+Schwaben, they found her lying in the ruins dead. They buried her
+there, up on the top of the hill. God alone knows who she was and what
+she was doing there.
+
+Looking back across the Ancre from the Schwaben the hill of the right
+bank of the river is clear from the woods near Mesnil to Beaucourt.
+All along that graceful chalk hill our communication trenches thrust
+up like long white mole-runs, or like the comb of rollers on a reef.
+At right angles to these long white lines are black streaks which mark
+the enemy's successive front lines. The later ones are visibly more
+ragged than those near our old line.
+
+There are few more lonely places than that scene of old battles. One
+may stand on the Schwaben for many days together and look west over
+the moor, or east over the wilderness, without seeing any sign of
+human life, save perhaps some solitary guarding a dump of stores.
+
+The hill on which the Schwaben is built is like a great thumb laid
+down beside the Ancre River. There is a little valley on its eastern
+side exactly like the space between a great thumb and a great
+forefinger. It is called Crucifix Valley, from an iron Calvary that
+stood in it in the early days of the war. It must once have been a
+lovely and romantic glen, strangely beautiful throughout. Even now its
+lower reach between a steep bank of scrub and Thiepval Wood is as
+lovely as a place can be after the passing of a cyclone. Its upper
+reach, which makes the eastern boundary of the Schwaben, is as ghastly
+a scene of smash as the world can show. It is nothing but a collection
+of irregular pools dug by big shells during months of battle. The
+pools are long enough and deep enough to dive into, and full to
+overflowing with filthy water. Sometimes the pressure of the water
+bursts the mud banks of one of these pools and a rush of water comes,
+and the pools below it overflow, and a noise of water rises in that
+solitude which is like the mud and water of the beginning of the world
+before any green thing appeared.
+
+  [Illustration: The Leipzig Salient under Fire]
+
+Our line runs across this Crucifix Valley in a strong sandbag
+barricade. The enemy line crosses it higher up in a continuation of
+the front line of the Schwaben. As soon as the lines are across the
+valley they turn sharply to the south at an important point.
+
+The Schwaben spur is like a thumb; Crucifix Valley is like the space
+between a thumb and a forefinger. Just to the east of Crucifix Valley
+a second spur thrusts away down to the south like a forefinger. It is
+a long sloping spur, wooded at the lower end. It is known on the maps
+as Thiepval Hill or the Leipzig Salient. When the lines turn to the
+south after crossing Crucifix Valley they run along the side of this
+hill and pass out of sight round the end. The lines are quite regular
+and distinct. From the top of the Schwaben it looks as though the side
+of the hill were fenced into a neat green track or racecourse. This
+track is the No Man's Land, which lies like a broad green regular
+stripe between brown expanses along the hillside. All this hill was of
+the greatest importance to the enemy. It was as strong an eyrie as the
+Schwaben; it turned and made very dangerous our works in front of
+Hamel; and it was the key to a covered way to the plateau from which
+all these spurs thrust southward.
+
+It is a bolder, more regular spur than the others which thrust from
+this plateau. The top slopes so slightly as to be almost level, the
+two flanks are rather steep.
+
+Right at the top of it, just where it springs from the plateau, much
+where the knuckle of the imagined hand would be, and perhaps five
+hundred yards east from our old sandbag barricade in Crucifix Valley,
+there is a redness in the battered earth and upon the chalk of the
+road. The redness is patchy over a good big stretch of this part of
+the spur, but it is all within the enemy lines and well above our own.
+Where the shattered hillside slopes towards our lines there are many
+remnants of trees, some of them fruit trees arranged in a kind of
+order behind the burnt relics of a hedge, others dotted about at
+random. All are burnt, blasted, and killed. One need only glance at
+the hill on which they stand to see that it has been more burnt and
+shell-smitten than most parts of the lines. It is as though the fight
+here had been more than to the death, to beyond death, to the bones
+and skeleton of the corpse which was yet unkillable. This is the site
+of the little hill village of Thiepval, which once stood at a
+cross-roads here among apple orchards and the trees of a park. It had
+a church, just at the junction of the roads, and a fine seigneurial
+ch�teau, in a garden, beside the church; otherwise it was a little
+lonely mean place, built of brick and plaster on a great lonely heap
+of chalk downland. It had no importance and no history before the war,
+except that a Seigneur of Thiepval is mentioned as having once
+attended a meeting at Amiens. It was of great military importance at
+the time of the Battle of the Somme. In the old days it may have had a
+beauty of position.
+
+It is worth while to clamber up to Thiepval from our lines. The road
+runs through the site of the village in a deep cutting, which may have
+once been lovely. The road is reddish with the smashed bricks of the
+village. Here and there in the mud are perhaps three courses of brick
+where a house once stood, or some hideous hole bricked at the bottom
+for the vault of a cellar. Blasted, dead, pitted stumps of trees, with
+their bark in rags, grow here and there in a collection of vast holes,
+ten feet deep and fifteen feet across, with filthy water in them.
+There is nothing left of the church; a big reddish mound of brick,
+that seems mainly powder round a core of cement, still marks where the
+ch�teau stood. The ch�teau garden, the round village pond, the
+pine-tree which was once a landmark there, are all blown out of
+recognition.
+
+The mud of the Somme, which will be remembered by our soldiers long
+after they have forgotten the shelling, was worse at Thiepval than
+elsewhere, or, at least, could not have been worse elsewhere. The road
+through Thiepval was a bog, the village was a quagmire. Near the
+ch�teau there were bits where one sank to the knee. In the great
+battle for Thiepval, on the 26th of last September, one of our Tanks
+charged an enemy trench here. It plunged and stuck fast and remained
+in the mud, like a great animal stricken dead in its spring. It was
+one of the sights of Thiepval during the winter, for it looked most
+splendid; afterwards, it was salved and went to fight again.
+
+From this part of Thiepval one can look along the top of the Leipzig
+Spur, which begins here and thrusts to the south for a thousand yards.
+
+There are two big enemy works on the Leipzig Spur: one, well to the
+south of the village, is (or was, for it is all blown out of shape) a
+six-angled star-shaped redoubt called the Wonder Work; the other,
+still further to the south, about a big, disused, and very
+evil-looking quarry, towards the end of the spur, is, or was, called
+the Leipzig Salient, or, by some people, the Hohenzollern, from the
+Hohenzollern Trench, which ran straight across the spur about halfway
+down the salient.
+
+In these two fortresses the enemy had two strong, evil eyries, high
+above us. They look down upon our line, which runs along the side of
+the hill below them. Though, in the end, our guns blasted the enemy
+off the hill, our line along that slope was a costly one to hold,
+since fire upon it could be observed and directed from so many
+points--from the rear (above Hamel), from the left flank (on the
+Schwaben and near Thiepval), and from the hill itself. The hill is
+all skinned and scarred, and the trace of the great works can no
+longer be followed. At the top of the hill, in the middle of a filthy
+big pool, is a ruined enemy trench-mortar, sitting up like a swollen
+toad.
+
+At the end of the spur the lines curve round to the east to shut in
+the hill. A grass-grown road crosses the lines here, goes up to the
+hill-top, and then along it. The slopes at this end of the hill are
+gentle, and from low down, where our lines are, it is a pleasant and
+graceful brae, where the larks never cease to sing and where you may
+always put up partridges and sometimes even a hare. It is a deserted
+hill at this time, but for the wild things. The No Man's Land is
+littered with the relics of a charge; for many brave Dorsetshire and
+Wiltshire men died in the rush up that slope. On the highest point of
+the enemy parapet, at the end of the hill, is a lonely white cross,
+which stands out like a banner planted by a conquerer. It marks the
+grave of an officer of the Wilts, who was killed there, among the
+ruin, in the July attack.
+
+Below the lines, where the ground droops away toward the river, the
+oddly shaped, deeply-vallied Wood of Authuille begins. It makes a
+sort of socket of woodland so curved as to take the end of the spur.
+
+It is a romantic and very lovely wood, pleasant with the noise of
+water and not badly damaged by the fighting. The trees are alive and
+leafy, the shrubs are pushing, and the spring flowers, wood anemones,
+violets, and the oxlip (which in this country takes the place of the
+primrose and the cowslip) flower beautifully among the shell-holes,
+rags, and old tins of war. But at the north-eastern end it runs out in
+a straggling spinney along the Leipzig's east flank, and this horn of
+wood is almost as badly shattered as if the shell fire upon it had
+been English. Here the enemy, fearing for his salient, kept up a
+terrible barrage. The trees are burnt, ragged, unbarked, topped, and
+cut off short, the trenches are blown in and jumbled, and the ground
+blasted and gouged.
+
+Standing in the old English front line just to the north of Authuille
+Wood, one sees the usual slow gradual grassy rise to the dark enemy
+wire. Mesnil stands out among its trees to the left; to the right is
+this shattered stretch of wood, with a valley beyond it, and a rather
+big, steep, green hill topped by a few trees beyond the valley. The
+jut of the Leipzig shuts out the view to the flanks, so that one can
+see little more than this.
+
+The Leipzig, itself, like the Schwaben, is a hawk's nest or eyrie. Up
+there one can look down by Authuille Wood to Albert church and
+chimneys, the uplands of the Somme, the Amiens road, down which the
+enemy marched in triumph and afterwards retreated in a hurry, and the
+fair fields that were to have been the booty of this war. Away to the
+left of this is the wooded clump of B�court, and, beyond it, One Tree
+Hill with its forlorn mound, like the burial place of a King. On the
+right flank is the Ancre Valley, with the English position round Hamel
+like an open book under the eye; on the left flank is the rather big,
+steep, green hill, topped by a few trees, before mentioned. These trees
+grow in and about what was once the village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle.
+The hill does not seem to have a name; it may be called here Middle
+Finger Hill or Ovillers Hill.
+
+Like the Schwaben and the Leipzig Hills this hill thrusts out from the
+knuckle of the big chalk plateau to the north of it like the finger of
+a hand, in this case the middle finger. It is longer and less
+regularly defined than the Leipzig Hill; because instead of ending, it
+merges into other hills not quite so high. The valley which parts it
+from the Leipzig is steeply sided, with the banks of great lynchets.
+The lines cross the valley obliquely and run north and south along the
+flank of this hill, keeping their old relative positions, the enemy
+line well above our own, so that the approach to it is up a glacis.
+
+  [Illustration: Dug-outs and barbed wire in La Boisselle. Usna-Tara
+  Hill, with English Support Lines in Background. At Extreme Left is
+  the Albert-Bapaume Road]
+
+As one climbs up along our old line here, the great flank of Ovillers
+Hill is before one in a noble, bare sweep of grass, running up to the
+enemy line. Something in the make of this hill, in its shape, or in
+the way it catches the light, gives it a strangeness which other parts
+of the battlefield have not. The rise between the lines of the
+trenches is fully two hundred yards across, perhaps more. Nearly all
+over it, in no sort of order, now singly, now in twos or threes, just
+as the men fell, are the crosses of the graves of the men who were
+killed in the attack there. Here and there among the little crosses is
+one bigger than the rest, to some man specially loved or to the men of
+some battalion. It is difficult to stand in the old English line from
+which those men started without the feeling that the crosses are the
+men alive, still going forward, as they went in the July morning a
+year ago.
+
+Just within the enemy line, three-quarters of the way up the hill,
+there is a sort of small flat field about fifty yards across where the
+enemy lost very heavily. They must have gathered there for some rush
+and then been caught by our guns.
+
+At the top of the hill the lines curve to the southeast, drawing
+closer together. The crest of the hill, such as it is, was not
+bitterly disputed here, for we could see all that we wished to see of
+the hill from the eastern flank. Our line passes over the spur
+slightly below it, the enemy line takes in as much of it as the enemy
+needed. From it, he has a fair view of Albert town and of the country
+to the east and west of it, the wooded hill of B�court, and the hill
+above Fricourt. From our line, we see his line and a few tree-tops.
+From the eastern flank of the hill, our line gives a glimpse of the
+site of the village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle, once one of the strong
+places of the enemy, and now a few heaps of bricks, and one spike of
+burnt ruin where the church stood.
+
+Like most Picardy villages, Ovillers was compactly built of red brick
+along a country road, with trees and orchards surrounding it. It had a
+lofty and pretentious brick church of a modern type. Below and beyond
+it to the east is a long and not very broad valley which lies between
+the eastern flank of Ovillers Hill and the next spur. It is called
+Mash Valley on the maps. The lines go down Ovillers Hill into this
+valley and then across it.
+
+Right at the upper end of this valley, rather more than a mile away,
+yet plainly visible from our lines near Ovillers, at the time of the
+beginning of the battle, were a few red-brick ruins in an irregular
+row across the valley-head.
+
+A clump of small fir and cypress trees stood up dark on the hill at
+the western end of this row, and behind the trees was a line of green
+hill topped with the ruins of a windmill. The ruins, now gone, were
+the end of Pozi�res village, the dark trees grew in Pozi�res cemetery,
+and the mill was the famous windmill of Pozi�res, which marked the
+crest that was one of the prizes of the battle. All these things were
+then clearly to be seen, though in the distance.
+
+The main hollow of the valley is not remarkable except that it is
+crossed by enormous trenches and very steeply hedged by a hill on its
+eastern flank. This eastern hill which has such a steep side is a spur
+or finger of chalk thrusting southward from Pozi�res, like the
+ring-finger of the imagined hand. Mash Valley curves round its
+finger-tip, and just at the spring of the curve the third of the four
+Albert roads crosses it, and goes up the spur towards Pozi�res and
+Bapaume. The line of the road, which is rather banked up, so as to be
+a raised way, like so many Roman roads, can be plainly seen, going
+along the spur, almost to Pozi�res. In many places, it makes the
+eastern skyline to observers down in the valley.
+
+Behind our front line in this Mash Valley is the pleasant green Usna
+Hill, which runs across the hollow and shuts it in to the south. From
+this hill, seamed right across with our reserve and support trenches,
+one can look down at the enemy position, which crosses Mash Valley in
+six great lines all very deep, strong, and dug into for underground
+shelter.
+
+Standing in Mash Valley, at the foot of Ring Finger Spur, just where
+the Roman Road starts its long rise to Pozi�res, one sees a lesser
+road forking off to the right, towards a village called Contalmaison,
+a couple of miles away. The fork of the road marks where our old front
+line ran. The trenches are filled in at this point now, so that the
+roads may be used, but the place was once an exceedingly hot corner.
+In the old days, all the space between the two roads at the fork was
+filled with the village or hamlet of La Boisselle, which, though a
+tiny place, had once a church and perhaps a hundred inhabitants. The
+enemy fortified the village till it was an exceedingly strong place.
+We held a part of the village cemetery. Some of the broken crosses of
+the graves still show among the chalk here.
+
+  [Illustration: Photograph showing the Scene of the Successful
+  British Advance at La Boisselle, taken from the British Front
+  Line]
+
+To the left of the Roman Road, only a stone's throw from this ruined
+graveyard, a part of our line is built up with now rotting sandbags
+full of chalk, so that it looks like a mound of grey rocks. Opposite
+the mound, perhaps a hundred yards up the hill, is another, much
+bigger, irregular mound, of chalk that has become dirty, with some
+relics of battered black wire at its base. The space between the two
+mounds is now green with grass, though pitted with shell-holes, and
+marked in many places with the crosses of graves. The space is the old
+No Man's Land, and the graves are of men who started to charge across
+that field on the 1st of July. The big grey mound is the outer wall or
+casting of a mine thirty yards deep in the chalk and a hundred yards
+across, which we sprang under the enemy line there on that summer
+morning, just before our men went over.
+
+La Boisselle, after being battered by us in our attack, was destroyed
+by enemy fire after we had taken it, and then cleared by our men who
+wished to use the roads. It offers no sight of any interest; but just
+outside it, between the old lines, there is a stretch of spur, useful
+for observation, for which both sides fought bitterly. For about 200
+yards, the No Man's Land is a succession of pits in the chalk where
+mines have been sprung. Chalk, wire, stakes, friends, and enemies seem
+here to have been all blown to powder.
+
+The lines cross this debated bit, and go across a small, ill-defined
+bulk of chalk, known as Chapes Spur, on the top of which there is a
+vast heap of dazzlingly white chalk, so bright that it is painful to
+look at. Beyond it is the pit of a mine, evenly and cleanly blown,
+thirty-five yards deep, and more than a hundred yards across, in the
+pure chalk of the upland, as white as cherry blossom. This is the
+finest, though not the biggest, mine in the battlefield. It was the
+work of many months, for the shafts by which it was approached began
+more than a quarter of a mile away. It was sprung on the 1st of July
+as a signal for the attack. Quite close to it are the graves of an
+officer and a sergeant, both English, who were killed in the attack a
+few minutes after that chasm in the chalk had opened. The sergeant
+was killed while trying to save his officer.
+
+The lines bend down south-eastward from Chapes Spur, and cross a long,
+curving, shallow valley, known as Sausage Valley, famous, later in the
+battle, as an assembly place for men going up against Pozi�res. Here
+the men in our line could see nothing but chalk slope to right, left,
+or front, except the last tree of La Boisselle, rising gaunt and black
+above the line of the hill. Just behind them, however, at the foot of
+the Sausage Valley they had a pleasant wooded hill, the hill of
+B�court, which was for nearly two years within a mile of the front
+line, yet remained a green and leafy hill, covered with living trees,
+among which the ch�teau of B�court remained a habitable house.
+
+The lines slant in a south-easterly direction across the Sausage
+Valley; they mount the spur to the east of it, and proceed, in the
+same direction, across a bare field, like the top of a slightly tilted
+table, in the long slope down to Fricourt. Here, the men in our front
+lines could see rather more from their position. In front of them was
+a smooth space of grass slightly rising to the enemy lines two hundred
+yards away. Behind the enemy lines is a grassy space, and behind
+this, there shows what seems to be a gully or ravine, beyond which the
+high ground of another spur rises, much as the citadel of an old
+encampment rises out of its walled ditch. This high ground of this
+other spur is not more than a few feet above the ground near it, but
+it is higher; it commands it. All the high ground is wooded. To the
+southern or lower end of it the trees are occasional and much broken
+by fire. To the northern or upper end they grow in a kind of wood
+though all are much destroyed. Right up to the wood, all the high
+ground bears traces of building; there are little tumbles of bricks
+and something of the colour of brick all over the pilled, poxed, and
+blasted heap that is so like an old citadel. The ravine in front of it
+is the gully between the two spurs; it shelters the sunken road to
+Contalmaison; the heap is Fricourt village, and the woodland to the
+north is Fricourt Wood. A glance is enough to show that it is a strong
+position.
+
+To the left of Fricourt, the spur rises slowly into a skyline. To the
+right the lines droop down the spur to a valley, across a brook and a
+road in the valley, and up a big bare humping chalk hill placed at
+right angles to the spur on which Fricourt stands.
+
+The spur on which Fricourt stands and the spur down which the lines
+run both end at the valley in a steep drop. Just above the steep fall
+our men fought very hard to push back the enemy a little towards
+Fricourt, so that he might not see the lower part of the valley, or be
+able to enfilade our lines on the other side of it. For about three
+hundred yards here the space between the lines is filled with the
+craters of mines exploded under the enemy's front line. In some cases,
+we seized and held the craters; in others the craters were untenable
+by either side. Under one of those held by us it was found that the
+enemy had sunk a big counter-mine, which was excavated and ready for
+charging at the time of the beginning of the battle, when Fricourt
+fell. This part of the line is more thickly coated with earth than
+most of the chalk hills of the battlefield. The craters lie in a blown
+and dug up wilderness of heaps of reddish earth, pocked with
+shell-holes, and tumbled with wire. The enemy lines are much broken
+and ruined, their parapets thrown down, the mouths of their dugouts
+blown in, and their pride abased.
+
+  [Illustration: A View of Fricourt]
+
+The Fricourt position was one of the boasts of the enemy on this
+front. Other places on the line, such as the Leipzig, the Schwaben,
+and the trenches near Hamel, were strong, because they could be
+supported by works behind them or on their flanks. Fricourt was strong
+in itself, like Gommecourt. It was perhaps the only place in the field
+of which it could be said that it was as strong as Gommecourt. As at
+Gommecourt, it had a good natural glacis up to the front line, which
+was deep, strong, and well wired. Behind the front line was a wired
+second line, and behind that, the rising spur on which the village
+stood, commanding both with machine-gun emplacements.
+
+Fricourt was not captured by storm, but swiftly isolated and forced to
+surrender. It held out not quite two days. It was the first first-rate
+fortress taken by our men from the enemy in this engagement. In the
+ruins, they saw for the first time the work which the enemy puts into
+his main defences, and the skill and craft with which he provides for
+his comfort. For some weeks, the underground arrangements of Fricourt,
+the stairs with wired treads, the bolting holes, the air and escape
+shafts, the living rooms with electric light, the panelled walls,
+covered with cretonnes of the smartest Berlin patterns, the neat bunks
+and the signs of female visitors, were written of in the press, so
+that some may think that Fricourt was better fitted than other places
+on the line. It is not so. The work at Fricourt was well done, but it
+was no better than that at other places, where a village with cellars
+in it had to be converted into a fortress. Our men took Fricourt at
+the beginning of the battle, in a fair state of preservation. Such
+work was then new to our men, and this good example was made much of.
+
+  [Illustration: Looking at Fricourt and Fricourt Wood. Troops
+  bivouac for a Short Rest under Ground Sheets laced together]
+
+In the valley below the village, in great, deep, and powerfully
+revetted works, the enemy had built himself gun emplacements, so
+weighted with timber balks that they collapsed soon after his men
+ceased to attend them. The line of these great works ran (as so many
+of his important lines have run) at the foot of a steep bank or
+lynchet, so that at a little distance the parapet of the work merged
+into the bank behind it and was almost invisible.
+
+This line of guns ran about east and west across the neck of the
+Fricourt Salient, which thrust still further south, across the little
+valley and up the hill on the other side.
+
+Our old line crosses the valley just to the east of the Fricourt
+Station on the little railway which once ran in the valley past
+Fricourt and Mametz to Montauban. It then crossed the fourth of the
+roads from Albert, at Fricourt cemetery, which is a small, raised
+forlorn garden of broken tombs at cross-roads, under the hill facing
+Fricourt. Here our line began to go diagonally up the lower slopes of
+the hill. The enemy line climbed it further to the east, round the
+bulging snout of the hill, at a steep and difficult point above the
+bank of a sunken road. Towards the top of the hill the lines
+converged.
+
+All the way of the hill, the enemy had the stronger position. It was
+above us almost invisible and unguessable, except from the air, at the
+top of a steep climb up a clay bank, which in wet weather makes bad
+going even for the Somme; and though the lie of the ground made it
+impossible for him to see much of our position, it was impossible for
+us to see anything or his or to assault him. The hill is a big steep
+chalk hill, with contours so laid upon it that not much of it can be
+seen from below. By looking to the left from our trenches on its
+western lower slopes one can see nothing of Fricourt, for the bulge of
+the hill's snout covers it. One has a fair view of the old English
+line on the smoothish big slope between Fricourt and B�court, but
+nothing of the enemy stronghold. One might have lived in those
+trenches for nearly two years without seeing any enemy except the rain
+and mud and lice.
+
+Up at the top of the hill, there is an immense prospect over the
+eastern half of the battlefield, and here, where the lines converge,
+it was most necessary for us to have the crest and for the enemy to
+keep us off it. The highest ground is well forward, on the snout, and
+this point was the only part of the hill which the enemy strove to
+keep. His line goes up the hill to the highest point, cuts off the
+highest point, and at once turns eastward, so that his position on the
+hill is just the northern slope and a narrow line of crest. It is as
+though an army holding Fleet Street against an army on the Embankment
+and in Cheapside should have seized Ludgate Hill to the top of the
+steps of St. Paul's and left the body of the cathedral to its
+opponent. The lines securing this important salient are of immense
+strength and intricacy, with many great avenues of approach. The front
+line is double across the greater part of the crest, and behind it is
+a very deep, strong, trebly wired support line which is double at
+important points.
+
+  [Illustration: The Sandbags at the Fricourt Salient]
+
+Our old front line runs almost straight across the crest parallel with
+the enemy front line, and distant from it from forty to one hundred
+and fifty yards. The crest or highest ground is on both flanks of the
+hill-top close to the enemy line. Between the lines at both these
+points are the signs of a struggle which raged for weeks and months
+for the possession of those lumps of hill, each, perhaps, two hundred
+yards long, by fifty broad, by five high. Those fifteen feet of height
+were bartered for with more than their own weight of sweat and blood;
+the hill can never lose the marks of the struggle.
+
+In those two patches of the hill the space between the lines is a
+quarry of confluent craters, twenty or thirty yards deep, blown into
+and under each other till the top of the hill is split apart. No man
+can now tell which of all these mines were sunk by our men. The quarry
+runs irregularly in heaps and hollows of chalk and red earth mingled
+like flesh and blood. On our side of the pits the marks of our
+occupation are plain. There in several places, as at La Boisselle and
+on the Beaucourt spur, our men have built up the parapet of our old
+front line by thousands of sandbags till it is a hill-top or cairn
+from which they could see beyond. The sandbags have rotted and the
+chalk and flints within have fallen partly through the rags, and
+Nature has already begun to change those heaps to her own colours, but
+they will be there for ever as the mark of our race. Such monuments
+must be as lasting as Stonehenge. Neither the mines nor the guns of
+the enemy could destroy them. From among them our soldiers peered
+through the smoke of burning and explosions at the promised land which
+the battle made ours.
+
+From those heaps there is a wide view over that part of the field. To
+the left one sees Albert, the wooded clump of B�court, and a high
+green spur which hides the Sausage Valley. To the front this green
+spur runs to the higher ground from which the Fricourt spur thrusts.
+On this higher ground, behind Fricourt and its wood, is a much bigger,
+thicker, and better grown wood, about a mile and a half away; this is
+the wood of Mametz. Some short distance to the left of this wood, very
+plainly visible on the high, rather bare hill, is a clump of pollarded
+trees near a few heaps of red brick. The trees were once the
+shade-giving trees about the market-place of Contalmaison, a hamlet at
+a cross-roads at this point. Behind these ruins the skyline is a kind
+of ridge which runs in a straight line, broken in one place by a few
+shatters of trees. These trees are the remains of the wood which once
+grew outside the village of Pozi�res. The ridge is the Albert-Bapaume
+Road, here passing over the highest ground on its path.
+
+Turning from these distant places and looking to the right, one sees,
+just below, twelve hundred yards to the east of Fricourt, across the
+valley at the foot of this hill of the salient, the end of an
+irregular spur, on which are the shattered bricks of the village of
+Mametz before mentioned.
+
+To the north of Mametz the ground rises. From the eyrie of the salient
+one can look over it and away to the north to big rolling chalk land,
+most of it wooded. Mametz Wood is a dark expanse to the front; to the
+right of it are other woods, Bazentin Woods, Big and Little, and
+beyond them, rather to the right and only just visible as a few sticks
+upon the skyline, are two other woods, High Wood, like a ghost in the
+distance, and the famous and terrible Wood of Delville. High Wood is
+nearly five miles away and a little out of the picture. The other
+wooded heights are about three miles away. All that line of high
+ground marked by woods was the enemy second line, which with a few
+slight exceptions was our front line before the end of the third week
+of the battle.
+
+From this hill-top of the salient the lines run down the north-eastern
+snout of the hill and back across the valley, so as to shut in Mametz.
+Then they run eastward for a couple of miles, up to and across a
+plateau in front of the hamlet of Carnoy, which was just within our
+line. From our line, in this bare and hideous field, little could be
+seen but the slope up to the enemy line. At one point, where the road
+or lane from Carnoy to Montauban crossed the enemy line, there was a
+struggle for the power to see, and as a result of the struggle mines
+and counter-mines were sprung here till the space between the lines is
+now a chaos of pits and chasms full of water. The country here is an
+expanse of smoothish tilted slopes, big, empty, and lonely, and
+crossed (at about the middle point) by a strange narrow gut or gully,
+up which the railway once ran to Montauban. No doubt there are places
+in the English chalk counties which resemble this sweep of country,
+but I know of none so bare or so featureless. The ground is of the
+reddish earth which makes such bad mud. The slopes are big and
+gradual, either up or down. Little breaks the monotony of the expanse
+except a few copses or sites of copses; the eye is always turning to
+the distance.
+
+  [Illustration: View of Mametz]
+
+In front, more than half a mile away, the ground reaches its highest
+point in the ridge or bank which marks the road to Montauban. The big
+gradual sweep up is only broken by lines of trenches and by mud heaped
+up from the road. Some of the trees which once made Montauban
+pleasant and shady still stand over the little heaps of brick and
+solitary iron gate which show where the village used to stand. Rather
+to the right of this, and nearer to our lines, are some irregular red
+heaps with girders protruding from them. This is the enemy fortress of
+the brickworks of Montauban. Beyond this, still further to the right,
+behind the old enemy line, the ground loses its monotony and passes
+into lovely and romantic sweeping valleys, which our men could not see
+from their lines.
+
+Well behind our English lines in this district and above the dip where
+Carnoy stands, the fourth of the four roads from Albert runs eastward
+along a ridge-top between a double row of noble trees which have not
+suffered very severely, except at their eastern end. Just north of
+this road, and a little below it on the slopes of the ridge, is the
+village of Maricourt. Our line turns to the southeast opposite
+Montauban, and curves in towards the ridge so as to run just outside
+Maricourt, along the border of a little wood to the east of the
+houses. From all the high ground to the north of it, from the enemy's
+second line and beyond, the place is useful to give a traveller his
+bearings. The line of plane-trees along the road on the ridge, and
+the big clumps of trees round the village, are landmarks which cannot
+be mistaken from any part of the field.
+
+Little is to be seen from our line outside Maricourt Wood, except the
+enemy line a little beyond it, and the trees of other woods behind it.
+
+The line turns to the south, parallel with the wood, crosses the
+fourth road (which goes on towards Peronne) and goes down some
+difficult, rather lovely, steep chalk slopes, wooded in parts, to the
+ruins of Fargny Mill on the Somme River.
+
+The Somme River is here a very beautiful expanse of clear chalk water
+like a long wandering shallow lake. Through this shallow lake the
+river runs in half a dozen channels, which are parted and thwarted in
+many places by marsh, reed-beds, osier plots, and tracts of swampy
+woodland. There is nothing quite like it in England. The river-bed is
+pretty generally between five and six hundred yards across.
