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The British had failed in the north from Thiepval to Gommecourt, but in the south they had cut their way through almost impregnable defenses and now occupied a strong position that promised well for the next offensive. At the close of the first phase of the battle the number of prisoners in the hands of the British had risen to 7,500. The French had captured 11,000.
When our infantry attacked at Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel and Thiepval they were received by waves of machine-gun bullets fired by men who, in spite of the ordeal of our seven days' bombardment, came out into the open now, at the moment of attack which they knew through their periscopes was coming.
Our line now skirted the southern orchards of Pozières, running westwards just north of Ovillers and then curving sharply back to the old front line near Authuille. All this sector was, to our great disadvantage, overlooked and enfiladed by the height of Thiepval; and progress, though steady, was for the most part slow and heavily bought.
It was one of the sights of Thiepval during the winter, for it looked most splendid; afterwards, it was salved and went to fight again. From this part of Thiepval one can look along the top of the Leipzig Spur, which begins here and thrusts to the south for a thousand yards. In these two fortresses the enemy had two strong, evil eyries, high above us.
On the same day on which the British took Guillemont and reached Ginchy and Leuze Wood; on the same day on which the French pushed their line almost to Combles; at the same time as the British attacked Thiépval from the front, the Australians, for the fifth time, delivered a blow at the wedge which they have all the while been driving into Thiépval from the back, along the ridge whose crest runs northwards from Pozières past Mouquet Farm.
There was no sign of life here, either, or to the rear where ran the network of other excavations as the result of the almost two years of German digging, the whole thrown in relief on the slope up to the bare trunks of two or three trees thrust upward from the smudge of the ruins of Thiepval.
The will to stand firm must be impressed on every man in the army. The enemy should have to carve his way over heaps of corpses...." To understand the exact position of the British forces on July 3, 1916, the alignment of the new front must be described in detail. The first section extended from Thiepval to Fricourt, between which the Albert-Bapaume road ran in a straight line over the watershed.
On the evening of August 26, 1916, the British captured several hundred yards of German trenches north of Bazentin-le-Petit and pushed forward some distance north of Ginchy. After gaining a trench of 470 yards south of Thiepval and taking over 200 prisoners, the British on August 24, 1916, joined up with the French forces on the right, where important progress was made around Maurepas.
Howell who had the Thiepval task in hand I had first known at Uskub in Macedonia in the days of the Macedonian revolution, when Hilmi Pasha was juggling with the Powers of Europe and autonomy days which seem far away. A lieutenant then, Howell had an assignment from The Times, while home on leave from India, in order to make a study of the Balkan situation.
At Beaumont-Hamel and Thiepval, particularly, and in all villages house cellars had been enlarged and connected by new galleries, the débris from the buildings forming a thicker roof against penetration by shells. Where there had seemed no life in Beaumont-Hamel battalions were snug in their refuges as the earth around trembled from the explosions.
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