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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.
They had taken part in the great advance of September fifteenth, which captured Courcellette and numerous other towns the greatest gain ever made in one day on the Western Front until the recent one at Cambrai and had helped to add another glorious page to Canada's brilliant record. But the cost was great.
"The bloodbath of the Somme," as the Germans called it, was ours as well as theirs, and scores of times when I saw the dead bodies of our men lying strewn over those dreadful fields, after desperate and, in the end, successful attacks through the woods of death Mametz Wood, Delville Wood, Trones Wood, Bernafay Wood, High Wood, and over the Pozieres ridge to Courcellette and Martinpuich I thought of Rawlinson in his chateau in Querrieux, scheming out the battles and ordering up new masses of troops to the great assault over the bodies of their dead... Well, it is not for generals to sit down with their heads in their hands, bemoaning slaughter, or to shed tears over their maps when directing battle.
Norton-Taylor was commissioned and commanded the section at Courcellette, where he was killed, September 15, 1916. He came of a long line of distinguished British officers, his father having been a Colonel in the Royal Field Artillery. A brother and a brother-in-law were in the service, one of them losing both feet by a shell. A sister was working in the hospitals in France and another in England.
I bent almost double and walked fast at the same time. My mind turned to September 1916, when I walked along Pozières Ridge, just before the Courcellette fight, and was shouted at for not crouching down by my battery commander. But there were shells abroad that day.... I almost laughed to myself.
It was not very long before both were engaged in that terrible battle of the Somme, where to Canadian arms fell the honor of taking the village of Courcellette. We plugged right on and soon we put the "Vim" into Vimy, and took Vimy Ridge. As I write we are marking time in front of Lens. At Ypres we started our great casualty lists with ten thousand.
As there was a fight on, I went in with the "Glosters," and after the fall of Combles made my way up the line until I located my own command, near Courcellette. Here I heard of the great advance of September fifteenth and also of the death of many of my old friends.
Amiens seemed threatened on the morning when, to the north, Albert was held by a mixed crowd of Scottish and English troops, too thin, as I could see when I passed through them, to fight any big action, with an enemy advancing rapidly from Courcellette and outflanking our line by Montauban and Fricourt.
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