Von Below had correctly estimated the position. The old ground, with all it held, must be re-won if possible; no more must be lost; fresh lines must be constructed in the rear. But the new improvised lines could be no equivalent of those mighty fastnesses which represented the work of eighteen months. Therefore those fastnesses must be regained. We shall learn how ill his enterprise prospered.
For a correct understanding of the position on Monday, July 3rd, it is necessary to recall the exact alignment of the new British front. It fell into two sections. The first lay from Thiepval to Fricourt, and was bisected by the Albert-Bapaume road, which ran like an arrow over the watershed. Here Thiepval, Ovillers, and La Boisselle were positions in the German first line. Contalmaison, to the east of La Boisselle, was a strongly fortified village on high ground, which formed, so to speak, a pivot in the German intermediate line—the line which covered their field-guns. The second position ran through Pozieres to the two Bazentins. On the morning of July 3rd the British had not got Thiepval, nor Ovillers; they had only a portion of La Boisselle, but south of it they had broken through the first position and were well on the road to Contal-maison. All this northern section consisted of bare undulating slopes—once covered with crops, but now like some lunar desert where life was forbidden. Everywhere it was seamed with the sears of trendies and poek-marked with shell holes. The few trees lining the roads had been long razed, and the only vegetation was coarse grass, thistles, and the ubiquitous poppy and mustard.
The southern section, from Fricourt to Montauban, was of a different character. It was patched with large woods, curiously clean cut like the copses in the park of a country-house. A line of them ran from Fricourt northeastward—Fricourt Wood, Bottom Wood, the big wood of Mametz, the woods of Bazentin, and the wood of Foureaux, which our men called High Wood; while from Montauban ran a second line, the woods of Bernafay and Trones and Delville Wood around Longueval. Here all the German first position had been captured. The second position ran through the Bazentins, Longueval, and Guillemont, but to rcach it some difficult woodland country had to be traversed. On July 3rd, therefore, the southern half of the British line was advancing against the enemy’s second position, while the northern half had still for its objective Ovillers and La Boisselle in the first position and the intermediate point, Contalmaison.
LA BOISSELLE, OVILLERS AND CONTALMAISON.
It will be most convenient to take the two sections separately, since their problems were different, and see the progress of the British advance in each, preparatory to the assault on the enemy’s second position. In the north our task was to capture the three fortified places, Ovillers, La Boisselle and Contalmaison, which were on a large scale the equivalent of the fortins, manned by machine-guns, which we had known to our cost at Fcstubert and Loos. Thiepval on the extreme left was less important, for the high ground could be won without its capture. The German troops in this area obeyed to the full von Below’s instructions and fought hard for every inch. On the night of Sunday, July 2nd, La Boisselle was penetrated, and all Monday the struggle swayed around that village and Ovillers. La Boisselle lies on the right of the high road; Ovillers is to the north and a little to the east, separated by a dry hollow which we called Mash Valley. All Monday night the struggle see-sawed, our troops winning ground and the Germans winning back small portions. On Tuesday, the 4th, the heat wave broke in thunderstorms and torrential rain, and the dusty hollows became quagmires. That evening La Boisselle was won, after one of the bloodiest contests of the war.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the old enemy first line, which we held just south of Thiepval, was the subject of a heavy bombardment and various counter-attacks. On Friday, July 7th, came the first big advance on Contalmaison from Sausage Valley on the south-west, and from the tangle of copses north-east of Frieourt, through whieh ran the Frieourt-Contalmaison high road. On the latter side good work had already been done, the enemy fortins at Birch Tree Wood and Shelter Copse having been taken on July 5th, and the work called the Quadrangle on July Gth. On the Friday the attack ranged from the Leipzig Redoubt, south of Thiepval, and the environs of Ovillers to the skirts of Contalmaison. About noon our infantry, after a heavy initial bombardment, carried Contalmaison by storm, releasing a small party of Tyneside Scottish, who had been made prisoners four days earlier. The 3rd Prussian Guard Division were our opponents—containing true Guards regiments, not like the 2nd Guards Reserve Division, which had been against us at Serre on July 1st, which was only a division used as a reserve to the Guards. They were heavily punished, and 700 of them fell as prisoners into our hands. But our success at Contalmaison was beyond our strength to maintain, and in the afternoon a counter-attack forced us out of the village. That same day we had pushed our front nearly half-a-mile along the Bapaume road, east of La Boisselle, and had taken most of the Leipzig Redoubt. Ovillers was now in danger of envelopment. One brigade had attacked in front, and another brigade, pressing in on the flank, was cutting the position in two. All that day there was a deluge of rain, and the sodden ground and flooded trenches crippled the movement of our men.
Next day the struggle for Ovillers continued. The place was now a mass of battered trenches, rubble, and muddy shell-holes, and every yard had to be fought for. We were also slowly consolidating our ground around Contalmaison, and driving the Germans from their strongholds in the little copses. Ever since July 7th we had held the southern corner of the village. On the night of Monday, the 10th, pushing from Bailiff’s Wood on the west side in four successive waves, with our guns lifting the range in front of us, we broke into the north-west corner, swept round on the north, and after bitter hand-to-hand fighting conquered the whole village. As for Ovillers, it was now surrounded and beyond succour, and it was only a question of days till its stubborn garrison must yield. It did not actually fall till Monday, July 17th, when the gallant remnant—two officers and 124 guardsmen—surrendered. By that time our main push had swept far to the eastward.
A good description of the country over which we had advanced is contained in a letter of an officer to a friend who had been invalided home:—
“I suppose it would seem nothing to other people, but you, who were here with us through all those dismal winter months, will understand how thrilling it was to be able to walk about on that ground in broad daylight, smoking one’s pipe. You remember how our chaps used to risk their lives in the early days for such silly souvenirs as nose-caps and that kind of thing. You could gather them by the cartload now, and Boche caps and buttons, and bits of uniform and boots, and broken rifles and odd tags of equipment—cartloads of it. To other folk, and on the maps, one place seems just like another, I suppose; but to us—La Boiselle and Ovillers—my hat! To walk about in those hells ! Not one of those broken walls we knew so well (through our glasses) is standing now; and only a few jagged spikes where the trees were. I went along the ‘sunken road’ all the way to Contalmaison. Talk about sacred ground. When I think what that no-man’s-land was to us for nearly a year! The new troops coming up now go barging across it in the most light-hearted way. They know nothing about it. It means no more to them than the roads behind used to mean to us. It’s all behind, to them, and never was the front. But when I think how we watered every yard of it with blood and sweat! Children might play there now, if it didn’t look so much like the aftermath of an earthquake. But you know there’s a kind of a wrench about seeing the new chaps swagger over it so carelessly, and seeing it gradually merged into the ‘behind the line’ country. I have a sort of feeling it ought to be marked off somehow, a permanent memorial.
“You remember that old couple who had the blacksmith’s shop at-. The wife was down at the corner by - the other night, when I came along with half the platoon. I found her wringing the hands of some of our stolid chaps, and couldn’t make it out. Then she told me, half sobbing, how she and her husband owned a couple of fields just beyond our old front line, and how she wanted to thank us for getting them back. Think what those fields must have been in the spring of 1914, and what they are to-day,