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That effort on our right was, however, hampered by the Germans in the Quadrilateral and Bouleaux wood to the east of Ginchy, and the Guards were unable to carry out the most important tactical part of the day's work by carrying Lesboeufs and Morval. The French had no such accumulation of gains on the 15th, but they conquered a larger area between the 13th and 18th.
Courcelette fell to the Canadians, Martinpuich to the Scots, Flers to the New Zealanders. High wood was at last enveloped in this advance, and Delville wood passed by the division of the New Army which pushed from Ginchy towards Lesboeufs.
On that day the British at last mastered the Quadrilateral east of Ginchy, and thus prepared for the great success which attended the next general attack on the 25th. It was the best day of the whole campaign. Lesboeufs and Morval fell on the north of Combles, while the French took Rancourt on the south-east, and away to the west Gough's army made the surprising seizure of Thiepval.
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.
The German General Staff studied its next lines of defense away through Courcelette, Martinpuich, Lesboeufs, Morval, and Combles, and they did not look too good, but with luck and the courage of German soldiers, and the exhaustion surely those fellows were exhausted! of British troops good enough.
On the 25th September an attack was timed for twelve o'clock noon for Morval and Lesboeufs, and the Guards, London Scottish, Norfolks, Suffolks and many other regiments were to take part. The day before I visited our front in that section to obtain preliminary scenes. The London Scottish were preparing to leave to take up their battle positions.
Here and there, as on the German left at Morval and Lesboeufs, the bulwarks stood for a time, but the British pressed against them and round them.
From this point I could see practically the whole of our section between Lesboeufs and Morval, but I immediately found out to my annoyance that the slight breeze would bring all the smoke back towards our lines.
After our successful attack and capture of Lesboeufs and Morval on September 25th, 1916, beyond consolidating our gains there was comparatively little done in the way of big offensives until the capture of Mouquet Farm and Thiepval and the capture of Beaumont Hamel that fortress of fortresses on November 13th, and I devoted the interval to recording the ground won.
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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