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From the top of the Schwaben it looks as though the side of the hill were fenced into a neat green track or racecourse. This track is the No Man's Land, which lies like a broad green regular stripe between brown expanses along the hillside. All this hill was of the greatest importance to the enemy.
The hill on which the Schwaben is built is like a great thumb laid down beside the Ancre River. There is a little valley on its eastern side exactly like the space between a great thumb and a great forefinger. It is called Crucifix Valley, from an iron Calvary that stood in it in the early days of the war. It must once have been a lovely and romantic glen, strangely beautiful throughout.
In Franken, in Schwaben, in the Rhine Countries, a dissolute son would rob his father, as shopmen their masters' tills, and managers their cash-boxes, and hie off to those magnanimous Prussian Officials, who gave away companies like kreutzers, and had a value for young fellows of spirit.
In the day's fighting the Irish soldiers were especially distinguished for many remarkable acts of bravery. The Royal Irish Fusiliers were the first to leave the trenches. To the north of Thiepval the Ulster Division broke through the German position at a point called "The Crucifix," holding for a time the formidable Schwaben Redoubt, and some even penetrated the outskirts of Grandcourt.
Prior to the war period, between the years 1910 and 1914, a German undertaking called the Deutsche Luftfahrt Actien Gesellschaft conducted a commercial Zeppelin service in which four airships known as the Sachsan, Hansa, Victoria Louise, and Schwaben were used.
Donnau Reise von Regensburgh bis Wein. Montag. 1802. 8vo. The same remark applies to this work, only, as the title indicates, it is confined to the river and its streams, from Ratisbon to Vienna. Reise durch Ober-Deutschland, OEsterreich, Nieder Bayern, Ober Schwaben, Wirtemberg, Baden, &c. Saltz. 1778. 8vo.
Our companion infantry battalion were as gorgeously housed as ourselves in an adjoining quarry, and at the dinner parties arranged between their mess and ours reminiscences of Thiepval and Schwaben Redoubt, and July 1st, 1916, and St Pierre Divion and the Hindenburg Line, brought out many a new and many an old story.
These trees grow in and about what was once the village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle. The hill does not seem to have a name; it may be called here Middle Finger Hill or Ovillers Hill. Like the Schwaben and the Leipzig Hills this hill thrusts out from the knuckle of the big chalk plateau to the north of it like the finger of a hand, in this case the middle finger.
Apart from these slight traces of occupation, the battle-field seemed quite deserted from one end to the other. On another occasion I went with General Riddell by car to Thiepval and we rode back through Bucquoy. This was a very interesting visit, for the General explained on the spot exactly how the Schwaben Redoubt was stormed, and how the troops were brought forward and disposed for the attack.
General Riddell had at one time been Adjutant of the 7th N.F., that is to say, long before the war; and he knew all about Alnwick and the people there. During the war he had been instructing officers at Sandhurst for a time, and later on he commanded a battalion of the Cambridgeshires at the Battle of the Somme. This battalion succeeded in capturing the Schwaben Redoubt, near Thiepval.
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