+
+Nearly two miles above the place where the old enemy line comes down
+to the bank, the river thrusts suddenly north-westward, in a very
+noble great horse-shoe, the bend of which comes at Fargny where our
+lines touched it. The enemy line touched the horse-shoe close to our
+own at a curious wooded bank or slope, known (from its shape on the
+map, which is like a cocked hat) as the Chapeau de Gendarme. Just
+behind our lines, at the bend, the horse-shoe sweeps round to the
+south. The river-bed at once broadens to about two-thirds of a mile,
+and the river, in four or five main channels, passes under a most
+beautiful sweep of steep chalk cliff, not unlike some of the chalk
+country near Arundel. These places marked the end of the British
+sector at the time of the beginning of the battle. On the south or
+left bank of the Somme River the ground was held by the French.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such was our old front line at the beginning of the battle, and so the
+travellers of our race will strive to picture it when they see the
+ground under the crops of coming Julys. It was never anything but a
+makeshift, patched together, and held, God knows how, against greater
+strength. Our strongest places were the half-dozen built-up
+observation posts at the mines near Fricourt, Serre, and La Boisselle.
+For the rest, our greatest strength was but a couple of sandbags deep.
+There was no concrete in any part of the line, very few iron girders
+and not many iron "humpies" or "elephant backs" to make the roofs of
+dugouts. The whole line gives the traveller the impression that it was
+improvised (as it was) by amateurs with few tools, and few resources,
+as best they could, in a time of need and danger. Like the old,
+hurriedly built Long Walls at Athens, it sufficed, and like the old
+camps of C�sar it served, till our men could take the much finer lines
+of the enemy. A few words may be said about those enemy lines. They
+were very different lines from ours.
+
+The defences of the enemy front line varied a little in degree, but
+hardly at all in kind, throughout the battlefield. The enemy wire was
+always deep, thick, and securely staked with iron supports, which were
+either crossed like the letter +X+, or upright, with loops to take the
+wire and shaped at one end like corkscrews so as to screw into the
+ground. The wire stood on these supports on a thick web, about four
+feet high and from thirty to forty feet across. The wire used was
+generally as thick as sailor's marline stuff, or two twisted
+rope-yarns. It contained, as a rule, some sixteen barbs to the foot.
+The wire used in front of our lines was generally galvanized, and
+remained grey after months of exposure. The enemy wire, not being
+galvanized, rusted to a black colour, and shows up black at a great
+distance. In places this web or barrier was supplemented with
+trip-wire, or wire placed just above the ground, so that the artillery
+observing officers might not see it and so not cause it to be
+destroyed. This trip-wire was as difficult to cross as the wire of the
+entanglements. In one place (near the Y Ravine at Beaumont Hamel) this
+trip-wire was used with thin iron spikes a yard long of the kind known
+as calthrops. The spikes were so placed in the ground that about one
+foot of spike projected. The scheme was that our men should catch
+their feet in the trip-wire, fall on the spikes, and be transfixed.
+
+In places, in front of the front line in the midst of his wire,
+sometimes even in front of the wire, the enemy had carefully hidden
+snipers and machine-gun posts. Sometimes these outside posts were
+connected with his front-line trench by tunnels, sometimes they were
+simply shell-holes, slightly altered with a spade to take the snipers
+and the gunners. These outside snipers had some success in the early
+parts of the battle. They caused losses among our men by firing in the
+midst of them and by shooting them in the backs after they had
+passed. Usually the posts were small oblong pans in the mud, in which
+the men lay. Sometimes they were deep narrow graves in which the men
+stood to fire through a funnel in the earth. Here and there, where the
+ground was favourable, especially when there was some little knop,
+hillock, or bulge of ground just outside their line, as near
+Gommecourt Park and close to the Sunken Road at Beaumont Hamel, he
+placed several such posts together. Outside Gommecourt, a slight
+lynchet near the enemy line was prepared for at least a dozen such
+posts invisible from any part of our line and not easily to be picked
+out by photograph, and so placed as to sweep at least a mile of No
+Man's Land.
+
+  [Illustration: Sleighs used for conveying the Wounded through the
+  Mud]
+
+When these places had been passed, and the enemy wire, more or less
+cut by our shrapnel, had been crossed, our men had to attack the enemy
+fire trenches of the first line. These, like the other defences,
+varied in degree, but not in kind. They were, in the main, deep, solid
+trenches, dug with short bays or zigzags in the pattern of the Greek
+Key or badger's earth. They were seldom less than eight feet and
+sometimes as much as twelve feet deep. Their sides were revetted, or
+held from collapsing, by strong wickerwork. They had good,
+comfortable standing slabs or banquettes on which the men could stand
+to fire. As a rule, the parapets were not built up with sandbags as
+ours were.
+
+In some parts of the line, the front trenches were strengthened at
+intervals of about fifty yards by tiny forts or fortlets made of
+concrete and so built into the parapet that they could not be seen
+from without, even five yards away. These fortlets were pierced with a
+foot-long slip for the muzzle of a machine gun, and were just big
+enough to hold the gun and one gunner.
+
+In the forward wall of the trenches were the openings of the shafts
+which led to the front-line dugouts. The shafts are all of the same
+pattern. They have open mouths about four feet high, and slant down
+into the earth for about twenty feet at an angle of forty-five
+degrees. At the bottom of the stairs which led down are the living
+rooms and barracks which communicate with each other so that if a
+shaft collapse the men below may still escape by another. The shafts
+and living rooms are strongly propped and panelled with wood, and this
+has led to the destruction of most of the few which survived our
+bombardment. While they were needed as billets our men lived in them.
+Then the wood was removed, and the dugout and shaft collapsed.
+
+During the bombardment before an attack, the enemy kept below in his
+dugouts. If one shaft were blown in by a shell, they passed to the
+next. When the fire "lifted" to let the attack begin, they raced up
+the stairs with their machine guns and had them in action within a
+minute. Sometimes the fire was too heavy for this, for trench,
+parapet, shafts, dugouts, wood, and fortlets, were pounded out of
+existence, so that no man could say that a line had ever run there;
+and in these cases the garrison was destroyed in the shelters. This
+happened in several places, though all the enemy dugouts were kept
+equipped with pioneer tools by which buried men could dig themselves
+out.
+
+The direction of the front-line trenches was so inclined with bends,
+juts, and angles as to give flanking fire upon attackers.
+
+At some little distance behind the front line (a hundred yards or so)
+was a second fire line, wired like the first, though less elaborate
+and generally without concrete fortlets. This second line was usually
+as well sited for fire as the front line. There were many
+communication trenches between the two lines. Half a mile behind the
+second line was a third support line; and behind this, running along
+the whole front, a mile or more away, was the prepared second main
+position, which was in every way like the front line, with wire,
+concrete fortlets, dugouts, and a difficult glacis for the attacker to
+climb.
+
+The enemy batteries were generally placed behind banks or lynchets
+which gave good natural cover; but in many places he mounted guns in
+strong permanent emplacements, built up of timber balks, within a
+couple of miles (at Fricourt within a quarter of a mile) of his front
+line. In woods from the high trees of which he could have clear
+observation, as in the Bazentin, Bernafay, and Trones Woods, he had
+several of these emplacements, and also stout concrete fortlets for
+heavy single guns.
+
+All the enemy position on the battlefield was well gunned at the time
+of the beginning of the battle. In modern war, it is not possible to
+hide preparations for an attack on a wide front. Men have to be
+brought up, trenches have to be dug, the artillery has to prepare, and
+men, guns, and trenches have to be supplied with food, water, shells,
+sandbags, props, and revetments. When the fire on any sector increases
+tenfold, while the roads behind the lines are thronged with five times
+the normal traffic of troops and lorries, and new trenches, the attack
+or "jumping-off" trenches, are being dug in front of the line, a
+commander cannot fail to know that an attack is preparing. These
+preparations must be made and cannot be concealed from observers in
+the air or on the ground. The enemy knew very well that we were about
+to attack upon the Somme front, but did not know at which point to
+expect the main thrust. To be ready, in any case, he concentrated guns
+along the sector. It seems likely that he expected our attack to be an
+attempt to turn Bapaume by a thrust from the west, by Gommecourt,
+Puisieux, Grandcourt. In all this difficult sector his observations
+and arrangements for cross-fire were excellent. He concentrated a
+great artillery here (it is a legend among our men that he brought up
+a hundred batteries to defend Gommecourt alone). In this sector, and
+in one other place a little to the south of it, his barrage upon our
+trenches, before the battle, was very accurate, terrible, and deadly.
+
+Our attacks were met by a profuse machine-gun fire from the trench
+parapets and from the hidden pits between and outside the lines. There
+was not very much rifle fire in any part of the battle, but all the
+hotly fought for strongholds were defended by machine guns to the
+last. It was reported that the bodies of some enemy soldiers were
+found chained to their guns, and that on the bodies of others were
+intoxicating pills, designed to madden and infuriate the takers before
+an attack. The fighting in the trenches was mainly done by bombing
+with hand-grenades, of which the enemy had several patterns, all
+effective. His most used type was a grey tin cylinder, holding about a
+pound of explosive, and screwed to a wooden baton or handle about a
+foot long for the greater convenience of throwing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Early in the spring of 1916, it was determined that an attack should
+be made by our armies upon these lines of the enemy, so as to bring
+about a removal of the enemy guns and men, then attacking the French
+at Verdun and the Russians on the eastern front.
+
+Preparations for this attack were made throughout the first half of
+the year. New roads were cut, old roads were remetalled, new lines of
+railways were surveyed and laid, and supplies and munitions were
+accumulated not far from the front. Pumping stations were built and
+wells were sunk for the supply of water to the troops during the
+battle. Fresh divisions were brought up and held ready behind the
+line. An effort was made to check the enemy's use of aeroplanes. In
+June, our Air Service in the Somme sector made it so difficult for the
+enemy to take photographs over our lines that his knowledge of our
+doings along the front of the planned battle was lessened and
+thwarted. At the same time, many raids were made by our aeroplanes
+upon the enemy's depots and magazines behind his front. Throughout
+June, our infantry raided the enemy line in many places to the north
+of the planned battle. It seems possible that these raids led him to
+think that our coming attack would be made wholly to the north of the
+Ancre River.
+
+  [Illustration: The Assault on July 1, 1916, at La Boisselle]
+
+During the latter half of June, our armies concentrated a very great
+number of guns behind the front of the battle. The guns were of every
+kind, from the field gun to the heaviest howitzer. Together they made
+what was at that time by far the most terrible concentration of
+artillery ever known upon a battlefield. Vast stores of shells of
+every known kind were made ready, and hourly increased.
+
+As the guns came into battery, they opened intermittent fire, so that,
+by the 20th of June, the fire along our front was heavier than it had
+been before. At the same time, the fire of the machine guns and trench
+mortars in our trenches became hotter and more constant. On the 24th
+of June this fire was increased, by system, along the front designed
+for the battle, and along the French front to the south of the Somme,
+until it reached the intensity of a fire of preparation. Knowing, as
+they did, that an attack was to come, the enemy made ready and kept on
+the alert. Throughout the front, they expected the attack for the next
+morning.
+
+The fire was maintained throughout the night, but no attack was made
+in the morning, except by aeroplanes. These raided the enemy
+observation balloons, destroyed nine of them, and made it impossible
+for the others to keep in the air. The shelling continued all that
+day, searching the line and particular spots with intense fire and
+much asphyxiating gas. Again the enemy prepared for an attack in the
+morning, and again there was no attack, although the fire of
+preparation still went on. The enemy said, "To-morrow will make three
+whole days of preparation; the English will attack to-morrow." But
+when the morning came, there was no attack, only the never-ceasing
+shelling, which seemed to increase as time passed. It was now
+difficult and dangerous to move within the enemy lines. Relieving
+exhausted soldiers, carrying out the wounded, and bringing up food
+and water to the front, became terrible feats of war. The fire
+continued and increased, all that day and all the next day, and the
+day after that. It darkened the days with smoke and lit the nights
+with flashes. It covered the summer landscape with a kind of haze of
+hell, earth-coloured above fields and reddish above villages, from the
+dust of blown mud and brick flung up into the air. The tumult of these
+days and nights cannot be described nor imagined. The air was without
+wind yet it seemed in a hurry with the passing of death. Men knew not
+which they heard, a roaring that was behind and in front, like a
+presence, or a screaming that never ceased to shriek in the air. No
+thunder was ever so terrible as that tumult. It broke the drums of the
+ears when it came singly, but when it rose up along the front and gave
+tongue together in full cry it humbled the soul. With the roaring,
+crashing, and shrieking came a racket of hammers from the machine guns
+till men were dizzy and sick from the noise, which thrust between
+skull and brain, and beat out thought. With the noise came also a
+terror and an exultation, that one should hurry, and hurry, and hurry,
+like the shrieking shells, into the pits of fire opening on the hills.
+Every night in all this week the enemy said, "The English will attack
+to-morrow," and in the front lines prayed that the attack might come,
+that so an end, any end, might come to the shelling.
+
+It was fine, cloudless, summer weather, not very clear, for there was
+a good deal of heat haze and of mist in the nights and early mornings.
+It was hot yet brisk during the days. The roads were thick in dust.
+Clouds and streamers of chalk dust floated and rolled over all the
+roads leading to the front, till men and beasts were grey with it.
+
+At half-past six in the morning of the 1st of July all the guns on our
+front quickened their fire to a pitch of intensity never before
+attained. Intermittent darkness and flashing so played on the enemy
+line from Gommecourt to Maricourt that it looked like a reef on a
+loppy day. For one instant it could be seen as a white rim above the
+wire, then some comber of a big shell struck it fair and spouted it
+black aloft. Then another and another fell, and others of a new kind
+came and made a different darkness, through which now and then some
+fat white wreathing devil of explosion came out and danced. Then it
+would show out, with gaps in it, and with some of it level with the
+field, till another comber would fall and go up like a breaker and
+smash it out of sight again. Over all the villages on the field there
+floated a kind of bloody dust from the blasted bricks.
+
+In our trenches after seven o'clock on that morning, our men waited
+under a heavy fire for the signal to attack. Just before half-past
+seven, the mines at half a dozen points went up with a roar that shook
+the earth and brought down the parapets in our lines. Before the
+blackness of their burst had thinned or fallen the hand of Time rested
+on the half-hour mark, and along all that old front line of the
+English there came a whistling and a crying. The men of the first wave
+climbed up the parapets, in tumult, darkness, and the presence of
+death, and having done with all pleasant things, advanced across the
+No Man's Land to begin the Battle of the Somme.
+
+
+
+                           THE END
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+           PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 61: siegneurial replaced with seigneurial            |
+    | Page 84: protuding replaced with protruding               |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Interesting words in this document:                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | A rampike is an erect broken or dead tree.                |
+    | Eyrie is an alternate spelling for Aerie.                 |
+    | Tetter is a generic name for a number of skin diseases,   |
+    | such as eczema, psoriasis, or herpes, characterized by    |
+    | eruptions and itching.                                    |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Front Line, by John Masefield
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Front Line, by John Masefield
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Old Front Line
+
+Author: John Masefield
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2007 [EBook #20616]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD FRONT LINE ***
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+
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+Produced by K Nordquist, David Edwards, Jeannie Howse and
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+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<br />
+<p class="noin">Inconsistent hyphenation and alternate spelling in the original document have been preserved.</p>
+<p class="noin">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text.<br />
+For a complete list, please see the <a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h1>THE<br />
+OLD FRONT LINE</h1>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3 style="margin-bottom: -1px;">BY</h3>
+<h2 style="margin-bottom: -1px; margin-top: -1px;">JOHN MASEFIELD</h2>
+<h5 style="margin-top: -1px;">Author of "Gallipoli," etc.</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5>New York<br />
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+1918</h5>
+<br />
+<h5><i>All rights reserved</i></h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5><span class="sc">Copyright</span>, 1917<br />
+By JOHN MASEFIELD</h5>
+
+<hr style="width: 5%; color: black;" />
+
+<h5>Set up and electrotyped. Published, December, 1917.<br />
+Reprinted January, 1918.</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>TO<br />
+NEVILLE LYTTON</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="toi" id="toi"></a><hr />
+<br />
+
+<h3>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="65%" summary="List of Illustrations">
+  <tr>
+  <td width="80%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr" width="20%" style="font-size: 75%;">FACING PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">The Road up the Ancre Valley</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep016">16</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">Artillery Transport in Bapaume Road</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep028">28</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">Troops Moving to the Front</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep038">38</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">An Artillery Team</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep040">40</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">View in Hamel</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep042">42</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">The Ancre River</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep044">44</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">The Ancre Opposite Hamel</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep048">48</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">The Leipzig Salient</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep058">58</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">Dugouts in La Boisselle</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep066">66</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">La Boisselle</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep070">70</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">Fricourt</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep074">74</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">Fricourt</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep076">76</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">Sandbags at Fricourt</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep078">78</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">Mametz</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep082">82</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">Sleighs for the Wounded</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep088">88</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">The Attack on La Boisselle</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep094">94</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span><br />
+
+<h2>THE OLD FRONT LINE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>This description of the old front line, as it was when the Battle of
+the Somme began, may some day be of use. All wars end; even this war
+will some day end, and the ruins will be rebuilt and the field full of
+death will grow food, and all this frontier of trouble will be
+forgotten. When the trenches are filled in, and the plough has gone
+over them, the ground will not long keep the look of war. One summer
+with its flowers will cover most of the ruin that man can make, and
+then these places, from which the driving back of the enemy began,
+will be hard indeed to trace, even with maps. It is said that even now
+in some places the wire has been removed, the explosive salved, the
+trenches filled, and the ground ploughed with tractors. In a few
+years' time, when this war is a romance in memory, the soldier looking
+for his battlefield will find his marks gone. Centre Way, Peel Trench,
+Munster Alley, and these other paths to glory will be deep under the
+corn, and gleaners will sing at Dead Mule Corner.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span>It is hoped that this description of the line will be followed by an
+account of our people's share in the battle. The old front line was
+the base from which the battle proceeded. It was the starting-place.
+The thing began there. It was the biggest battle in which our people
+were ever engaged, and so far it has led to bigger results than any
+battle of this war since the Battle of the Marne. It caused a great
+falling back of the enemy armies. It freed a great tract of France,
+seventy miles long, by from ten to twenty-five miles broad. It first
+gave the enemy the knowledge that he was beaten.</p>
+
+<p>Very many of our people never lived to know the result of even the
+first day's fighting. For then the old front line was the battlefield,
+and the No Man's Land the prize of the battle. They never heard the
+cheer of victory nor looked into an enemy trench. Some among them
+never even saw the No Man's Land, but died in the summer morning from
+some shell in the trench in the old front line here described.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>It is a difficult thing to describe without monotony, for it varies so
+little. It is like describing the course of the Thames from Oxford to
+Reading, or of the Severn from Deerhurst to Lydney, or of the Hudson
+from New York <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span>to Tarrytown. Whatever country the rivers pass they
+remain water, bordered by shore. So our front-line trenches, wherever
+they lie, are only gashes in the earth, fenced by wire, beside a
+greenish strip of ground, pitted with shell-holes, which is fenced
+with thicker, blacker, but more tumbled wire on the other side. Behind
+this further wire is the parapet of the enemy front-line trench, which
+swerves to take in a hillock or to flank a dip, or to crown a slope,
+but remains roughly parallel with ours, from seventy to five hundred
+yards from it, for miles and miles, up hill and down dale. All the
+advantages of position and observation were in the enemy's hands, not
+in ours. They took up their lines when they were strong and our side
+weak, and in no place in all the old Somme position is our line better
+sited than theirs, though in one or two places the sites are nearly
+equal. Almost in every part of this old front our men had to go up
+hill to attack.</p>
+
+<p>If the description of this old line be dull to read, it should be
+remembered that it was dull to hold. The enemy had the lookout posts,
+with the fine views over France, and the sense of domination. Our men
+were down below with no view of anything but of stronghold after
+stronghold, just up above, being made stronger <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>daily. And if the
+enemy had strength of position he had also strength of equipment, of
+men, of guns, and explosives of all kinds. He had all the advantages
+for nearly two years of war, and in all that time our old front line,
+whether held by the French or by ourselves, was nothing but a post to
+be endured, day in day out, in all weathers and under all fires, in
+doubt, difficulty, and danger, with bluff and makeshift and
+improvisation, till the tide could be turned. If it be dull to read
+about and to see, it was, at least, the old line which kept back the
+tide and stood the siege. It was the line from which, after all those
+months of war, the tide turned and the besieged became the attackers.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>To most of the British soldiers who took part in the Battle of the
+Somme, the town of Albert must be a central point in a reckoning of
+distances. It lies, roughly speaking, behind the middle of the line of
+that battle. It is a knot of roads, so that supports and supplies
+could and did move from it to all parts of the line during the battle.
+It is on the main road, and on the direct railway line from Amiens. It
+is by much the most important town within an easy march of the
+battlefield. It will be, quite certainly, the centre from which, in
+time to come, travellers <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span>will start to see the battlefield where such
+deeds were done by men of our race.</p>
+
+<p>It is not now (after three years of war and many bombardments) an
+attractive town; probably it never was. It is a small straggling town
+built of red brick along a knot of cross-roads at a point where the
+swift chalk-river Ancre, hardly more than a brook, is bridged and so
+channeled that it can be used for power. Before the war it contained a
+few small factories, including one for the making of sewing-machines.
+Its most important building was a big church built a few years ago,
+through the energy of a priest, as a shrine for the Virgin of Albert,
+a small, probably not very old image, about which strange stories are
+told. Before the war it was thought that this church would become a
+northern rival to Lourdes for the working of miraculous cures during
+the September pilgrimage. A gilded statue of the Virgin and Child
+stood on an iron stalk on the summit of the church tower. During a
+bombardment of the town at a little after three o'clock in the
+afternoon of Friday, January 15, 1915, a shell so bent the stalk that
+the statue bent down over the Place as though diving. Perhaps few of
+our soldiers will remember Albert for anything except this diving
+Virgin. Perhaps half of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span>men engaged in the Battle of the Somme
+passed underneath her as they marched up to the line, and, glancing
+up, hoped that she might not come down till they were past. From some
+one, French or English, a word has gone about that when she does fall
+the war will end. Others have said that French engineers have so fixed
+her with wire ropes that she cannot fall.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>From Albert four roads lead to the battlefield of the Somme:</p>
+
+<p>1. In a north-westerly direction to Auchonvillers and H&eacute;buterne.</p>
+
+<p>2. In a northerly direction to Authuille and Hamel.</p>
+
+<p>3. In a north-easterly direction to Pozi&egrave;res.</p>
+
+<p>4. In an easterly direction to Fricourt and Maricourt.</p>
+
+<p>Between the second and the third of these the little river Ancre runs
+down its broad, flat, well-wooded valley, much of which is a marsh
+through which the river (and man) have forced more than one channel.
+This river, which is a swift, clear, chalk stream, sometimes too deep
+and swift to ford, cuts the English sector of the battlefield into two
+nearly equal portions.</p>
+
+<p>Following the first of the four roads, one passes the wooded village
+of Martinsart, to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>village of Auchonvillers, which lies among a
+clump of trees upon a ridge or plateau top. The road dips here, but
+soon rises again, and so, by a flat tableland, to the large village of
+H&eacute;buterne. Most of this road, with the exception of one little stretch
+near Auchonvillers, is hidden by high ground from every part of the
+battlefield. Men moving upon it cannot see the field.</p>
+
+<p>H&eacute;buterne, although close to the line and shelled daily and nightly
+for more than two years, was never the object of an attack in force,
+so that much of it remains. Many of its walls and parts of some of its
+roofs still stand, the church tower is in fair order, and no one
+walking in the streets can doubt that he is in a village. Before the
+war it was a prosperous village; then, for more than two years, it
+rang with the roar of battle and with the business of an army.
+Presently the tide of the war ebbed away from it and left it deserted,
+so that one may walk in it now, from end to end, without seeing a
+human being. It is as though the place had been smitten by the plague.
+Villages during the Black Death must have looked thus. One walks in
+the village expecting at every turn to meet a survivor, but there is
+none; the village is dead; the grass is growing in the street; the
+bells are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>silent; the beasts are gone from the byre and the ghosts
+from the church. Stealing about among the ruins and the gardens are
+the cats of the village, who have eaten too much man to fear him, but
+are now too wild to come to him. They creep about and eye him from
+cover and look like evil spirits.</p>
+
+<p>The second of the four roads passes out of Albert, crosses the railway
+at a sharp turn, over a bridge called Marmont Bridge, and runs
+northward along the valley of the Ancre within sight of the railway.
+Just beyond the Marmont Bridge there is a sort of lake or reservoir or
+catchment of the Ancre overflows, a little to the right of the road.
+By looking across this lake as he walks northward, the traveller can
+see some rolls of gentle chalk hill, just beyond which the English
+front line ran at the beginning of the battle.</p>
+
+<p>A little further on, at the top of a rise, the road passes the village
+of Aveluy, where there is a bridge or causeway over the Ancre valley.
+Aveluy itself, being within a mile and a half of enemy gun positions
+for nearly two years of war, is knocked about, and rather roofless and
+windowless. A cross-road leading to the causeway across the valley
+once gave the place some little importance.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep016" id="imagep016"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep016.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep016.jpg" width="85%" alt="The Road up the Ancre Valley through Aveluy Wood" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">The Road up the Ancre Valley through Aveluy Wood<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span>Not far to the north of Aveluy, the road runs for more than a mile
+through the Wood of Aveluy, which is a well-grown plantation of trees
+and shrubs. This wood hides the marsh of the river from the traveller.
+Tracks from the road lead down to the marsh and across it by military
+causeways.</p>
+
+<p>On emerging from the wood, the road runs within hail of the railway,
+under a steep and high chalk bank partly copsed with scrub.
+Three-quarters of a mile from the wood it passes through the skeleton
+of the village of Hamel, which is now a few ruined walls of brick
+standing in orchards on a hillside. Just north of this village,
+crossing the road, the railway, and the river-valley, is the old
+English front line.</p>
+
+<p>The third of the four roads is one of the main roads of France. It is
+the state highway, laid on the line of a Roman road, from Albert to
+Bapaume. It is by far the most used and the most important of the
+roads crossing the battlefield. As it leads directly to Bapaume, which
+was one of the prizes of the victory, and points like a sword through
+the heart of the enemy positions it will stay in the memories of our
+soldiers as the main avenue of the battle.</p>
+
+<p>The road leaves Albert in a street of dingy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>and rather broken
+red-brick houses. After passing a corner crucifix it shakes itself
+free of the houses and rises slowly up a ridge of chalk hill about
+three hundred feet high. On the left of the road, this ridge, which is
+much withered and trodden by troops and horses, is called Usna Hill.
+On the right, where the grass is green and the chalk of the old
+communication trenches still white and clean, it is called Tara Hill.
+Far away on the left, along the line of the Usna Hill, one can see the
+Aveluy Wood.</p>
+
+<p>Looking northward from the top of the Usna-Tara Hill to the dip below
+it and along the road for a few yards up the opposite slope, one sees
+where the old English front line crossed the road at right angles. The
+enemy front line faced it at a few yards' distance, just about two
+miles from Albert town.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth of the four roads runs for about a mile eastwards from
+Albert, and then slopes down into a kind of gully or shallow valley,
+through which a brook once ran and now dribbles. The road crosses the
+brook-course, and runs parallel with it for a little while to a place
+where the ground on the left comes down in a slanting tongue and on
+the right rises steeply into a big hill. The ground of the tongue
+bears traces of human habitation on it, all much <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>smashed and
+discoloured. This is the once pretty village of Fricourt. The hill on
+the right front at this point is the Fricourt Salient. The lines run
+round the salient and the road cuts across them.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond Fricourt, the road leaves another slanting tongue at some
+distance to its left. On this second tongue the village of Mametz once
+stood. Near here the road, having now cut across the salient, again
+crosses both sets of lines, and begins a long, slow ascent to a ridge
+or crest. From this point, for a couple of miles, the road is planted
+on each side with well-grown plane-trees, in some of which magpies
+have built their nests ever since the war began. At the top of the
+rise the road runs along the plateau top (under trees which show more
+and more plainly the marks of war) to a village so planted that it
+seems to stand in a wood. The village is built of red brick, and is
+rather badly broken by enemy shell fire, though some of the houses in
+it are still habitable. This is the village of Maricourt. Three or
+four hundred yards beyond Maricourt the road reaches the old English
+front line, at the eastern extremity of the English sector, as it was
+at the beginning of the battle.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>These four roads which lead to the centre and the wings of the
+battlefield were all, throughout the battle and for the months of war
+which preceded it, dangerous by daylight. All could be shelled by the
+map, and all, even the first, which was by much the best hidden of the
+four, could be seen, in places, from the enemy position. On some of
+the trees or tree stumps by the sides of the roads one may still see
+the "camouflage" by which these exposed places were screened from the
+enemy observers. The four roads were not greatly used in the months of
+war which preceded the battle. In those months, the front was too near
+to them, and other lines of supply and approach were more direct and
+safer. But there was always some traffic upon them of men going into
+the line or coming out, of ration parties, munition and water
+carriers, and ambulances. On all four roads many men of our race were
+killed. All, at some time, or many times, rang and flashed with
+explosions. Danger, death, shocking escape and firm resolve, went up
+and down those roads daily and nightly. Our men slept and ate and
+sweated and dug and died along them after all hardships and in all
+weathers. On parts of them, no traffic moved, even at night, so that
+the grass grew high upon them. Presently, they will be quiet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span>country
+roads again, and tourists will walk at ease, where brave men once ran
+and dodged and cursed their luck, when the Battle of the Somme was
+raging.</p>
+
+<p>Then, indeed, those roads were used. Then the grass that had grown on
+some of them was trodden and crushed under. The trees and banks by the
+waysides were used to hide batteries, which roared all day and all
+night. At all hours and in all weathers the convoys of horses slipped
+and stamped along those roads with more shells for the ever-greedy
+cannon. At night, from every part of those roads, one saw a twilight
+of summer lightning winking over the high ground from the
+never-ceasing flashes of guns and shells. Then there was no quiet, but
+a roaring, a crashing, and a screaming from guns, from shells bursting
+and from shells passing in the air. Then, too, on the two roads to the
+east of the Ancre River, the troops for the battle moved up to the
+line. The battalions were played by their bands through Albert, and up
+the slope of Usna Hill to Pozi&egrave;res and beyond, or past Fricourt and
+the wreck of Mametz to Montauban and the bloody woodland near it.
+Those roads then were indeed paths of glory leading to the grave.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>During the months which preceded the Battle of the Somme, other roads
+behind our front lines were more used than these. Little villages, out
+of shell fire, some miles from the lines, were then of more use to us
+than Albert. Long after we are gone, perhaps, stray English tourists,
+wandering in Picardy, will see names scratched in a barn, some mark or
+notice on a door, some sign-post, some little line of graves, or hear,
+on the lips of a native, some slang phrase of English, learned long
+before in the wartime, in childhood, when the English were there. All
+the villages behind our front were thronged with our people. There
+they rested after being in the line and there they established their
+hospitals and magazines. It may be said, that men of our race died in
+our cause in every village within five miles of the front. Wherever
+the traveller comes upon a little company of our graves, he will know
+that he is near the site of some old hospital or clearing station,
+where our men were brought in from the line.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>So much for the roads by which our men marched to this battlefield.
