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The ridge is the Albert-Bapaume Road, here passing over the highest ground on its path. Turning from these distant places and looking to the right, one sees, just below, twelve hundred yards to the east of Fricourt, across the valley at the foot of this hill of the salient, the end of an irregular spur, on which are the shattered bricks of the village of Mametz before mentioned.
At 6 a. m. on September 15, 1916, the British attacked on a front of about six miles, extending from Bouleaux Wood east of Guillemont to the north of the Albert-Bapaume road. A tremendous bombardment of the enemy positions continued for twenty minutes before the infantry advanced to attack.
During the two following days the British guns incessantly bombarded the entire German front. Two new corps had been joined with the Fifth Army, the Second and First Anzac, which occupied ground between the Ancre and south of the Albert-Bapaume road. On July 23, 1916, the British launched a strong attack over a wide front. The heaviest blows were centered on Pozières and the Windmill on the left.
The front had now become too large for a single commander to manage successfully, so to General Hubert Gough of the Reserve, or Fifth Army, was given the ground north of the Albert-Bapaume road, including the area of the Fourth and Eighth Corps. Sunday, July 2, 1916, was a day of steady heat and blinding dust, and the troops suffered severely.
The Canadians took up the struggle at Courcelette and captured it in a fierce and bloody battle. The Australians worked up on the right of the Albert-Bapaume road to Thilloy and Ligny Thilloy.
By the time we reached Albert our height was 12,000 feet, and we steered eastward over the ground gained in the June-July advance. Beyond the scrap-heap that once was Pozières two enormous mine craters showed up, dented into the razed surface, one on either side of the Albert-Bapaume road. Flying very low a few buses were working on trench reconnaissance.
Now our men stayed in the ruins, and this time German shells smashed into the chateau and the cottages and left nothing but rubbish heaps of brick through which a few days later I went walking with the smell of death in my nostrils. Our men were now being shelled in that place. Beyond La Boisselle, on the left of the Albert-Bapaume road, there had been a village called Ovillers.
The will to stand firm must be impressed on every man in the army. The enemy should have to carve his way over heaps of corpses...." To understand the exact position of the British forces on July 3, 1916, the alignment of the new front must be described in detail. The first section extended from Thiepval to Fricourt, between which the Albert-Bapaume road ran in a straight line over the watershed.
The village is strung out along a stretch of the Albert-Bapaume road up which the battle has advanced from the first. Another line crossing the road in front of the village was then in their hands.
Bapaume lay southwest from our trenches a matter of 15 miles; intervening were the towns of Labazell, Pozières, Courcelette and Martinpuieh, all on the Albert-Bapaume road. We arrived just in time to save Pozières.
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