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Updated: June 14, 2025
The disposition of the British forces on the front of attack was as follows: The right wing of Sir Edmund Allenby's Third Army and General Hunter-Weston's Eighth Corps lay opposite Gommecourt, and down to a point just south of Beaumont-Hamel.
The section selected for attack ran from north to south, covering Gommecourt, passing east of Hebuterne and following the high ground before Serre and Beaumont-Hamel, crossed the Ancre northwest of Thiepval. From this point it stretched for about a mile and a quarter to the east of Albert. Passing south around Fricourt, it turned at right angles to the east, covering Mametz and Montauban.
Three of the British divisions in action here were from the New Army; one was a Territorial brigade and the two others had seen hard fighting in Flanders and Gallipoli. They confronted a series of strongly fortified villages Gommecourt Serre, Beaumont-Hamel, and Thiepval with underground caves that could shelter whole battalions.
A short spell of 48 hours in the trenches followed in front of Auchonvillers, facing the coveted spur of Beaumont-Hamel, which was to fall in November. Here we sustained our only casualties during the month, one killed and one wounded, a happy contrast to August, when 286 men were put out of action.
Before the war it had been like hundreds of other villages. Since the war its ruins were like scores of others in the front line. Parts of a few walls were standing. It was difficult to tell where the débris of Beaumont-Hamel began and that of the German trench ended.
This ravine was such a formidable place that it merits a somewhat detailed description. Imagine a great gash in the earth some 7,000 or 8,000 yards in total length. In form like a great "Y" lying on its side, the prongs at the top projected down to the German front line while the stem ran back connecting with the road through the dip which goes from Beaumont-Hamel on the north to the Ancre.
The rest of the day was spent in bivouac in an open field; the guns around fired incessantly, including a 15-inch close at hand, but no hostile shell fell near. We were about 3 miles west of Beaumont-Hamel, where the 29th Division were so furiously engaged.
Attacking simultaneously northward, down the nearer slope, and eastward directly against the face of the main German line before Beaumont-Hamel, the British troops captured the whole position at once. The entire front on which the British attacked was over 8,000 yards.
In the Ancre region the British won some notable victories on November 12, 1916, when Beaumont-Hamel was taken, which the Germans considered an even more impregnable stronghold than Thiepval. The British also swept all before them on the south side of the Ancre, capturing the lesser village of St. Pierre Divion.
Early on the 26th the Germans had broken through our old line between Beaumont-Hamel and Hébuterne and taken Colincamps, where they had not been since 1914; but in the afternoon they were driven out again, and the recovery was permanent.
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