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Up there one can look down by Authuille Wood to Albert church and chimneys, the uplands of the Somme, the Amiens road, down which the enemy marched in triumph and afterwards retreated in a hurry, and the fair fields that were to have been the booty of this war.
From Albert four roads lead to the battlefield of the Somme: 1. In a north-westerly direction to Auchonvillers and Hébuterne. In a northerly direction to Authuille and Hamel. In a north-easterly direction to Pozières. In an easterly direction to Fricourt and Maricourt.
The trees are burnt, ragged, unbarked, topped, and cut off short, the trenches are blown in and jumbled, and the ground blasted and gouged. Standing in the old English front line just to the north of Authuille Wood, one sees the usual slow gradual grassy rise to the dark enemy wire.
Below the lines, where the ground droops away toward the river, the oddly shaped, deeply-vallied Wood of Authuille begins. It makes a sort of socket of woodland so curved as to take the end of the spur. It is a romantic and very lovely wood, pleasant with the noise of water and not badly damaged by the fighting.
Our line now skirted the southern orchards of Pozières, running westwards just north of Ovillers and then curving sharply back to the old front line near Authuille. All this sector was, to our great disadvantage, overlooked and enfiladed by the height of Thiepval; and progress, though steady, was for the most part slow and heavily bought.
North of Ancre to Authuille was General Morland's Tenth Corps, and east of Albert General Pulteney's Third Corps, a division directed against La Boiselle, and another against Ovillers. Adjoining the French forces on the British right flank lay General Congreve's Thirteenth Corps.
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