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Updated: May 17, 2025
At the southern gate there was a little black and shapeless heap fluttering a rag in the wind. I saluted and passed on, sick at heart. The grounds were pitted with shell-holes: the cucumber-frames were shattered. Just behind the chateau was a wee village of dug-outs. Now they are slowly falling in. And the chateau itself?
The clock tower, unfortunately, disappeared finally at eighteen minutes past eleven yesterday morning, so the controversy is never likely to be settled. The bombardment broke out suddenly from behind us. We saw the long line of men below clamber on to the surface, a bayonet gleaming here and there, and begin to walk steadily between the shell-holes towards the edge of the hill.
Most of us had not had any sleep since we left our "shell-holes" Camp at dawn on the 8th some of us none since the 7th, and when we finally lay down, tired out, we slept far into the next day. Soon after midday on the 10th Major R.S. Dyer Bennet reported for duty and took over command of the Battalion, Capt.
I went over all the ground which we now held, and saw the visible reminders of all that fighting which lay strewn there, and told the story of all the struggle there by the upheaval of earth, the wreckage of old trenches, the mine craters and shell-holes, and the litter of battle in every part of that countryside.
And when James went far more willingly to stay opposite the Germans, until an interesting visit was short-circuited by shell-shock, he showed himself so wonderfully at home in dug-outs and shell-holes and mine-craters, so completely undisturbed by the weariful lack of any green on the course over which his battalion was playing, that he rose from Second-Lieutenant to Lieutenant with almost unheard-of celerity in the space of two years and nine months.
And there are some quite fresh shell-holes along our path, some of them not many hours old. Altogether, it is with relief that as the firing grows hotter we turn back and pick up the motor in the wood again. And yet one is loath to go! Never again shall I stand in such a scene never again behold those haunted ridges, and this wood of death with the guns that hide in it!
The rain stopped, a misty moon appeared; the vehicles came along, and by 10.30 P.M. the colonel was on his mare, picking a way for our little column around shell-holes, across water-logged country, until we struck a track leading direct to Meaulte, where the Brigade had been billeted during 1915. It was a strangely silent march.
Captain Burnett spent much time at the telephone demanding the slaughter of "Bear," "Bat," "Pharaoh," "Philis," "Philistine," "Moses," "Aaron," etc. etc. It was impossible to visit any of the outpost line by day, and those from Battalion Headquarters who wanted to do so had perforce to go at night. Nights were dark; the ground was covered with shell-holes, some of them of great size.
For miles and miles around it had the appearance of a sieve, with hundreds of thousands of shell-holes, and like a beautiful green ribbon, winding away as far as the eye could see, was that wonderful yet terrible strip of ground between the lines, known as "No Man's Land." We were now running into a bank of white fleecy clouds, which enveloped us in its folds, blotting the whole earth from view.
"From here on we must walk," announced Captain Ribaut. "Berger, be sure that you take us by the most direct route. Do not take us into the Hun trenches to-night." "I know the way excellently, my captain," Berger replied briefly. For some distance they walked over open country, made dangerous, however, by the presence of gaping shell-holes.
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