burrows and machine-gun positions
along its length made another unit in
the complicated system.

Men of the Suffolks, of Essex and
Middlesex, leaped out to rush the
Thiepval area, in an attack timed for a
half-hour after noon on September 26.

546



walls. Communication with his rear
seems to have been cut off for some
time, since the action of his artillery
was delayed until evening, when it
came too late to save the town.

/CANADIANS TAKE MOUQUET FARM, ZOL-
\^ LERN REDOUBT AND HESSIAN TRENCH.

Simultaneously with the attack of
the men from Britain upon Thiepval,
the Canadians on the right wing of the
Fifth Army advanced toward the
town from their position on the east,
where Mouquet Farm and Zollern
Redoubt, the key to the whole system
of redoubts east and north of Thiepval,
presented a stiff resistance. An in-
tense bombardment was followed by
desperate hand-to-hand encounters, as



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



a result of which the Canadians had
the satisfaction of securing the Farm,
Zollern Redoubt and Hessian Trench.
At the Farm, a working party of
Pioneers had taken a hand in the fight,
when a machine gun appeared above-
ground to attack the rear of the in-
fantry who had just passed. Dropping
their tools, the Pioneers attacked the
gun position and, when joined by
others, dashed into the recesses under
the Farm and fought through them
until they had been cleared.

In order to make sure of the hold up-
on the western end of the ridge, it was
essential to get control of the Cemetery,
the Stuff and Schwaben Redoubts,
and the difficult Regina Trench. Ac-
cordingly, the next progress was north-
ward. The tide of advance, on the
twenty-seventh, rolled on through the
Cemetery and up to the southern end
of the Schwaben Redoubt, which was
broken into and held. The British
at this stage had reached a point from
which they could look down upon the
valley of the Ancre to the west, while
on the other side Bapaume was but
three miles away. Since the middle of
September they had captured seven
villages in an advance to an average
depth of two or three miles. They
had taken some 10,000 prisoners and
great stores of supplies. The machine
was moving, slowly, to be sure, but
apparently with irresistible force. It
was a moment of encouragement and
expectation.

MUD HINDERS AND THEN ARRESTS THE
ADVANCE.

But inexorable Nature turned her
hand against them. The October
rains, drenching the newly taken
acres all churned and pitted and
furrowed, transformed them into quag-
mires and sloughs of mud where men
and horses must struggle for every step
forward. The chalky subsoil, viscid
when soaked, clung tenaciously to
whatever had sunk into it. Men left
their boots and their socks imbedded
when they drew forth their feet. One
officer is reported to have been forced
to abandon his breeches, and High-
landers found themselves parted from
their kilts. In shell-holes and mine-



craters were horrible pools of water,
wherein men and horses sometimes fell
and were drowned. Months afterward
the pools were still there, and Mase-
field walked ~mong them. "Some-
times," he writes, "the pressure of the
water bursts the mud banks of ore of
these pools and a rush of water comes,
and the pools below it overflow, and a
noise of water rises in that solitude
which is like the mud and water of the
beginning of the worlc. before any
green thing appeared."

The earth, dry and receptive when
the storms began, could absorb the
rain of the first week of October; but
when, for the greater part of five
weeks, the heavens poured down tor-
rents, the point of saturation was
passed, and the surface of the battle-
razed fields became fluid. What had
been described as porridge turned
into gruel.

^HE BOTTOM FALLS OUT OF THE ROADS
1 SUPPLYING THE LINES.

The only excellent roads that crossed
the area of the battle were the Albert-
Bapaume and the Pronne-Bapaume
highways, and even these had been
rutted and worn rough by the heavy
traffic of passing armies. The other
roads, of lighter construction, could
hardly be considered roads at all.
While the work of repairing and of
making new roads was pressed with all
urgency, it was beset with extraordi-
nary difficulties. The soil, poor
originally, had been shattered and
powdered and crushed until it had lost
whatever virtue it had ever possessed
for making road-beds. Wood and
stone and other materials had to be
brought from a distance. Yet the
armies had to be provisioned from
beyond that strange new No Man's
Land behind the existing lines. And
here was "such a traffic as the world
had scarcely seen before. Not the
biggest mining camp or the vastest
engineering undertaking had ever pro-
duced one tithe of the activity which
existed behind each section of the
battle line."

In addition to putting obstacles in
the way of communication with supply-
bases, the stormy weather introduced

547



HISTORY OF THE W0RLD WAR



another great impediment to progress
by interrupting the work of aviation.
In the occasional intervals furnished
by clear days, when visibility was
possible, there was great activity on
the part of the airmen. On the one day,
October 20, for instance, there were
more than 80 combats in the air; and
on November 9 a great battle was
fought northeast of Bapaume, at a



their left were moving northward in
the direction of Bapaume.

