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Two British aeroplanes were not heard from again. In the afternoon of the following day, October 22, 1916, the British right wing advanced east of Gueudecourt and Les Boeufs and captured 1,000 yards of German trenches. On the same day British airmen bombed two railway stations behind the enemy's lines, hitting a train and working great damage to buildings and rolling stock.
British aircraft, which had been actively engaged in bombing German batteries, in the course of several combats in the air destroyed two hostile machines. On November 4, 1916, the Germans attempted by a counterattack to regain the trenches won by the British near Gueudecourt, but were driven off with heavy losses, considering the number of troops engaged.
By these operations the French took 736 prisoners, of whom twenty were officers, and also twelve machine guns. The British forces on the Somme on the night of November 2, 1916, by a surprise attack captured a German trench east of Gueudecourt and carried out a successful raid on German trenches near Arras.
The subsequent capture of Gueudecourt by the French and British forces completed the notable advance of the Allies on September 25, 1916. They were now in possession of the ridge that dominates the valley of Bapaume, having cleared a stretch of ground on the far side of the crest to a distance of half a mile.
Ten days later, on September 25th, when the British made a new advance all this time the French were pressing forward, too, on our right by Roye Combles was evacuated without a fight and with a litter of dead in its streets; Gueudecourt, Lesboeufs, and Morval were lost by the Germans; and a day later Thiepval, the greatest fortress position next to Beaumont Hamel, fell, with all its garrison taken prisoners.
In Morval where houses were still standing, their white walls visible through the glasses, there was a kind of flash which was not that of a shell but prolonged, like a windowpane flaming under the sun, which we knew meant that the village was taken, as was also Gueudecourt we learned afterward.
The plan you have outlined is exactly in every detail the one which the Commander-in-Chief discussed with me when overlooking the charming little village of Gueudecourt. 'Johnson, he said, 'that is what we will do, and he turned to the Chief of Staff and ordered him to make a note of it." The Sapper paused for a moment to relight his pipe. Then he turned impressively to Sir John.
During these operations, which were carried out by a single company, the British took two officers and 303 of other ranks. In the evening the British advanced their lines northeast of Gueudecourt and made further captures of men and material.
Further fruits were gathered on the morrow; Gueudecourt, which had been taken but abandoned on the 25th, was recovered; the French who had then failed against Frégicourt now took it; and Combles was the prize of their joint success.
The journey to the Somme front, on the German side, was a way of terror, ugliness, and death. Not all the imagination of morbid minds searching obscenely for foulness and blood in the great, deep pits of human agony could surpass these scenes along the way to the German lines round Courcelette and Flers, Gueudecourt, Morval, and Lesboeufs.
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