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Updated: May 5, 2025
It had no importance and no history before the war, except that a Seigneur of Thiepval is mentioned as having once attended a meeting at Amiens. It was of great military importance at the time of the Battle of the Somme. In the old days it may have had a beauty of position. It is worth while to clamber up to Thiepval from our lines.
The Clayfords, stationed on the north of the line at Thiepval, had redeemed their name and added a new lustre to their erstwhile shining record. The devotion of the officers, the discipline of the men, had borne their fruits.
Humfrey had his little fox terrier, 'Darky, who was born in the trenches at Thiepval during the Battle of the Somme last summer, with him. It is a nice little dog. I found a gold ring on the road just by me; and I intend to keep it as a souvenir of the episode. "We remained here for five hours from 2.30 to 7.30. Men were reinforcing us all the time.
And I chanced to remember that the name had first been indelibly impressed on my consciousness at a comfortable breakfast-table at home, where I sat looking out on a bright New England garden. In the headlines and columns of my morning newspaper I had read again and again, during the summer of 1916, of Thiepval and La Boisselle, of Fricourt and Mametz and the Bois des Trones.
That helps him in war; whereas the yokel, or the sergeant major type, is splendid until the shock comes. Then he may crack. But there is no law. Imagination apprehension are the devil, too, and they go with 'nerves." It was a sergeant-major whom I saw stricken badly with shell-shock in Aveluy Wood near Thiepval.
The German Third Line has been entered at the Bois de Foureaux, the whole of Delville Wood has been carried; and in the combined advance of July 30th, the French swept on to Maurepas on the north of the Somme, and are closely threatening both Combles and Péronne, while we are attacking Thiepval on the left of our line and Guillemont on the right, and pushing forward, north of Pozières, toward Bapaume.
The attack was checked everywhere, and by evening what was left of the British troops from Gommecourt to Thiepval struggled back to their old line. The British had failed to win their objective, but the day had not been wholly wasted; they had struck deep into the heart of the German defense and inspired in the enemy a wholesome respect for their fighting powers.
Australian blood has sanctified much of that soil, and Australian bravery has monopolized some of its names. As surely as Gallipoli will Pozières and Thiepval and Bapaume be associated with the name and achievement of Australians in the minds of readers of the history of the great war.
In the night of September 26, 1916, the British troops captured Thiepval and the strongly fortified ridge east of it, which included an important stronghold, the Zollern Redoubt. The British reported the capture of over 1,500 prisoners during the two days' fighting. September 30, 1916, marked the close of the third month of Allied fighting in the Somme region.
"We had a good show day before yesterday," said Brigadier-General Philip Howell, when I went to call on him one day. "Sorry you were not here. You could have seen it excellently." The corps of which he was general staff officer had taken a section of first-line trench at Thiepval with more prisoners than casualties, which is the kind of news they like to hear at General Headquarters.
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