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Updated: May 29, 2025
The Battalion in this locality was in touch with the French, from whom the officers managed to secure some of the French ration wine which proved very acceptable. On the 30th the Battalion moved to a place by Fricourt, and pitched a camp which it left two days later for a bivouac area by Bronfay Farm, near Carnoy. From this place the officers went forward on reconnaissance.
A few shrapnel shells were also fired near the road, and I believe our horses and orderlies were nearly hit, but escaped by galloping off when the first shell came. The countryside looked very desolate and knocked about till we got to Fricourt Circus, only the chalky roads were crammed with limbers and lorries taking up supplies.
Fricourt fell and its surrounding defences, while the French took Frise, Curlu, and Herbecourt. It was clear, however, that the German line had not, and could not be broken in the sense which the public at least attached to the word.
One could be killed any day in Albert. I saw men blown to bits there the clay after the battles of the Somme began. It was in the road that turned to the right, past the square to go to Meaulte and on to Fricourt. There was a tide of gun transport swirling down the road, bringing up new ammunition for the guns that were firing without a pause over Fricourt and Mametz.
Our strongest places were the half-dozen built-up observation posts at the mines near Fricourt, Serre, and La Boisselle. For the rest, our greatest strength was but a couple of sandbags deep. There was no concrete in any part of the line, very few iron girders and not many iron "humpies" or "elephant backs" to make the roofs of dugouts.
"Why, we've got a couple of 8-inch hows. as far up as Fricourt. That's more forward than most of the field-guns." As I stepped out there came the swift screaming rush of three high-velocity shells. They exploded with an echoing crash in the wood below, near where my horse and the colonel's had been taken to water.
His car drew up; His Majesty alighted and heartily greeted the General. I filmed the scenes as they presented themselves. All aboard once more the King leading we started on our journey for the battlefield of Fricourt. Having hung about until the last second turning the handle, it was a rush for me to pack, and pick them up again.
And I chanced to remember that the name had first been indelibly impressed on my consciousness at a comfortable breakfast-table at home, where I sat looking out on a bright New England garden. In the headlines and columns of my morning newspaper I had read again and again, during the summer of 1916, of Thiepval and La Boisselle, of Fricourt and Mametz and the Bois des Trones.
The white ruins of Fricourt may be the blur in the background south of them. We shall be attacking Fricourt to-day. The Germans have not a single "sausage" in the air that I can see. The sausage is the very descriptive name for the observation balloon. We have twenty-one of them up, specking the sky as clearly as a bacteriologist's slide is specked with microbes.
Some detachments must have reached their objective, as their signals had been seen. From La Boisselle southward the British had taken every objective. They were in Mametz and Montauban and around Fricourt. For the French it had been a clean sweep, without a single repulse. Twenty miles of those formidable German fortifications were in the possession of the Allies.
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