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Left Company Headquarters had a beautiful chateau, with a fruit and asparagus garden, known after its first occupant as "John Burnett's Chateau." There were two communication trenches, one each side of the Riaumont Hill: "Assign" on the South, shallow and unsafe in daylight, and "Absalom" on the North. "Hill 65" dominated everything, and gave the Boche a tremendous advantage.
The Germans had brought forward new batteries and stationed them around Lens and Loos, replacing those captured by the British during the first day's battle. These guns were now constantly active, sending heavy shells into Liévin, Bois de Riaumont, and into the suburbs of Lens and Monchy. The neighboring ridge and slopes were also subjected to machine-gun fire.
Attacking by starlight the British troops stormed and captured 400 yards of front-line trenches east of Riaumont Wood, in the western outskirts of Lens, thus drawing closer the ring of iron with which they were hemming in the French mining center.
For as "B" Company passed the group of cottages South of Riaumont Hill, the Boche opened a heavy fire on the trench and dropped a shell right amongst the Company Headquarters. Capt. Wynne was untouched, but his Serjeant-Major, Gore, and his runner, Ghent, both first-class soldiers, were killed by his side.
Those at the bottom we held, but the enemy had those on the slopes, and one building in particular, the "L-shaped house," was very strongly fortified. The right Company had its outposts in the cellars and shell-holes round the N. and W. edges of the lake, the centre and left companies had cellars and trenches, through the Cités de Riaumont and du Bois de Liévin, down to the main Lens road.
We had the Riaumont hill, 500 yards West of our front line, and could use the Bois de Riaumont on its summit as an O.P., but this was always being shelled, and though the view was excellent, one was seldom left in peace long enough to enjoy it. Battalion Headquarters had a strong German concrete dug-out in Liévin, said to have been formerly occupied by Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria.
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