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Updated: May 29, 2025
The ravine in front of it is the gully between the two spurs; it shelters the sunken road to Contalmaison; the heap is Fricourt village, and the woodland to the north is Fricourt Wood. A glance is enough to show that it is a strong position. To the left of Fricourt, the spur rises slowly into a skyline.
Those before the French were not so strong and were in alluvial soil on the plain. Many of the German dugouts in front of Dompierre were in relatively as good condition as those at Fricourt, though not so numerous or so strong; which meant that the artillery of neither army had been able completely to destroy them.
The section selected for attack ran from north to south, covering Gommecourt, passing east of Hebuterne and following the high ground before Serre and Beaumont-Hamel, crossed the Ancre northwest of Thiepval. From this point it stretched for about a mile and a quarter to the east of Albert. Passing south around Fricourt, it turned at right angles to the east, covering Mametz and Montauban.
On this higher ground, behind Fricourt and its wood, is a much bigger, thicker, and better grown wood, about a mile and a half away; this is the wood of Mametz. Some short distance to the left of this wood, very plainly visible on the high, rather bare hill, is a clump of pollarded trees near a few heaps of red brick.
The country town below us is Albert behind the centre of the British attack. One can see the tall, battered church tower rising against the mist, with the gilt figure of the Virgin hanging at right angles from the top like the arm of a bracket. On the hills beyond can just be made out the woods of Fricourt behind the German line. They are in the background behind Albert church tower.
And there all day, lying amongst the poppies and cornflowers, we watched the fight of the hour the struggle around Fricourt Wood and the attack on the village of La Boiselle. To call these places villages conveys the idea of recognisable streets and houses.
The 8th Corps was on the left in the first attack on the Somme, when many of our divisions were cut to pieces in the attempt to break the German line at Gommecourt. It was a ghastly tragedy, which spoiled the success on the right at Fricourt and Montauban. But Gen.
A division that had been sorely punished at Loos and was now occupying a position west of Fricourt had now an opportunity to avenge its previous disaster.
On Friday, July 7, 1916, the British began an attack on Contalmaison from Sausage Valley on the southwest, and from the labyrinth of copses north of Fricourt through which ran the Contalmaison-Fricourt highroad. South of Thiepval there was a salient which the Germans had organized and strongly fortified during twenty months' preparation.
The ground of the tongue bears traces of human habitation on it, all much smashed and discoloured. This is the once pretty village of Fricourt. The hill on the right front at this point is the Fricourt Salient. The lines run round the salient and the road cuts across them. Beyond Fricourt, the road leaves another slanting tongue at some distance to its left.
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