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Updated: July 16, 2025
Thus, though no one yet knew the date arranged for the opening of the battle, expectations were abroad, and each morning the significance of any unusual cannonade was eagerly discussed. Amidst such an atmosphere of uncertainty we relieved the 4th Gloucesters at Hébuterne on September 17th, making the passage from Sailly over the brow of the hill for the first time by the congested Boyau Larrey.
They passed along the same route by which exactly two years before they had come down to Hébuterne, and the survivors of those days cheered as they passed the well-remembered little towns of Marles and Lapugnoy.
A distressing attack of tooth-ache took me twice to the C.C.S. near Doullens. I found that town more deserted than it used to be, for the Germans had shelled and bombed it vigorously since their offensive started. On April 16, after a week's rest, the 42nd Division took over the trenches running from Gommecourt to Hébuterne.
Bounding the outskirts of Sailly-au-Bois, we arrived in the midst of the battery positions nesting by the score in the level plain behind Hébuterne. The batteries soon let us know of their presence. Red flashes broke out in the gathering darkness, followed by quick reports. To the right one could discern the dim outlines of platoons moving up steadily and at equal distances like ourselves.
During the six weeks after our arrival the weather was very broken, with many violent thunderstorms and very little heat. Except for eight days at Sailly, where fear of aeroplanes was fortunately sufficient to prevent parades, but not cricket in the orchards, we spent all our time at Hébuterne.
Boston, of B Company, was blown to pieces while gallantly remaining out to see that the working party under his charge had taken cover safely. Next day, after a month's continuous residence in Hébuterne or the trenches, we were relieved by the 144th Brigade.
Probably it will be found, that in every case they are natural slopes made sharper by cultivation. Two or three of these lynchets and sunken roads cross the shallow valley of the No Man's Land near Hébuterne. By the side of one of them, a line of Sixteen Poplars, now ruined, made a landmark between the lines. This jut was known by our men as the Point, and a very spiky point it was to handle.
Hébuterne was a good-sized village of about 1,000 inhabitants, on no highway but the converging point of many small roads, lying in a very slight pocket of the rolling chalk plateaux of Artois, surrounded on every side by the orchards of the local bitter cider apple, with a village green in the centre, and a pond surrounded by tall poplars.
Others won across and went further, and drove the enemy from his fort, and then back from line to line and from one hasty trenching to another, till the Battle of the Somme ended in the falling back of the enemy army. Those of our men who were in the line at Hébuterne, at the extreme northern end of the battlefield of the Somme, were opposite the enemy salient of Gommecourt.
And in spite of the hard work time was found for recreation; cricket was played again for the first time since the summer days at Hébuterne in 1915, and a Brigade Horse Show created keen interest. In St.
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