FOOT BY FOOT THE ADVANCE WAS
CARRIED ON.

Through heavy rain an attack was
launched on October I, which resulted
in the capture of Eaucourt 1'Abbaye
and an advance toward Le Sars. Eau-
courtl'Abbaye, a settlement grouped
about an old religious establishment,




ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION IN THE WAKE OF BATTLE



When lakes and seas of thick clinging chalk-soil mud, acres wide, deeply sown and interpenetrated with unnamable
debris, stretched between the armies and their bases, with deluges of rain from a heavy sky, who can calculate
the persistent, straining effort that kept supplies in motion and still pushed on? The imagination staggers in an
attempt to reconcile such a picture with one of flowery stretches of pastoral peace and beauty.



height of 5000 feet. -But the enemy
had more opportunity, during the days
of storm, to bring up reserves unob-
served and make adjustments in his
line, thus strengthening his resistance;
consequently, his counter-attacks in-
creased in force and effectiveness.

After Morval had been secured, it
was passed over to General Fayolle, to
facilitate his advance toward Sailly-
Saillisel. Thus the point of junction
between French and English had been
moved again and now lay to the east of
Lesboeufs. From Morval and Ran-
court the French pushed nearer to
their objective, while the British on

548



had been leveled with the ground by
artillery action, like all the hamlets
and villages of the neighborhood, but
it was prepared in the usual way with
heavy fortification of its cellars and
ruins. Fighting for possession of the
position continued until the morning
of the fourth, when the British were left
in control. A break in the stormy
weather, on the sixth, presented a
favorable moment for pushing the
attack upon Le Sars, the last village
of importance on the Albert-Bapaume
road. It was rushed and taken the
following day, making the number of
villages captured thus far, twenty-two.



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



The whole front of attack on the
seventh extended from Lesboeufs west-
ward to beyond Le Sars. Of this the
most difficult portion was between
Eaucourt and Le Sars, where a gully
running through was raked by gunfire
from the northern end near the Butte
of Warlencourt (a high mound of land).
While the British held points at the
southern end, from which they could
command a sweep of the gully, they
did not try to keep their line united
across the rain-sodden hollow but
held firmly the high ground on both
sides. West of Le Sars, east of the
Butte of Warlencourt and beyond
Gueudecourt the attack proved success-
ful. Altogether, the operations of
the day resulted m the capture of al-
most looo prisoners and took con-
siderable toll from the enemy in dead
and wounded.

pv IFFICULTIES OF LIFE IN THE NEW
LJ TRENCHES.

In the trenches, newly constructed
on the far front, conditions were in-
creasingly bad. Hastily prepared for
occupation and defense, the trenches
were without shelters or board flooring.
At first, in fact, shell holes were utilized
for the front line. In all alike the
water stood knee-high at least. And,
while the enemy now had his back at
the very edge of open country where
no battle had torn and mutilated the
land, the British were separated by
almost impassable and indescribable
acres of mire and water from every
necessity or comfort of life. "It re-
quired physical fitness merely to live
in the trenches. To stay and hold
them under fire was heroism. To at-
tack from them almost impossible. In
such operations as did take place, the
men helped each other out of the waist-
high water, over the parapets of mud,
and attacked across a 'ground' which
at its solidest was quagmire, and for
half of its surface standing water."

Subsequent movements of the Allied
armies in the region between the Ancre
and the Somme can be better under-
stood if we consider here Sir Douglas
Haig's view of the situation as it
' existed in early October. Of the Thiep-
val area on the northwestern end of



the ridge, he says: " During this period
our gains in the neighborhood of Stuff
and Schwaben Redoubts were gradual-
ly increased and secured in readiness
for future operations; and I was quite
confident of the ability of our troops,
not only to repulse the enemy's
attacks, but to clear him entirely from
his last positions on the ridge when-
ever it should suit my plans to do so.
I was, therefore, well content with
the situation on this flank."

SIR DOUGLAS HAIG'S VIEW OF THE SITUA-
TION.

Regarding the centre of the line
from Gueudecourt to west of Le Sars
he felt that, "Pending developments
elsewhere all that was necessary or
indeed desirable was to carry on local
operations to improve our positions
and to keep the enemy fully employed."
"On the eastern flank, on the other
hand," he continues, "it was impor-
tant to gain ground." There, the en-
emy's "last completed system of de-
fense before Le Transloy, was flanked
to the south by the enemy's positions
at Sailly-Saillisel, and screened to the
west by the spur lying between Le
Transloy and Lesboeufs. A necessary
preliminary, therefore, to an assault
upon it was to secure the spur and the
Sailly-Saillisel heights. Possession of
the high ground at this latter village
would at once give a far better com-
mand over the ground to the north and
northwest, secure the flank of our
operations towards Le Transloy, and
deprive the enemy of observation over
the Allied communications in the
Combles Valley. In view of the
enemy's efforts to construct new sys-
tems of defense behind the Le Transloy
line, it was desirable to lose no time in
dealing with the situation."

