Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
On July 3, 1916, the ground east of Fricourt Wood was clear of Germans and the way opened to Mametz Wood. During the day the Germans attempted a counterattack, and incidentally the British enjoyed "a good time." A fresh German division had just arrived at Montauban, which received such a cruel welcome from the British guns that it must have depressed their fighting spirit.
German gunners in invisible batteries were sweeping our lines with barrage fire, it roamed up and down this side of Montauban Wood, just ahead of me, and now and then shells smashed among the houses and barns of Fricourt, and over Mametz there was suddenly a hurricane of "hate." Our men were working like ants in those muck heaps, a battalion moved up toward Boisselle.
On the same date the British advanced to the north end of Mametz Wood, and by evening of July 12, 1916, had captured virtually the whole of it, gathering in some hundreds of German prisoners in the operation.
Half a tactical eye could see that the woods of Mametz, Bernafay and Trônes must be held in order to allow of elbow room for a mass movement over a broad front.
The 149th and 150th Infantry Brigades were then in the front line between High Wood and Martinpuich with the 151st Brigade in reserve. At zero the Battalion moved from Shelter Wood by way of Sausage Valley to an old German trench at the south-west corner of Mametz Wood.
At the lower end of the wood, standing out against it, was the dusty yellow ruin which once was Fricourt. Behind that shoulder of the hill was a valley, of which we could see the gentle green slopes stretching away to Mametz and Montauban, both taken the day before, in the first half-day's fighting. The green slopes must have been covered with the relics of that attack.
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.
More graveyards, carefully tended; spaces of peace amid the universal movement. And always, on the southern horizon, those clear lines of British trenches, whence sprang on July 1st, 1916, the irresistible attack on Montauban and Mametz.
When I went southward through that world of triumph back of Mametz and Montauban I kept thinking of a strong man who had broken free of his bonds and was taking a deep breath before another effort.
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.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking