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Updated: July 14, 2025
Owing to the appalling weather all trenches were very wet, including the communication trenches, of which there were several Chiswick Avenue opposite Essarts, Lulu Lane alongside the Hannescamps road, with Collingbourne Avenue branching off it, and, on the Monchy side, Shell Street in the middle, and Stoneygate Street alongside the Bienvillers road.
When I got back the roads through Bienvillers became more crowded than ever with horse transport, and many guns were being moved on the road from Monchy-au-Bois. The sides of the road, too, became crowded with infantry, who were apparently awaiting orders to move forward. In spite of the congestion on the roads the enemy made only one attempt that day to harass them.
When I arrived they had no particular news, but I was asked to send a post of observers again, if possible, to the east end of Logeast Wood, which was thought to be still in our hands. After this I returned to Bienvillers about midnight and arranged for an early start next day. He said he had just ridden over from Bapaume on a motor-cycle and he told us a sorry tale.
On the 11th we moved up through Bienvillers and went into our old trenches opposite Monchy. But the recent heavy rains had undone all the good that we had done in the early autumn, and they were now in a very bad state. On the right of the Hannescamps road they were particularly bad, and Liverpool Street, which ran from Lulu Lane to the front line, was almost impassable.
It was indeed a crisis in the fate of the right wing of the Third Army, though at the time we did not realise it. At 6 p.m. the observers left Bienvillers and went forward along the road to Hannescamps, meeting many wounded on the road and a few other parties of troops returning. We found the battalion in a hollow west of Essarts. They were just preparing to move.
He left it hurriedly and hastened, dripping and unclothed, to the cellar, which he found already contained several officers and the ladies of his billet. But this stay in Bienvillers is most remembered on account of a slight fracas which occurred between Col. Jones and a visiting Army Sanitation Officer. A full account is given in two entries in the War Diary.
Some of the communication trenches were in a particularly bad condition, and worst of all was the very deep Berlin Trench running alongside the road from Bienvillers to Hannescamps.
After this I decided that Dierville Farm could be held as an O.P. for the time being; and so sending my two observers on, I returned to Bienvillers to get a little much needed rest. As I went back there was still no shelling and no sound of rifle fire. Yet it afterwards transpired that the enemy had already pushed his outposts forward into Ablainzevelle and west of Logeast Wood.
A 10-inch shell from a long-range gun fell in an open field about 100 yards short of Bienvillers Church, but it did no damage except to the field. The stream of traffic through the village continued without ceasing all that day.
The remainder of the Battalion with the Headquarters was now in Bienvillers in Brigade reserve. The weather once more became frosty, and there was a thick mist almost every day. On the 23rd we relieved the 4th Battalion, and occupied some 2,500 yards of front line opposite Gommecourt, where the Huns shelled us at intervals all the next day, but did no damage.
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