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Updated: July 26, 2025
To the northeast of Eaucourt the determined pressure of the British troops caused the Bavarian resistance to crumble and the victors swept on and out along the road to Le Barque. At other points the British pierced the German lines and occupied positions midway between Eaucourt and the Butte de Warlencourt.
A good deal of salvage had been done since then, and there were fewer dead men lying about. But the scene of the fighting at Hook Sap and round the Butte of Warlencourt was still littered with helmets, rifles, and broken equipment of all sorts. Of course by this time the trenches had largely fallen in and were covered with rough rank herbage.
The British forces in France did not attempt any offensive during the day of January 29, 1917, but at night a successful raid was carried out in the neighborhood of the Butte de Warlencourt north of Courcelette. The British penetrated the German trenches and bombed the dugouts, destroying a gun and taking seventeen prisoners.
How plainly one catches through the words of the last speaker an eager prescience of events to come! the sweep of General Gough on Warlencourt and Bapaume the French reoccupation of Péronne. One word for the cathedral of Amiens before we leave the bustling streets of the old Picard capital.
In the night of February 24, 1917, British troops, advancing south of Irles and toward Warlencourt, occupied the famous butte which had been the scene of intense fighting in the previous month. The foggy, misty weather which prevailed at the time in this region had greatly facilitated the German retreat, as the keen eyes of the British airmen were unable to study their movements.
For British long-range guns were hurling high explosives into distant villages, barraging crossroads, reaching out to rail-heads and ammunition-dumps, while British airmen were on bombing flights over railway stations and rest-billets and highroads down which the German troops came marching at Cambrai, Bapaume, in the valley between Irles and Warlencourt, at Ligny-Thilloy, Busigny, and many other places on the lines of route.
So too Bourlon Wood, high and dark against the evening sky; the unspeakable desolation and ruin of the road thence to Bapaume; Bapaume itself, under the moon, its poor huddled heaps lit only, as we walked about it, by that strange, tranquil light from overhead, and the lamps of our standing motor-car; some dim shapes and sights emerging on the long and thrice-famous road from Bapaume to Albert, first, the dark mound of the Butte de Warlencourt, with three white crosses on its top, and once a mysterious light in a fragment of a ruined house, the only light I saw on the whole long downward stretch from Bapaume to Albert.
One by one the lines of defence before it had been stormed, and it was obvious that the town must fall, though its capture was delayed until months later by a fierce defence at the Butte de Warlencourt and elsewhere. The advance towards Bapaume was of special interest to R.F.C. squadrons on the Somme, for the town had been a troublesome centre of anti-aircraft devilries.
The British troops, which had won 1,000 yards of a position on the high ground in the neighborhood of the Butte de Warlencourt on November 5, 1916, were forced to relinquish a great part of their gains when the Germans made a violent attack on the following day. North of the Somme the French made important advances between Les Boeufs and Sailly-Saillisel.
A week later the German retreat extended, and Warlencourt, Pys, Miraumont, and Serre were evacuated. Again the Germans stopped for a time to breathe, and it was not till 10 March that Irles, a bare mile from Miraumont, was abandoned.
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