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Continuing their advance on the following day, in less than half an hour they carried the German first line and, taking Hill 145 by the way, pressed on to the Bapaume road south of Rancourt, and held it as far south as Bouchavesnes village which was captured by a brilliant dash early in the evening.
Wounded were coming along the winding gray streak of highway near where we sat and a convoy of prisoners passed led by a French guard whose attitude seemed to have an eye-twinkling of "See who's here and see what I've got!" Not far away was a French private at a telephone. "It goes well!" he said. "Rancourt is taken and we are advancing on Frégicourt. Combles is a ripe plum."
By the capture of these villages German communication with Combles was cut off. The British took a large number of prisoners and immense quantities of war material. About noon of the same date the French attacked the German positions between Combles and Rancourt and the defenses from the latter village to the Somme.
To do so they had in the first place to capture the strongly fortified villages of Maurepas, Le Forest, Rancourt, and Fregicourt, besides many woods and strong systems of trenches.
Rancourt was taken after a sharp struggle, and the French lines were advanced to the northeast of Combles as far as the southern outskirts of Frégicourt. East of the Bethune road the French positions were extended for half a mile, while farther south several systems of German trenches were captured in the vicinity of the Cabal du Nord.
On that day the British at last mastered the Quadrilateral east of Ginchy, and thus prepared for the great success which attended the next general attack on the 25th. It was the best day of the whole campaign. Lesboeufs and Morval fell on the north of Combles, while the French took Rancourt on the south-east, and away to the west Gough's army made the surprising seizure of Thiepval.
This town nestling in a bowl was not worth the expenditure of much ammunition when what the Germans wanted to hold and the Anglo-French troops to gain was the hills around it. Rancourt was the other side of Combles, which explains the plum simile.
In another dashing attack they took by assault a group of German trenches south of Rancourt, some of their troops pushing forward to the edge of the village. South of the Somme they advanced east of Deniécourt and northeast of Berny, taking several hundred prisoners and ten machine guns. The closing-in process around Combles went steadily forward.
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