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Updated: August 12, 2024
Between this last place and the river they broke into the German second position. Fayolle's left now commanded the light railway from Combles to Péronne, his center held the great loop of the Somme at Frise village, while his right was only four miles from Péronne itself. During the day of July 3, 1916, the French continued their victorious advance, capturing Assevillers and Flaucourt.
More prisoners kept coming in; the brigade-major's telephone rang furiously; a heavily-moustached infantry signaller, with a bar to his Military Medal, just back from the eastern side of Combles, was telling his pals how an officer and himself had stalked a Hun sniper. "He was in a hole behind some trees," he said, "and we were walkin' along, when he hit old Alf in the foot "
What news the Infantry brigade-major did receive, however, was all to the good. The battalions that went into Combles were going strong, and the mopping-up was being done with the old-soldier thoroughness that so many of the young lads who only learnt war during the summer advance seemed to acquire so rapidly.
On the second day of the Allied offensive the French and British continued their successful advance. Combles, which the Allied troops had been closing in on for some days, was captured. Here an enormous quantity of booty, munitions, and supplies which the Germans had stored away in the subterranean regions of the place fell to the victors.
In a forward sweep near the end of the month the British took a number of German positions northeast of Combles, while the French advanced south of that point, so that the two armies almost surrounding it were scarcely a mile apart. A day later British and French troops entered Comibles from opposite sides and drove the Germans out.
August 30: Before noon we learned that the battle had gone not altogether our way. Our own Divisional Infantry had fought well and scattered the Boche in the low-lying village of Combles, but the Division on our left had failed to force the enemy from the Morval Heights.
Two days later the British got into Leuze wood between Guillemont and Combles, and captured Falfemont farm to the south, while a new French army extended the line of battle below Chaulnes and took Chilly and Soyécourt; on the 6th they pushed their advance both north and south of the Somme, taking above the river L'Hôpital farm and Anderlu and Marrières woods, and below it parts of Vermandovillers and Berny.
As there was a fight on, I went in with the "Glosters," and after the fall of Combles made my way up the line until I located my own command, near Courcellette. Here I heard of the great advance of September fifteenth and also of the death of many of my old friends.
The picturesque thing was that the British troops were working up on one side of Combles and the French on the other side; and the next morning after the British had gathered in some escaping Germans who seemed to have lost their way, the blue and the khaki met in the main street without indulging in formal ceremonies and exchanged a "Good morning!" and "Bon jour!" and "Here we are! Voyla!
On the night of September 11, 1916, French forces north of the Somme took the offensive and drove a broad wedge right in between the powerfully defended German positions of Combles on the north and Péronne to the south.
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