+Near the lines they had to leave the roads for the shelter of some
+communication trench or deep cut in the mud, revetted at the sides
+with wire to hinder it from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>collapsing inwards. By these deep narrow
+roads, only broad enough for marching in single file, our men passed
+to "the front," to the line itself. Here and there, in recesses in the
+trench, under roofs of corrugated iron covered with sandbags, they
+passed the offices and the stores of war, telephonists, battalion
+headquarters, dumps of bombs, barbed wire, rockets, lights,
+machine-gun ammunition, tins, jars, and cases. Many men, passing these
+things as they went "in" for the first time, felt with a sinking of
+the heart, that they were leaving all ordered and arranged things,
+perhaps forever, and that the men in charge of these stores enjoyed,
+by comparison, a life like a life at home.</p>
+
+<p>Much of the relief and munitioning of the fighting lines was done at
+night. Men going into the lines saw little of where they were going.
+They entered the gash of the communication trench, following the load
+on the back of the man in front, but seeing perhaps nothing but the
+shape in front, the black walls of the trench, and now and then some
+gleam of a star in the water under foot. Sometimes as they marched
+they would see the starshells, going up and bursting like rockets, and
+coming down With a wavering slow settling motion, as white and bright
+as burning magnesium wire, shedding <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>a kind of dust of light upon the
+trench and making the blackness intense when they went out. These
+lights, the glimmer in the sky from the enemy's guns, and now and then
+the flash of a shell, were the things seen by most of our men on their
+first going in.</p>
+
+<p>In the fire trench they saw little more than the parapet. If work were
+being done in the No Man's Land, they still saw little save by these
+lights that floated and fell from the enemy and from ourselves. They
+could see only an array of stakes tangled with wire, and something
+distant and dark which might be similar stakes, or bushes, or men, in
+front of what could only be the enemy line. When the night passed, and
+those working outside the trench had to take shelter, they could see
+nothing, even at a loophole or periscope, but the greenish strip of
+ground, pitted with shell-holes and fenced with wire, running up to
+the enemy line. There was little else for them to see, looking to the
+front, for miles and miles, up hill and down dale.</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers who held this old front line of ours saw this grass and
+wire day after day, perhaps, for many months. It was the limit of
+their world, the horizon of their landscape, the boundary. What
+interest there was in their life was the speculation, what lay beyond
+that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>wire, and what the enemy was doing there. They seldom saw an
+enemy. They heard his songs and they were stricken by his missiles,
+but seldom saw more than, perhaps, a swiftly moving cap at a gap in
+the broken parapet, or a grey figure flitting from the light of a
+starshell. Aeroplanes brought back photographs of those unseen lines.
+Sometimes, in raids in the night, our men visited them and brought
+back prisoners; but they remained mysteries and unknown.</p>
+
+<p>In the early morning of the 1st of July, 1916, our men looked at them
+as they showed among the bursts of our shells. Those familiar heaps,
+the lines, were then in a smoke of dust full of flying clods and
+shards and gleams of fire. Our men felt that now, in a few minutes,
+they would see the enemy and know what lay beyond those parapets and
+probe the heart of that mystery. So, for the last half-hour, they
+watched and held themselves ready, while the screaming of the shells
+grew wilder and the roar of the bursts quickened into a drumming. Then
+as the time drew near, they looked a last look at that unknown
+country, now almost blotted in the fog of War, and saw the flash of
+our shells, breaking a little further off as the gunners "lifted," and
+knew that the moment had come. Then for one wild confused moment they
+knew that they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>were running towards that unknown land, which they
+could still see in the dust ahead. For a moment, they saw the parapet
+with the wire in front of it, and began, as they ran, to pick out in
+their minds a path through that wire. Then, too often, to many of
+them, the grass that they were crossing flew up in shards and sods and
+gleams of fire from the enemy shells, and those runners never reached
+the wire, but saw, perhaps, a flash, and the earth rushing nearer, and
+grasses against the sky, and then saw nothing more at all, for ever
+and for ever and for ever.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>It may be some years before those whose fathers, husbands and brothers
+were killed in this great battle, may be able to visit the battlefield
+where their dead are buried. Perhaps many of them, from brooding on
+the map, and from dreams and visions in the night, have in their minds
+an image or picture of that place. The following pages may help some
+few others, who have not already formed that image, to see the scene
+as it appears to-day. What it was like on the day of battle cannot be
+imagined by those who were not there.</p>
+
+<p>It was a day of an intense blue summer beauty, full of roaring,
+violence, and confusion of death, agony, and triumph, from dawn till
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>dark. All through that day, little rushes of the men of our race went
+towards that No Man's Land from the bloody shelter of our trenches.
+Some hardly left our trenches, many never crossed the green space,
+many died in the enemy wire, many had to fall back. Others won across
+and went further, and drove the enemy from his fort, and then back
+from line to line and from one hasty trenching to another, till the
+Battle of the Somme ended in the falling back of the enemy army.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>Those of our men who were in the line at H&eacute;buterne, at the extreme
+northern end of the battlefield of the Somme, were opposite the enemy
+salient of Gommecourt. This was one of those projecting fortresses or
+flankers, like the Leipzig, Ovillers, and Fricourt, with which the
+enemy studded and strengthened his front line. It is doubtful if any
+point in the line in France was stronger than this point of
+Gommecourt. Those who visit it in future times may be surprised that
+such a place was so strong.</p>
+
+<p>All the country there is gentler and less decided than in the southern
+parts of the battlefield. H&eacute;buterne stands on a plateau-top; to the
+east of it there is a gentle dip down to a shallow hollow or valley;
+to the east of this again <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>there is a gentle rise to higher ground, on
+which the village of Gommecourt stood. The church of Gommecourt is
+almost exactly one mile northeast and by north from the church at
+H&eacute;buterne; both churches being at the hearts of their villages.</p>
+
+<p>Seen from our front line at H&eacute;buterne, Gommecourt is little more than
+a few red-brick buildings, standing in woodland on a rise of ground.
+Wood hides the village to the north, the west, and the southwest. A
+big spur of woodland, known as Gommecourt Park, thrusts out boldly
+from the village towards the plateau on which the English lines stood.
+This spur, strongly fortified by the enemy, made the greater part of
+the salient in the enemy line. The landscape away from the wood is not
+in any way remarkable, except that it is open, and gentle, and on a
+generous scale. Looking north from our position at H&eacute;buterne there is
+the snout of the woodland salient; looking south there is the green
+shallow shelving hollow or valley which made the No Man's Land for
+rather more than a mile. It is just such a gentle waterless hollow,
+like a dried-up river-bed, as one may see in several places in chalk
+country in England, but it is unenclosed land, and therefore more open
+and seemingly on a bigger scale than such a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span>landscape would be in
+England, where most fields are small and fenced. Our old front line
+runs where the ground shelves or glides down into the valley; the
+enemy front line runs along the gentle rise up from the valley. The
+lines face each other across the slopes. To the south, the slope on
+which the enemy line stands is very slight.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep028" id="imagep028"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep028.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep028.jpg" width="85%" alt="Artillery Transport crossing a Trench Bridge into the Bapaume Road" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">Artillery Transport crossing a Trench Bridge into the
+Bapaume Road<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The impression given by this tract of land once held by the enemy is
+one of graceful gentleness. The wood on the little spur, even now, has
+something green about it. The village, once almost within the wood,
+wrecked to shatters as it is, has still a charm of situation. In the
+distance behind Gommecourt there is some ill-defined rising ground
+forming gullies and ravines. On these rises are some dark clumps of
+woodland, one of them called after the nightingales, which perhaps
+sing there this year, in what is left of their home. There is nothing
+now to show that this quiet landscape was one of the tragical places
+of this war.</p>
+
+<p>The whole field of the Somme is chalk hill and downland, like similar
+formations in England. It has about it, in every part of it, certain
+features well known to every one who has ever travelled in a chalk
+country. These features occur even in the gentle, rolling, and not
+strongly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>marked sector near H&eacute;buterne. Two are very noticeable, the
+formation almost everywhere of those steep, regular banks or terraces,
+which the French call remblais and our own farmers lynchets, and the
+presence, in nearly all parts of the field, of roads sunken between
+two such banks into a kind of narrow gully or ravine. It is said, that
+these remblais or lynchets, which may be seen in English chalk
+countries, as in the Dunstable Downs, in the Chiltern Hills, and in
+many parts of Berkshire and Wiltshire, are made in each instance, in a
+short time, by the ploughing away from the top and bottom of any
+difficult slope. Where two slopes adjoin, such ploughing steepens the
+valley between them into a gully, which, being always unsown, makes a
+track through the crops when they are up. Sometimes, though less
+frequently, the farmer ploughs away from a used track on quite flat
+land, and by doing this on both sides of the track, he makes the track
+a causeway or ridge-way, slightly raised above the adjoining fields.
+This type of raised road or track can be seen in one or two parts of
+the battlefield (just above Hamel and near Pozi&egrave;res for instance), but
+the hollow or sunken road and the steep remblai or lynchet are
+everywhere. One may say that no quarter of a mile of the whole field
+is without <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span>one or other of them. The sunken roads are sometimes very
+deep. Many of our soldiers, on seeing them, have thought that they
+were cuttings made, with great labour, through the chalk, and that the
+remblais or lynchets were piled up and smoothed for some unknown
+purpose by primitive man. Probably it will be found, that in every
+case they are natural slopes made sharper by cultivation. Two or three
+of these lynchets and sunken roads cross the shallow valley of the No
+Man's Land near H&eacute;buterne. By the side of one of them, a line of
+Sixteen Poplars, now ruined, made a landmark between the lines.</p>
+
+<p>The line continues (with some slight eastward trendings, but without a
+change in its gentle quiet) southwards from this point for about a
+mile to a slight jut, or salient in the enemy line. This jut was known
+by our men as the Point, and a very spiky point it was to handle. From
+near the Point on our side of No Man's Land, a bank or lynchet, topped
+along its edge with trees, runs southwards for about a mile. In four
+places, the trees about this lynchet grow in clumps or copses, which
+our men called after the four Evangelists, John, Luke, Mark, and
+Matthew. This bank marks the old English front line between the Point
+and the Serre Road a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>mile to the south of it. Behind this English
+line are several small copses, on ground which very gently rises
+towards the crest of the plateau a mile to the west. In front of most
+of this part of our line, the ground rises towards the enemy trenches,
+so that one can see little to the front, but the slope up. The No
+Man's Land here is not green, but as full of shell-holes and the ruin
+of battle as any piece of the field. Directly between Serre and the
+Matthew Copse, where the lines cross a rough lump of ground, the enemy
+parapet is whitish from the chalk. The whitish parapet makes the
+skyline to observers in the English line. Over that parapet, some
+English battalions made one of the most splendid charges of the
+battle, in the heroic attack on Serre four hundred yards beyond.</p>
+
+<p>To the right of our front at Matthew Copse the ground slopes southward
+a little, past what may once have been a pond or quarry, but is now a
+pit in the mud, to the Serre road. Here one can look up the muddy road
+to the hamlet of Serre, where the wrecks of some brick buildings stand
+in a clump of tree stumps, or half-right down a God-forgotten kind of
+glen, blasted by fire to the look of a moor in hell. A few rampikes of
+trees standing on one side of this glen give the place its name of Ten
+Tree Alley. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>Immediately to the south of the Serre road, the ground
+rises into one of the many big chalk spurs, which thrust from the main
+H&eacute;buterne plateau towards the Ancre Valley. The spur at this point
+runs east and west, and the lines cross it from north and south. They
+go up it side by side, a hundred and fifty yards apart, with a
+greenish No Man's Land between them. The No Man's Land, as usual, is
+the only part of all this chalk spur that is not burnt, gouged,
+pocked, and pitted with shell fire. It is, however, enough marked by
+the war to be bad going. When they are well up the spur, the lines
+draw nearer, and at the highest point of the spur they converge in one
+of the terrible places of the battlefield.</p>
+
+<p>For months before the battle began, it was a question here, which side
+should hold the highest point of the spur. Right at the top of the
+spur there is one patch of ground, measuring, it may be, two hundred
+yards each way, from which one can see a long way in every direction.
+From this patch, the ground droops a little towards the English side
+and stretches away fairly flat towards the enemy side, but one can see
+far either way, and to have this power of seeing, both sides fought
+desperately.</p>
+
+<p>Until the beginning of the war, this spur of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>ground was corn-land,
+like most of the battlefield. Unfenced country roads crossed it. It
+was a quiet, lonely, prosperous ploughland, stretching for miles, up
+and down, in great sweeping rolls and folds, like our own chalk
+downlands. It had one feature common to all chalk countries; it was a
+land of smooth expanses. Before the war, all this spur was a smooth
+expanse, which passed in a sweep from the slope to the plateau, over
+this crown of summit.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, the whole of the summit (which is called the Redan Ridge), for
+all its two hundred yards, is blown into pits and craters from twenty
+to fifty feet deep, and sometimes fifty yards long. These pits and
+ponds in rainy weather fill up with water, which pours from one pond
+into another, so that the hill-top is loud with the noise of the
+brooks. For many weeks, the armies fought for this patch of hill. It
+was all mined, counter-mined, and re-mined, and at each explosion the
+crater was fought for and lost and won. It cannot be said that either
+side won that summit till the enemy was finally beaten from all that
+field, for both sides conquered enough to see from. On the enemy side,
+a fortification of heaped earth was made; on our side, castles were
+built of sandbags filled with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span>flint. These strongholds gave both
+sides enough observation. The works face each other across the ponds.
+The sandbags of the English works have now rotted, and flag about like
+the rags of uniform or like withered grass. The flint and chalk laid
+bare by their rotting look like the grey of weathered stone, so that,
+at a little distance, the English works look old and noble, as though
+they were the foundations of some castle long since fallen under Time.</p>
+
+<p>To the right, that is to the southward, from these English castles
+there is a slope of six hundred yards into a valley or gully. The
+slope is not in any way remarkable or seems not to be, except that the
+ruin of a road, now barely to be distinguished from the field, runs
+across it. The opposing lines of trenches go down the slope, much as
+usual, with the enemy line above on a slight natural glacis. Behind
+this enemy line is the bulk of the spur, which is partly white from
+up-blown chalk, partly burnt from months of fire, and partly faintly
+green from recovering grass. A little to the right or south, on this
+bulk of spur, there are the stumps of trees and no grass at all,
+nothing but upturned chalk and burnt earth. On the battlefield of the
+Somme, these are the marks of a famous place.</p>
+
+<p>The valley into which the slope descends is a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>broadish gentle opening
+in the chalk hills, with a road running at right angles to the lines
+of trenches at the bottom of it. As the road descends, the valley
+tightens in, and just where the enemy line crosses it, it becomes a
+narrow deep glen or gash, between high and steep banks of chalk. Well
+within the enemy position and fully seven hundred yards from our line,
+another such glen or gash runs into this glen, at right angles. At
+this meeting place of the glens is or was the village of Beaumont
+Hamel, which the enemy said could never be taken.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment it need not be described; for it was not seen by many
+of our men in the early stages of the battle. In fact our old line was
+at least five hundred yards outside it. But all our line in the valley
+here was opposed to the village defences, and the fighting at this
+point was fierce and terrible, and there are some features in the No
+Man's Land just outside the village which must be described. These
+features run parallel with our line right down to the road in the
+valley, and though they are not features of great tactical importance,
+like the patch of summit above, where the craters are, or like the
+windmill at Pozi&egrave;res, they were the last things seen by many brave
+Irish and Englishmen, and cannot be passed lightly by.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>The features are a lane, fifty or sixty yards in front of our front
+trench, and a remblai or lynchet fifty or sixty yards in front of the
+lane.</p>
+
+<p>The lane is a farmer's track leading from the road in the valley to
+the road on the spur. It runs almost north and south, like the lines
+of trenches, and is about five hundred yards long. From its start in
+the valley-road to a point about two hundred yards up the spur it is
+sunken below the level of the field on each side of it. At first the
+sinking is slight, but it swiftly deepens as it goes up hill. For more
+than a hundred yards it lies between banks twelve or fifteen feet
+deep. After this part the banks die down into insignificance, so that
+the road is nearly open. The deep part, which is like a very deep,
+broad, natural trench, was known to our men as the Sunken Road. The
+banks of this sunken part are perpendicular. Until recently, they were
+grown over with a scrub of dwarf beech, ash, and sturdy saplings, now
+mostly razed by fire. In the road itself our men built up walls of
+sandbags to limit the effects of enemy shell fire. From these defences
+steps cut in the chalk of the bank lead to the field above, where
+there were machine-gun pits.</p>
+
+<p>The field in front of the lane (where these pits were) is a fairly
+smooth slope for about <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>fifty yards. Then there is the lynchet or
+remblai, like a steep cliff, from three to twelve feet high, hardly to
+be noticed from above until the traveller is upon it. Below this
+lynchet is a fairly smooth slope, so tilted that it slopes down to the
+right towards the valley road, and slopes up to the front towards the
+enemy line. Looking straight to the front from the Sunken Road our men
+saw no sudden dip down at the lynchet, but a continuous grassy field,
+at first flat, then slowly rising towards the enemy parapet. The line
+of the lynchet-top merges into the slope behind it, so that it is not
+seen. The enemy line thrusts out in a little salient here, so as to
+make the most of a little bulge of ground which was once wooded and
+still has stumps. The bulge is now a heap and ruin of burnt and
+tumbled mud and chalk. To reach it our men had to run across the flat
+from the Sunken Road, slide down the bank of the lynchet, and then run
+up the glacis to the parapet.</p>
+
+<p>The Sunken Road was only held by our men as an advanced post and
+"jumping off" (or attacking) point. Our line lay behind it on a higher
+part of the spur, which does not decline gradually into the valley
+road, but breaks off in a steep bank cut by our soldiers into a flight
+of chalk steps. These steps gave to all this part <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>of the line the
+name of Jacob's Ladder. From the top of Jacob's Ladder there is a good
+view of the valley road running down into Beaumont Hamel. To the right
+there is a big steep knoll of green hill bulking up to the south of
+the valley, and very well fenced with enemy wire. All the land to the
+right or south of Jacob's Ladder is this big green hill, which is very
+steep, irregular, and broken with banks, and so ill-adapted for
+trenching that we were forced to make our line further from the enemy
+than is usual on the front. The front trenches here are nearly five
+hundred yards apart. As far as the hill-top the enemy line has a great
+advantage of position. To reach it our men had to cross the open and
+ascend a slope which gave neither dead ground nor cover to front or
+flank. Low down the hill, running parallel with the road, is a little
+lynchet, topped by a few old hawthorn bushes. All this bit of the old
+front line was the scene of a most gallant attack by our men on the
+1st of July. Those who care may see it in the official cinematograph
+films of the Battle of the Somme.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep038" id="imagep038"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep038.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep038.jpg" width="85%" alt="Troops moving to the Front in the Dust of the Summer Fighting" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">Troops moving to the Front in the Dust of the Summer
+Fighting<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Right at the top of the hill there is a dark enclosure of wood,
+orchard, and plantation, with several fairly well preserved red-brick
+buildings in it. This is the plateau-village of Auchonvillers. On the
+slopes below it, a couple of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>hundred yards behind Jacob's Ladder,
+there is a little round clump of trees. Both village and clump make
+conspicuous landmarks. The clump was once the famous English
+machine-gun post of the Bowery, from which our men could shoot down
+the valley into Beaumont Hamel.</p>
+
+<p>The English line goes up the big green hill, in trenches and saps of
+reddish clay, to the plateau or tableland at the top. Right up on the
+top, well behind our front line and close to one of our communication
+trenches, there is a good big hawthorn bush, in which a magpie has
+built her nest. This bush, which is strangely beautiful in the spring,
+has given to the plateau the name of the Hawthorn Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Just where the opposing lines reach the top of the Ridge they both
+bend from their main north and south direction towards the southeast,
+and continue in that course for several miles. At the point or salient
+of the bending, in the old enemy position, there is a crater of a mine
+which the English sprang in the early morning of the 1st of July. This
+is the crater of the mine of Beaumont Hamel. Until recently it was
+supposed to be the biggest crater ever blown by one explosion. It is
+not the deepest: one or two others near La Boisselle are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>deeper, but
+none on the Somme field comes near it in bigness and squalor. It is
+like the crater of a volcano, vast, ragged, and irregular, about one
+hundred and fifty yards long, one hundred yards across, and
+twenty-five yards deep. It is crusted and scabbed with yellowish
+tetter, like sulphur or the rancid fat on meat. The inside has rather
+the look of meat, for it is reddish and all streaked and scabbed with
+this pox and with discoloured chalk. A lot of it trickles and oozes
+like sores discharging pus, and this liquid gathers in holes near the
+bottom, and is greenish and foul and has the look of dead eyes staring
+upwards.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep040" id="imagep040"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep040.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep040.jpg" width="85%" alt="An Artillery Team taking the Bank" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">An Artillery Team taking the Bank<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>All that can be seen of it from the English line is a disarrangement
+of the enemy wire and parapet. It is a hole in the ground which cannot
+be seen except from quite close at hand. At first sight, on looking
+into it, it is difficult to believe that it was the work of man; it
+looks so like nature in her evil mood. It is hard to imagine that only
+three years ago that hill was cornfield, and the site of the chasm
+grew bread. After that happy time, the enemy bent his line there and
+made the salient a stronghold, and dug deep shelters for his men in
+the walls of his trenches; the marks of the dugouts are still plain in
+the sides of the pit. Then, on the 1st of July, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span>when the explosion
+was to be a signal for the attack, and our men waited in the trenches
+for the spring, the belly of the chalk was heaved, and chalk, clay,
+dugouts, gear, and enemy, went up in a dome of blackness full of
+pieces, and spread aloft like a toadstool, and floated, and fell down.</p>
+
+<p>From the top of the Hawthorn Ridge, our soldiers could see a great
+expanse of chalk downland, though the falling of the hill kept them
+from seeing the enemy's position. That lay on the slope of the ridge,
+somewhere behind the wire, quite out of sight from our lines. Looking
+out from our front line at this salient, our men saw the enemy wire
+almost as a skyline. Beyond this line, the ground dipped towards
+Beaumont Hamel (which was quite out of sight in the valley) and rose
+again sharply in the steep bulk of Beaucourt spur. Beyond this lonely
+spur, the hills ranked and ran, like the masses of a moor, first the
+high ground above Miraumont, and beyond that the high ground of the
+Loupart Wood, and away to the east the bulk that makes the left bank
+of the Ancre River. What trees there are in this moorland were not
+then all blasted. Even in Beaumont Hamel some of the trees were green.
+The trees in the Ancre River Valley made all that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span>marshy meadow like
+a forest. Looking out on all this, the first thought of the soldier
+was that here he could really see something of the enemy's ground.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep042" id="imagep042"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep042.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep042.jpg" width="85%" alt="A View in Hamel" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">A View in Hamel<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is true, that from this hill-top much land, then held by the enemy,
+could be seen, but very little that was vital to the enemy could be
+observed. His lines of supply and support ran in ravines which we
+could not see; his batteries lay beyond crests, his men were in hiding
+places. Just below us on the lower slopes of this Hawthorn Ridge he
+had one vast hiding place which gave us a great deal of trouble. This
+was a gully or ravine, about five hundred yards long, well within his
+position, running (roughly speaking) at right angles with his front
+line. Probably it was a steep and deep natural fold made steeper and
+deeper by years of cultivation. It is from thirty to forty feet deep,
+and about as much across at the top; it has abrupt sides, and thrusts
+out two forks to its southern side. These forks give it the look of a
+letter <b>Y</b> upon the maps, for which reason both the French and
+ourselves called the place the "Ravin en Y" or "Y Ravine." Part of the
+southernmost fork was slightly open to observation from our lines; the
+main bulk of the gully was invisible to us, except from the air.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>Whenever the enemy has had a bank of any kind, at all screened from
+fire, he has dug into it for shelter. In the Y Ravine, which provided
+these great expanses of banks, he dug himself shelters of unusual
+strength and size. He sank shafts into the banks, tunnelled long
+living rooms, both above and below the gully-bottom, linked the rooms
+together with galleries, and cut hatchways and bolting holes to lead
+to the surface as well as to the gully. All this work was securely
+done, with balks of seasoned wood, iron girders, and concreting. Much
+of it was destroyed by shell fire during the battle, but much not hit
+by shells is in good condition to-day even after the autumn rains and
+the spring thaw. The galleries which lead upwards and outwards from
+this underground barracks to the observation posts and machine-gun
+emplacements in the open air, are cunningly planned and solidly made.
+The posts and emplacements to which they led are now, however, (nearly
+all) utterly destroyed by our shell fire.</p>
+
+<p>In this gully barracks, and in similar shelters cut in the chalk of
+the steeper banks near Beaumont Hamel, the enemy could hold ready
+large numbers of men to repel an attack or to make a counter-attack.
+They lived in these dugouts in comparative safety and in moderate
+comfort. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span>When our attacks came during the early months of the battle,
+they were able to pass rapidly and safely by these underground
+galleries from one part of the position to another, bringing their
+machine guns with them. However, the Ravine was presently taken and
+the galleries and underground shelters were cleared. In one
+underground room in that barracks, nearly fifty of the enemy were
+found lying dead in their bunks, all unwounded, and as though asleep.
+They had been killed by the concussion of the air following on the
+burst of a big shell at the entrance.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep044" id="imagep044"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep044.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep044.jpg" width="85%" alt="The Ancre River" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">The Ancre River<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>One other thing may be mentioned about this Hawthorn Ridge. It runs
+parallel with the next spur (the Beaucourt spur) immediately to the
+north of it, then in the enemy's hands. Just over the crest of this
+spur, out of sight from our lines, is a country road, well banked and
+screened, leading from Beaucourt to Serre. This road was known by our
+men as Artillery Lane, because it was used as a battery position by
+the enemy. The wrecks of several of his guns lie in the mud there
+still. From the crest in front of this road there is a view to the
+westward, so wonderful that those who see it realize at once that the
+enemy position on the Ridge, which, at a first glance, seems badly
+sited for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span>observation, is, really, well placed. From this crest, the
+Ridge-top, all our old front line, and nearly all the No Man's Land
+upon it, is exposed, and plainly to be seen. On a reasonably clear
+day, no man could leave our old line unseen from this crest. No
+artillery officer, correcting the fire of a battery, could ask for a
+better place from which to watch the bursts of his shells. This crest,
+in front of the lane of enemy guns, made it possible for the enemy
+batteries to drop shells upon our front line trenches before all the
+men were out of them at the instant of the great attack.</p>
+
+<p>The old English line runs along the Hawthorn Ridge-top for some
+hundreds of yards, and then crosses a dip or valley, which is the
+broad, fanshaped, southern end of a fork of Y Ravine. A road runs, or
+ran, down this dip into the Y Ravine. It is not now recognisable as a
+road, but the steep banks at each side of it, and some bluish
+metalling in the shell holes, show that one once ran there. These
+banks are covered with hawthorn bushes. A remblai, also topped with
+hawthorn, lies a little to the north of this road.</p>
+
+<p>From this lynchet, looking down the valley into the Y Ravine, the
+enemy position is saddle-shaped, low in the middle, where the Y
+Ravine <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>narrows, and rising to right and left to a good height. Chalk
+hills from their form often seem higher than they really are,
+especially in any kind of haze. Often they have mystery and nearly
+always beauty. For some reason, the lumping rolls of chalk hill rising
+up on each side of this valley have a menace and a horror about them.
+One sees little of the enemy position from the English line. It is now
+nothing but a track of black wire in front of some burnt and battered
+heapings of the ground, upon which the grass and the flowers have only
+now begun to push. At the beginning of the battle it must have been
+greener and fresher, for then the fire of hell had not come upon it;
+but even then, even in the summer day, that dent in the chalk leading
+to the Y Ravine must have seemed a threatening and forbidding place.</p>
+
+<p>Our line goes along the top of the ridge here, at a good distance from
+the enemy line. It is dug on the brow of the plateau in reddish earth
+on the top of chalk. It is now much as our men left it for the last
+time. The trench-ladders by which they left it are still in place in
+the bays of the trenches. All the outer, or jumping-off, trenches, are
+much destroyed by enemy shell fire, which was very heavy here from
+both sides of the Ancre River. A quarter of a mile to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>southeast
+of the Y Ravine the line comes within sight of the great gap which
+cuts the battlefield in two. This gap is the valley of the Ancre
+River, which runs here beneath great spurs of chalk, as the Thames
+runs at Goring and Pangbourne. On the lonely hill, where this first
+comes plainly into view, as one travels south along the line, there
+used to be two bodies of English soldiers, buried once, and then
+unburied by the rain. They lay in the No Man's Land, outside the
+English wire, in what was then one of the loneliest places in the
+field. The ruin of war lay all round them.</p>
+
+<p>There are many English graves (marked, then, hurriedly, by the man's
+rifle thrust into the ground) in that piece of the line. On a windy
+day, these rifles shook in the wind as the bayonets bent to the blast.
+The field testaments of both men lay open beside them in the mud. The
+rain and the mud together had nearly destroyed the little books, but
+in each case it was possible to read one text. In both cases, the text
+which remained, read with a strange irony. The one book, beside a
+splendid youth, cut off in his promise, was open at a text which ran,
+"And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty
+in word and in deed." The other book, beside one who had been killed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>in an attack which did not succeed at the moment, but which led to the
+falling back of the enemy nation from many miles of conquered ground,
+read even more strangely. It was open at the eighty-ninth Psalm, and
+the only legible words were, "Thou hast broken down all his hedges;
+thou hast brought his strong holds to ruin."</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep048" id="imagep048"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep048.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep048.jpg" width="85%" alt="The Ancre opposite Hamel" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">The Ancre opposite Hamel<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>From the hill-top where these graves are the lines droop down towards
+the second of the four roads, which runs here in the Ancre valley
+parallel with the river and the railway. The slope is steep and the
+ground broken with shallow gullies and lynchets. Well down towards the
+river, just above the road, a flattish piece of land leads to a ravine
+with steep and high banks. This flattish land, well within the enemy
+line, was the scene of very desperate fighting on the 1st of July.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at the enemy line in front of our own line here, one sees
+little but a gentle crest, protected by wire, in front of another
+gentle crest, also wired, with other gentle crests beyond and to the
+left. To the right there is a blur of gentle crests behind tree-tops.
