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Updated: June 16, 2025
Thiepval and Ovillers had not yet been taken, and only a portion of La Boiselle, but the British had broken through the first position south of that place and had pushed well along on the road to Contalmaison. This northern section had been transformed by warfare into a scene of desolation, bare, and forbidding, seamed with trenches and pitted with shell holes.
The remainder of that day passed quietly; the Battalion were in dugouts round the southern and eastern outskirts of Ovillers, in support to the Oxfords, comparatively comfortable and secure, and expecting no immediate call. But they were to undergo within 24 hours by far their severest ordeal since they landed in France.
From Albert C and D Companies moved forward to some Nissen huts near Ovillers to be employed on working parties. For the same duties A and B Companies soon afterwards were sent to Mouquet Farm, while Battalion Headquarters went to Fabick Trench.
When Maubeuge fell I heard Germans of all classes boast of how their soldiers struck the British who offered to shake hands after they surrendered to the Germans. Nearly two years later, during the Battle of the Somme, some Berlin papers copied from London papers a report of how British soldiers presented arms to the group of prisoners who had stubbornly defended Ovillers.
A deep and narrow valley separated them from the latter stronghold, which rose steeply 170 feet above: a line of broken stumps standing forlornly near the crest line, 1,000 yards away, marked where the apple orchards had run along the southern outskirts of the little village. The enemy's positions lay astride this valley, thrust forward in a pronounced salient towards Ovillers.
Lieut. Beazley was fortunate to escape with some severe bruises. The relief was begun at 10.30 p.m., and the weary men were able to get a short rest by sleeping in the old German line south of Ovillers. The rest was, however, a very short one, for by 1.30 p.m. next day the Battalion were back in the trenches, which they had taken over from the Bucks, immediately to the left of their former line.
It had a lofty and pretentious brick church of a modern type. Below and beyond it to the east is a long and not very broad valley which lies between the eastern flank of Ovillers Hill and the next spur. It is called Mash Valley on the maps. The lines go down Ovillers Hill into this valley and then across it.
We leave the motor and go to look into the dug-outs which line the road, out of which the dazed and dying Germans flung themselves at the approach of our men after the bombardment, and then Captain F. guides us a little further to a huge mine crater, and we sink into the mud which surrounds it, while my eyes look out over what once was Ovillers, northward towards Thiépval, and the slopes behind which runs the valley of the Ancre; up and over this torn and naked land, where the new armies of Great Britain, through five months of some of the deadliest fighting known to history, fought their way yard by yard, ridge after ridge, mile after mile, caring nothing for pain, mutilation and death so that England and the cause of the Allies might live.
German Fictions Winter Preparation Albert La Boisselle and Ovillers In the Track of War Regained Ground Enemy Preparations German Dug-outs "There were no Stragglers" Contalmaison Devastation Retreating Germans Death, Victory, Work Work of the R.E. A Parachute Approaching Victory. No. 6
"We have every reason to hope that Ovillers, Fricourt, Thiepval are impregnable; at the same time in war one never leaves things to chance." The Kid's astonishment turned to stupefaction; he himself had been in the storming of Ovillers.
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