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Reduced to ruins, it crowned a ridge below the position of the British lines in a hollow north of the Péronne road at Carnoy. The British artillery had done effective work, and the attack on Montauban resulted in an easier victory than had been expected. The Sixth Bavarian Regiment which defended the place was said to have lost 3,000 out of the 8,500 who had entered the battle.

The same day I went forward to the advanced B.H.Q. at Forester's Point, on the N.W. side of the forest, east of Carnoy. And I arranged with the Brigade-Major of the 126th Infantry Brigade to send some of the observers to help him next day. This, however, was cancelled, as the Germans began to retreat towards the River Sambre.

Then they run eastward for a couple of miles, up to and across a plateau in front of the hamlet of Carnoy, which was just within our line. From our line, in this bare and hideous field, little could be seen but the slope up to the enemy line.

I saw some French children still about the cottages near the Mormal Forest, though there was still shelling going on. Coming back I avoided the village of Carnoy, as it was being heavily shelled by the enemy's long-range guns. This was the last time I came anywhere near the enemy's shell fire.

A series of big dugouts, of houses and caves with walls of sandbags, back of the first British line near Carnoy was a focus of communication trenches and the magnet to the men hastening from bullet-swept, shell-swept spaces to security. The hot breath of the firing-line had scorched them and cast them out and they came together in congestion at this clearing station like a crowd at a gate.