+It is plain from a glance that gullies run irregularly into the spurs
+here, and make the defence easy. All through the fighting here, it
+happened too often <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>that the taking of one crest only meant that the
+winners were taken in flank by machine guns in the crest beyond, and
+(in this bit of the line) by other guns on the other side of the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>Well to the back of the English line here, on the top of the plateau,
+level with Auchonvillers, some trees stand upon the skyline, with the
+tower of a church, battered, but not destroyed, like the banner of
+some dauntless one, a little to the west of the wood. The wood shows
+marks of shelling, but nothing like the marks on the woods attacked by
+our own men. There are signs of houses among the trees, and the line
+of a big wood to the east of them.</p>
+
+<p>This church and the buildings near it are parts of Mesnil village,
+most of which lies out of sight on the further side of the crest. They
+are conspicuous landmarks, and can be made out from many parts of the
+field. The chalk scarp on which they stand is by much the most
+beautiful thing on the battlefield, and the sight of Mesnil church
+tower on the top of it is most pleasant. That little banner stood all
+through the war, and not all the guns of the enemy could bring it
+down. Many men in the field near Mesnil, enduring the mud of the thaw,
+and the lice, wet, and squalor of dugouts near the front, were cheered
+by that church tower. "For all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>their bloody talk the bastards
+couldn't bring it down."</p>
+
+<p>The hill with the lines upon it slopes steeply down to the valley of
+the Ancre. Just where the lines come to the valley, the ground drops
+abruptly, in a cliff or steep bank, twenty-five feet high, to the
+road.</p>
+
+<p>Our line on this slope covers the village of Hamel, which lies just
+behind the line, along the road and on the hill-slopes above it. The
+church and churchyard of Hamel, both utterly ruined, lie well up the
+hill in such a position that they made good posts from which our
+snipers could shoot across the river at men in the Schwaben Redoubt.
+Crocuses, snowdrops, and a purple flower once planted on the graves of
+the churchyard, but now escaped into the field, blossomed here in this
+wintry spring, long before any other plant on the battlefield was in
+bud.</p>
+
+<p>Hamel in peace time may have contained forty houses, some shatters of
+which still stand. There are a few red-brick walls, some frames of
+wood from which the plaster has been blown, some gardens gone wild,
+fruit trees unpruned and more or less ragged from fire, and an air of
+desecration and desertion. In some of the ruins there are signs of
+use. The lower <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span>windows are filled with sandbags, the lower stories
+are strengthened with girders and baulks. From the main road in the
+valley, a country track or road, muddy even for the Somme, leads up
+the hill, through the heart of the village, past the church, towards
+our old line and Auchonvillers.</p>
+
+<p>Not much can be seen from the valley road in Hamel, for it is only a
+few feet above the level of the river-bed, which is well grown with
+timber not yet completely destroyed. The general view to the eastward
+from this low-lying road is that of a lake, five hundred yards across,
+in some wild land not yet settled. The lake is shallow, blind with
+reeds, vivid with water-grass, and lively with moor-fowl. The trees
+grow out of the water, or lie in it, just as they fell when they were
+shot. On the whole, the trees just here, though chipped and knocked
+about, have not suffered badly; they have the look of trees, and are
+leafy in summer. Beyond the trees, on the other side of the marsh, is
+the steep and high eastern bank of the Ancre, on which a battered
+wood, called Thiepval Wood, stands like an army of black and haggard
+rampikes. But for this stricken wood, the eastern bank of the Ancre is
+a gentle, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>sloping hill, bare of trees. On the top of this hill is the
+famous Schwaben Redoubt.</p>
+
+<p>The Ancre River and the marshy valley through which it runs are
+crossed by several causeways. One most famous causeway crosses just in
+front of Hamel on the line of the old Mill Road. The Mill from which
+it takes its name lies to the left of the causeway on a sort of green
+island. The wheel, which is not destroyed, still shows among the
+ruins. The enemy had a dressing station there at one time.</p>
+
+<p>The marshy valley of the Ancre splits up the river here into several
+channels besides the mill stream. The channels are swift and deep,
+full of exquisitely clear water just out of the chalk. The marsh is
+rather blind with snags cut off by shells. For some years past the
+moor-fowl in the marsh have been little molested. They are very
+numerous here; their cries make the place lonely and romantic.</p>
+
+<p>When one stands on this causeway over the Ancre one is almost at the
+middle point of the battlefield, for the river cuts the field in two.
+Roughly speaking, the ground to the west of the river was the scene of
+containing fighting, the ground to the east of the river the scene of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>our advance. At the eastern end of the causeway the Old Mill Road
+rises towards the Schwaben Redoubt.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>All the way up the hill the road is steep, rather deep and bad. It is
+worn into the chalk and shows up very white in sunny weather. Before
+the battle it lay about midway between the lines, but it was always
+patrolled at night by our men. The ground on both sides of it is
+almost more killed and awful than anywhere in the field. On the
+English or south side of it, distant from one hundred to two hundred
+yards, is the shattered wood, burnt, dead, and desolate. On the enemy
+side, at about the same distance, is the usual black enemy wire, much
+tossed and bunched by our shells, covering a tossed and tumbled chalky
+and filthy parapet. Our own old line is an array of rotted sandbags,
+filled with chalkflint, covering the burnt wood. One need only look at
+the ground to know that the fighting here was very grim, and to the
+death. Near the road and up the slope to the enemy the ground is
+littered with relics of our charges, mouldy packs, old shattered
+scabbards, rifles, bayonets, helmets curled, torn, rolled, and
+starred, clips of cartridges, and very many graves. Many of the
+graves <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>are marked with strips of wood torn from packing cases, with
+pencilled inscriptions, "An unknown British Hero"; "In loving memory
+of Pte. &mdash;&mdash;"; "Two unknown British heroes"; "An unknown British
+soldier"; "A dead Fritz." That gentle slope to the Schwaben is covered
+with such things.</p>
+
+<p>Passing these things, by some lane through the wire and clambering
+over the heaps of earth which were once the parapet, one enters the
+Schwaben, where so much life was spent. As in so many places on this
+old battlefield, the first thought is: "Why, they were in an eyrie
+here; our fellows had no chance at all." There is no wonder, then,
+that the approach is strewn with graves. The line stands at the top of
+a smooth, open slope, commanding our old position and the Ancre
+Valley. There is no cover of any kind upon the slope except the rims
+of the shell-holes, which make rings of mud among the grass. Just
+outside the highest point of the front line there is a little clump of
+our graves. Just inside there is a still unshattered concrete fortlet,
+built for the machine gun by which those men were killed.</p>
+
+<p>All along that front trench of the Schwaben, lying on the parapet,
+half buried in the mud, are the belts of machine guns, still full of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span>cartridges. There were many machine guns on that earthen wall last
+year. When our men scrambled over the tumbled chalky line of old
+sandbags, so plain just down the hill, and came into view on the
+slope, running and stumbling in the hour of the attack, the machine
+gunners in the fortress felt indeed that they were in an eyrie, and
+that our fellows had no chance at all.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment one thinks this, as the enemy gunners must have thought
+it; then, looking up the hill at the inner works of the great fort,
+the thought comes that it was not so happy a fate to have to hold this
+eyrie. Sometimes, in winter storms, the Atlantic is heaved aloft and
+tossed and tumbled under an evil heaven till all its wilderness is
+hideous. This hill-top is exactly as though some such welter of water
+had suddenly become mud. It is all heaped and tossed and tumbled as
+though the earth there had been a cross-sea. In one place some great
+earth wave of a trench has been bitten into and beaten back and turned
+blind into an eddy by great pits and chasms and running heaps. Then in
+another place, where the crown of the work once reared itself aloft
+over the hill, the heaps of mud are all blurred and pounded together,
+so that there is no design, no trace, no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>visible plan of any
+fortress, only a mess of mud bedevilled and bewildered. All this mess
+of heaps and hillocks is strung and filthied over with broken bodies
+and ruined gear. There is nothing whole, nor alive, nor clean, in all
+its extent; it is a place of ruin and death, blown and blasted out of
+any likeness to any work of man, and so smashed that there is no
+shelter on it, save for the one machine gunner in his box. On all that
+desolate hill our fire fell like rain for days and nights and weeks,
+till the watchers in our line could see no hill at all, but a great,
+vague, wreathing devil of darkness in which little sudden fires winked
+and glimmered and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Once in a lull of the firing a woman appeared upon the enemy parapet
+and started to walk along it. Our men held their fire and watched her.
+She walked steadily along the whole front of the Schwaben and then
+jumped down into her trench. Many thought at the time that she was a
+man masquerading for a bet, but long afterwards, when our men took the
+Schwaben, they found her lying in the ruins dead. They buried her
+there, up on the top of the hill. God alone knows who she was and what
+she was doing there.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back across the Ancre from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span>Schwaben the hill of the right
+bank of the river is clear from the woods near Mesnil to Beaucourt.
+All along that graceful chalk hill our communication trenches thrust
+up like long white mole-runs, or like the comb of rollers on a reef.
+At right angles to these long white lines are black streaks which mark
+the enemy's successive front lines. The later ones are visibly more
+ragged than those near our old line.</p>
+
+<p>There are few more lonely places than that scene of old battles. One
+may stand on the Schwaben for many days together and look west over
+the moor, or east over the wilderness, without seeing any sign of
+human life, save perhaps some solitary guarding a dump of stores.</p>
+
+<p>The hill on which the Schwaben is built is like a great thumb laid
+down beside the Ancre River. There is a little valley on its eastern
+side exactly like the space between a great thumb and a great
+forefinger. It is called Crucifix Valley, from an iron Calvary that
+stood in it in the early days of the war. It must once have been a
+lovely and romantic glen, strangely beautiful throughout. Even now its
+lower reach between a steep bank of scrub and Thiepval Wood is as
+lovely as a place can be after the passing of a cyclone. Its upper
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>reach, which makes the eastern boundary of the Schwaben, is as ghastly
+a scene of smash as the world can show. It is nothing but a collection
+of irregular pools dug by big shells during months of battle. The
+pools are long enough and deep enough to dive into, and full to
+overflowing with filthy water. Sometimes the pressure of the water
+bursts the mud banks of one of these pools and a rush of water comes,
+and the pools below it overflow, and a noise of water rises in that
+solitude which is like the mud and water of the beginning of the world
+before any green thing appeared.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep058" id="imagep058"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep058.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep058.jpg" width="85%" alt="The Leipzig Salient under Fire" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">The Leipzig Salient under Fire<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Our line runs across this Crucifix Valley in a strong sandbag
+barricade. The enemy line crosses it higher up in a continuation of
+the front line of the Schwaben. As soon as the lines are across the
+valley they turn sharply to the south at an important point.</p>
+
+<p>The Schwaben spur is like a thumb; Crucifix Valley is like the space
+between a thumb and a forefinger. Just to the east of Crucifix Valley
+a second spur thrusts away down to the south like a forefinger. It is
+a long sloping spur, wooded at the lower end. It is known on the maps
+as Thiepval Hill or the Leipzig Salient. When the lines turn to the
+south after crossing Crucifix Valley they run along the side of this
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>hill and pass out of sight round the end. The lines are quite regular
+and distinct. From the top of the Schwaben it looks as though the side
+of the hill were fenced into a neat green track or racecourse. This
+track is the No Man's Land, which lies like a broad green regular
+stripe between brown expanses along the hillside. All this hill was of
+the greatest importance to the enemy. It was as strong an eyrie as the
+Schwaben; it turned and made very dangerous our works in front of
+Hamel; and it was the key to a covered way to the plateau from which
+all these spurs thrust southward.</p>
+
+<p>It is a bolder, more regular spur than the others which thrust from
+this plateau. The top slopes so slightly as to be almost level, the
+two flanks are rather steep.</p>
+
+<p>Right at the top of it, just where it springs from the plateau, much
+where the knuckle of the imagined hand would be, and perhaps five
+hundred yards east from our old sandbag barricade in Crucifix Valley,
+there is a redness in the battered earth and upon the chalk of the
+road. The redness is patchy over a good big stretch of this part of
+the spur, but it is all within the enemy lines and well above our own.
+Where the shattered hillside slopes towards our lines there are many
+remnants of trees, some of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>them fruit trees arranged in a kind of
+order behind the burnt relics of a hedge, others dotted about at
+random. All are burnt, blasted, and killed. One need only glance at
+the hill on which they stand to see that it has been more burnt and
+shell-smitten than most parts of the lines. It is as though the fight
+here had been more than to the death, to beyond death, to the bones
+and skeleton of the corpse which was yet unkillable. This is the site
+of the little hill village of Thiepval, which once stood at a
+cross-roads here among apple orchards and the trees of a park. It had
+a church, just at the junction of the roads, and a fine seigneurial
+ch&acirc;teau, in a garden, beside the church; otherwise it was a little
+lonely mean place, built of brick and plaster on a great lonely heap
+of chalk downland. It had no importance and no history before the war,
+except that a Seigneur of Thiepval is mentioned as having once
+attended a meeting at Amiens. It was of great military importance at
+the time of the Battle of the Somme. In the old days it may have had a
+beauty of position.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth while to clamber up to Thiepval from our lines. The road
+runs through the site of the village in a deep cutting, which may have
+once been lovely. The road is reddish with the smashed bricks of the
+village. Here <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span>and there in the mud are perhaps three courses of brick
+where a house once stood, or some hideous hole bricked at the bottom
+for the vault of a cellar. Blasted, dead, pitted stumps of trees, with
+their bark in rags, grow here and there in a collection of vast holes,
+ten feet deep and fifteen feet across, with filthy water in them.
+There is nothing left of the church; a big reddish mound of brick,
+that seems mainly powder round a core of cement, still marks where the
+ch&acirc;teau stood. The ch&acirc;teau garden, the round village pond, the
+pine-tree which was once a landmark there, are all blown out of
+recognition.</p>
+
+<p>The mud of the Somme, which will be remembered by our soldiers long
+after they have forgotten the shelling, was worse at Thiepval than
+elsewhere, or, at least, could not have been worse elsewhere. The road
+through Thiepval was a bog, the village was a quagmire. Near the
+ch&acirc;teau there were bits where one sank to the knee. In the great
+battle for Thiepval, on the 26th of last September, one of our Tanks
+charged an enemy trench here. It plunged and stuck fast and remained
+in the mud, like a great animal stricken dead in its spring. It was
+one of the sights of Thiepval during the winter, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>for it looked most
+splendid; afterwards, it was salved and went to fight again.</p>
+
+<p>From this part of Thiepval one can look along the top of the Leipzig
+Spur, which begins here and thrusts to the south for a thousand yards.</p>
+
+<p>There are two big enemy works on the Leipzig Spur: one, well to the
+south of the village, is (or was, for it is all blown out of shape) a
+six-angled star-shaped redoubt called the Wonder Work; the other,
+still further to the south, about a big, disused, and very
+evil-looking quarry, towards the end of the spur, is, or was, called
+the Leipzig Salient, or, by some people, the Hohenzollern, from the
+Hohenzollern Trench, which ran straight across the spur about halfway
+down the salient.</p>
+
+<p>In these two fortresses the enemy had two strong, evil eyries, high
+above us. They look down upon our line, which runs along the side of
+the hill below them. Though, in the end, our guns blasted the enemy
+off the hill, our line along that slope was a costly one to hold,
+since fire upon it could be observed and directed from so many
+points&mdash;from the rear (above Hamel), from the left flank (on the
+Schwaben and near Thiepval), and from the hill itself. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>The hill is
+all skinned and scarred, and the trace of the great works can no
+longer be followed. At the top of the hill, in the middle of a filthy
+big pool, is a ruined enemy trench-mortar, sitting up like a swollen
+toad.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the spur the lines curve round to the east to shut in
+the hill. A grass-grown road crosses the lines here, goes up to the
+hill-top, and then along it. The slopes at this end of the hill are
+gentle, and from low down, where our lines are, it is a pleasant and
+graceful brae, where the larks never cease to sing and where you may
+always put up partridges and sometimes even a hare. It is a deserted
+hill at this time, but for the wild things. The No Man's Land is
+littered with the relics of a charge; for many brave Dorsetshire and
+Wiltshire men died in the rush up that slope. On the highest point of
+the enemy parapet, at the end of the hill, is a lonely white cross,
+which stands out like a banner planted by a conquerer. It marks the
+grave of an officer of the Wilts, who was killed there, among the
+ruin, in the July attack.</p>
+
+<p>Below the lines, where the ground droops away toward the river, the
+oddly shaped, deeply-vallied Wood of Authuille begins. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>makes a
+sort of socket of woodland so curved as to take the end of the spur.</p>
+
+<p>It is a romantic and very lovely wood, pleasant with the noise of
+water and not badly damaged by the fighting. The trees are alive and
+leafy, the shrubs are pushing, and the spring flowers, wood anemones,
+violets, and the oxlip (which in this country takes the place of the
+primrose and the cowslip) flower beautifully among the shell-holes,
+rags, and old tins of war. But at the north-eastern end it runs out in
+a straggling spinney along the Leipzig's east flank, and this horn of
+wood is almost as badly shattered as if the shell fire upon it had
+been English. Here the enemy, fearing for his salient, kept up a
+terrible barrage. The trees are burnt, ragged, unbarked, topped, and
+cut off short, the trenches are blown in and jumbled, and the ground
+blasted and gouged.</p>
+
+<p>Standing in the old English front line just to the north of Authuille
+Wood, one sees the usual slow gradual grassy rise to the dark enemy
+wire. Mesnil stands out among its trees to the left; to the right is
+this shattered stretch of wood, with a valley beyond it, and a rather
+big, steep, green hill topped by a few trees beyond the valley. The
+jut of the Leipzig <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>shuts out the view to the flanks, so that one can
+see little more than this.</p>
+
+<p>The Leipzig, itself, like the Schwaben, is a hawk's nest or eyrie. Up
+there one can look down by Authuille Wood to Albert church and
+chimneys, the uplands of the Somme, the Amiens road, down which the
+enemy marched in triumph and afterwards retreated in a hurry, and the
+fair fields that were to have been the booty of this war. Away to the
+left of this is the wooded clump of B&eacute;court, and, beyond it, One Tree
+Hill with its forlorn mound, like the burial place of a King. On the
+right flank is the Ancre Valley, with the English position round Hamel
+like an open book under the eye; on the left flank is the rather big,
+steep, green hill, topped by a few trees, before mentioned. These trees
+grow in and about what was once the village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle.
+The hill does not seem to have a name; it may be called here Middle
+Finger Hill or Ovillers Hill.</p>
+
+<p>Like the Schwaben and the Leipzig Hills this hill thrusts out from the
+knuckle of the big chalk plateau to the north of it like the finger of
+a hand, in this case the middle finger. It is longer and less
+regularly defined than the Leipzig Hill; because instead of ending, it
+merges into other hills not quite so high. The valley <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>which parts it
+from the Leipzig is steeply sided, with the banks of great lynchets.
+The lines cross the valley obliquely and run north and south along the
+flank of this hill, keeping their old relative positions, the enemy
+line well above our own, so that the approach to it is up a glacis.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep066" id="imagep066"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep066.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep066.jpg" width="85%" alt="Dug-outs and barbed wire in La Boisselle." /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">Dug-outs and barbed wire in La Boisselle. Usna-Tara
+Hill, with English Support Lines in Background. <br />At Extreme Left is the
+Albert-Bapaume Road<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As one climbs up along our old line here, the great flank of Ovillers
+Hill is before one in a noble, bare sweep of grass, running up to the
+enemy line. Something in the make of this hill, in its shape, or in
+the way it catches the light, gives it a strangeness which other parts
+of the battlefield have not. The rise between the lines of the
+trenches is fully two hundred yards across, perhaps more. Nearly all
+over it, in no sort of order, now singly, now in twos or threes, just
+as the men fell, are the crosses of the graves of the men who were
+killed in the attack there. Here and there among the little crosses is
+one bigger than the rest, to some man specially loved or to the men of
+some battalion. It is difficult to stand in the old English line from
+which those men started without the feeling that the crosses are the
+men alive, still going forward, as they went in the July morning a
+year ago.</p>
+
+<p>Just within the enemy line, three-quarters of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>the way up the hill,
+there is a sort of small flat field about fifty yards across where the
+enemy lost very heavily. They must have gathered there for some rush
+and then been caught by our guns.</p>
+
+<p>At the top of the hill the lines curve to the southeast, drawing
+closer together. The crest of the hill, such as it is, was not
+bitterly disputed here, for we could see all that we wished to see of
+the hill from the eastern flank. Our line passes over the spur
+slightly below it, the enemy line takes in as much of it as the enemy
+needed. From it, he has a fair view of Albert town and of the country
+to the east and west of it, the wooded hill of B&eacute;court, and the hill
+above Fricourt. From our line, we see his line and a few tree-tops.
+From the eastern flank of the hill, our line gives a glimpse of the
+site of the village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle, once one of the strong
+places of the enemy, and now a few heaps of bricks, and one spike of
+burnt ruin where the church stood.</p>
+
+<p>Like most Picardy villages, Ovillers was compactly built of red brick
+along a country road, with trees and orchards surrounding it. It had a
+lofty and pretentious brick church of a modern type. Below and beyond
+it to the east is a long and not very broad valley which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>lies between
+the eastern flank of Ovillers Hill and the next spur. It is called
+Mash Valley on the maps. The lines go down Ovillers Hill into this
+valley and then across it.</p>
+
+<p>Right at the upper end of this valley, rather more than a mile away,
+yet plainly visible from our lines near Ovillers, at the time of the
+beginning of the battle, were a few red-brick ruins in an irregular
+row across the valley-head.</p>
+
+<p>A clump of small fir and cypress trees stood up dark on the hill at
+the western end of this row, and behind the trees was a line of green
+hill topped with the ruins of a windmill. The ruins, now gone, were
+the end of Pozi&egrave;res village, the dark trees grew in Pozi&egrave;res cemetery,
+and the mill was the famous windmill of Pozi&egrave;res, which marked the
+crest that was one of the prizes of the battle. All these things were
+then clearly to be seen, though in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>The main hollow of the valley is not remarkable except that it is
+crossed by enormous trenches and very steeply hedged by a hill on its
+eastern flank. This eastern hill which has such a steep side is a spur
+or finger of chalk thrusting southward from Pozi&egrave;res, like the
+ring-finger of the imagined hand. Mash Valley curves round its
+finger-tip, and just at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>the spring of the curve the third of the four
+Albert roads crosses it, and goes up the spur towards Pozi&egrave;res and
+Bapaume. The line of the road, which is rather banked up, so as to be
+a raised way, like so many Roman roads, can be plainly seen, going
+along the spur, almost to Pozi&egrave;res. In many places, it makes the
+eastern skyline to observers down in the valley.</p>
+
+<p>Behind our front line in this Mash Valley is the pleasant green Usna
+Hill, which runs across the hollow and shuts it in to the south. From
+this hill, seamed right across with our reserve and support trenches,
+one can look down at the enemy position, which crosses Mash Valley in
+six great lines all very deep, strong, and dug into for underground
+shelter.</p>
+
+<p>Standing in Mash Valley, at the foot of Ring Finger Spur, just where
+the Roman Road starts its long rise to Pozi&egrave;res, one sees a lesser
+road forking off to the right, towards a village called Contalmaison,
+a couple of miles away. The fork of the road marks where our old front
+line ran. The trenches are filled in at this point now, so that the
+roads may be used, but the place was once an exceedingly hot corner.
+In the old days, all the space between the two roads at the fork was
+filled with the village or hamlet of La Boisselle, which, though a
+tiny <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>place, had once a church and perhaps a hundred inhabitants. The
+enemy fortified the village till it was an exceedingly strong place.
+We held a part of the village cemetery. Some of the broken crosses of
+the graves still show among the chalk here.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep070" id="imagep070"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep070.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep070.jpg" width="85%" alt="Photograph showing the Scene of the Successful British
+Advance at La Boisselle, taken from the British Front Line" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">Photograph showing the Scene of the Successful British
+Advance at La Boisselle, taken from the British Front Line<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>To the left of the Roman Road, only a stone's throw from this ruined
+graveyard, a part of our line is built up with now rotting sandbags
+full of chalk, so that it looks like a mound of grey rocks. Opposite
+the mound, perhaps a hundred yards up the hill, is another, much
+bigger, irregular mound, of chalk that has become dirty, with some
+relics of battered black wire at its base. The space between the two
+mounds is now green with grass, though pitted with shell-holes, and
+marked in many places with the crosses of graves. The space is the old
+No Man's Land, and the graves are of men who started to charge across
+that field on the 1st of July. The big grey mound is the outer wall or
+casting of a mine thirty yards deep in the chalk and a hundred yards
+across, which we sprang under the enemy line there on that summer
+morning, just before our men went over.</p>
+
+<p>La Boisselle, after being battered by us in our attack, was destroyed
+by enemy fire after <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span>we had taken it, and then cleared by our men who
+wished to use the roads. It offers no sight of any interest; but just
+outside it, between the old lines, there is a stretch of spur, useful
+for observation, for which both sides fought bitterly. For about 200
+yards, the No Man's Land is a succession of pits in the chalk where
+mines have been sprung. Chalk, wire, stakes, friends, and enemies seem
+here to have been all blown to powder.</p>
+
+<p>The lines cross this debated bit, and go across a small, ill-defined
+bulk of chalk, known as Chapes Spur, on the top of which there is a
+vast heap of dazzlingly white chalk, so bright that it is painful to
+look at. Beyond it is the pit of a mine, evenly and cleanly blown,
+thirty-five yards deep, and more than a hundred yards across, in the
+pure chalk of the upland, as white as cherry blossom. This is the
+finest, though not the biggest, mine in the battlefield. It was the
+work of many months, for the shafts by which it was approached began
+more than a quarter of a mile away. It was sprung on the 1st of July
+as a signal for the attack. Quite close to it are the graves of an
+officer and a sergeant, both English, who were killed in the attack a
+few minutes after that chasm in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>chalk had opened. The sergeant
+was killed while trying to save his officer.</p>
+
+<p>The lines bend down south-eastward from Chapes Spur, and cross a long,
+curving, shallow valley, known as Sausage Valley, famous, later in the
+battle, as an assembly place for men going up against Pozi&egrave;res. Here
+the men in our line could see nothing but chalk slope to right, left,
+or front, except the last tree of La Boisselle, rising gaunt and black
+above the line of the hill. Just behind them, however, at the foot of
+the Sausage Valley they had a pleasant wooded hill, the hill of
+B&eacute;court, which was for nearly two years within a mile of the front
+line, yet remained a green and leafy hill, covered with living trees,
+among which the ch&acirc;teau of B&eacute;court remained a habitable house.</p>
+
+<p>The lines slant in a south-easterly direction across the Sausage
+Valley; they mount the spur to the east of it, and proceed, in the
+same direction, across a bare field, like the top of a slightly tilted
+table, in the long slope down to Fricourt. Here, the men in our front
+lines could see rather more from their position. In front of them was
+a smooth space of grass slightly rising to the enemy lines two hundred
+yards away. Behind the enemy lines is a grassy space, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>behind
+this, there shows what seems to be a gully or ravine, beyond which the
+high ground of another spur rises, much as the citadel of an old
+encampment rises out of its walled ditch. This high ground of this
+other spur is not more than a few feet above the ground near it, but
+it is higher; it commands it. All the high ground is wooded. To the
+southern or lower end of it the trees are occasional and much broken
+by fire. To the northern or upper end they grow in a kind of wood
+though all are much destroyed. Right up to the wood, all the high
+ground bears traces of building; there are little tumbles of bricks
+and something of the colour of brick all over the pilled, poxed, and
+blasted heap that is so like an old citadel. The ravine in front of it
+is the gully between the two spurs; it shelters the sunken road to
+Contalmaison; the heap is Fricourt village, and the woodland to the
+north is Fricourt Wood. A glance is enough to show that it is a strong
+position.</p>
+
+<p>To the left of Fricourt, the spur rises slowly into a skyline. To the
+right the lines droop down the spur to a valley, across a brook and a
+road in the valley, and up a big bare humping chalk hill placed at
+right angles to the spur on which Fricourt stands.</p>
+
+<p>The spur on which Fricourt stands and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>spur down which the lines
+run both end at the valley in a steep drop. Just above the steep fall
+our men fought very hard to push back the enemy a little towards
+Fricourt, so that he might not see the lower part of the valley, or be
+able to enfilade our lines on the other side of it. For about three
+hundred yards here the space between the lines is filled with the
+craters of mines exploded under the enemy's front line. In some cases,
+we seized and held the craters; in others the craters were untenable
+by either side. Under one of those held by us it was found that the
+enemy had sunk a big counter-mine, which was excavated and ready for
+charging at the time of the beginning of the battle, when Fricourt
+fell. This part of the line is more thickly coated with earth than
+most of the chalk hills of the battlefield. The craters lie in a blown
+and dug up wilderness of heaps of reddish earth, pocked with
+shell-holes, and tumbled with wire. The enemy lines are much broken
+and ruined, their parapets thrown down, the mouths of their dugouts
+blown in, and their pride abased.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep074" id="imagep074"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep074.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep074.jpg" width="85%" alt="A View of Fricourt" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">A View of Fricourt<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Fricourt position was one of the boasts of the enemy on this
+front. Other places on the line, such as the Leipzig, the Schwaben,
+and the trenches near Hamel, were strong, because <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>they could be
+supported by works behind them or on their flanks. Fricourt was strong
+in itself, like Gommecourt. It was perhaps the only place in the field
+of which it could be said that it was as strong as Gommecourt. As at
+Gommecourt, it had a good natural glacis up to the front line, which
+was deep, strong, and well wired. Behind the front line was a wired
+second line, and behind that, the rising spur on which the village
+stood, commanding both with machine-gun emplacements.</p>
+
+<p>Fricourt was not captured by storm, but swiftly isolated and forced to
+surrender. It held out not quite two days. It was the first first-rate
+fortress taken by our men from the enemy in this engagement. In the
+ruins, they saw for the first time the work which the enemy puts into
+his main defences, and the skill and craft with which he provides for
+his comfort. For some weeks, the underground arrangements of Fricourt,
+the stairs with wired treads, the bolting holes, the air and escape
+shafts, the living rooms with electric light, the panelled walls,
+covered with cretonnes of the smartest Berlin patterns, the neat bunks
+and the signs of female visitors, were written of in the press, so
+that some may think that Fricourt was better fitted than other places
+on the line. It is not so. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>The work at Fricourt was well done, but it
+was no better than that at other places, where a village with cellars
+in it had to be converted into a fortress. Our men took Fricourt at
+the beginning of the battle, in a fair state of preservation. Such
+work was then new to our men, and this good example was made much of.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep076" id="imagep076"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep076.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep076.jpg" width="85%" alt="Looking at Fricourt and Fricourt Wood. Troops bivouac
+for a Short Rest under Ground Sheets laced together" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">Looking at Fricourt and Fricourt Wood. Troops bivouac
+for a Short Rest under Ground Sheets laced together<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the valley below the village, in great, deep, and powerfully
+revetted works, the enemy had built himself gun emplacements, so
+weighted with timber balks that they collapsed soon after his men
+ceased to attend them. The line of these great works ran (as so many
+of his important lines have run) at the foot of a steep bank or
+lynchet, so that at a little distance the parapet of the work merged
+into the bank behind it and was almost invisible.</p>
+
+<p>This line of guns ran about east and west across the neck of the
+Fricourt Salient, which thrust still further south, across the little
+valley and up the hill on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>Our old line crosses the valley just to the east of the Fricourt
+Station on the little railway which once ran in the valley past
+Fricourt and Mametz to Montauban. It then crossed the fourth of the
+roads from Albert, at Fricourt cemetery, which is a small, raised
+forlorn garden of broken tombs at cross-roads, under <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span>the hill facing
+Fricourt. Here our line began to go diagonally up the lower slopes of
+the hill. The enemy line climbed it further to the east, round the
+bulging snout of the hill, at a steep and difficult point above the
+bank of a sunken road. Towards the top of the hill the lines
+converged.</p>
+
+<p>All the way of the hill, the enemy had the stronger position. It was
+above us almost invisible and unguessable, except from the air, at the
+top of a steep climb up a clay bank, which in wet weather makes bad
+going even for the Somme; and though the lie of the ground made it
+impossible for him to see much of our position, it was impossible for
+us to see anything or his or to assault him. The hill is a big steep
+chalk hill, with contours so laid upon it that not much of it can be
+seen from below. By looking to the left from our trenches on its
+western lower slopes one can see nothing of Fricourt, for the bulge of
+the hill's snout covers it. One has a fair view of the old English
+line on the smoothish big slope between Fricourt and B&eacute;court, but
+nothing of the enemy stronghold. One might have lived in those
+trenches for nearly two years without seeing any enemy except the rain
+and mud and lice.</p>
+
+<p>Up at the top of the hill, there is an immense <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>prospect over the
+eastern half of the battlefield, and here, where the lines converge,
+it was most necessary for us to have the crest and for the enemy to
+keep us off it. The highest ground is well forward, on the snout, and
+this point was the only part of the hill which the enemy strove to
+keep. His line goes up the hill to the highest point, cuts off the
+highest point, and at once turns eastward, so that his position on the
+hill is just the northern slope and a narrow line of crest. It is as
+though an army holding Fleet Street against an army on the Embankment
+and in Cheapside should have seized Ludgate Hill to the top of the
+steps of St. Paul's and left the body of the cathedral to its
+opponent. The lines securing this important salient are of immense
+strength and intricacy, with many great avenues of approach. The front
+line is double across the greater part of the crest, and behind it is
+a very deep, strong, trebly wired support line which is double at
+important points.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep078" id="imagep078"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep078.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep078.jpg" width="85%" alt="The Sandbags at the Fricourt Salient" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">The Sandbags at the Fricourt Salient<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Our old front line runs almost straight across the crest parallel with
+the enemy front line, and distant from it from forty to one hundred
+and fifty yards. The crest or highest ground is on both flanks of the
+hill-top close to the enemy line. Between the lines at both these
+points are the signs of a struggle which raged <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span>for weeks and months
+for the possession of those lumps of hill, each, perhaps, two hundred
+yards long, by fifty broad, by five high. Those fifteen feet of height
+were bartered for with more than their own weight of sweat and blood;
+the hill can never lose the marks of the struggle.</p>
+
+<p>In those two patches of the hill the space between the lines is a
+quarry of confluent craters, twenty or thirty yards deep, blown into
+and under each other till the top of the hill is split apart. No man
+can now tell which of all these mines were sunk by our men. The quarry
+runs irregularly in heaps and hollows of chalk and red earth mingled
+like flesh and blood. On our side of the pits the marks of our
+occupation are plain. There in several places, as at La Boisselle and
+on the Beaucourt spur, our men have built up the parapet of our old
+front line by thousands of sandbags till it is a hill-top or cairn
+from which they could see beyond. The sandbags have rotted and the
+chalk and flints within have fallen partly through the rags, and
+Nature has already begun to change those heaps to her own colours, but
+they will be there for ever as the mark of our race. Such monuments
+must be as lasting as Stonehenge. Neither the mines nor the guns of
+the enemy could destroy them. From among <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span>them our soldiers peered
+through the smoke of burning and explosions at the promised land which
+the battle made ours.</p>
+
+<p>From those heaps there is a wide view over that part of the field. To
+the left one sees Albert, the wooded clump of B&eacute;court, and a high
+green spur which hides the Sausage Valley. To the front this green
+spur runs to the higher ground from which the Fricourt spur thrusts.
