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When I went through Boiselle I thought it was the limit that desolation could reach. A wilderness of powdered chalk and broken brick, under which men had burrowed like rats, but with method, so as to make a city underneath the shattered foundations of the village.
"If you want to see La Boiselle properly we must hurry!" said F., and off he went at the double with K.'s long legs striding beside him, but, as for me, I must needs turn for one last look where those deadly smoke puffs came and went with such awful regularity. The rain had stopped, but it was three damp and mud-spattered wretches who clambered back into the waiting car.
North of Ancre to Authuille was General Morland's Tenth Corps, and east of Albert General Pulteney's Third Corps, a division directed against La Boiselle, and another against Ovillers. Adjoining the French forces on the British right flank lay General Congreve's Thirteenth Corps.
Black rolling clouds sprang into existence on the earth beside them. Every minute one expected to see one of them obliterate the whole party. But, at the end of a minute or so, someone would pick himself up and run on and the remainder would follow. What we thought was a road or sandhill I afterwards found to be the upturned edge of one of the two giant mine craters, south of La Boiselle.
But the gallant remnant that struggled back to their own line took 600 prisoners, one trooper alone bringing in fifteen through the enemy's own barrage. The village of Fricourt, as will be seen by the map, forms a prominent salient, and the British command decided to cut it off by attacking on two sides. An advance was planned on the strongly fortified villages of Ovillers and La Boiselle.
German 5.9 shell were falling just on our side of Fricourt village, and in a line from there up the valley behind our attack. It was not a really heavy barrage big black shell-bursts at intervals on the ground, helped by fairly constant white puffs of shrapnel in the air above them. Just then our attention was attracted in quite another direction: La Boiselle.
Thiepval and Ovillers had not yet been taken, and only a portion of La Boiselle, but the British had broken through the first position south of that place and had pushed well along on the road to Contalmaison. This northern section had been transformed by warfare into a scene of desolation, bare, and forbidding, seamed with trenches and pitted with shell holes.
The Germans were shooting down a valley, almost a funnel, invisible to us. But we could see that the fire was increasing every minute; 4.2's were joining in, and field guns; the lighter guns firing shrapnel, the heavier guns high explosive. The black smoke of German high explosive streamed up the valley like a thundercloud. La Boiselle was entirely hidden by it.
On the morning of July 5, 1916, the British, after one of the bloodiest struggles in this sector, captured La Boiselle and carried forward their attack toward Bailiff Wood and Contalmaison. In the five days' fighting since they assumed the offensive the British had been hard hit at some points, but at others had registered substantial gains.
And there all day, lying amongst the poppies and cornflowers, we watched the fight of the hour the struggle around Fricourt Wood and the attack on the village of La Boiselle. To call these places villages conveys the idea of recognisable streets and houses.