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Barry rode with the column to the very mouth of the communication trench running to Pozieres, dropping into step with each company commander for a time, and leaving each with a cheery word of farewell.
I waited awhile to watch the Bosche shelling before going over the ridge to Pozières. I could then tell the sections he "strafed" most. I would be able to avoid them as much as possible. I watched for fully an hour; the variation in his target was barely perceptible. On one or two occasions he "swept" the ridge. I decided to make a start after the next dose.
Light was just breaking and we were in a field of young beets on the crest of a rise, with no higher ground beyond us all the way to Thiepval, which was in the day's objective, and to Pozières, which was beyond it. Ordinarily, on a clear day we should have had from here a view over five or six miles of front and through our glasses the action should have been visible in detail.
Downs pushed resolutely forward beyond 81, endeavouring to get in touch with the Australians. He reached the heavily-wired German second line, which ran north and south through the outskirts of Pozières, but was forced back. Returning with about 20 men from all three Companies he barricaded and secured Point 81, after killing 11 Germans in hand-to-hand fighting and capturing 2.
On Saturday night, July 22-23, the greater part of Pozières, on the high ground toward Bapaume, was taken. "Shortly after midnight," wrote the official correspondent at Headquarters with the Australian Imperial Forces in France, "on the 23rd, by a splendid night attack, the Australians took the greater portion of Pozières." The previous bombardment had been magnificent.
It was a growing wood with the green still on the branches, very different from the charred posts and tree stumps which are all that now remain of the gardens and orchards of Pozières.
By morning the position had been improved, so that nearly the whole village was secure against sudden attack. An official report would read: "The same progress continued on Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning the whole of Pozières was consolidated." That is to say in the heart of the village itself there was little more actual hand-to-hand fighting.
There was a polite forbearance in his tone when he spoke. "The first thing to do is to make sure that my Dawn was the same as yours. Mine was known to us by no title; he was a Captain in the same battalion as myself. He was killed in front of Pozières. Ah, I see by the way you start, that so was yours!
The mine craters in the white chalk of La Boiselle are big enough to hide a large church. But for sheer desolation it will not compare with Pozières. On the top of a gently rising hill, over which the Roman road ran as is the way with Roman roads, was a pretty village, with its church, its cemetery under the shady trees; its orchards and picturesque village houses.
What an excellent view of Pozières, about eight hundred yards away on my left. On the right was Contalmaison, which had only been taken a short time previously. The Bosches were shelling the place pretty frequently. I set up the camera and waited. Away on the opposite hill shells were falling thickly. I started filming them and got some interesting bursts, both high explosive and H.E. shrapnel.
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