+On this higher ground, behind Fricourt and its wood, is a much bigger,
+thicker, and better grown wood, about a mile and a half away; this is
+the wood of Mametz. Some short distance to the left of this wood, very
+plainly visible on the high, rather bare hill, is a clump of pollarded
+trees near a few heaps of red brick. The trees were once the
+shade-giving trees about the market-place of Contalmaison, a hamlet at
+a cross-roads at this point. Behind these ruins the skyline is a kind
+of ridge which runs in a straight line, broken in one place by a few
+shatters of trees. These trees are the remains of the wood which once
+grew outside the village of Pozi&egrave;res. The ridge is the Albert-Bapaume
+Road, here passing over the highest ground on its path.</p>
+
+<p>Turning from these distant places and looking to the right, one sees,
+just below, twelve <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span>hundred yards to the east of Fricourt, across the
+valley at the foot of this hill of the salient, the end of an
+irregular spur, on which are the shattered bricks of the village of
+Mametz before mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>To the north of Mametz the ground rises. From the eyrie of the salient
+one can look over it and away to the north to big rolling chalk land,
+most of it wooded. Mametz Wood is a dark expanse to the front; to the
+right of it are other woods, Bazentin Woods, Big and Little, and
+beyond them, rather to the right and only just visible as a few sticks
+upon the skyline, are two other woods, High Wood, like a ghost in the
+distance, and the famous and terrible Wood of Delville. High Wood is
+nearly five miles away and a little out of the picture. The other
+wooded heights are about three miles away. All that line of high
+ground marked by woods was the enemy second line, which with a few
+slight exceptions was our front line before the end of the third week
+of the battle.</p>
+
+<p>From this hill-top of the salient the lines run down the north-eastern
+snout of the hill and back across the valley, so as to shut in Mametz.
+Then they run eastward for a couple of miles, up to and across a
+plateau in front of the hamlet of Carnoy, which was just <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span>within our
+line. From our line, in this bare and hideous field, little could be
+seen but the slope up to the enemy line. At one point, where the road
+or lane from Carnoy to Montauban crossed the enemy line, there was a
+struggle for the power to see, and as a result of the struggle mines
+and counter-mines were sprung here till the space between the lines is
+now a chaos of pits and chasms full of water. The country here is an
+expanse of smoothish tilted slopes, big, empty, and lonely, and
+crossed (at about the middle point) by a strange narrow gut or gully,
+up which the railway once ran to Montauban. No doubt there are places
+in the English chalk counties which resemble this sweep of country,
+but I know of none so bare or so featureless. The ground is of the
+reddish earth which makes such bad mud. The slopes are big and
+gradual, either up or down. Little breaks the monotony of the expanse
+except a few copses or sites of copses; the eye is always turning to
+the distance.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep082" id="imagep082"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep082.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep082.jpg" width="85%" alt="View of Mametz" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">View of Mametz<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In front, more than half a mile away, the ground reaches its highest
+point in the ridge or bank which marks the road to Montauban. The big
+gradual sweep up is only broken by lines of trenches and by mud heaped
+up from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>the road. Some of the trees which once made Montauban
+pleasant and shady still stand over the little heaps of brick and
+solitary iron gate which show where the village used to stand. Rather
+to the right of this, and nearer to our lines, are some irregular red
+heaps with girders protruding from them. This is the enemy fortress of
+the brickworks of Montauban. Beyond this, still further to the right,
+behind the old enemy line, the ground loses its monotony and passes
+into lovely and romantic sweeping valleys, which our men could not see
+from their lines.</p>
+
+<p>Well behind our English lines in this district and above the dip where
+Carnoy stands, the fourth of the four roads from Albert runs eastward
+along a ridge-top between a double row of noble trees which have not
+suffered very severely, except at their eastern end. Just north of
+this road, and a little below it on the slopes of the ridge, is the
+village of Maricourt. Our line turns to the southeast opposite
+Montauban, and curves in towards the ridge so as to run just outside
+Maricourt, along the border of a little wood to the east of the
+houses. From all the high ground to the north of it, from the enemy's
+second line and beyond, the place is useful to give a traveller his
+bearings. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>The line of plane-trees along the road on the ridge, and
+the big clumps of trees round the village, are landmarks which cannot
+be mistaken from any part of the field.</p>
+
+<p>Little is to be seen from our line outside Maricourt Wood, except the
+enemy line a little beyond it, and the trees of other woods behind it.</p>
+
+<p>The line turns to the south, parallel with the wood, crosses the
+fourth road (which goes on towards Peronne) and goes down some
+difficult, rather lovely, steep chalk slopes, wooded in parts, to the
+ruins of Fargny Mill on the Somme River.</p>
+
+<p>The Somme River is here a very beautiful expanse of clear chalk water
+like a long wandering shallow lake. Through this shallow lake the
+river runs in half a dozen channels, which are parted and thwarted in
+many places by marsh, reed-beds, osier plots, and tracts of swampy
+woodland. There is nothing quite like it in England. The river-bed is
+pretty generally between five and six hundred yards across.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly two miles above the place where the old enemy line comes down
+to the bank, the river thrusts suddenly north-westward, in a very
+noble great horse-shoe, the bend of which comes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>at Fargny where our
+lines touched it. The enemy line touched the horse-shoe close to our
+own at a curious wooded bank or slope, known (from its shape on the
+map, which is like a cocked hat) as the Chapeau de Gendarme. Just
+behind our lines, at the bend, the horse-shoe sweeps round to the
+south. The river-bed at once broadens to about two-thirds of a mile,
+and the river, in four or five main channels, passes under a most
+beautiful sweep of steep chalk cliff, not unlike some of the chalk
+country near Arundel. These places marked the end of the British
+sector at the time of the beginning of the battle. On the south or
+left bank of the Somme River the ground was held by the French.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>Such was our old front line at the beginning of the battle, and so the
+travellers of our race will strive to picture it when they see the
+ground under the crops of coming Julys. It was never anything but a
+makeshift, patched together, and held, God knows how, against greater
+strength. Our strongest places were the half-dozen built-up
+observation posts at the mines near Fricourt, Serre, and La Boisselle.
+For the rest, our greatest strength was but a couple of sandbags deep.
+There was no concrete in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>any part of the line, very few iron girders
+and not many iron "humpies" or "elephant backs" to make the roofs of
+dugouts. The whole line gives the traveller the impression that it was
+improvised (as it was) by amateurs with few tools, and few resources,
+as best they could, in a time of need and danger. Like the old,
+hurriedly built Long Walls at Athens, it sufficed, and like the old
+camps of C&aelig;sar it served, till our men could take the much finer lines
+of the enemy. A few words may be said about those enemy lines. They
+were very different lines from ours.</p>
+
+<p>The defences of the enemy front line varied a little in degree, but
+hardly at all in kind, throughout the battlefield. The enemy wire was
+always deep, thick, and securely staked with iron supports, which were
+either crossed like the letter <b>X</b>, or upright, with loops to take the
+wire and shaped at one end like corkscrews so as to screw into the
+ground. The wire stood on these supports on a thick web, about four
+feet high and from thirty to forty feet across. The wire used was
+generally as thick as sailor's marline stuff, or two twisted
+rope-yarns. It contained, as a rule, some sixteen barbs to the foot.
+The wire used in front of our lines was generally galvanized, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>remained grey after months of exposure. The enemy wire, not being
+galvanized, rusted to a black colour, and shows up black at a great
+distance. In places this web or barrier was supplemented with
+trip-wire, or wire placed just above the ground, so that the artillery
+observing officers might not see it and so not cause it to be
+destroyed. This trip-wire was as difficult to cross as the wire of the
+entanglements. In one place (near the Y Ravine at Beaumont Hamel) this
+trip-wire was used with thin iron spikes a yard long of the kind known
+as calthrops. The spikes were so placed in the ground that about one
+foot of spike projected. The scheme was that our men should catch
+their feet in the trip-wire, fall on the spikes, and be transfixed.</p>
+
+<p>In places, in front of the front line in the midst of his wire,
+sometimes even in front of the wire, the enemy had carefully hidden
+snipers and machine-gun posts. Sometimes these outside posts were
+connected with his front-line trench by tunnels, sometimes they were
+simply shell-holes, slightly altered with a spade to take the snipers
+and the gunners. These outside snipers had some success in the early
+parts of the battle. They caused losses among our men by firing in the
+midst of them and by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span>shooting them in the backs after they had
+passed. Usually the posts were small oblong pans in the mud, in which
+the men lay. Sometimes they were deep narrow graves in which the men
+stood to fire through a funnel in the earth. Here and there, where the
+ground was favourable, especially when there was some little knop,
+hillock, or bulge of ground just outside their line, as near
+Gommecourt Park and close to the Sunken Road at Beaumont Hamel, he
+placed several such posts together. Outside Gommecourt, a slight
+lynchet near the enemy line was prepared for at least a dozen such
+posts invisible from any part of our line and not easily to be picked
+out by photograph, and so placed as to sweep at least a mile of No
+Man's Land.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep088" id="imagep088"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep088.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep088.jpg" width="85%" alt="Sleighs used for conveying the Wounded through the Mud" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">Sleighs used for conveying the Wounded through the Mud<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When these places had been passed, and the enemy wire, more or less
+cut by our shrapnel, had been crossed, our men had to attack the enemy
+fire trenches of the first line. These, like the other defences,
+varied in degree, but not in kind. They were, in the main, deep, solid
+trenches, dug with short bays or zigzags in the pattern of the Greek
+Key or badger's earth. They were seldom less than eight feet and
+sometimes as much as twelve feet deep. Their sides were revetted, or
+held from collapsing, by strong wickerwork. They had good,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>comfortable standing slabs or banquettes on which the men could stand
+to fire. As a rule, the parapets were not built up with sandbags as
+ours were.</p>
+
+<p>In some parts of the line, the front trenches were strengthened at
+intervals of about fifty yards by tiny forts or fortlets made of
+concrete and so built into the parapet that they could not be seen
+from without, even five yards away. These fortlets were pierced with a
+foot-long slip for the muzzle of a machine gun, and were just big
+enough to hold the gun and one gunner.</p>
+
+<p>In the forward wall of the trenches were the openings of the shafts
+which led to the front-line dugouts. The shafts are all of the same
+pattern. They have open mouths about four feet high, and slant down
+into the earth for about twenty feet at an angle of forty-five
+degrees. At the bottom of the stairs which led down are the living
+rooms and barracks which communicate with each other so that if a
+shaft collapse the men below may still escape by another. The shafts
+and living rooms are strongly propped and panelled with wood, and this
+has led to the destruction of most of the few which survived our
+bombardment. While they were needed as billets our men lived in them.
+Then the wood was removed, and the dugout and shaft collapsed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>During the bombardment before an attack, the enemy kept below in his
+dugouts. If one shaft were blown in by a shell, they passed to the
+next. When the fire "lifted" to let the attack begin, they raced up
+the stairs with their machine guns and had them in action within a
+minute. Sometimes the fire was too heavy for this, for trench,
+parapet, shafts, dugouts, wood, and fortlets, were pounded out of
+existence, so that no man could say that a line had ever run there;
+and in these cases the garrison was destroyed in the shelters. This
+happened in several places, though all the enemy dugouts were kept
+equipped with pioneer tools by which buried men could dig themselves
+out.</p>
+
+<p>The direction of the front-line trenches was so inclined with bends,
+juts, and angles as to give flanking fire upon attackers.</p>
+
+<p>At some little distance behind the front line (a hundred yards or so)
+was a second fire line, wired like the first, though less elaborate
+and generally without concrete fortlets. This second line was usually
+as well sited for fire as the front line. There were many
+communication trenches between the two lines. Half a mile behind the
+second line was a third support line; and behind this, running along
+the whole front, a mile or more away, was the prepared <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span>second main
+position, which was in every way like the front line, with wire,
+concrete fortlets, dugouts, and a difficult glacis for the attacker to
+climb.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy batteries were generally placed behind banks or lynchets
+which gave good natural cover; but in many places he mounted guns in
+strong permanent emplacements, built up of timber balks, within a
+couple of miles (at Fricourt within a quarter of a mile) of his front
+line. In woods from the high trees of which he could have clear
+observation, as in the Bazentin, Bernafay, and Trones Woods, he had
+several of these emplacements, and also stout concrete fortlets for
+heavy single guns.</p>
+
+<p>All the enemy position on the battlefield was well gunned at the time
+of the beginning of the battle. In modern war, it is not possible to
+hide preparations for an attack on a wide front. Men have to be
+brought up, trenches have to be dug, the artillery has to prepare, and
+men, guns, and trenches have to be supplied with food, water, shells,
+sandbags, props, and revetments. When the fire on any sector increases
+tenfold, while the roads behind the lines are thronged with five times
+the normal traffic of troops and lorries, and new trenches, the attack
+or "jumping-off" trenches, are being <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span>dug in front of the line, a
+commander cannot fail to know that an attack is preparing. These
+preparations must be made and cannot be concealed from observers in
+the air or on the ground. The enemy knew very well that we were about
+to attack upon the Somme front, but did not know at which point to
+expect the main thrust. To be ready, in any case, he concentrated guns
+along the sector. It seems likely that he expected our attack to be an
+attempt to turn Bapaume by a thrust from the west, by Gommecourt,
+Puisieux, Grandcourt. In all this difficult sector his observations
+and arrangements for cross-fire were excellent. He concentrated a
+great artillery here (it is a legend among our men that he brought up
+a hundred batteries to defend Gommecourt alone). In this sector, and
+in one other place a little to the south of it, his barrage upon our
+trenches, before the battle, was very accurate, terrible, and deadly.</p>
+
+<p>Our attacks were met by a profuse machine-gun fire from the trench
+parapets and from the hidden pits between and outside the lines. There
+was not very much rifle fire in any part of the battle, but all the
+hotly fought for strongholds were defended by machine guns to the
+last. It was reported that the bodies of some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span>enemy soldiers were
+found chained to their guns, and that on the bodies of others were
+intoxicating pills, designed to madden and infuriate the takers before
+an attack. The fighting in the trenches was mainly done by bombing
+with hand-grenades, of which the enemy had several patterns, all
+effective. His most used type was a grey tin cylinder, holding about a
+pound of explosive, and screwed to a wooden baton or handle about a
+foot long for the greater convenience of throwing.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>Early in the spring of 1916, it was determined that an attack should
+be made by our armies upon these lines of the enemy, so as to bring
+about a removal of the enemy guns and men, then attacking the French
+at Verdun and the Russians on the eastern front.</p>
+
+<p>Preparations for this attack were made throughout the first half of
+the year. New roads were cut, old roads were remetalled, new lines of
+railways were surveyed and laid, and supplies and munitions were
+accumulated not far from the front. Pumping stations were built and
+wells were sunk for the supply of water to the troops during the
+battle. Fresh divisions were brought up and held ready behind the
+line. An effort was made to check the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>enemy's use of aeroplanes. In
+June, our Air Service in the Somme sector made it so difficult for the
+enemy to take photographs over our lines that his knowledge of our
+doings along the front of the planned battle was lessened and
+thwarted. At the same time, many raids were made by our aeroplanes
+upon the enemy's depots and magazines behind his front. Throughout
+June, our infantry raided the enemy line in many places to the north
+of the planned battle. It seems possible that these raids led him to
+think that our coming attack would be made wholly to the north of the
+Ancre River.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep094" id="imagep094"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep094.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep094.jpg" width="85%" alt="The Assault on July 1, 1916, at La Boisselle" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">The Assault on July 1, 1916, at La Boisselle<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>During the latter half of June, our armies concentrated a very great
+number of guns behind the front of the battle. The guns were of every
+kind, from the field gun to the heaviest howitzer. Together they made
+what was at that time by far the most terrible concentration of
+artillery ever known upon a battlefield. Vast stores of shells of
+every known kind were made ready, and hourly increased.</p>
+
+<p>As the guns came into battery, they opened intermittent fire, so that,
+by the 20th of June, the fire along our front was heavier than it had
+been before. At the same time, the fire of the machine guns and trench
+mortars in our <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>trenches became hotter and more constant. On the 24th
+of June this fire was increased, by system, along the front designed
+for the battle, and along the French front to the south of the Somme,
+until it reached the intensity of a fire of preparation. Knowing, as
+they did, that an attack was to come, the enemy made ready and kept on
+the alert. Throughout the front, they expected the attack for the next
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>The fire was maintained throughout the night, but no attack was made
+in the morning, except by aeroplanes. These raided the enemy
+observation balloons, destroyed nine of them, and made it impossible
+for the others to keep in the air. The shelling continued all that
+day, searching the line and particular spots with intense fire and
+much asphyxiating gas. Again the enemy prepared for an attack in the
+morning, and again there was no attack, although the fire of
+preparation still went on. The enemy said, "To-morrow will make three
+whole days of preparation; the English will attack to-morrow." But
+when the morning came, there was no attack, only the never-ceasing
+shelling, which seemed to increase as time passed. It was now
+difficult and dangerous to move within the enemy lines. Relieving
+exhausted soldiers, carrying out the wounded, and bringing up food
+and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>water to the front, became terrible feats of war. The fire
+continued and increased, all that day and all the next day, and the
+day after that. It darkened the days with smoke and lit the nights
+with flashes. It covered the summer landscape with a kind of haze of
+hell, earth-coloured above fields and reddish above villages, from the
+dust of blown mud and brick flung up into the air. The tumult of these
+days and nights cannot be described nor imagined. The air was without
+wind yet it seemed in a hurry with the passing of death. Men knew not
+which they heard, a roaring that was behind and in front, like a
+presence, or a screaming that never ceased to shriek in the air. No
+thunder was ever so terrible as that tumult. It broke the drums of the
+ears when it came singly, but when it rose up along the front and gave
+tongue together in full cry it humbled the soul. With the roaring,
+crashing, and shrieking came a racket of hammers from the machine guns
+till men were dizzy and sick from the noise, which thrust between
+skull and brain, and beat out thought. With the noise came also a
+terror and an exultation, that one should hurry, and hurry, and hurry,
+like the shrieking shells, into the pits of fire opening on the hills.
+Every night in all this week the enemy said, "The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>English will attack
+to-morrow," and in the front lines prayed that the attack might come,
+that so an end, any end, might come to the shelling.</p>
+
+<p>It was fine, cloudless, summer weather, not very clear, for there was
+a good deal of heat haze and of mist in the nights and early mornings.
+It was hot yet brisk during the days. The roads were thick in dust.
+Clouds and streamers of chalk dust floated and rolled over all the
+roads leading to the front, till men and beasts were grey with it.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past six in the morning of the 1st of July all the guns on our
+front quickened their fire to a pitch of intensity never before
+attained. Intermittent darkness and flashing so played on the enemy
+line from Gommecourt to Maricourt that it looked like a reef on a
+loppy day. For one instant it could be seen as a white rim above the
+wire, then some comber of a big shell struck it fair and spouted it
+black aloft. Then another and another fell, and others of a new kind
+came and made a different darkness, through which now and then some
+fat white wreathing devil of explosion came out and danced. Then it
+would show out, with gaps in it, and with some of it level with the
+field, till another comber would fall and go up like a breaker and
+smash it out of sight again. Over all the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>villages on the field there
+floated a kind of bloody dust from the blasted bricks.</p>
+
+<p>In our trenches after seven o'clock on that morning, our men waited
+under a heavy fire for the signal to attack. Just before half-past
+seven, the mines at half a dozen points went up with a roar that shook
+the earth and brought down the parapets in our lines. Before the
+blackness of their burst had thinned or fallen the hand of Time rested
+on the half-hour mark, and along all that old front line of the
+English there came a whistling and a crying. The men of the first wave
+climbed up the parapets, in tumult, darkness, and the presence of
+death, and having done with all pleasant things, advanced across the
+No Man's Land to begin the Battle of the Somme.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p>
+<br />
+Page 61: &nbsp;siegneurial replaced with seigneurial<br />
+Page 84: &nbsp;protuding replaced with protruding<br />
+<br />
+<p class="cen">Interesting words in this document:</p>
+<p class="noin">A rampike is an erect broken or dead tree.<br />
+Eyrie is an alternate spelling for Aerie.<br />
+Tetter is a generic name for a number of skin diseases,
+such as eczema, psoriasis, or herpes, characterized by
+eruptions and itching.</p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Front Line, by John Masefield
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,2454 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Front Line, by John Masefield
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Old Front Line
+
+Author: John Masefield
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2007 [EBook #20616]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD FRONT LINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by K Nordquist, David Edwards, Jeannie Howse and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and alternate spelling in the    |
+    | original document have been preserved.                    |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this  |
+    | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this     |
+    | document.                                                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+                             THE
+
+                        OLD FRONT LINE
+
+                              BY
+
+                        JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+                 Author of "Gallipoli," etc.
+
+                           New York
+
+                    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+                             1918
+
+                    _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+                       COPYRIGHT, 1917
+
+                      By JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+     Set up and electrotyped. Published, December, 1917.
+                   Reprinted January, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+                              TO
+
+                        NEVILLE LYTTON
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                      FACING
+                                                        PAGE
+
+The Road up the Ancre Valley                              16
+
+Artillery Transport in Bapaume Road                       28
+
+Troops Moving to the Front                                38
+
+An Artillery Team                                         40
+
+View in Hamel                                             42
+
+The Ancre River                                           44
+
+The Ancre Opposite Hamel                                  48
+
+The Leipzig Salient                                       58
+
+Dugouts in La Boisselle                                   66
+
+La Boisselle                                              70
+
+Fricourt                                                  74
+
+Fricourt                                                  76
+
+Sandbags at Fricourt                                      78
+
+Mametz                                                    82
+
+Sleighs for the Wounded                                   88
+
+The Attack on La Boisselle                                94
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD FRONT LINE
+
+
+This description of the old front line, as it was when the Battle of
+the Somme began, may some day be of use. All wars end; even this war
+will some day end, and the ruins will be rebuilt and the field full of
+death will grow food, and all this frontier of trouble will be
+forgotten. When the trenches are filled in, and the plough has gone
+over them, the ground will not long keep the look of war. One summer
+with its flowers will cover most of the ruin that man can make, and
+then these places, from which the driving back of the enemy began,
+will be hard indeed to trace, even with maps. It is said that even now
+in some places the wire has been removed, the explosive salved, the
+trenches filled, and the ground ploughed with tractors. In a few
+years' time, when this war is a romance in memory, the soldier looking
+for his battlefield will find his marks gone. Centre Way, Peel Trench,
+Munster Alley, and these other paths to glory will be deep under the
+corn, and gleaners will sing at Dead Mule Corner.
+
+It is hoped that this description of the line will be followed by an
+account of our people's share in the battle. The old front line was
+the base from which the battle proceeded. It was the starting-place.
+The thing began there. It was the biggest battle in which our people
+were ever engaged, and so far it has led to bigger results than any
+battle of this war since the Battle of the Marne. It caused a great
+falling back of the enemy armies. It freed a great tract of France,
+seventy miles long, by from ten to twenty-five miles broad. It first
+gave the enemy the knowledge that he was beaten.
+
+Very many of our people never lived to know the result of even the
+first day's fighting. For then the old front line was the battlefield,
+and the No Man's Land the prize of the battle. They never heard the
+cheer of victory nor looked into an enemy trench. Some among them
+never even saw the No Man's Land, but died in the summer morning from
+some shell in the trench in the old front line here described.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a difficult thing to describe without monotony, for it varies so
+little. It is like describing the course of the Thames from Oxford to
+Reading, or of the Severn from Deerhurst to Lydney, or of the Hudson
+from New York to Tarrytown. Whatever country the rivers pass they
+remain water, bordered by shore. So our front-line trenches, wherever
+they lie, are only gashes in the earth, fenced by wire, beside a
+greenish strip of ground, pitted with shell-holes, which is fenced
+with thicker, blacker, but more tumbled wire on the other side. Behind
+this further wire is the parapet of the enemy front-line trench, which
+swerves to take in a hillock or to flank a dip, or to crown a slope,
+but remains roughly parallel with ours, from seventy to five hundred
+yards from it, for miles and miles, up hill and down dale. All the
+advantages of position and observation were in the enemy's hands, not
+in ours. They took up their lines when they were strong and our side
+weak, and in no place in all the old Somme position is our line better
+sited than theirs, though in one or two places the sites are nearly
+equal. Almost in every part of this old front our men had to go up
+hill to attack.
+
+If the description of this old line be dull to read, it should be
+remembered that it was dull to hold. The enemy had the lookout posts,
+with the fine views over France, and the sense of domination. Our men
+were down below with no view of anything but of stronghold after
+stronghold, just up above, being made stronger daily. And if the
+enemy had strength of position he had also strength of equipment, of
+men, of guns, and explosives of all kinds. He had all the advantages
+for nearly two years of war, and in all that time our old front line,
+whether held by the French or by ourselves, was nothing but a post to
+be endured, day in day out, in all weathers and under all fires, in
+doubt, difficulty, and danger, with bluff and makeshift and
+improvisation, till the tide could be turned. If it be dull to read
+about and to see, it was, at least, the old line which kept back the
+tide and stood the siege. It was the line from which, after all those
+months of war, the tide turned and the besieged became the attackers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To most of the British soldiers who took part in the Battle of the
+Somme, the town of Albert must be a central point in a reckoning of
+distances. It lies, roughly speaking, behind the middle of the line of
+that battle. It is a knot of roads, so that supports and supplies
+could and did move from it to all parts of the line during the battle.
+It is on the main road, and on the direct railway line from Amiens. It
+is by much the most important town within an easy march of the
+battlefield. It will be, quite certainly, the centre from which, in
+time to come, travellers will start to see the battlefield where such
+deeds were done by men of our race.
+
+It is not now (after three years of war and many bombardments) an
+attractive town; probably it never was. It is a small straggling town
+built of red brick along a knot of cross-roads at a point where the
+swift chalk-river Ancre, hardly more than a brook, is bridged and so
+channeled that it can be used for power. Before the war it contained a
+few small factories, including one for the making of sewing-machines.
