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Updated: June 26, 2025
Bapaume lay southwest from our trenches a matter of 15 miles; intervening were the towns of Labazell, Pozières, Courcelette and Martinpuieh, all on the Albert-Bapaume road. We arrived just in time to save Pozières.
Our line now skirted the southern orchards of Pozières, running westwards just north of Ovillers and then curving sharply back to the old front line near Authuille. All this sector was, to our great disadvantage, overlooked and enfiladed by the height of Thiepval; and progress, though steady, was for the most part slow and heavily bought.
It was music to their ears, and they rode forward with a new feeling in their hearts, for there appeared to be almost no reply from the enemy guns. The battalion took to the trenches at the crossing of the Pozieres Road, and so effective was the counter-battery work that they were able to settle down into their battle positions without casualties.
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.
In the evening of the same day the Germans made four attacks on the British lines to the northwest of Pozières, and in one were successful in occupying a portion of a British trench. During this day the French north of the Somme, while the British were fighting at Guillemont, advanced east of Hill 139, north of Hardecourt, and took forty prisoners.
We see, first, the night journey of the four infantry battalions and their machine-gun company and trench-mortar battery, from Albert to Pozières by motor-bus, then the four-mile march of the troops in darkness and rain along a duck-board track, to the trenches they were to relieve.
It was probably a belated party of these new-comers that our men noticed wandering through the village in daytime. During the afternoon of Saturday our bombardment of Pozières became heavier. Most of these ruined villages are marked on this shell-swept country by the trees around them.
The British were turning the flank of these Thiepval positions as they swung in from the joint of the break of July 1st up to the Pozières Ridge. A squeeze here and a squeeze there; an attack on that side and then on this; one bite after another. "I hope you will like our patent barrage," said the artillery general, as he stopped for a moment on the way to a near-by observation post.
At breakfast the Commander-in-Chief showed us a telephone message he had just received from Pozières, saying that we had carried the piece of trench which we desired to carry, and had inflicted considerable losses upon the Germans without suffering too heavily ourselves. We had, besides, taken several hundred prisoners.
Minor fighting continued, however, every day, and during the nights the English positions were heavily bombarded by the German guns. On the night of August 4, 1916, the British assumed the offensive, advancing from Pozières on a front of 2,000 yards.
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