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Updated: June 7, 2025


"Were you much shelled when you took your waggon lines up there this evening?" I asked him. "Yes, sir. It got too hot, and Major Bullivant sent us down again half an hour ago. All the batteries have shifted their waggon lines back behind Guillemont, sir." "All the more exciting for us," muttered Wilde.

Ovillers which had been bravely defended for some days was finally captured by the British on July 16, 1916, thus clearing out the principal obstacle in the way of a general assault on Pozières. On this day the British were also successful in taking Waterlot Farm, about midway between Longueval and Guillemont, which cut another slice out of the German front.

Shrapnel was playing upon both roads leading from Guillemont, H.E. was bursting on my right in Lueze Wood, or "Lousy Wood," as it is called here, also in Delville Wood on my left. After a very tiring tramp over shell-holes and rubble I eventually reached my post.

The British attack on the Germans around Guillemont, which took place as previously noted on August 8, 1916, was at first successful. A section of the troops carried some trenches, and then pushing on gained a useful piece of ground south of Guillemont with few casualties.

A Battery had been ordered to move about half a mile beyond Guillemont, and to come into action off the road that led towards the extensive, low-lying village of Combles, through which the enemy front line now ran. Major Mallaby-Kelby had gone forward and the three remaining batteries awaited his return.

The artillery of both sides hammered the approaches of the woods to prevent reinforcements from coming up. In the cellars of Guillemont village beyond Trônes the Germans had refuges for concentrating their reserves to feed in more troops, whose orders, as all the prisoners taken said, were to hold to the last man. Trônes Wood was never to be yielded to the British. Its importance was too vital.

As a result of these operations carried out along the British front from Thiepval to their right, south of Guillemont, a distance of eleven miles, was the gain of the ridge southeast of Thiepval commanding the village and northern slopes of the high ground north of Pozières. The British also held the edge of High Wood and half a mile of captured German trenches to the west of the wood.

Now they were nothing but useless piles of brick and glorious names Thiepval, Pozières, La Boiselle, Guillemont, Flers, Hardecourt, Guinchy, Combles, Bouchavesnes, and a dozen others. Of all the crumbled roads the most striking was the long, straight one joining Albert and Bapaume. It looked fairly regular for the most part, except where the trenches cut it.

I had ridden about six hundred yards past the sunken road in which A Battery's ammunition waggons were waiting, when half a dozen 5·9's crashed round and about them. I turned back and saw more shells descend among the empty Nissen huts in Guillemont. Two drivers of A Battery were being carried away on stretchers and the waggons were coming towards me at a trot.

The village of Guillemont literally does not exist, in fact, it is an absolute impossibility to tell where the fields ended and the village began. It is one of the most awful specimens of the devastating track of war that exists on the Western Front.

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