+Its most important building was a big church built a few years ago,
+through the energy of a priest, as a shrine for the Virgin of Albert,
+a small, probably not very old image, about which strange stories are
+told. Before the war it was thought that this church would become a
+northern rival to Lourdes for the working of miraculous cures during
+the September pilgrimage. A gilded statue of the Virgin and Child
+stood on an iron stalk on the summit of the church tower. During a
+bombardment of the town at a little after three o'clock in the
+afternoon of Friday, January 15, 1915, a shell so bent the stalk that
+the statue bent down over the Place as though diving. Perhaps few of
+our soldiers will remember Albert for anything except this diving
+Virgin. Perhaps half of the men engaged in the Battle of the Somme
+passed underneath her as they marched up to the line, and, glancing
+up, hoped that she might not come down till they were past. From some
+one, French or English, a word has gone about that when she does fall
+the war will end. Others have said that French engineers have so fixed
+her with wire ropes that she cannot fall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From Albert four roads lead to the battlefield of the Somme:
+
+1. In a north-westerly direction to Auchonvillers and Hebuterne.
+
+2. In a northerly direction to Authuille and Hamel.
+
+3. In a north-easterly direction to Pozieres.
+
+4. In an easterly direction to Fricourt and Maricourt.
+
+Between the second and the third of these the little river Ancre runs
+down its broad, flat, well-wooded valley, much of which is a marsh
+through which the river (and man) have forced more than one channel.
+This river, which is a swift, clear, chalk stream, sometimes too deep
+and swift to ford, cuts the English sector of the battlefield into two
+nearly equal portions.
+
+Following the first of the four roads, one passes the wooded village
+of Martinsart, to the village of Auchonvillers, which lies among a
+clump of trees upon a ridge or plateau top. The road dips here, but
+soon rises again, and so, by a flat tableland, to the large village of
+Hebuterne. Most of this road, with the exception of one little stretch
+near Auchonvillers, is hidden by high ground from every part of the
+battlefield. Men moving upon it cannot see the field.
+
+Hebuterne, although close to the line and shelled daily and nightly
+for more than two years, was never the object of an attack in force,
+so that much of it remains. Many of its walls and parts of some of its
+roofs still stand, the church tower is in fair order, and no one
+walking in the streets can doubt that he is in a village. Before the
+war it was a prosperous village; then, for more than two years, it
+rang with the roar of battle and with the business of an army.
+Presently the tide of the war ebbed away from it and left it deserted,
+so that one may walk in it now, from end to end, without seeing a
+human being. It is as though the place had been smitten by the plague.
+Villages during the Black Death must have looked thus. One walks in
+the village expecting at every turn to meet a survivor, but there is
+none; the village is dead; the grass is growing in the street; the
+bells are silent; the beasts are gone from the byre and the ghosts
+from the church. Stealing about among the ruins and the gardens are
+the cats of the village, who have eaten too much man to fear him, but
+are now too wild to come to him. They creep about and eye him from
+cover and look like evil spirits.
+
+The second of the four roads passes out of Albert, crosses the railway
+at a sharp turn, over a bridge called Marmont Bridge, and runs
+northward along the valley of the Ancre within sight of the railway.
+Just beyond the Marmont Bridge there is a sort of lake or reservoir or
+catchment of the Ancre overflows, a little to the right of the road.
+By looking across this lake as he walks northward, the traveller can
+see some rolls of gentle chalk hill, just beyond which the English
+front line ran at the beginning of the battle.
+
+A little further on, at the top of a rise, the road passes the village
+of Aveluy, where there is a bridge or causeway over the Ancre valley.
+Aveluy itself, being within a mile and a half of enemy gun positions
+for nearly two years of war, is knocked about, and rather roofless and
+windowless. A cross-road leading to the causeway across the valley
+once gave the place some little importance.
+
+  [Illustration: The Road up the Ancre Valley through Aveluy Wood]
+
+Not far to the north of Aveluy, the road runs for more than a mile
+through the Wood of Aveluy, which is a well-grown plantation of trees
+and shrubs. This wood hides the marsh of the river from the traveller.
+Tracks from the road lead down to the marsh and across it by military
+causeways.
+
+On emerging from the wood, the road runs within hail of the railway,
+under a steep and high chalk bank partly copsed with scrub.
+Three-quarters of a mile from the wood it passes through the skeleton
+of the village of Hamel, which is now a few ruined walls of brick
+standing in orchards on a hillside. Just north of this village,
+crossing the road, the railway, and the river-valley, is the old
+English front line.
+
+The third of the four roads is one of the main roads of France. It is
+the state highway, laid on the line of a Roman road, from Albert to
+Bapaume. It is by far the most used and the most important of the
+roads crossing the battlefield. As it leads directly to Bapaume, which
+was one of the prizes of the victory, and points like a sword through
+the heart of the enemy positions it will stay in the memories of our
+soldiers as the main avenue of the battle.
+
+The road leaves Albert in a street of dingy and rather broken
+red-brick houses. After passing a corner crucifix it shakes itself
+free of the houses and rises slowly up a ridge of chalk hill about
+three hundred feet high. On the left of the road, this ridge, which is
+much withered and trodden by troops and horses, is called Usna Hill.
+On the right, where the grass is green and the chalk of the old
+communication trenches still white and clean, it is called Tara Hill.
+Far away on the left, along the line of the Usna Hill, one can see the
+Aveluy Wood.
+
+Looking northward from the top of the Usna-Tara Hill to the dip below
+it and along the road for a few yards up the opposite slope, one sees
+where the old English front line crossed the road at right angles. The
+enemy front line faced it at a few yards' distance, just about two
+miles from Albert town.
+
+The fourth of the four roads runs for about a mile eastwards from
+Albert, and then slopes down into a kind of gully or shallow valley,
+through which a brook once ran and now dribbles. The road crosses the
+brook-course, and runs parallel with it for a little while to a place
+where the ground on the left comes down in a slanting tongue and on
+the right rises steeply into a big hill. The ground of the tongue
+bears traces of human habitation on it, all much smashed and
+discoloured. This is the once pretty village of Fricourt. The hill on
+the right front at this point is the Fricourt Salient. The lines run
+round the salient and the road cuts across them.
+
+Beyond Fricourt, the road leaves another slanting tongue at some
+distance to its left. On this second tongue the village of Mametz once
+stood. Near here the road, having now cut across the salient, again
+crosses both sets of lines, and begins a long, slow ascent to a ridge
+or crest. From this point, for a couple of miles, the road is planted
+on each side with well-grown plane-trees, in some of which magpies
+have built their nests ever since the war began. At the top of the
+rise the road runs along the plateau top (under trees which show more
+and more plainly the marks of war) to a village so planted that it
+seems to stand in a wood. The village is built of red brick, and is
+rather badly broken by enemy shell fire, though some of the houses in
+it are still habitable. This is the village of Maricourt. Three or
+four hundred yards beyond Maricourt the road reaches the old English
+front line, at the eastern extremity of the English sector, as it was
+at the beginning of the battle.
+
+These four roads which lead to the centre and the wings of the
+battlefield were all, throughout the battle and for the months of war
+which preceded it, dangerous by daylight. All could be shelled by the
+map, and all, even the first, which was by much the best hidden of the
+four, could be seen, in places, from the enemy position. On some of
+the trees or tree stumps by the sides of the roads one may still see
+the "camouflage" by which these exposed places were screened from the
+enemy observers. The four roads were not greatly used in the months of
+war which preceded the battle. In those months, the front was too near
+to them, and other lines of supply and approach were more direct and
+safer. But there was always some traffic upon them of men going into
+the line or coming out, of ration parties, munition and water
+carriers, and ambulances. On all four roads many men of our race were
+killed. All, at some time, or many times, rang and flashed with
+explosions. Danger, death, shocking escape and firm resolve, went up
+and down those roads daily and nightly. Our men slept and ate and
+sweated and dug and died along them after all hardships and in all
+weathers. On parts of them, no traffic moved, even at night, so that
+the grass grew high upon them. Presently, they will be quiet country
+roads again, and tourists will walk at ease, where brave men once ran
+and dodged and cursed their luck, when the Battle of the Somme was
+raging.
+
+Then, indeed, those roads were used. Then the grass that had grown on
+some of them was trodden and crushed under. The trees and banks by the
+waysides were used to hide batteries, which roared all day and all
+night. At all hours and in all weathers the convoys of horses slipped
+and stamped along those roads with more shells for the ever-greedy
+cannon. At night, from every part of those roads, one saw a twilight
+of summer lightning winking over the high ground from the
+never-ceasing flashes of guns and shells. Then there was no quiet, but
+a roaring, a crashing, and a screaming from guns, from shells bursting
+and from shells passing in the air. Then, too, on the two roads to the
+east of the Ancre River, the troops for the battle moved up to the
+line. The battalions were played by their bands through Albert, and up
+the slope of Usna Hill to Pozieres and beyond, or past Fricourt and
+the wreck of Mametz to Montauban and the bloody woodland near it.
+Those roads then were indeed paths of glory leading to the grave.
+
+During the months which preceded the Battle of the Somme, other roads
+behind our front lines were more used than these. Little villages, out
+of shell fire, some miles from the lines, were then of more use to us
+than Albert. Long after we are gone, perhaps, stray English tourists,
+wandering in Picardy, will see names scratched in a barn, some mark or
+notice on a door, some sign-post, some little line of graves, or hear,
+on the lips of a native, some slang phrase of English, learned long
+before in the wartime, in childhood, when the English were there. All
+the villages behind our front were thronged with our people. There
+they rested after being in the line and there they established their
+hospitals and magazines. It may be said, that men of our race died in
+our cause in every village within five miles of the front. Wherever
+the traveller comes upon a little company of our graves, he will know
+that he is near the site of some old hospital or clearing station,
+where our men were brought in from the line.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So much for the roads by which our men marched to this battlefield.
+Near the lines they had to leave the roads for the shelter of some
+communication trench or deep cut in the mud, revetted at the sides
+with wire to hinder it from collapsing inwards. By these deep narrow
+roads, only broad enough for marching in single file, our men passed
+to "the front," to the line itself. Here and there, in recesses in the
+trench, under roofs of corrugated iron covered with sandbags, they
+passed the offices and the stores of war, telephonists, battalion
+headquarters, dumps of bombs, barbed wire, rockets, lights,
+machine-gun ammunition, tins, jars, and cases. Many men, passing these
+things as they went "in" for the first time, felt with a sinking of
+the heart, that they were leaving all ordered and arranged things,
+perhaps forever, and that the men in charge of these stores enjoyed,
+by comparison, a life like a life at home.
+
+Much of the relief and munitioning of the fighting lines was done at
+night. Men going into the lines saw little of where they were going.
+They entered the gash of the communication trench, following the load
+on the back of the man in front, but seeing perhaps nothing but the
+shape in front, the black walls of the trench, and now and then some
+gleam of a star in the water under foot. Sometimes as they marched
+they would see the starshells, going up and bursting like rockets, and
+coming down With a wavering slow settling motion, as white and bright
+as burning magnesium wire, shedding a kind of dust of light upon the
+trench and making the blackness intense when they went out. These
+lights, the glimmer in the sky from the enemy's guns, and now and then
+the flash of a shell, were the things seen by most of our men on their
+first going in.
+
+In the fire trench they saw little more than the parapet. If work were
+being done in the No Man's Land, they still saw little save by these
+lights that floated and fell from the enemy and from ourselves. They
+could see only an array of stakes tangled with wire, and something
+distant and dark which might be similar stakes, or bushes, or men, in
+front of what could only be the enemy line. When the night passed, and
+those working outside the trench had to take shelter, they could see
+nothing, even at a loophole or periscope, but the greenish strip of
+ground, pitted with shell-holes and fenced with wire, running up to
+the enemy line. There was little else for them to see, looking to the
+front, for miles and miles, up hill and down dale.
+
+The soldiers who held this old front line of ours saw this grass and
+wire day after day, perhaps, for many months. It was the limit of
+their world, the horizon of their landscape, the boundary. What
+interest there was in their life was the speculation, what lay beyond
+that wire, and what the enemy was doing there. They seldom saw an
+enemy. They heard his songs and they were stricken by his missiles,
+but seldom saw more than, perhaps, a swiftly moving cap at a gap in
+the broken parapet, or a grey figure flitting from the light of a
+starshell. Aeroplanes brought back photographs of those unseen lines.
+Sometimes, in raids in the night, our men visited them and brought
+back prisoners; but they remained mysteries and unknown.
+
+In the early morning of the 1st of July, 1916, our men looked at them
+as they showed among the bursts of our shells. Those familiar heaps,
+the lines, were then in a smoke of dust full of flying clods and
+shards and gleams of fire. Our men felt that now, in a few minutes,
+they would see the enemy and know what lay beyond those parapets and
+probe the heart of that mystery. So, for the last half-hour, they
+watched and held themselves ready, while the screaming of the shells
+grew wilder and the roar of the bursts quickened into a drumming. Then
+as the time drew near, they looked a last look at that unknown
+country, now almost blotted in the fog of War, and saw the flash of
+our shells, breaking a little further off as the gunners "lifted," and
+knew that the moment had come. Then for one wild confused moment they
+knew that they were running towards that unknown land, which they
+could still see in the dust ahead. For a moment, they saw the parapet
+with the wire in front of it, and began, as they ran, to pick out in
+their minds a path through that wire. Then, too often, to many of
+them, the grass that they were crossing flew up in shards and sods and
+gleams of fire from the enemy shells, and those runners never reached
+the wire, but saw, perhaps, a flash, and the earth rushing nearer, and
+grasses against the sky, and then saw nothing more at all, for ever
+and for ever and for ever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It may be some years before those whose fathers, husbands and brothers
+were killed in this great battle, may be able to visit the battlefield
+where their dead are buried. Perhaps many of them, from brooding on
+the map, and from dreams and visions in the night, have in their minds
+an image or picture of that place. The following pages may help some
+few others, who have not already formed that image, to see the scene
+as it appears to-day. What it was like on the day of battle cannot be
+imagined by those who were not there.
+
+It was a day of an intense blue summer beauty, full of roaring,
+violence, and confusion of death, agony, and triumph, from dawn till
+dark. All through that day, little rushes of the men of our race went
+towards that No Man's Land from the bloody shelter of our trenches.
+Some hardly left our trenches, many never crossed the green space,
+many died in the enemy wire, many had to fall back. Others won across
+and went further, and drove the enemy from his fort, and then back
+from line to line and from one hasty trenching to another, till the
+Battle of the Somme ended in the falling back of the enemy army.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those of our men who were in the line at Hebuterne, at the extreme
+northern end of the battlefield of the Somme, were opposite the enemy
+salient of Gommecourt. This was one of those projecting fortresses or
+flankers, like the Leipzig, Ovillers, and Fricourt, with which the
+enemy studded and strengthened his front line. It is doubtful if any
+point in the line in France was stronger than this point of
+Gommecourt. Those who visit it in future times may be surprised that
+such a place was so strong.
+
+All the country there is gentler and less decided than in the southern
+parts of the battlefield. Hebuterne stands on a plateau-top; to the
+east of it there is a gentle dip down to a shallow hollow or valley;
+to the east of this again there is a gentle rise to higher ground, on
+which the village of Gommecourt stood. The church of Gommecourt is
+almost exactly one mile northeast and by north from the church at
+Hebuterne; both churches being at the hearts of their villages.
+
+Seen from our front line at Hebuterne, Gommecourt is little more than
+a few red-brick buildings, standing in woodland on a rise of ground.
+Wood hides the village to the north, the west, and the southwest. A
+big spur of woodland, known as Gommecourt Park, thrusts out boldly
+from the village towards the plateau on which the English lines stood.
+This spur, strongly fortified by the enemy, made the greater part of
+the salient in the enemy line. The landscape away from the wood is not
+in any way remarkable, except that it is open, and gentle, and on a
+generous scale. Looking north from our position at Hebuterne there is
+the snout of the woodland salient; looking south there is the green
+shallow shelving hollow or valley which made the No Man's Land for
+rather more than a mile. It is just such a gentle waterless hollow,
+like a dried-up river-bed, as one may see in several places in chalk
+country in England, but it is unenclosed land, and therefore more open
+and seemingly on a bigger scale than such a landscape would be in
+England, where most fields are small and fenced. Our old front line
+runs where the ground shelves or glides down into the valley; the
+enemy front line runs along the gentle rise up from the valley. The
+lines face each other across the slopes. To the south, the slope on
+which the enemy line stands is very slight.
+
+  [Illustration: Artillery Transport crossing a Trench Bridge into
+  the Bapaume Road]
+
+The impression given by this tract of land once held by the enemy is
+one of graceful gentleness. The wood on the little spur, even now, has
+something green about it. The village, once almost within the wood,
+wrecked to shatters as it is, has still a charm of situation. In the
+distance behind Gommecourt there is some ill-defined rising ground
+forming gullies and ravines. On these rises are some dark clumps of
+woodland, one of them called after the nightingales, which perhaps
+sing there this year, in what is left of their home. There is nothing
+now to show that this quiet landscape was one of the tragical places
+of this war.
+
+The whole field of the Somme is chalk hill and downland, like similar
+formations in England. It has about it, in every part of it, certain
+features well known to every one who has ever travelled in a chalk
+country. These features occur even in the gentle, rolling, and not
+strongly marked sector near Hebuterne. Two are very noticeable, the
+formation almost everywhere of those steep, regular banks or terraces,
+which the French call remblais and our own farmers lynchets, and the
+presence, in nearly all parts of the field, of roads sunken between
+two such banks into a kind of narrow gully or ravine. It is said, that
+these remblais or lynchets, which may be seen in English chalk
+countries, as in the Dunstable Downs, in the Chiltern Hills, and in
+many parts of Berkshire and Wiltshire, are made in each instance, in a
+short time, by the ploughing away from the top and bottom of any
+difficult slope. Where two slopes adjoin, such ploughing steepens the
+valley between them into a gully, which, being always unsown, makes a
+track through the crops when they are up. Sometimes, though less
+frequently, the farmer ploughs away from a used track on quite flat
+land, and by doing this on both sides of the track, he makes the track
+a causeway or ridge-way, slightly raised above the adjoining fields.
+This type of raised road or track can be seen in one or two parts of
+the battlefield (just above Hamel and near Pozieres for instance), but
+the hollow or sunken road and the steep remblai or lynchet are
+everywhere. One may say that no quarter of a mile of the whole field
+is without one or other of them. The sunken roads are sometimes very
+deep. Many of our soldiers, on seeing them, have thought that they
+were cuttings made, with great labour, through the chalk, and that the
+remblais or lynchets were piled up and smoothed for some unknown
+purpose by primitive man. Probably it will be found, that in every
+case they are natural slopes made sharper by cultivation. Two or three
+of these lynchets and sunken roads cross the shallow valley of the No
+Man's Land near Hebuterne. By the side of one of them, a line of
+Sixteen Poplars, now ruined, made a landmark between the lines.
+
+The line continues (with some slight eastward trendings, but without a
+change in its gentle quiet) southwards from this point for about a
+mile to a slight jut, or salient in the enemy line. This jut was known
+by our men as the Point, and a very spiky point it was to handle. From
+near the Point on our side of No Man's Land, a bank or lynchet, topped
+along its edge with trees, runs southwards for about a mile. In four
+places, the trees about this lynchet grow in clumps or copses, which
+our men called after the four Evangelists, John, Luke, Mark, and
+Matthew. This bank marks the old English front line between the Point
+and the Serre Road a mile to the south of it. Behind this English
+line are several small copses, on ground which very gently rises
+towards the crest of the plateau a mile to the west. In front of most
+of this part of our line, the ground rises towards the enemy trenches,
+so that one can see little to the front, but the slope up. The No
+Man's Land here is not green, but as full of shell-holes and the ruin
+of battle as any piece of the field. Directly between Serre and the
+Matthew Copse, where the lines cross a rough lump of ground, the enemy
+parapet is whitish from the chalk. The whitish parapet makes the
+skyline to observers in the English line. Over that parapet, some
+English battalions made one of the most splendid charges of the
+battle, in the heroic attack on Serre four hundred yards beyond.
+
+To the right of our front at Matthew Copse the ground slopes southward
+a little, past what may once have been a pond or quarry, but is now a
+pit in the mud, to the Serre road. Here one can look up the muddy road
+to the hamlet of Serre, where the wrecks of some brick buildings stand
+in a clump of tree stumps, or half-right down a God-forgotten kind of
+glen, blasted by fire to the look of a moor in hell. A few rampikes of
+trees standing on one side of this glen give the place its name of Ten
+Tree Alley. Immediately to the south of the Serre road, the ground
+rises into one of the many big chalk spurs, which thrust from the main
+Hebuterne plateau towards the Ancre Valley. The spur at this point
+runs east and west, and the lines cross it from north and south. They
+go up it side by side, a hundred and fifty yards apart, with a
+greenish No Man's Land between them. The No Man's Land, as usual, is
+the only part of all this chalk spur that is not burnt, gouged,
+pocked, and pitted with shell fire. It is, however, enough marked by
+the war to be bad going. When they are well up the spur, the lines
+draw nearer, and at the highest point of the spur they converge in one
+of the terrible places of the battlefield.
+
+For months before the battle began, it was a question here, which side
+should hold the highest point of the spur. Right at the top of the
+spur there is one patch of ground, measuring, it may be, two hundred
+yards each way, from which one can see a long way in every direction.
+From this patch, the ground droops a little towards the English side
+and stretches away fairly flat towards the enemy side, but one can see
+far either way, and to have this power of seeing, both sides fought
+desperately.
+
+Until the beginning of the war, this spur of ground was corn-land,
+like most of the battlefield. Unfenced country roads crossed it. It
+was a quiet, lonely, prosperous ploughland, stretching for miles, up
+and down, in great sweeping rolls and folds, like our own chalk
+downlands. It had one feature common to all chalk countries; it was a
+land of smooth expanses. Before the war, all this spur was a smooth
+expanse, which passed in a sweep from the slope to the plateau, over
+this crown of summit.
+
+To-day, the whole of the summit (which is called the Redan Ridge), for
+all its two hundred yards, is blown into pits and craters from twenty
+to fifty feet deep, and sometimes fifty yards long. These pits and
+ponds in rainy weather fill up with water, which pours from one pond
+into another, so that the hill-top is loud with the noise of the
+brooks. For many weeks, the armies fought for this patch of hill. It
+was all mined, counter-mined, and re-mined, and at each explosion the
+crater was fought for and lost and won. It cannot be said that either
+side won that summit till the enemy was finally beaten from all that
+field, for both sides conquered enough to see from. On the enemy side,
+a fortification of heaped earth was made; on our side, castles were
+built of sandbags filled with flint. These strongholds gave both
+sides enough observation. The works face each other across the ponds.
+The sandbags of the English works have now rotted, and flag about like
+the rags of uniform or like withered grass. The flint and chalk laid
+bare by their rotting look like the grey of weathered stone, so that,
+at a little distance, the English works look old and noble, as though
+they were the foundations of some castle long since fallen under Time.
+
+To the right, that is to the southward, from these English castles
+there is a slope of six hundred yards into a valley or gully. The
+slope is not in any way remarkable or seems not to be, except that the
+ruin of a road, now barely to be distinguished from the field, runs
+across it. The opposing lines of trenches go down the slope, much as
+usual, with the enemy line above on a slight natural glacis. Behind
+this enemy line is the bulk of the spur, which is partly white from
+up-blown chalk, partly burnt from months of fire, and partly faintly
+green from recovering grass. A little to the right or south, on this
+bulk of spur, there are the stumps of trees and no grass at all,
+nothing but upturned chalk and burnt earth. On the battlefield of the
+Somme, these are the marks of a famous place.
+
+The valley into which the slope descends is a broadish gentle opening
+in the chalk hills, with a road running at right angles to the lines
+of trenches at the bottom of it. As the road descends, the valley
+tightens in, and just where the enemy line crosses it, it becomes a
+narrow deep glen or gash, between high and steep banks of chalk. Well
+within the enemy position and fully seven hundred yards from our line,
+another such glen or gash runs into this glen, at right angles. At
+this meeting place of the glens is or was the village of Beaumont
+Hamel, which the enemy said could never be taken.
+
+For the moment it need not be described; for it was not seen by many
+of our men in the early stages of the battle. In fact our old line was
+at least five hundred yards outside it. But all our line in the valley
+here was opposed to the village defences, and the fighting at this
+point was fierce and terrible, and there are some features in the No
+Man's Land just outside the village which must be described. These
+features run parallel with our line right down to the road in the
+valley, and though they are not features of great tactical importance,
+like the patch of summit above, where the craters are, or like the
+windmill at Pozieres, they were the last things seen by many brave
+Irish and Englishmen, and cannot be passed lightly by.
+
+The features are a lane, fifty or sixty yards in front of our front
+trench, and a remblai or lynchet fifty or sixty yards in front of the
+lane.
+
+The lane is a farmer's track leading from the road in the valley to
+the road on the spur. It runs almost north and south, like the lines
+of trenches, and is about five hundred yards long. From its start in
+the valley-road to a point about two hundred yards up the spur it is
+sunken below the level of the field on each side of it. At first the
+sinking is slight, but it swiftly deepens as it goes up hill. For more
+than a hundred yards it lies between banks twelve or fifteen feet
+deep. After this part the banks die down into insignificance, so that
+the road is nearly open. The deep part, which is like a very deep,
+broad, natural trench, was known to our men as the Sunken Road. The
+banks of this sunken part are perpendicular. Until recently, they were
+grown over with a scrub of dwarf beech, ash, and sturdy saplings, now
+mostly razed by fire. In the road itself our men built up walls of
+sandbags to limit the effects of enemy shell fire. From these defences
+steps cut in the chalk of the bank lead to the field above, where
+there were machine-gun pits.
+
+The field in front of the lane (where these pits were) is a fairly
+smooth slope for about fifty yards. Then there is the lynchet or
+remblai, like a steep cliff, from three to twelve feet high, hardly to
+be noticed from above until the traveller is upon it. Below this
+lynchet is a fairly smooth slope, so tilted that it slopes down to the
+right towards the valley road, and slopes up to the front towards the
+enemy line. Looking straight to the front from the Sunken Road our men
+saw no sudden dip down at the lynchet, but a continuous grassy field,
+at first flat, then slowly rising towards the enemy parapet. The line
+of the lynchet-top merges into the slope behind it, so that it is not
+seen. The enemy line thrusts out in a little salient here, so as to
+make the most of a little bulge of ground which was once wooded and
+still has stumps. The bulge is now a heap and ruin of burnt and
+tumbled mud and chalk. To reach it our men had to run across the flat
+from the Sunken Road, slide down the bank of the lynchet, and then run
+up the glacis to the parapet.
+
+The Sunken Road was only held by our men as an advanced post and
+"jumping off" (or attacking) point. Our line lay behind it on a higher
+part of the spur, which does not decline gradually into the valley
+road, but breaks off in a steep bank cut by our soldiers into a flight
+of chalk steps. These steps gave to all this part of the line the
+name of Jacob's Ladder. From the top of Jacob's Ladder there is a good
+view of the valley road running down into Beaumont Hamel. To the right
+there is a big steep knoll of green hill bulking up to the south of
+the valley, and very well fenced with enemy wire. All the land to the
+right or south of Jacob's Ladder is this big green hill, which is very
+steep, irregular, and broken with banks, and so ill-adapted for
+trenching that we were forced to make our line further from the enemy
+than is usual on the front. The front trenches here are nearly five
+hundred yards apart. As far as the hill-top the enemy line has a great
+advantage of position. To reach it our men had to cross the open and
+ascend a slope which gave neither dead ground nor cover to front or
+flank. Low down the hill, running parallel with the road, is a little
+lynchet, topped by a few old hawthorn bushes. All this bit of the old
+front line was the scene of a most gallant attack by our men on the
+1st of July. Those who care may see it in the official cinematograph
+films of the Battle of the Somme.
+
+  [Illustration: Troops moving to the Front in the Dust of the
+  Summer Fighting]
+
+Right at the top of the hill there is a dark enclosure of wood,
+orchard, and plantation, with several fairly well preserved red-brick
+buildings in it. This is the plateau-village of Auchonvillers. On the
+slopes below it, a couple of hundred yards behind Jacob's Ladder,
+there is a little round clump of trees. Both village and clump make
+conspicuous landmarks. The clump was once the famous English
+machine-gun post of the Bowery, from which our men could shoot down
+the valley into Beaumont Hamel.
+
+The English line goes up the big green hill, in trenches and saps of
+reddish clay, to the plateau or tableland at the top. Right up on the
+top, well behind our front line and close to one of our communication
+trenches, there is a good big hawthorn bush, in which a magpie has
+built her nest. This bush, which is strangely beautiful in the spring,
+has given to the plateau the name of the Hawthorn Ridge.
+
+Just where the opposing lines reach the top of the Ridge they both
+bend from their main north and south direction towards the southeast,
+and continue in that course for several miles. At the point or salient
+of the bending, in the old enemy position, there is a crater of a mine
+which the English sprang in the early morning of the 1st of July. This
+is the crater of the mine of Beaumont Hamel. Until recently it was
+supposed to be the biggest crater ever blown by one explosion. It is
+not the deepest: one or two others near La Boisselle are deeper, but
+none on the Somme field comes near it in bigness and squalor. It is
+like the crater of a volcano, vast, ragged, and irregular, about one
+hundred and fifty yards long, one hundred yards across, and
+twenty-five yards deep. It is crusted and scabbed with yellowish
+tetter, like sulphur or the rancid fat on meat. The inside has rather
+the look of meat, for it is reddish and all streaked and scabbed with
+this pox and with discoloured chalk. A lot of it trickles and oozes
+like sores discharging pus, and this liquid gathers in holes near the
+bottom, and is greenish and foul and has the look of dead eyes staring
+upwards.
+
+  [Illustration: An Artillery Team taking the Bank]
+
+All that can be seen of it from the English line is a disarrangement
+of the enemy wire and parapet. It is a hole in the ground which cannot
+be seen except from quite close at hand. At first sight, on looking
+into it, it is difficult to believe that it was the work of man; it
+looks so like nature in her evil mood. It is hard to imagine that only
+three years ago that hill was cornfield, and the site of the chasm
+grew bread. After that happy time, the enemy bent his line there and
+made the salient a stronghold, and dug deep shelters for his men in
+the walls of his trenches; the marks of the dugouts are still plain in
+the sides of the pit. Then, on the 1st of July, when the explosion
+was to be a signal for the attack, and our men waited in the trenches
+for the spring, the belly of the chalk was heaved, and chalk, clay,
+dugouts, gear, and enemy, went up in a dome of blackness full of
+pieces, and spread aloft like a toadstool, and floated, and fell down.
