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It was not these trenches only, where I stood, but all that lay out there in the darkness, which had been given into our keeping. Its dangers were ours now. There were villages away there in the heart of the night, still unknown to all but the experts at home, whose names like Thiepval and Bazentin would soon be English names, familiar to every man in Britain as the streets of his own town.
Many batteries had been knocked out in their emplacements along the line of Bazentin and Longueval before the artillery was drawn back to Grand-court and a new line of safety. Battalion commanders clamored for greater supplies of hand-grenades, intrenching-tools, trench-mortars, signal rockets, and all kinds of fighting material enormously in excess of all previous requirements.
Here and there a British soldier lit a cigarette and for a second the little flame of his match revealed a bronzed face or glinted on steel helmets. Cavalry!... So even now there was a serious purpose behind the joke of English soldiers who had gone forward on the first day, shouting, "This way to the gap!" and in the conversation of some of those who actually did ride through Bazentin that day.
But at the time when the British attack upon the second German line in Longueval and Bazentin ended, the farther village of Pozières was left as the hub of the battle for the time being. This point is the summit of the hill on which the German second line ran.
It was an important position, vital for the enemy's defense, and our attack on the right flank of the Pozieres Ridge, above Bazentin and Delville Wood, giving on the reverse slope a fine observation of the enemy's lines above Martinpuich and Courcellette away to Bapaume.
Towards the end of the month came rumours of relief, and on the 24th January the Division was relieved by the 1st Australian Division. The Battalion came out to a new hut camp on the Beaver Road, between the Bazentin and Mametz Woods. The next day it marched to Becourt Camp, the air being full of rumours as to the future.
So they were used as support troops mostly, behind the Black Watch and other battalions near Bazentin and Longueval, and there these poor little men dug and dug like beavers and crouched in the cover they made under damnable fire, until many of them were blown to bits. There was no "glory" in their job, only filth and blood, but they held the ground and suffered it all, not gladly.
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