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On the 4th and 5th they extended their gains on their right by the capture of most of Estrées and Belloy, and after disposing of German counter-attacks leapt forward on the 9th past Flaucourt to Biaches, a mile from Péronne. On 14 July the second stage of the battle of the Somme began with an attack before dawn.
On the night of July 9, 1916, the French commander Fayolle took the village of Biaches, only a mile from Péronne. The German losses had been very great since the beginning of the French offensive, and at this place an entire regiment was destroyed.
I took by-roads, thinking that they would be more negotiable than the main ones, and, reaching the outskirts of the village of Biaches, I left the car there and prepared to walk into Peronne. I could see in the distance that the place was still burning; columns of smoke were pouring upwards and splashing the sky with patches of villainous-looking black clouds.
Strapping my camera upon my back, and bidding my man follow with my tripod, I started off down the hill into Biaches. Then the signs of the German retreat began to fully reveal themselves. The ground was absolutely littered with the horrible wastage of war; roads were torn open, leaving great yawning gaps that looked for all the world like huge jagged wounds.
On my right lay the Château of La Maisonnette. The ground there was a shambles, for numerous bodies in various stages of putrefaction lay about as they had fallen. I left this section of blood-soaked earth, and, turning to my left, entered the village, or rather the site of what had once been Biaches.
Thus in the first four days of July, 1916, the French forces operating south of the Somme constantly marched with the left in advance. After a pause for rest and to consolidate positions won, the attack was again resumed by the left wing on the 9th, and carried before Péronne, Biaches, and La Maisonette.
I will not attempt to describe it; my pen is not equal to the task of conveying even the merest idea of the state of the place. It was as if a human skeleton had been torn asunder, bone by bone, and then flung in all directions. Then, look around and say this was once a man. You could say the same thing of Biaches this was once a village.
The winding waters of the Somme flowed in higher reaches through the hell of war by Biaches and St.-Christ, this side of Peronne, where dead bodies floated in slime and blood, and there was a litter of broken bridges and barges, and dead trees, and ammunition-boxes.
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