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Updated: May 29, 2025
By them ran another old road up the valley. Beyond the road the railway trucks were still standing as they have stood for two years in what once was Fricourt siding. The foundations of Fricourt village stood up a little beyond, against the dark shades of Fricourt Wood.
I expect that the garrison of Fricourt had been almost entirely in those dug-outs during the bombardment. The chambers seemed to have more than one entrance in some cases, and one suspects they also led into one another underground. A subterranean passage led forward beneath the parapet to a door opening into No Man's Land you could see the daylight at the end of it.
My car not being one of the best, I had great difficulty in keeping up with the party. The news of the King's arrival and journey to Fricourt seemed to have spread well ahead, for everywhere numbers of troops were strewn along the roadside, and even far behind as I was, I could hear the echoing cheers which resounded over hills and valleys for miles around.
The much-lauded Fokkers were flitting here and there, doing little damage. Two were sent to earth by Allied airmen before the day was over. With the capture of Mametz and positions in Fricourt Wood to the east, Fricourt could not hold out, and about noon on July 2, 1916, the place was in British hands.
It is only the last minute or so that one has noticed it a low, ceaseless pulsation. It is the drumming of the German artillery upon our charging infantry. Behind that blue screen they must be in the thick of it. God be with our men! France, July 3rd. Yesterday three of us walked out from near the town of Albert to a hill-side within a few hundred yards of Fricourt.
I remember, as though it were yesterday in vividness and a hundred years ago in time, the bombardment which preceded the battles of the Somme. With a group of officers I stood on the high ground above Albert, looking over to Gommecourt and Thiepval and La Boisselle, on the left side of the German salient, and then, by crossing the road, to Fricourt, Mametz, and Montauban on the southern side.
The charge of July 1st had been at seven-thirty in the morning. Contalmaison had been stormed in the afternoon. Fricourt was taken at midday.
We could see them on the centre of the crest; but here, where the trench ran into the upper end of Fricourt Wood, there was apparently a check. Men were lined up at this point, not in the trench, but lying down on the surface a little on our side of it. From beyond that corner of the wood there broke out occasionally a chatter of machine-gun fire. Evidently the Germans still hung on there.
Then, too, on the two roads to the east of the Ancre River, the troops for the battle moved up to the line. The battalions were played by their bands through Albert, and up the slope of Usna Hill to Pozières and beyond, or past Fricourt and the wreck of Mametz to Montauban and the bloody woodland near it. Those roads then were indeed paths of glory leading to the grave.
On the left, by Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel, the British attack failed, as I have told, but southward the "impregnable" lines were smashed by a tide of British soldiers as sand castles are overwhelmed by the waves. Our men swept up to Fricourt, struck straight up to Montauban on the right, captured it, and flung a loop round Mametz village.
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