+
+From the top of the Hawthorn Ridge, our soldiers could see a great
+expanse of chalk downland, though the falling of the hill kept them
+from seeing the enemy's position. That lay on the slope of the ridge,
+somewhere behind the wire, quite out of sight from our lines. Looking
+out from our front line at this salient, our men saw the enemy wire
+almost as a skyline. Beyond this line, the ground dipped towards
+Beaumont Hamel (which was quite out of sight in the valley) and rose
+again sharply in the steep bulk of Beaucourt spur. Beyond this lonely
+spur, the hills ranked and ran, like the masses of a moor, first the
+high ground above Miraumont, and beyond that the high ground of the
+Loupart Wood, and away to the east the bulk that makes the left bank
+of the Ancre River. What trees there are in this moorland were not
+then all blasted. Even in Beaumont Hamel some of the trees were green.
+The trees in the Ancre River Valley made all that marshy meadow like
+a forest. Looking out on all this, the first thought of the soldier
+was that here he could really see something of the enemy's ground.
+
+  [Illustration: A View in Hamel]
+
+It is true, that from this hill-top much land, then held by the enemy,
+could be seen, but very little that was vital to the enemy could be
+observed. His lines of supply and support ran in ravines which we
+could not see; his batteries lay beyond crests, his men were in hiding
+places. Just below us on the lower slopes of this Hawthorn Ridge he
+had one vast hiding place which gave us a great deal of trouble. This
+was a gully or ravine, about five hundred yards long, well within his
+position, running (roughly speaking) at right angles with his front
+line. Probably it was a steep and deep natural fold made steeper and
+deeper by years of cultivation. It is from thirty to forty feet deep,
+and about as much across at the top; it has abrupt sides, and thrusts
+out two forks to its southern side. These forks give it the look of a
+letter +Y+ upon the maps, for which reason both the French and
+ourselves called the place the "Ravin en Y" or "Y Ravine." Part of the
+southernmost fork was slightly open to observation from our lines; the
+main bulk of the gully was invisible to us, except from the air.
+
+Whenever the enemy has had a bank of any kind, at all screened from
+fire, he has dug into it for shelter. In the Y Ravine, which provided
+these great expanses of banks, he dug himself shelters of unusual
+strength and size. He sank shafts into the banks, tunnelled long
+living rooms, both above and below the gully-bottom, linked the rooms
+together with galleries, and cut hatchways and bolting holes to lead
+to the surface as well as to the gully. All this work was securely
+done, with balks of seasoned wood, iron girders, and concreting. Much
+of it was destroyed by shell fire during the battle, but much not hit
+by shells is in good condition to-day even after the autumn rains and
+the spring thaw. The galleries which lead upwards and outwards from
+this underground barracks to the observation posts and machine-gun
+emplacements in the open air, are cunningly planned and solidly made.
+The posts and emplacements to which they led are now, however, (nearly
+all) utterly destroyed by our shell fire.
+
+In this gully barracks, and in similar shelters cut in the chalk of
+the steeper banks near Beaumont Hamel, the enemy could hold ready
+large numbers of men to repel an attack or to make a counter-attack.
+They lived in these dugouts in comparative safety and in moderate
+comfort. When our attacks came during the early months of the battle,
+they were able to pass rapidly and safely by these underground
+galleries from one part of the position to another, bringing their
+machine guns with them. However, the Ravine was presently taken and
+the galleries and underground shelters were cleared. In one
+underground room in that barracks, nearly fifty of the enemy were
+found lying dead in their bunks, all unwounded, and as though asleep.
+They had been killed by the concussion of the air following on the
+burst of a big shell at the entrance.
+
+  [Illustration: The Ancre River]
+
+One other thing may be mentioned about this Hawthorn Ridge. It runs
+parallel with the next spur (the Beaucourt spur) immediately to the
+north of it, then in the enemy's hands. Just over the crest of this
+spur, out of sight from our lines, is a country road, well banked and
+screened, leading from Beaucourt to Serre. This road was known by our
+men as Artillery Lane, because it was used as a battery position by
+the enemy. The wrecks of several of his guns lie in the mud there
+still. From the crest in front of this road there is a view to the
+westward, so wonderful that those who see it realize at once that the
+enemy position on the Ridge, which, at a first glance, seems badly
+sited for observation, is, really, well placed. From this crest, the
+Ridge-top, all our old front line, and nearly all the No Man's Land
+upon it, is exposed, and plainly to be seen. On a reasonably clear
+day, no man could leave our old line unseen from this crest. No
+artillery officer, correcting the fire of a battery, could ask for a
+better place from which to watch the bursts of his shells. This crest,
+in front of the lane of enemy guns, made it possible for the enemy
+batteries to drop shells upon our front line trenches before all the
+men were out of them at the instant of the great attack.
+
+The old English line runs along the Hawthorn Ridge-top for some
+hundreds of yards, and then crosses a dip or valley, which is the
+broad, fanshaped, southern end of a fork of Y Ravine. A road runs, or
+ran, down this dip into the Y Ravine. It is not now recognisable as a
+road, but the steep banks at each side of it, and some bluish
+metalling in the shell holes, show that one once ran there. These
+banks are covered with hawthorn bushes. A remblai, also topped with
+hawthorn, lies a little to the north of this road.
+
+From this lynchet, looking down the valley into the Y Ravine, the
+enemy position is saddle-shaped, low in the middle, where the Y
+Ravine narrows, and rising to right and left to a good height. Chalk
+hills from their form often seem higher than they really are,
+especially in any kind of haze. Often they have mystery and nearly
+always beauty. For some reason, the lumping rolls of chalk hill rising
+up on each side of this valley have a menace and a horror about them.
+One sees little of the enemy position from the English line. It is now
+nothing but a track of black wire in front of some burnt and battered
+heapings of the ground, upon which the grass and the flowers have only
+now begun to push. At the beginning of the battle it must have been
+greener and fresher, for then the fire of hell had not come upon it;
+but even then, even in the summer day, that dent in the chalk leading
+to the Y Ravine must have seemed a threatening and forbidding place.
+
+Our line goes along the top of the ridge here, at a good distance from
+the enemy line. It is dug on the brow of the plateau in reddish earth
+on the top of chalk. It is now much as our men left it for the last
+time. The trench-ladders by which they left it are still in place in
+the bays of the trenches. All the outer, or jumping-off, trenches, are
+much destroyed by enemy shell fire, which was very heavy here from
+both sides of the Ancre River. A quarter of a mile to the southeast
+of the Y Ravine the line comes within sight of the great gap which
+cuts the battlefield in two. This gap is the valley of the Ancre
+River, which runs here beneath great spurs of chalk, as the Thames
+runs at Goring and Pangbourne. On the lonely hill, where this first
+comes plainly into view, as one travels south along the line, there
+used to be two bodies of English soldiers, buried once, and then
+unburied by the rain. They lay in the No Man's Land, outside the
+English wire, in what was then one of the loneliest places in the
+field. The ruin of war lay all round them.
+
+There are many English graves (marked, then, hurriedly, by the man's
+rifle thrust into the ground) in that piece of the line. On a windy
+day, these rifles shook in the wind as the bayonets bent to the blast.
+The field testaments of both men lay open beside them in the mud. The
+rain and the mud together had nearly destroyed the little books, but
+in each case it was possible to read one text. In both cases, the text
+which remained, read with a strange irony. The one book, beside a
+splendid youth, cut off in his promise, was open at a text which ran,
+"And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty
+in word and in deed." The other book, beside one who had been killed
+in an attack which did not succeed at the moment, but which led to the
+falling back of the enemy nation from many miles of conquered ground,
+read even more strangely. It was open at the eighty-ninth Psalm, and
+the only legible words were, "Thou hast broken down all his hedges;
+thou hast brought his strong holds to ruin."
+
+  [Illustration: The Ancre opposite Hamel]
+
+From the hill-top where these graves are the lines droop down towards
+the second of the four roads, which runs here in the Ancre valley
+parallel with the river and the railway. The slope is steep and the
+ground broken with shallow gullies and lynchets. Well down towards the
+river, just above the road, a flattish piece of land leads to a ravine
+with steep and high banks. This flattish land, well within the enemy
+line, was the scene of very desperate fighting on the 1st of July.
+
+Looking at the enemy line in front of our own line here, one sees
+little but a gentle crest, protected by wire, in front of another
+gentle crest, also wired, with other gentle crests beyond and to the
+left. To the right there is a blur of gentle crests behind tree-tops.
+It is plain from a glance that gullies run irregularly into the spurs
+here, and make the defence easy. All through the fighting here, it
+happened too often that the taking of one crest only meant that the
+winners were taken in flank by machine guns in the crest beyond, and
+(in this bit of the line) by other guns on the other side of the
+river.
+
+Well to the back of the English line here, on the top of the plateau,
+level with Auchonvillers, some trees stand upon the skyline, with the
+tower of a church, battered, but not destroyed, like the banner of
+some dauntless one, a little to the west of the wood. The wood shows
+marks of shelling, but nothing like the marks on the woods attacked by
+our own men. There are signs of houses among the trees, and the line
+of a big wood to the east of them.
+
+This church and the buildings near it are parts of Mesnil village,
+most of which lies out of sight on the further side of the crest. They
+are conspicuous landmarks, and can be made out from many parts of the
+field. The chalk scarp on which they stand is by much the most
+beautiful thing on the battlefield, and the sight of Mesnil church
+tower on the top of it is most pleasant. That little banner stood all
+through the war, and not all the guns of the enemy could bring it
+down. Many men in the field near Mesnil, enduring the mud of the thaw,
+and the lice, wet, and squalor of dugouts near the front, were cheered
+by that church tower. "For all their bloody talk the bastards
+couldn't bring it down."
+
+The hill with the lines upon it slopes steeply down to the valley of
+the Ancre. Just where the lines come to the valley, the ground drops
+abruptly, in a cliff or steep bank, twenty-five feet high, to the
+road.
+
+Our line on this slope covers the village of Hamel, which lies just
+behind the line, along the road and on the hill-slopes above it. The
+church and churchyard of Hamel, both utterly ruined, lie well up the
+hill in such a position that they made good posts from which our
+snipers could shoot across the river at men in the Schwaben Redoubt.
+Crocuses, snowdrops, and a purple flower once planted on the graves of
+the churchyard, but now escaped into the field, blossomed here in this
+wintry spring, long before any other plant on the battlefield was in
+bud.
+
+Hamel in peace time may have contained forty houses, some shatters of
+which still stand. There are a few red-brick walls, some frames of
+wood from which the plaster has been blown, some gardens gone wild,
+fruit trees unpruned and more or less ragged from fire, and an air of
+desecration and desertion. In some of the ruins there are signs of
+use. The lower windows are filled with sandbags, the lower stories
+are strengthened with girders and baulks. From the main road in the
+valley, a country track or road, muddy even for the Somme, leads up
+the hill, through the heart of the village, past the church, towards
+our old line and Auchonvillers.
+
+Not much can be seen from the valley road in Hamel, for it is only a
+few feet above the level of the river-bed, which is well grown with
+timber not yet completely destroyed. The general view to the eastward
+from this low-lying road is that of a lake, five hundred yards across,
+in some wild land not yet settled. The lake is shallow, blind with
+reeds, vivid with water-grass, and lively with moor-fowl. The trees
+grow out of the water, or lie in it, just as they fell when they were
+shot. On the whole, the trees just here, though chipped and knocked
+about, have not suffered badly; they have the look of trees, and are
+leafy in summer. Beyond the trees, on the other side of the marsh, is
+the steep and high eastern bank of the Ancre, on which a battered
+wood, called Thiepval Wood, stands like an army of black and haggard
+rampikes. But for this stricken wood, the eastern bank of the Ancre is
+a gentle, sloping hill, bare of trees. On the top of this hill is the
+famous Schwaben Redoubt.
+
+The Ancre River and the marshy valley through which it runs are
+crossed by several causeways. One most famous causeway crosses just in
+front of Hamel on the line of the old Mill Road. The Mill from which
+it takes its name lies to the left of the causeway on a sort of green
+island. The wheel, which is not destroyed, still shows among the
+ruins. The enemy had a dressing station there at one time.
+
+The marshy valley of the Ancre splits up the river here into several
+channels besides the mill stream. The channels are swift and deep,
+full of exquisitely clear water just out of the chalk. The marsh is
+rather blind with snags cut off by shells. For some years past the
+moor-fowl in the marsh have been little molested. They are very
+numerous here; their cries make the place lonely and romantic.
+
+When one stands on this causeway over the Ancre one is almost at the
+middle point of the battlefield, for the river cuts the field in two.
+Roughly speaking, the ground to the west of the river was the scene of
+containing fighting, the ground to the east of the river the scene of
+our advance. At the eastern end of the causeway the Old Mill Road
+rises towards the Schwaben Redoubt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the way up the hill the road is steep, rather deep and bad. It is
+worn into the chalk and shows up very white in sunny weather. Before
+the battle it lay about midway between the lines, but it was always
+patrolled at night by our men. The ground on both sides of it is
+almost more killed and awful than anywhere in the field. On the
+English or south side of it, distant from one hundred to two hundred
+yards, is the shattered wood, burnt, dead, and desolate. On the enemy
+side, at about the same distance, is the usual black enemy wire, much
+tossed and bunched by our shells, covering a tossed and tumbled chalky
+and filthy parapet. Our own old line is an array of rotted sandbags,
+filled with chalkflint, covering the burnt wood. One need only look at
+the ground to know that the fighting here was very grim, and to the
+death. Near the road and up the slope to the enemy the ground is
+littered with relics of our charges, mouldy packs, old shattered
+scabbards, rifles, bayonets, helmets curled, torn, rolled, and
+starred, clips of cartridges, and very many graves. Many of the
+graves are marked with strips of wood torn from packing cases, with
+pencilled inscriptions, "An unknown British Hero"; "In loving memory
+of Pte. ----"; "Two unknown British heroes"; "An unknown British
+soldier"; "A dead Fritz." That gentle slope to the Schwaben is covered
+with such things.
+
+Passing these things, by some lane through the wire and clambering
+over the heaps of earth which were once the parapet, one enters the
+Schwaben, where so much life was spent. As in so many places on this
+old battlefield, the first thought is: "Why, they were in an eyrie
+here; our fellows had no chance at all." There is no wonder, then,
+that the approach is strewn with graves. The line stands at the top of
+a smooth, open slope, commanding our old position and the Ancre
+Valley. There is no cover of any kind upon the slope except the rims
+of the shell-holes, which make rings of mud among the grass. Just
+outside the highest point of the front line there is a little clump of
+our graves. Just inside there is a still unshattered concrete fortlet,
+built for the machine gun by which those men were killed.
+
+All along that front trench of the Schwaben, lying on the parapet,
+half buried in the mud, are the belts of machine guns, still full of
+cartridges. There were many machine guns on that earthen wall last
+year. When our men scrambled over the tumbled chalky line of old
+sandbags, so plain just down the hill, and came into view on the
+slope, running and stumbling in the hour of the attack, the machine
+gunners in the fortress felt indeed that they were in an eyrie, and
+that our fellows had no chance at all.
+
+For the moment one thinks this, as the enemy gunners must have thought
+it; then, looking up the hill at the inner works of the great fort,
+the thought comes that it was not so happy a fate to have to hold this
+eyrie. Sometimes, in winter storms, the Atlantic is heaved aloft and
+tossed and tumbled under an evil heaven till all its wilderness is
+hideous. This hill-top is exactly as though some such welter of water
+had suddenly become mud. It is all heaped and tossed and tumbled as
+though the earth there had been a cross-sea. In one place some great
+earth wave of a trench has been bitten into and beaten back and turned
+blind into an eddy by great pits and chasms and running heaps. Then in
+another place, where the crown of the work once reared itself aloft
+over the hill, the heaps of mud are all blurred and pounded together,
+so that there is no design, no trace, no visible plan of any
+fortress, only a mess of mud bedevilled and bewildered. All this mess
+of heaps and hillocks is strung and filthied over with broken bodies
+and ruined gear. There is nothing whole, nor alive, nor clean, in all
+its extent; it is a place of ruin and death, blown and blasted out of
+any likeness to any work of man, and so smashed that there is no
+shelter on it, save for the one machine gunner in his box. On all that
+desolate hill our fire fell like rain for days and nights and weeks,
+till the watchers in our line could see no hill at all, but a great,
+vague, wreathing devil of darkness in which little sudden fires winked
+and glimmered and disappeared.
+
+Once in a lull of the firing a woman appeared upon the enemy parapet
+and started to walk along it. Our men held their fire and watched her.
+She walked steadily along the whole front of the Schwaben and then
+jumped down into her trench. Many thought at the time that she was a
+man masquerading for a bet, but long afterwards, when our men took the
+Schwaben, they found her lying in the ruins dead. They buried her
+there, up on the top of the hill. God alone knows who she was and what
+she was doing there.
+
+Looking back across the Ancre from the Schwaben the hill of the right
+bank of the river is clear from the woods near Mesnil to Beaucourt.
+All along that graceful chalk hill our communication trenches thrust
+up like long white mole-runs, or like the comb of rollers on a reef.
+At right angles to these long white lines are black streaks which mark
+the enemy's successive front lines. The later ones are visibly more
+ragged than those near our old line.
+
+There are few more lonely places than that scene of old battles. One
+may stand on the Schwaben for many days together and look west over
+the moor, or east over the wilderness, without seeing any sign of
+human life, save perhaps some solitary guarding a dump of stores.
+
+The hill on which the Schwaben is built is like a great thumb laid
+down beside the Ancre River. There is a little valley on its eastern
+side exactly like the space between a great thumb and a great
+forefinger. It is called Crucifix Valley, from an iron Calvary that
+stood in it in the early days of the war. It must once have been a
+lovely and romantic glen, strangely beautiful throughout. Even now its
+lower reach between a steep bank of scrub and Thiepval Wood is as
+lovely as a place can be after the passing of a cyclone. Its upper
+reach, which makes the eastern boundary of the Schwaben, is as ghastly
+a scene of smash as the world can show. It is nothing but a collection
+of irregular pools dug by big shells during months of battle. The
+pools are long enough and deep enough to dive into, and full to
+overflowing with filthy water. Sometimes the pressure of the water
+bursts the mud banks of one of these pools and a rush of water comes,
+and the pools below it overflow, and a noise of water rises in that
+solitude which is like the mud and water of the beginning of the world
+before any green thing appeared.
+
+  [Illustration: The Leipzig Salient under Fire]
+
+Our line runs across this Crucifix Valley in a strong sandbag
+barricade. The enemy line crosses it higher up in a continuation of
+the front line of the Schwaben. As soon as the lines are across the
+valley they turn sharply to the south at an important point.
+
+The Schwaben spur is like a thumb; Crucifix Valley is like the space
+between a thumb and a forefinger. Just to the east of Crucifix Valley
+a second spur thrusts away down to the south like a forefinger. It is
+a long sloping spur, wooded at the lower end. It is known on the maps
+as Thiepval Hill or the Leipzig Salient. When the lines turn to the
+south after crossing Crucifix Valley they run along the side of this
+hill and pass out of sight round the end. The lines are quite regular
+and distinct. From the top of the Schwaben it looks as though the side
+of the hill were fenced into a neat green track or racecourse. This
+track is the No Man's Land, which lies like a broad green regular
+stripe between brown expanses along the hillside. All this hill was of
+the greatest importance to the enemy. It was as strong an eyrie as the
+Schwaben; it turned and made very dangerous our works in front of
+Hamel; and it was the key to a covered way to the plateau from which
+all these spurs thrust southward.
+
+It is a bolder, more regular spur than the others which thrust from
+this plateau. The top slopes so slightly as to be almost level, the
+two flanks are rather steep.
+
+Right at the top of it, just where it springs from the plateau, much
+where the knuckle of the imagined hand would be, and perhaps five
+hundred yards east from our old sandbag barricade in Crucifix Valley,
+there is a redness in the battered earth and upon the chalk of the
+road. The redness is patchy over a good big stretch of this part of
+the spur, but it is all within the enemy lines and well above our own.
+Where the shattered hillside slopes towards our lines there are many
+remnants of trees, some of them fruit trees arranged in a kind of
+order behind the burnt relics of a hedge, others dotted about at
+random. All are burnt, blasted, and killed. One need only glance at
+the hill on which they stand to see that it has been more burnt and
+shell-smitten than most parts of the lines. It is as though the fight
+here had been more than to the death, to beyond death, to the bones
+and skeleton of the corpse which was yet unkillable. This is the site
+of the little hill village of Thiepval, which once stood at a
+cross-roads here among apple orchards and the trees of a park. It had
+a church, just at the junction of the roads, and a fine seigneurial
+chateau, in a garden, beside the church; otherwise it was a little
+lonely mean place, built of brick and plaster on a great lonely heap
+of chalk downland. It had no importance and no history before the war,
+except that a Seigneur of Thiepval is mentioned as having once
+attended a meeting at Amiens. It was of great military importance at
+the time of the Battle of the Somme. In the old days it may have had a
+beauty of position.
+
+It is worth while to clamber up to Thiepval from our lines. The road
+runs through the site of the village in a deep cutting, which may have
+once been lovely. The road is reddish with the smashed bricks of the
+village. Here and there in the mud are perhaps three courses of brick
+where a house once stood, or some hideous hole bricked at the bottom
+for the vault of a cellar. Blasted, dead, pitted stumps of trees, with
+their bark in rags, grow here and there in a collection of vast holes,
+ten feet deep and fifteen feet across, with filthy water in them.
+There is nothing left of the church; a big reddish mound of brick,
+that seems mainly powder round a core of cement, still marks where the
+chateau stood. The chateau garden, the round village pond, the
+pine-tree which was once a landmark there, are all blown out of
+recognition.
+
+The mud of the Somme, which will be remembered by our soldiers long
+after they have forgotten the shelling, was worse at Thiepval than
+elsewhere, or, at least, could not have been worse elsewhere. The road
+through Thiepval was a bog, the village was a quagmire. Near the
+chateau there were bits where one sank to the knee. In the great
+battle for Thiepval, on the 26th of last September, one of our Tanks
+charged an enemy trench here. It plunged and stuck fast and remained
+in the mud, like a great animal stricken dead in its spring. It was
+one of the sights of Thiepval during the winter, for it looked most
+splendid; afterwards, it was salved and went to fight again.
+
+From this part of Thiepval one can look along the top of the Leipzig
+Spur, which begins here and thrusts to the south for a thousand yards.
+
+There are two big enemy works on the Leipzig Spur: one, well to the
+south of the village, is (or was, for it is all blown out of shape) a
+six-angled star-shaped redoubt called the Wonder Work; the other,
+still further to the south, about a big, disused, and very
+evil-looking quarry, towards the end of the spur, is, or was, called
+the Leipzig Salient, or, by some people, the Hohenzollern, from the
+Hohenzollern Trench, which ran straight across the spur about halfway
+down the salient.
+
+In these two fortresses the enemy had two strong, evil eyries, high
+above us. They look down upon our line, which runs along the side of
+the hill below them. Though, in the end, our guns blasted the enemy
+off the hill, our line along that slope was a costly one to hold,
+since fire upon it could be observed and directed from so many
+points--from the rear (above Hamel), from the left flank (on the
+Schwaben and near Thiepval), and from the hill itself. The hill is
+all skinned and scarred, and the trace of the great works can no
+longer be followed. At the top of the hill, in the middle of a filthy
+big pool, is a ruined enemy trench-mortar, sitting up like a swollen
+toad.
+
+At the end of the spur the lines curve round to the east to shut in
+the hill. A grass-grown road crosses the lines here, goes up to the
+hill-top, and then along it. The slopes at this end of the hill are
+gentle, and from low down, where our lines are, it is a pleasant and
+graceful brae, where the larks never cease to sing and where you may
+always put up partridges and sometimes even a hare. It is a deserted
+hill at this time, but for the wild things. The No Man's Land is
+littered with the relics of a charge; for many brave Dorsetshire and
+Wiltshire men died in the rush up that slope. On the highest point of
+the enemy parapet, at the end of the hill, is a lonely white cross,
+which stands out like a banner planted by a conquerer. It marks the
+grave of an officer of the Wilts, who was killed there, among the
+ruin, in the July attack.
+
+Below the lines, where the ground droops away toward the river, the
+oddly shaped, deeply-vallied Wood of Authuille begins. It makes a
+sort of socket of woodland so curved as to take the end of the spur.
+
+It is a romantic and very lovely wood, pleasant with the noise of
+water and not badly damaged by the fighting. The trees are alive and
+leafy, the shrubs are pushing, and the spring flowers, wood anemones,
+violets, and the oxlip (which in this country takes the place of the
+primrose and the cowslip) flower beautifully among the shell-holes,
+rags, and old tins of war. But at the north-eastern end it runs out in
+a straggling spinney along the Leipzig's east flank, and this horn of
+wood is almost as badly shattered as if the shell fire upon it had
+been English. Here the enemy, fearing for his salient, kept up a
+terrible barrage. The trees are burnt, ragged, unbarked, topped, and
+cut off short, the trenches are blown in and jumbled, and the ground
+blasted and gouged.
+
+Standing in the old English front line just to the north of Authuille
+Wood, one sees the usual slow gradual grassy rise to the dark enemy
+wire. Mesnil stands out among its trees to the left; to the right is
+this shattered stretch of wood, with a valley beyond it, and a rather
+big, steep, green hill topped by a few trees beyond the valley. The
+jut of the Leipzig shuts out the view to the flanks, so that one can
+see little more than this.
+
+The Leipzig, itself, like the Schwaben, is a hawk's nest or eyrie. Up
+there one can look down by Authuille Wood to Albert church and
+chimneys, the uplands of the Somme, the Amiens road, down which the
+enemy marched in triumph and afterwards retreated in a hurry, and the
+fair fields that were to have been the booty of this war. Away to the
+left of this is the wooded clump of Becourt, and, beyond it, One Tree
+Hill with its forlorn mound, like the burial place of a King. On the
+right flank is the Ancre Valley, with the English position round Hamel
+like an open book under the eye; on the left flank is the rather big,
+steep, green hill, topped by a few trees, before mentioned. These trees
+grow in and about what was once the village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle.
+The hill does not seem to have a name; it may be called here Middle
+Finger Hill or Ovillers Hill.
+
+Like the Schwaben and the Leipzig Hills this hill thrusts out from the
+knuckle of the big chalk plateau to the north of it like the finger of
+a hand, in this case the middle finger. It is longer and less
+regularly defined than the Leipzig Hill; because instead of ending, it
+merges into other hills not quite so high. The valley which parts it
+from the Leipzig is steeply sided, with the banks of great lynchets.
+The lines cross the valley obliquely and run north and south along the
+flank of this hill, keeping their old relative positions, the enemy
+line well above our own, so that the approach to it is up a glacis.
+
+  [Illustration: Dug-outs and barbed wire in La Boisselle. Usna-Tara
+  Hill, with English Support Lines in Background. At Extreme Left is
+  the Albert-Bapaume Road]
+
+As one climbs up along our old line here, the great flank of Ovillers
+Hill is before one in a noble, bare sweep of grass, running up to the
+enemy line. Something in the make of this hill, in its shape, or in
+the way it catches the light, gives it a strangeness which other parts
+of the battlefield have not. The rise between the lines of the
+trenches is fully two hundred yards across, perhaps more. Nearly all
+over it, in no sort of order, now singly, now in twos or threes, just
+as the men fell, are the crosses of the graves of the men who were
+killed in the attack there. Here and there among the little crosses is
+one bigger than the rest, to some man specially loved or to the men of
+some battalion. It is difficult to stand in the old English line from
+which those men started without the feeling that the crosses are the
+men alive, still going forward, as they went in the July morning a
+year ago.
+
+Just within the enemy line, three-quarters of the way up the hill,
+there is a sort of small flat field about fifty yards across where the
+enemy lost very heavily. They must have gathered there for some rush
+and then been caught by our guns.
+
+At the top of the hill the lines curve to the southeast, drawing
+closer together. The crest of the hill, such as it is, was not
+bitterly disputed here, for we could see all that we wished to see of
+the hill from the eastern flank. Our line passes over the spur
+slightly below it, the enemy line takes in as much of it as the enemy
+needed. From it, he has a fair view of Albert town and of the country
+to the east and west of it, the wooded hill of Becourt, and the hill
+above Fricourt. From our line, we see his line and a few tree-tops.
+From the eastern flank of the hill, our line gives a glimpse of the
+site of the village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle, once one of the strong
+places of the enemy, and now a few heaps of bricks, and one spike of
+burnt ruin where the church stood.
+
+Like most Picardy villages, Ovillers was compactly built of red brick
+along a country road, with trees and orchards surrounding it. It had a
+lofty and pretentious brick church of a modern type. Below and beyond
+it to the east is a long and not very broad valley which lies between
+the eastern flank of Ovillers Hill and the next spur. It is called
+Mash Valley on the maps. The lines go down Ovillers Hill into this
+valley and then across it.
+
+Right at the upper end of this valley, rather more than a mile away,
+yet plainly visible from our lines near Ovillers, at the time of the
+beginning of the battle, were a few red-brick ruins in an irregular
+row across the valley-head.
+
+A clump of small fir and cypress trees stood up dark on the hill at
+the western end of this row, and behind the trees was a line of green
+hill topped with the ruins of a windmill. The ruins, now gone, were
+the end of Pozieres village, the dark trees grew in Pozieres cemetery,
+and the mill was the famous windmill of Pozieres, which marked the
+crest that was one of the prizes of the battle. All these things were
+then clearly to be seen, though in the distance.
+
+The main hollow of the valley is not remarkable except that it is
+crossed by enormous trenches and very steeply hedged by a hill on its
+eastern flank. This eastern hill which has such a steep side is a spur
+or finger of chalk thrusting southward from Pozieres, like the
+ring-finger of the imagined hand. Mash Valley curves round its
+finger-tip, and just at the spring of the curve the third of the four
+Albert roads crosses it, and goes up the spur towards Pozieres and
+Bapaume. The line of the road, which is rather banked up, so as to be
+a raised way, like so many Roman roads, can be plainly seen, going
+along the spur, almost to Pozieres. In many places, it makes the
+eastern skyline to observers down in the valley.
+
+Behind our front line in this Mash Valley is the pleasant green Usna
+Hill, which runs across the hollow and shuts it in to the south. From
+this hill, seamed right across with our reserve and support trenches,
+one can look down at the enemy position, which crosses Mash Valley in
+six great lines all very deep, strong, and dug into for underground
+shelter.
+
+Standing in Mash Valley, at the foot of Ring Finger Spur, just where
+the Roman Road starts its long rise to Pozieres, one sees a lesser
+road forking off to the right, towards a village called Contalmaison,
+a couple of miles away. The fork of the road marks where our old front
+line ran. The trenches are filled in at this point now, so that the
+roads may be used, but the place was once an exceedingly hot corner.
+In the old days, all the space between the two roads at the fork was
+filled with the village or hamlet of La Boisselle, which, though a
+tiny place, had once a church and perhaps a hundred inhabitants. The
+enemy fortified the village till it was an exceedingly strong place.
