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What an excellent view of Pozières, about eight hundred yards away on my left. On the right was Contalmaison, which had only been taken a short time previously. The Bosches were shelling the place pretty frequently. I set up the camera and waited. Away on the opposite hill shells were falling thickly. I started filming them and got some interesting bursts, both high explosive and H.E. shrapnel.
One year and ten months later she hurled the Guard Reserve at Contalmaison because she was determined that this important link in the chain of concrete and steel that coiled back and forth before Bapaume-Peronne must remain unbroken. The newly-formed lines of Britain's sons bent but did not break under the shock.
Bosche has a pretty sharp eye on anyone there; he knows the lay of the battery and he just plasters it. You might get round at 'Dead Man's Corner, on the Contalmaison Road. It's pretty bad there, but I think it's the best place to try, and once you are round the corner you may be all right." "Well, which way do I take?"
Now for Pozières. The enemy must have been putting 9-inch and 12-inch stuff in there, for they were sending up huge clouds of smoke and débris. I secured some excellent scenes. First Pozières, then Contalmaison. My camera was first on one then on the other. For a change Bosche whizz-banged the battery.
On the morning of July 5, 1916, the British, after one of the bloodiest struggles in this sector, captured La Boiselle and carried forward their attack toward Bailiff Wood and Contalmaison. In the five days' fighting since they assumed the offensive the British had been hard hit at some points, but at others had registered substantial gains.
Nearer to the line they came under the fire of eight-inch and six-inch shells. At Contalmaison they marched into a barrage, and here the officer was taken prisoner. Of his battalion there were few men left. It was so with the 3d Jager Battalion, ordered up hurriedly to make a counter-attack near Flers. They suffered so heavily on the way to the trenches that no attack could be made.
In the night of July 10, 1916, the British, advancing from Bailiff Wood on the west side of Contalmaison, pressed forward in four successive waves, their guns pouring a flood of shells before them, and breaking into the northwest corner, and after a desperate hand-to-hand conflict, during which prodigies of valor were performed on both sides, drove out the Germans and occupied the entire village.
I walked into such villages as Contalmaison, Martinpuich, Le Sars, Thilloy, and at last Bapaume, when a smell of burning and the fumes of explosives and the stench of dead flesh rose up to one's nostrils and one's very soul, when our dead and German dead lay about, and newly wounded came walking through the ruins or were carried shoulder high on stretchers, and consciously and subconsciously the living, unwounded men who went through these places knew that death lurked about them and around them and above them, and at any second might make its pounce upon their own flesh.
Storms of German shrapnel were bursting there, and machineguns were firing in spasms. In Contalmaison, round a chateau which stood high above ruined houses, shells were bursting with thunderclaps, our shells.
I went along the "sunken road" all the way to Contalmaison. Talk about sacred ground! The new troops coming up now go barging across in the most light-hearted way. It means no more to them than the roads behind used to mean to us. But when I think how we watered every yard of it with blood and sweat! Children might play there now, if it didn't look so like the aftermath of an earthquake.
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