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Updated: May 29, 2025
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.
From among them our soldiers peered through the smoke of burning and explosions at the promised land which the battle made ours. From those heaps there is a wide view over that part of the field. To the left one sees Albert, the wooded clump of Bécourt, and a high green spur which hides the Sausage Valley. To the front this green spur runs to the higher ground from which the Fricourt spur thrusts.
An army of movement Taking over the captured space At Minden Post, a crossroads of battle German prisoners Their desire to live Their variety The ambulance line The refuse from the hopper of battle Resting in the battle line Reminiscences of the fighters A mighty crater The dugouts around Fricourt Method of taking a dugout The litter over the field.
The large number of the enemy dead on the battle-field indicate that the German losses have been very severe." So much for the first day's news. On the following day Fricourt was captured; and the prisoners went up to 3,500, together with a quantity of war material. Meanwhile the French on the right had done brilliantly, capturing five villages, and 6,000 prisoners. The attack was well begun.
To complete the operation of cutting off Fricourt it was necessary to carry Mametz on the south; this accomplished, the forces would unite in the north at La Boiselle and Ovillers and, following the long depression popularly known as Sausage Valley toward Contalmaison, would be able to squeeze Fricourt so hard that it must be abandoned by the enemy. The British plans worked out successfully.
We walked over the mud heaps and litter that had once been houses towards the centre of Dompierre village, and tried to picture to ourselves what the place had been. Many things are recognisable in Dompierre that have altogether vanished at Fricourt; for instance, there are quire large triangular pieces of the church wall upstanding at Dompierre.
The ridge is the Albert-Bapaume Road, here passing over the highest ground on its path. Turning from these distant places and looking to the right, one sees, just below, twelve hundred yards to the east of Fricourt, across the valley at the foot of this hill of the salient, the end of an irregular spur, on which are the shattered bricks of the village of Mametz before mentioned.
In this place German officers and soldiers have lived continually for nearly two years. This war is, indeed, a troglodytic propaganda. You come up at last at the far end into what was once a cellar of a decent Frenchman's home. But there are stranger subterranean refuges than that at Fricourt.
Through this heap runs a network of German trenches, here and there breaking through some still recognisable fragment of a wall. It was by the sight of two or three English soldiers clambering up one of these jagged fragments and peering into whatever lay beyond it, that we knew, as we came in sight of Fricourt, that the village had already been taken.
With grim determination to clean up the old score against the Germans, they advanced rapidly into the angle east of Sausage Valley, carrying two small woods and attacking Fricourt from the north and occupying a formidable position that threatened Fricourt. The strongly fortified village of Montauban fell early in the day of July 1, 1916.
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