+We held a part of the village cemetery. Some of the broken crosses of
+the graves still show among the chalk here.
+
+  [Illustration: Photograph showing the Scene of the Successful
+  British Advance at La Boisselle, taken from the British Front
+  Line]
+
+To the left of the Roman Road, only a stone's throw from this ruined
+graveyard, a part of our line is built up with now rotting sandbags
+full of chalk, so that it looks like a mound of grey rocks. Opposite
+the mound, perhaps a hundred yards up the hill, is another, much
+bigger, irregular mound, of chalk that has become dirty, with some
+relics of battered black wire at its base. The space between the two
+mounds is now green with grass, though pitted with shell-holes, and
+marked in many places with the crosses of graves. The space is the old
+No Man's Land, and the graves are of men who started to charge across
+that field on the 1st of July. The big grey mound is the outer wall or
+casting of a mine thirty yards deep in the chalk and a hundred yards
+across, which we sprang under the enemy line there on that summer
+morning, just before our men went over.
+
+La Boisselle, after being battered by us in our attack, was destroyed
+by enemy fire after we had taken it, and then cleared by our men who
+wished to use the roads. It offers no sight of any interest; but just
+outside it, between the old lines, there is a stretch of spur, useful
+for observation, for which both sides fought bitterly. For about 200
+yards, the No Man's Land is a succession of pits in the chalk where
+mines have been sprung. Chalk, wire, stakes, friends, and enemies seem
+here to have been all blown to powder.
+
+The lines cross this debated bit, and go across a small, ill-defined
+bulk of chalk, known as Chapes Spur, on the top of which there is a
+vast heap of dazzlingly white chalk, so bright that it is painful to
+look at. Beyond it is the pit of a mine, evenly and cleanly blown,
+thirty-five yards deep, and more than a hundred yards across, in the
+pure chalk of the upland, as white as cherry blossom. This is the
+finest, though not the biggest, mine in the battlefield. It was the
+work of many months, for the shafts by which it was approached began
+more than a quarter of a mile away. It was sprung on the 1st of July
+as a signal for the attack. Quite close to it are the graves of an
+officer and a sergeant, both English, who were killed in the attack a
+few minutes after that chasm in the chalk had opened. The sergeant
+was killed while trying to save his officer.
+
+The lines bend down south-eastward from Chapes Spur, and cross a long,
+curving, shallow valley, known as Sausage Valley, famous, later in the
+battle, as an assembly place for men going up against Pozieres. Here
+the men in our line could see nothing but chalk slope to right, left,
+or front, except the last tree of La Boisselle, rising gaunt and black
+above the line of the hill. Just behind them, however, at the foot of
+the Sausage Valley they had a pleasant wooded hill, the hill of
+Becourt, which was for nearly two years within a mile of the front
+line, yet remained a green and leafy hill, covered with living trees,
+among which the chateau of Becourt remained a habitable house.
+
+The lines slant in a south-easterly direction across the Sausage
+Valley; they mount the spur to the east of it, and proceed, in the
+same direction, across a bare field, like the top of a slightly tilted
+table, in the long slope down to Fricourt. Here, the men in our front
+lines could see rather more from their position. In front of them was
+a smooth space of grass slightly rising to the enemy lines two hundred
+yards away. Behind the enemy lines is a grassy space, and behind
+this, there shows what seems to be a gully or ravine, beyond which the
+high ground of another spur rises, much as the citadel of an old
+encampment rises out of its walled ditch. This high ground of this
+other spur is not more than a few feet above the ground near it, but
+it is higher; it commands it. All the high ground is wooded. To the
+southern or lower end of it the trees are occasional and much broken
+by fire. To the northern or upper end they grow in a kind of wood
+though all are much destroyed. Right up to the wood, all the high
+ground bears traces of building; there are little tumbles of bricks
+and something of the colour of brick all over the pilled, poxed, and
+blasted heap that is so like an old citadel. The ravine in front of it
+is the gully between the two spurs; it shelters the sunken road to
+Contalmaison; the heap is Fricourt village, and the woodland to the
+north is Fricourt Wood. A glance is enough to show that it is a strong
+position.
+
+To the left of Fricourt, the spur rises slowly into a skyline. To the
+right the lines droop down the spur to a valley, across a brook and a
+road in the valley, and up a big bare humping chalk hill placed at
+right angles to the spur on which Fricourt stands.
+
+The spur on which Fricourt stands and the spur down which the lines
+run both end at the valley in a steep drop. Just above the steep fall
+our men fought very hard to push back the enemy a little towards
+Fricourt, so that he might not see the lower part of the valley, or be
+able to enfilade our lines on the other side of it. For about three
+hundred yards here the space between the lines is filled with the
+craters of mines exploded under the enemy's front line. In some cases,
+we seized and held the craters; in others the craters were untenable
+by either side. Under one of those held by us it was found that the
+enemy had sunk a big counter-mine, which was excavated and ready for
+charging at the time of the beginning of the battle, when Fricourt
+fell. This part of the line is more thickly coated with earth than
+most of the chalk hills of the battlefield. The craters lie in a blown
+and dug up wilderness of heaps of reddish earth, pocked with
+shell-holes, and tumbled with wire. The enemy lines are much broken
+and ruined, their parapets thrown down, the mouths of their dugouts
+blown in, and their pride abased.
+
+  [Illustration: A View of Fricourt]
+
+The Fricourt position was one of the boasts of the enemy on this
+front. Other places on the line, such as the Leipzig, the Schwaben,
+and the trenches near Hamel, were strong, because they could be
+supported by works behind them or on their flanks. Fricourt was strong
+in itself, like Gommecourt. It was perhaps the only place in the field
+of which it could be said that it was as strong as Gommecourt. As at
+Gommecourt, it had a good natural glacis up to the front line, which
+was deep, strong, and well wired. Behind the front line was a wired
+second line, and behind that, the rising spur on which the village
+stood, commanding both with machine-gun emplacements.
+
+Fricourt was not captured by storm, but swiftly isolated and forced to
+surrender. It held out not quite two days. It was the first first-rate
+fortress taken by our men from the enemy in this engagement. In the
+ruins, they saw for the first time the work which the enemy puts into
+his main defences, and the skill and craft with which he provides for
+his comfort. For some weeks, the underground arrangements of Fricourt,
+the stairs with wired treads, the bolting holes, the air and escape
+shafts, the living rooms with electric light, the panelled walls,
+covered with cretonnes of the smartest Berlin patterns, the neat bunks
+and the signs of female visitors, were written of in the press, so
+that some may think that Fricourt was better fitted than other places
+on the line. It is not so. The work at Fricourt was well done, but it
+was no better than that at other places, where a village with cellars
+in it had to be converted into a fortress. Our men took Fricourt at
+the beginning of the battle, in a fair state of preservation. Such
+work was then new to our men, and this good example was made much of.
+
+  [Illustration: Looking at Fricourt and Fricourt Wood. Troops
+  bivouac for a Short Rest under Ground Sheets laced together]
+
+In the valley below the village, in great, deep, and powerfully
+revetted works, the enemy had built himself gun emplacements, so
+weighted with timber balks that they collapsed soon after his men
+ceased to attend them. The line of these great works ran (as so many
+of his important lines have run) at the foot of a steep bank or
+lynchet, so that at a little distance the parapet of the work merged
+into the bank behind it and was almost invisible.
+
+This line of guns ran about east and west across the neck of the
+Fricourt Salient, which thrust still further south, across the little
+valley and up the hill on the other side.
+
+Our old line crosses the valley just to the east of the Fricourt
+Station on the little railway which once ran in the valley past
+Fricourt and Mametz to Montauban. It then crossed the fourth of the
+roads from Albert, at Fricourt cemetery, which is a small, raised
+forlorn garden of broken tombs at cross-roads, under the hill facing
+Fricourt. Here our line began to go diagonally up the lower slopes of
+the hill. The enemy line climbed it further to the east, round the
+bulging snout of the hill, at a steep and difficult point above the
+bank of a sunken road. Towards the top of the hill the lines
+converged.
+
+All the way of the hill, the enemy had the stronger position. It was
+above us almost invisible and unguessable, except from the air, at the
+top of a steep climb up a clay bank, which in wet weather makes bad
+going even for the Somme; and though the lie of the ground made it
+impossible for him to see much of our position, it was impossible for
+us to see anything or his or to assault him. The hill is a big steep
+chalk hill, with contours so laid upon it that not much of it can be
+seen from below. By looking to the left from our trenches on its
+western lower slopes one can see nothing of Fricourt, for the bulge of
+the hill's snout covers it. One has a fair view of the old English
+line on the smoothish big slope between Fricourt and Becourt, but
+nothing of the enemy stronghold. One might have lived in those
+trenches for nearly two years without seeing any enemy except the rain
+and mud and lice.
+
+Up at the top of the hill, there is an immense prospect over the
+eastern half of the battlefield, and here, where the lines converge,
+it was most necessary for us to have the crest and for the enemy to
+keep us off it. The highest ground is well forward, on the snout, and
+this point was the only part of the hill which the enemy strove to
+keep. His line goes up the hill to the highest point, cuts off the
+highest point, and at once turns eastward, so that his position on the
+hill is just the northern slope and a narrow line of crest. It is as
+though an army holding Fleet Street against an army on the Embankment
+and in Cheapside should have seized Ludgate Hill to the top of the
+steps of St. Paul's and left the body of the cathedral to its
+opponent. The lines securing this important salient are of immense
+strength and intricacy, with many great avenues of approach. The front
+line is double across the greater part of the crest, and behind it is
+a very deep, strong, trebly wired support line which is double at
+important points.
+
+  [Illustration: The Sandbags at the Fricourt Salient]
+
+Our old front line runs almost straight across the crest parallel with
+the enemy front line, and distant from it from forty to one hundred
+and fifty yards. The crest or highest ground is on both flanks of the
+hill-top close to the enemy line. Between the lines at both these
+points are the signs of a struggle which raged for weeks and months
+for the possession of those lumps of hill, each, perhaps, two hundred
+yards long, by fifty broad, by five high. Those fifteen feet of height
+were bartered for with more than their own weight of sweat and blood;
+the hill can never lose the marks of the struggle.
+
+In those two patches of the hill the space between the lines is a
+quarry of confluent craters, twenty or thirty yards deep, blown into
+and under each other till the top of the hill is split apart. No man
+can now tell which of all these mines were sunk by our men. The quarry
+runs irregularly in heaps and hollows of chalk and red earth mingled
+like flesh and blood. On our side of the pits the marks of our
+occupation are plain. There in several places, as at La Boisselle and
+on the Beaucourt spur, our men have built up the parapet of our old
+front line by thousands of sandbags till it is a hill-top or cairn
+from which they could see beyond. The sandbags have rotted and the
+chalk and flints within have fallen partly through the rags, and
+Nature has already begun to change those heaps to her own colours, but
+they will be there for ever as the mark of our race. Such monuments
+must be as lasting as Stonehenge. Neither the mines nor the guns of
+the enemy could destroy them. From among them our soldiers peered
+through the smoke of burning and explosions at the promised land which
+the battle made ours.
+
+From those heaps there is a wide view over that part of the field. To
+the left one sees Albert, the wooded clump of Becourt, and a high
+green spur which hides the Sausage Valley. To the front this green
+spur runs to the higher ground from which the Fricourt spur thrusts.
+On this higher ground, behind Fricourt and its wood, is a much bigger,
+thicker, and better grown wood, about a mile and a half away; this is
+the wood of Mametz. Some short distance to the left of this wood, very
+plainly visible on the high, rather bare hill, is a clump of pollarded
+trees near a few heaps of red brick. The trees were once the
+shade-giving trees about the market-place of Contalmaison, a hamlet at
+a cross-roads at this point. Behind these ruins the skyline is a kind
+of ridge which runs in a straight line, broken in one place by a few
+shatters of trees. These trees are the remains of the wood which once
+grew outside the village of Pozieres. The ridge is the Albert-Bapaume
+Road, here passing over the highest ground on its path.
+
+Turning from these distant places and looking to the right, one sees,
+just below, twelve hundred yards to the east of Fricourt, across the
+valley at the foot of this hill of the salient, the end of an
+irregular spur, on which are the shattered bricks of the village of
+Mametz before mentioned.
+
+To the north of Mametz the ground rises. From the eyrie of the salient
+one can look over it and away to the north to big rolling chalk land,
+most of it wooded. Mametz Wood is a dark expanse to the front; to the
+right of it are other woods, Bazentin Woods, Big and Little, and
+beyond them, rather to the right and only just visible as a few sticks
+upon the skyline, are two other woods, High Wood, like a ghost in the
+distance, and the famous and terrible Wood of Delville. High Wood is
+nearly five miles away and a little out of the picture. The other
+wooded heights are about three miles away. All that line of high
+ground marked by woods was the enemy second line, which with a few
+slight exceptions was our front line before the end of the third week
+of the battle.
+
+From this hill-top of the salient the lines run down the north-eastern
+snout of the hill and back across the valley, so as to shut in Mametz.
+Then they run eastward for a couple of miles, up to and across a
+plateau in front of the hamlet of Carnoy, which was just within our
+line. From our line, in this bare and hideous field, little could be
+seen but the slope up to the enemy line. At one point, where the road
+or lane from Carnoy to Montauban crossed the enemy line, there was a
+struggle for the power to see, and as a result of the struggle mines
+and counter-mines were sprung here till the space between the lines is
+now a chaos of pits and chasms full of water. The country here is an
+expanse of smoothish tilted slopes, big, empty, and lonely, and
+crossed (at about the middle point) by a strange narrow gut or gully,
+up which the railway once ran to Montauban. No doubt there are places
+in the English chalk counties which resemble this sweep of country,
+but I know of none so bare or so featureless. The ground is of the
+reddish earth which makes such bad mud. The slopes are big and
+gradual, either up or down. Little breaks the monotony of the expanse
+except a few copses or sites of copses; the eye is always turning to
+the distance.
+
+  [Illustration: View of Mametz]
+
+In front, more than half a mile away, the ground reaches its highest
+point in the ridge or bank which marks the road to Montauban. The big
+gradual sweep up is only broken by lines of trenches and by mud heaped
+up from the road. Some of the trees which once made Montauban
+pleasant and shady still stand over the little heaps of brick and
+solitary iron gate which show where the village used to stand. Rather
+to the right of this, and nearer to our lines, are some irregular red
+heaps with girders protruding from them. This is the enemy fortress of
+the brickworks of Montauban. Beyond this, still further to the right,
+behind the old enemy line, the ground loses its monotony and passes
+into lovely and romantic sweeping valleys, which our men could not see
+from their lines.
+
+Well behind our English lines in this district and above the dip where
+Carnoy stands, the fourth of the four roads from Albert runs eastward
+along a ridge-top between a double row of noble trees which have not
+suffered very severely, except at their eastern end. Just north of
+this road, and a little below it on the slopes of the ridge, is the
+village of Maricourt. Our line turns to the southeast opposite
+Montauban, and curves in towards the ridge so as to run just outside
+Maricourt, along the border of a little wood to the east of the
+houses. From all the high ground to the north of it, from the enemy's
+second line and beyond, the place is useful to give a traveller his
+bearings. The line of plane-trees along the road on the ridge, and
+the big clumps of trees round the village, are landmarks which cannot
+be mistaken from any part of the field.
+
+Little is to be seen from our line outside Maricourt Wood, except the
+enemy line a little beyond it, and the trees of other woods behind it.
+
+The line turns to the south, parallel with the wood, crosses the
+fourth road (which goes on towards Peronne) and goes down some
+difficult, rather lovely, steep chalk slopes, wooded in parts, to the
+ruins of Fargny Mill on the Somme River.
+
+The Somme River is here a very beautiful expanse of clear chalk water
+like a long wandering shallow lake. Through this shallow lake the
+river runs in half a dozen channels, which are parted and thwarted in
+many places by marsh, reed-beds, osier plots, and tracts of swampy
+woodland. There is nothing quite like it in England. The river-bed is
+pretty generally between five and six hundred yards across.
+
+Nearly two miles above the place where the old enemy line comes down
+to the bank, the river thrusts suddenly north-westward, in a very
+noble great horse-shoe, the bend of which comes at Fargny where our
+lines touched it. The enemy line touched the horse-shoe close to our
+own at a curious wooded bank or slope, known (from its shape on the
+map, which is like a cocked hat) as the Chapeau de Gendarme. Just
+behind our lines, at the bend, the horse-shoe sweeps round to the
+south. The river-bed at once broadens to about two-thirds of a mile,
+and the river, in four or five main channels, passes under a most
+beautiful sweep of steep chalk cliff, not unlike some of the chalk
+country near Arundel. These places marked the end of the British
+sector at the time of the beginning of the battle. On the south or
+left bank of the Somme River the ground was held by the French.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such was our old front line at the beginning of the battle, and so the
+travellers of our race will strive to picture it when they see the
+ground under the crops of coming Julys. It was never anything but a
+makeshift, patched together, and held, God knows how, against greater
+strength. Our strongest places were the half-dozen built-up
+observation posts at the mines near Fricourt, Serre, and La Boisselle.
+For the rest, our greatest strength was but a couple of sandbags deep.
+There was no concrete in any part of the line, very few iron girders
+and not many iron "humpies" or "elephant backs" to make the roofs of
+dugouts. The whole line gives the traveller the impression that it was
+improvised (as it was) by amateurs with few tools, and few resources,
+as best they could, in a time of need and danger. Like the old,
+hurriedly built Long Walls at Athens, it sufficed, and like the old
+camps of Caesar it served, till our men could take the much finer lines
+of the enemy. A few words may be said about those enemy lines. They
+were very different lines from ours.
+
+The defences of the enemy front line varied a little in degree, but
+hardly at all in kind, throughout the battlefield. The enemy wire was
+always deep, thick, and securely staked with iron supports, which were
+either crossed like the letter +X+, or upright, with loops to take the
+wire and shaped at one end like corkscrews so as to screw into the
+ground. The wire stood on these supports on a thick web, about four
+feet high and from thirty to forty feet across. The wire used was
+generally as thick as sailor's marline stuff, or two twisted
+rope-yarns. It contained, as a rule, some sixteen barbs to the foot.
+The wire used in front of our lines was generally galvanized, and
+remained grey after months of exposure. The enemy wire, not being
+galvanized, rusted to a black colour, and shows up black at a great
+distance. In places this web or barrier was supplemented with
+trip-wire, or wire placed just above the ground, so that the artillery
+observing officers might not see it and so not cause it to be
+destroyed. This trip-wire was as difficult to cross as the wire of the
+entanglements. In one place (near the Y Ravine at Beaumont Hamel) this
+trip-wire was used with thin iron spikes a yard long of the kind known
+as calthrops. The spikes were so placed in the ground that about one
+foot of spike projected. The scheme was that our men should catch
+their feet in the trip-wire, fall on the spikes, and be transfixed.
+
+In places, in front of the front line in the midst of his wire,
+sometimes even in front of the wire, the enemy had carefully hidden
+snipers and machine-gun posts. Sometimes these outside posts were
+connected with his front-line trench by tunnels, sometimes they were
+simply shell-holes, slightly altered with a spade to take the snipers
+and the gunners. These outside snipers had some success in the early
+parts of the battle. They caused losses among our men by firing in the
+midst of them and by shooting them in the backs after they had
+passed. Usually the posts were small oblong pans in the mud, in which
+the men lay. Sometimes they were deep narrow graves in which the men
+stood to fire through a funnel in the earth. Here and there, where the
+ground was favourable, especially when there was some little knop,
+hillock, or bulge of ground just outside their line, as near
+Gommecourt Park and close to the Sunken Road at Beaumont Hamel, he
+placed several such posts together. Outside Gommecourt, a slight
+lynchet near the enemy line was prepared for at least a dozen such
+posts invisible from any part of our line and not easily to be picked
+out by photograph, and so placed as to sweep at least a mile of No
+Man's Land.
+
+  [Illustration: Sleighs used for conveying the Wounded through the
+  Mud]
+
+When these places had been passed, and the enemy wire, more or less
+cut by our shrapnel, had been crossed, our men had to attack the enemy
+fire trenches of the first line. These, like the other defences,
+varied in degree, but not in kind. They were, in the main, deep, solid
+trenches, dug with short bays or zigzags in the pattern of the Greek
+Key or badger's earth. They were seldom less than eight feet and
+sometimes as much as twelve feet deep. Their sides were revetted, or
+held from collapsing, by strong wickerwork. They had good,
+comfortable standing slabs or banquettes on which the men could stand
+to fire. As a rule, the parapets were not built up with sandbags as
+ours were.
+
+In some parts of the line, the front trenches were strengthened at
+intervals of about fifty yards by tiny forts or fortlets made of
+concrete and so built into the parapet that they could not be seen
+from without, even five yards away. These fortlets were pierced with a
+foot-long slip for the muzzle of a machine gun, and were just big
+enough to hold the gun and one gunner.
+
+In the forward wall of the trenches were the openings of the shafts
+which led to the front-line dugouts. The shafts are all of the same
+pattern. They have open mouths about four feet high, and slant down
+into the earth for about twenty feet at an angle of forty-five
+degrees. At the bottom of the stairs which led down are the living
+rooms and barracks which communicate with each other so that if a
+shaft collapse the men below may still escape by another. The shafts
+and living rooms are strongly propped and panelled with wood, and this
+has led to the destruction of most of the few which survived our
+bombardment. While they were needed as billets our men lived in them.
+Then the wood was removed, and the dugout and shaft collapsed.
+
+During the bombardment before an attack, the enemy kept below in his
+dugouts. If one shaft were blown in by a shell, they passed to the
+next. When the fire "lifted" to let the attack begin, they raced up
+the stairs with their machine guns and had them in action within a
+minute. Sometimes the fire was too heavy for this, for trench,
+parapet, shafts, dugouts, wood, and fortlets, were pounded out of
+existence, so that no man could say that a line had ever run there;
+and in these cases the garrison was destroyed in the shelters. This
+happened in several places, though all the enemy dugouts were kept
+equipped with pioneer tools by which buried men could dig themselves
+out.
+
+The direction of the front-line trenches was so inclined with bends,
+juts, and angles as to give flanking fire upon attackers.
+
+At some little distance behind the front line (a hundred yards or so)
+was a second fire line, wired like the first, though less elaborate
+and generally without concrete fortlets. This second line was usually
+as well sited for fire as the front line. There were many
+communication trenches between the two lines. Half a mile behind the
+second line was a third support line; and behind this, running along
+the whole front, a mile or more away, was the prepared second main
+position, which was in every way like the front line, with wire,
+concrete fortlets, dugouts, and a difficult glacis for the attacker to
+climb.
+
+The enemy batteries were generally placed behind banks or lynchets
+which gave good natural cover; but in many places he mounted guns in
+strong permanent emplacements, built up of timber balks, within a
+couple of miles (at Fricourt within a quarter of a mile) of his front
+line. In woods from the high trees of which he could have clear
+observation, as in the Bazentin, Bernafay, and Trones Woods, he had
+several of these emplacements, and also stout concrete fortlets for
+heavy single guns.
+
+All the enemy position on the battlefield was well gunned at the time
+of the beginning of the battle. In modern war, it is not possible to
+hide preparations for an attack on a wide front. Men have to be
+brought up, trenches have to be dug, the artillery has to prepare, and
+men, guns, and trenches have to be supplied with food, water, shells,
+sandbags, props, and revetments. When the fire on any sector increases
+tenfold, while the roads behind the lines are thronged with five times
+the normal traffic of troops and lorries, and new trenches, the attack
+or "jumping-off" trenches, are being dug in front of the line, a
+commander cannot fail to know that an attack is preparing. These
+preparations must be made and cannot be concealed from observers in
+the air or on the ground. The enemy knew very well that we were about
+to attack upon the Somme front, but did not know at which point to
+expect the main thrust. To be ready, in any case, he concentrated guns
+along the sector. It seems likely that he expected our attack to be an
+attempt to turn Bapaume by a thrust from the west, by Gommecourt,
+Puisieux, Grandcourt. In all this difficult sector his observations
+and arrangements for cross-fire were excellent. He concentrated a
+great artillery here (it is a legend among our men that he brought up
+a hundred batteries to defend Gommecourt alone). In this sector, and
+in one other place a little to the south of it, his barrage upon our
+trenches, before the battle, was very accurate, terrible, and deadly.
+
+Our attacks were met by a profuse machine-gun fire from the trench
+parapets and from the hidden pits between and outside the lines. There
+was not very much rifle fire in any part of the battle, but all the
+hotly fought for strongholds were defended by machine guns to the
+last. It was reported that the bodies of some enemy soldiers were
+found chained to their guns, and that on the bodies of others were
+intoxicating pills, designed to madden and infuriate the takers before
+an attack. The fighting in the trenches was mainly done by bombing
+with hand-grenades, of which the enemy had several patterns, all
+effective. His most used type was a grey tin cylinder, holding about a
+pound of explosive, and screwed to a wooden baton or handle about a
+foot long for the greater convenience of throwing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Early in the spring of 1916, it was determined that an attack should
+be made by our armies upon these lines of the enemy, so as to bring
+about a removal of the enemy guns and men, then attacking the French
+at Verdun and the Russians on the eastern front.
+
+Preparations for this attack were made throughout the first half of
+the year. New roads were cut, old roads were remetalled, new lines of
+railways were surveyed and laid, and supplies and munitions were
+accumulated not far from the front. Pumping stations were built and
+wells were sunk for the supply of water to the troops during the
+battle. Fresh divisions were brought up and held ready behind the
+line. An effort was made to check the enemy's use of aeroplanes. In
+June, our Air Service in the Somme sector made it so difficult for the
+enemy to take photographs over our lines that his knowledge of our
+doings along the front of the planned battle was lessened and
+thwarted. At the same time, many raids were made by our aeroplanes
+upon the enemy's depots and magazines behind his front. Throughout
+June, our infantry raided the enemy line in many places to the north
+of the planned battle. It seems possible that these raids led him to
+think that our coming attack would be made wholly to the north of the
+Ancre River.
+
+  [Illustration: The Assault on July 1, 1916, at La Boisselle]
+
+During the latter half of June, our armies concentrated a very great
+number of guns behind the front of the battle. The guns were of every
+kind, from the field gun to the heaviest howitzer. Together they made
+what was at that time by far the most terrible concentration of
+artillery ever known upon a battlefield. Vast stores of shells of
+every known kind were made ready, and hourly increased.
+
+As the guns came into battery, they opened intermittent fire, so that,
+by the 20th of June, the fire along our front was heavier than it had
+been before. At the same time, the fire of the machine guns and trench
+mortars in our trenches became hotter and more constant. On the 24th
+of June this fire was increased, by system, along the front designed
+for the battle, and along the French front to the south of the Somme,
+until it reached the intensity of a fire of preparation. Knowing, as
+they did, that an attack was to come, the enemy made ready and kept on
+the alert. Throughout the front, they expected the attack for the next
+morning.
+
+The fire was maintained throughout the night, but no attack was made
+in the morning, except by aeroplanes. These raided the enemy
+observation balloons, destroyed nine of them, and made it impossible
+for the others to keep in the air. The shelling continued all that
+day, searching the line and particular spots with intense fire and
+much asphyxiating gas. Again the enemy prepared for an attack in the
+morning, and again there was no attack, although the fire of
+preparation still went on. The enemy said, "To-morrow will make three
+whole days of preparation; the English will attack to-morrow." But
+when the morning came, there was no attack, only the never-ceasing
+shelling, which seemed to increase as time passed. It was now
+difficult and dangerous to move within the enemy lines. Relieving
+exhausted soldiers, carrying out the wounded, and bringing up food
+and water to the front, became terrible feats of war. The fire
+continued and increased, all that day and all the next day, and the
+day after that. It darkened the days with smoke and lit the nights
+with flashes. It covered the summer landscape with a kind of haze of
+hell, earth-coloured above fields and reddish above villages, from the
+dust of blown mud and brick flung up into the air. The tumult of these
+days and nights cannot be described nor imagined. The air was without
+wind yet it seemed in a hurry with the passing of death. Men knew not
+which they heard, a roaring that was behind and in front, like a
+presence, or a screaming that never ceased to shriek in the air. No
+thunder was ever so terrible as that tumult. It broke the drums of the
+ears when it came singly, but when it rose up along the front and gave
+tongue together in full cry it humbled the soul. With the roaring,
+crashing, and shrieking came a racket of hammers from the machine guns
+till men were dizzy and sick from the noise, which thrust between
+skull and brain, and beat out thought. With the noise came also a
+terror and an exultation, that one should hurry, and hurry, and hurry,
+like the shrieking shells, into the pits of fire opening on the hills.
+Every night in all this week the enemy said, "The English will attack
+to-morrow," and in the front lines prayed that the attack might come,
+that so an end, any end, might come to the shelling.
+
+It was fine, cloudless, summer weather, not very clear, for there was
+a good deal of heat haze and of mist in the nights and early mornings.
+It was hot yet brisk during the days. The roads were thick in dust.
+Clouds and streamers of chalk dust floated and rolled over all the
+roads leading to the front, till men and beasts were grey with it.
+
+At half-past six in the morning of the 1st of July all the guns on our
+front quickened their fire to a pitch of intensity never before
+attained. Intermittent darkness and flashing so played on the enemy
+line from Gommecourt to Maricourt that it looked like a reef on a
+loppy day. For one instant it could be seen as a white rim above the
+wire, then some comber of a big shell struck it fair and spouted it
+black aloft. Then another and another fell, and others of a new kind
+came and made a different darkness, through which now and then some
+fat white wreathing devil of explosion came out and danced. Then it
+would show out, with gaps in it, and with some of it level with the
+field, till another comber would fall and go up like a breaker and
+smash it out of sight again. Over all the villages on the field there
+floated a kind of bloody dust from the blasted bricks.
+
+In our trenches after seven o'clock on that morning, our men waited
+under a heavy fire for the signal to attack. Just before half-past
+seven, the mines at half a dozen points went up with a roar that shook
+the earth and brought down the parapets in our lines. Before the
+blackness of their burst had thinned or fallen the hand of Time rested
+on the half-hour mark, and along all that old front line of the
+English there came a whistling and a crying. The men of the first wave
+climbed up the parapets, in tumult, darkness, and the presence of
+death, and having done with all pleasant things, advanced across the
+No Man's Land to begin the Battle of the Somme.
+
+
+
+                           THE END
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+           PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 61: siegneurial replaced with seigneurial            |
+    | Page 84: protuding replaced with protruding               |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Interesting words in this document:                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | A rampike is an erect broken or dead tree.                |
+    | Eyrie is an alternate spelling for Aerie.                 |
+    | Tetter is a generic name for a number of skin diseases,   |
+    | such as eczema, psoriasis, or herpes, characterized by    |
+    | eruptions and itching.                                    |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Front Line, by John Masefield
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