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The situation at Beaumont-Hamel was also changed for the better by the fact that the German stronghold was now a pronounced salient enfiladed by our fire from the captured Hohenzollern, Schwaben, Stuff, and Regina redoubts. But that advantage was less felt farther north at Serre, and there the left wing of our attack on 13 November was no more successful than it had been on 1 July.
The storm of shells swept the entire enemy front, destroying trenches at Ypres and Arras and equally obliterating those at Beaumont-Hamel and Fricourt. By July 28, 1916, all the region subjected to bombardment presented a scene of complete and appalling devastation. Only a few stumps marked the spot where leafy groves had stood.
The defeats which the British had suffered in this region during July of 1916 were amply atoned for by these victories. Beaumont-Hamel lies in the fold of a ridge and was honeycombed with dugouts and the defenses so cunningly prepared that it was extremely difficult for the British artillery to destroy them.
Dust was mixed with the black bursts of smoke rising from the conglomerate mass of buildings and streets thrown together by previous explosions. The effect suggested the regular spout of geysers from a desert rock crushed by charges of dynamite. Could anybody be alive in Beaumont-Hamel? Wasn't this bombardment threshing straw which had long since yielded its last kernel of grain?
In all the German lines in France there was no more formidable position than the angle immediately above the Ancre, where Beaumont-Hamel lay in a hollow of the hill. On the morning of November 13, 1916, the Royal Naval Division attacked the stretch from just below the "Y" ravine on the south of Beaumont-Hamel to the north side of the Ancre.
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