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Updated: June 29, 2025
The whole of the great advance has been a thrust up-hill from the valley floors of the Ancre and the Somme toward a low ridge running roughly east and west and commanding an important stretch of country and vital communications beyond. "It has in just four weeks of effort," writes Mr.
Looking back across the Ancre from the Schwaben the hill of the right bank of the river is clear from the woods near Mesnil to Beaucourt. All along that graceful chalk hill our communication trenches thrust up like long white mole-runs, or like the comb of rollers on a reef. At right angles to these long white lines are black streaks which mark the enemy's successive front lines.
Then steadily the artillery barrage goes forward, one hundred yards every four minutes, and the infantry advance behind it, past the German front trench, to a ravine about three hundred yards further, which is known to be strongly held. The final objective is a strong German position protecting a village in the valley of the Ancre.
At night the Christopher brake her cradle, and lost an ancre, so that she could tary no longer, so we all wayed, and set saile.
After this intelligence was giuen vs by this our prize, he departed from vs, and went for England. On Saturday the 19. of September we came to an Ancre neere a small village on the North side of Flores, where we found ryding 5. English men of warre, of whom we vnderstood that our Viceadmirall and Prize were gone thence for England.
On the whole, the trees just here, though chipped and knocked about, have not suffered badly; they have the look of trees, and are leafy in summer. Beyond the trees, on the other side of the marsh, is the steep and high eastern bank of the Ancre, on which a battered wood, called Thiepval Wood, stands like an army of black and haggard rampikes.
Penniless though Concini had been, he was in a few months able to buy the Marquisate of Ancre, which cost him nearly half a million livres, and, soon after, the post of First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and that cost him nearly a quarter of a million, and, soon after that, a multitude of broad estates and high offices at immense prices.
It was a marvelous feat when the 19th Division and the Welsh waded at dusk across the foul waters of the River Ancre, under the heights of Thiepval, assembled under the guns of the enemy up there, and then, wet to their skins, and in small numbers compared with the strength of the enemy, stormed the huge ridges from both sides, and hurled the enemy back from what he thought was an impregnable position, and followed him day by day, taking thousands of prisoners and smashing his rear-guard defenses one by one.
An officer engaged as a Brigade-Major in the fight on the Ancre, September, 1917, has written me a detailed account of four days' experience in that battle, involving the relief of one brigade by another, and a successful but difficult attack, which gives a vivid idea of Staff work as carried on in the actual fighting line itself.
During this offensive more than 1,250 Germans were taken. Unceasing activity on the part of the Germans on October 11, 1916, showed that the recent successes of the Allies had by no means dampened their ardor or impaired their morale. All day long they shelled the British front south of the Ancre, especially north of Courcelette.
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