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It was the promised land the country behind the German lines the valley about Bapaume where the Germans have been for two years undisturbed in French territory, until our troops for the first time peeped over the ridge the other day at the flashes of the very German guns which were firing at them. Quite close at hand was a wood. The trees were not more than half a mile away, if that.
In some places they are clear and in others they cannot be seen. But we guess that it is the line ready to go out. At the top of the opposite up-slope the tower of Bapaume town hall showed up behind the trees.
We were on the point of entering Bapaume; the "pushing up" was going extraordinarily well, owing to the excellence of the staff-work, and the energy and efficiency of all the auxiliary services the Engineers, and the Labour Battalions, all the makers of roads and railways, the builders of huts, and levellers of shell-broken ground.
I walked into such villages as Contalmaison, Martinpuich, Le Sars, Thilloy, and at last Bapaume, when a smell of burning and the fumes of explosives and the stench of dead flesh rose up to one's nostrils and one's very soul, when our dead and German dead lay about, and newly wounded came walking through the ruins or were carried shoulder high on stretchers, and consciously and subconsciously the living, unwounded men who went through these places knew that death lurked about them and around them and above them, and at any second might make its pounce upon their own flesh.
The line established was supposed to run through Combles and Bapaume, and it was not till long afterwards that the public realized how far it had sagged to the westwards, or what that sagging meant when the British had to fight their way up to Bapaume.
A two-mile trench system, believed to be impregnable, was stormed by the Allied forces near Thiepval September 17, while south of the Somme the French took the German trenches along a front of three miles. Next day more ground was taken in the advance toward Bapaume and German prisoners continued to fall into the Allies' hands.
German counter-attacks were frequent, but lacked the vigor and success of former efforts on this front. In a joint attack on October the village of Le Sars was taken and the Allies found themselves within two miles of Bapaume. General Foch with his French infantry took a number of German positions near Ablaincourt, south of the Somme, October 14, and held his gains against repeated German attacks.
The horror of the other princes seems to have perturbed himself; he avowed his guilt in the council, tried to brazen it out, finally lost heart and fled at full gallop, cutting bridges behind him, towards Bapaume and Lille.
Every fine day the dwellers in the trenches before Bapaume saw machines swerving round each other in determined effort to destroy. This region was the hunting-ground of many dead notabilities of the air, including the Fokker stars Boelcke and Immelmann, besides British pilots as brilliant but less advertised.
One machine has left for home, with part of a control wire dangling helplessly beneath it, and a chunk of tail-plane left as a tribute to Archie. We complete the course and go over it again, with nothing more exciting than further anti-aircraft fire, a few Huns too low for another dive, and a sick observer. Not yet. Coming south towards Bapaume is a beautiful flock of black-crossed birds.
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