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Updated: May 24, 2025
Yes, but though the British had arrived, as the signals showed, could they remain? It seemed almost too good to be true. And that hateful Trônes Wood? Had we taken that, too, as a part of the tidal wave of a broad attack instead of trying to take it piecemeal? Our suspense was intensified by the thought that this action might be the turning-point in the first stage of the great Somme battle.
What a sight! Shells were falling thick and fast over Trones and towards Baentin-le-Grand. I must film this, Bosche or no Bosche! So hastily fixing up my tripod, I fastened on the camera and began exposing. "Excellent," I thought; "I've got it." Another shell came along. This time it was evidently a 5.9, and was right in the centre of my view, about one hundred and fifty yards away! Another one.
I found one long-haired, red-eyed fellow chopping wood for our cook; my appearance caused a signaller, noted for his Hyde Park Corner method of oratory, to cease abruptly a turgid denunciation of the Hun and all his works. The talk was all of a counter-attack by which a battalion of Prussian Guards had won back the eastern corner of Trones Wood, one of the day's objectives.
A British soldier returning from one of the attacks as he hobbled through Trônes Wood expressed to me the essential generalship of the battle.
The work cut out for the British right flank to perform was the clearing out of Trônes Wood still partly occupied by the Germans. The two Bazentins, Longueval, and the wood of Delville were either sheltered by a wood, or there was one close by that was always a nest of cunningly hidden guns.
In Delville Wood the South African Brigade of the 9th Division was cut to pieces, and I saw the survivors come out with few officers to lead them. In Trones Wood, in Bernafay Wood, in Mametz Wood, there had been great slaughter of English troops and Welsh. The 18th Division and the 38th suffered horribly. In Delville Wood many battalions were slashed to pieces before these South Africans.
The young Superior, who was then upon her bed, turned toward the wall to weep, and said in an undertone to Father Barre, 'I can not go on with this, father. I repeated her words aloud, and infuriated all the exorcists; they cried out that I ought to know that there are demons more ignorant than peasants, and said that as to their power and physical strength, it could not be doubted, since the spirits named Gresil des Trones, Aman des Puissance, and Asmodeus, had promised to carry off the calotte of Monsieur de Laubardemont.
Immediately doctors and orderlies were upon their knees tending to their wants with a gentleness that was wonderful. While I was there several shells fell and exploded only a short distance away. I left the dressing station and paused upon a mound near a tree stump, the top of which had been carefully split off by shell-fire. I stood looking in the direction of Trones.
The Boche, dirty cur that he is, had deliberately fouled them before departing. The undulating waste land east of Trones Wood, hallowed by memories of fierce battles in 1916, had remained untroubled until the last few weeks; and the hundreds of shell-holes, relics of 1916, had become grass-grown. The hummocky greenness reminded one of nothing so much as a seaside golf-course.
The magnitude of the achievement was not yet estimated, but already names hitherto unknown were flung up flaming into the world's sky in letters of eternal fire, Ovillers, Mametz Wood, Trones Wood, Langueval, Mouquet Farm, Deville Wood for the British, with twenty-one thousand prisoners, and Hardecourt, Dompierre, Becquin-Court, Bussu and Fay for the French allies, with thirty-one thousand prisoners.
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