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Several more screamed over us as we went along, and it was peculiar to hear the shells of both sides echoing backwards and forwards in the sky at the same time. We were about four hundred yards from the outskirts of Hébuterne, when I was made aware of the fact that the platoon in front of me had stopped. I immediately stopped my platoon.
It has about it, in every part of it, certain features well known to every one who has ever travelled in a chalk country. These features occur even in the gentle, rolling, and not strongly marked sector near Hébuterne.
Our ultimate destination was now the sector of Hébuterne, which had leapt into prominence on the occasion of the successful French attack on Touvent Farm, June 12th, but was now, from all accounts, peaceful enough.
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.
General de Castelnau, on the day before the fighting at Hebuterne, made a break in the German line east of Forest of l'Aigle which is a continuation of the Forest of Compiègne but is separated from it by the Aisne. Within the French lines were the farms of Ecaffaut and Quennevieres. The Germans held Les Loges and Tout Vent.
Looking north from our position at Hébuterne there is the snout of the woodland salient; looking south there is the green shallow shelving hollow or valley which made the No Man's Land for rather more than a mile.
The road dips here, but soon rises again, and so, by a flat tableland, to the large village of Hébuterne. Most of this road, with the exception of one little stretch near Auchonvillers, is hidden by high ground from every part of the battlefield. Men moving upon it cannot see the field.
Towards stopping that our checks to their local attacks in the West and offensive operations of our own did nothing. Important and sweeping French successes continued to be announced from time to time in the press, and occasionally positions were captured and retained, as at Buval near Souchez, Hébuterne, and Quenneviéres.
On May 8th we relieved the 4th Oxfords in G Sector on the extreme right of the Brigade front. This tour was destined to be memorable in the history of the Battalion. The ground was entirely new to us, and extremely difficult. All rations and supplies had to be brought up from Hébuterne by communication trenches more than a mile long and in bad repair.
Our line between Hébuterne and Serre sagged back in a westerly direction from Trench Hoche to Trench Bouillon, thereby interposing 800-900 yards between ourselves and the Germans, with an intervening rise in No Man's Land. This configuration of the ground presented three obvious defects for offensive operations.
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