The unfortunate circumstance of
the interruption by bad weather during
October and early November pre-
vented the accomplishment of these
plans to the extent desired but the
progress made was remarkable, con-
sidering the obstacles to be overcome.
In a general attack on October 10, the
chief success fell to General Micheler's
Tenth Army, south of the Somme, in
action on a front of three miles. Over

549



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



1 200 prisoners were seized and the
French line pushed farther to the east.
At the hamlet of Bovent, which was
included in the area gained, the
Germans had constructed in an orchard
an observation tower of reinforced
concrete. As soon as its shelter of
leaves had been thinned, either by
autumnal changes or by artillery shots,
the tower became a target for the



THE FOURTH CANADIAN DIVISION TAKES
REGINA TRENCH.

On the night of October 15-16,
General Fayolle's forces attacked the
twin village of Sailly-Saillisel, which
was built on both sides of the P6ronne-
Bapaume road. The approach was
made simultaneously from three sides,
north, west and south. A hold was
secured in the chateau and the church




PREPARATION FOR A CHARGE; FIXING BAYONETS

These determined Canadian soldiers are making ready for whatever may happen when they go over the top for a
charge across No Man's Land. It is a grim moment, that of fixing bayonets. Whatever may happen, whether they
have to penetrate into machine-gun lairs in woodland tangles or battle through dark underground mazes or follow
a tank on a trench-taking jaunt, the faces of these men are set forward unflinchingly.



French guns. After it had been badly
battered, gas shells were discharged
upon it. Then, a huge shell falling
about ten yards to the left of the tower
burst there and tore out a hole fifteen
feet deep. When the French soldiers
had taken the position, they found
that the explosion had blocked with
masses of concrete the entrances to
the German shelters around the tower.
In those deep, strong chambers, which
had been provided with many concealed
exits, lay thirty Germans with gas
masks on, un wounded but dead.
Among them were two colonels, who
had been seeking information.

550



on the western edge of Sailly, from
which the struggle was carried on
through underground trenches and
ruins of houses to the central cross-
roads. In spite of vigorous counter-
attacks, Sailly was cleared of the
enemy, on the eighteenth. Saillisel
remained in the hands of the Germans.
Taking advantage of the promise
offered by clearing, frosty, drying
weather, on October 20, the Germans
prepared to strike with especial force
at the Schwaben Redoubt, where they
had since the end of 1 September made
no fewer than eleven counter-attacks
against the British position. The



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



stroke, delivered on the twenty-first,
was promptly met and repulsed, then
answered by an attack which drove
along the Regina and Stuff Trenches.
In this attack the Fourth Canadian
Division gained about two-thirds of
the length of Regina Trench, thus
crowning with success the long series of
struggles for its possession which had
cost so dearly in lives. Advanced
posts were established by the British



Trench, at the eastern end, was taken
on the night of November 10-11. The
British were now in a dominating
position overlooking the Ancre Valley,
and pushing close to the strong Ger-
man first line across the stream. An
attack upon the Ancre was the next
action for which Sir Douglas Haig was
planning, and by the second week of
November the weather changed, giving
him his opportunity.




SCHWABEN REDOUBT, THE THEATRE OF MANY STRUGGLES



Schwaben Redoubt, though reached by an Ulster Division on the first day of the battle, was not secured until late
in October. Barrage and bombardment, attack and counter-attack rolled across its slopes for days and weeks.
Wreathed in fire and smoke it stood before Thiepval, a guardian dragon resisting to the death. Here the British
infantry are seen storming the mound, in the face of heavy barrage and rain of shells.



well on to the north and northeast of
Schwaben Redoubt and their line
pushed out in the direction of the
Ancre. The casualties were under 1200,
and the number of prisoners taken,
somewhat over 1000.

Then heavy weather settled down
again, making it impossible to enter
upon any large undertaking. Fighting
continued, however, around Chaulnes
Wood, St. Pierre Vaast Wood, Sailly-
Saillisel, the Butte of W T arlencourt,
le Sars and Schwaben Redoubt. Coun-
ter attacks were met, and positions
rounded out. The last bit of Regina



MASEFIELD'S DESCRIPTION OF THE
SCHWABEN REDOUBT.

Schwaben Redoubt, which had been
first reached on July I by the Ulster
Division but had not been won until
October, was a good example of the
German fortified positions. As John
Masefield found it, the year after the
battle, it was still impressive, though
desolate and solitary. "Clambering
over the heaps of earth which were
once the parapets one enters the
Schwaben, where so much life was
spent. As in so many places on this
old battlefield, the first thought is:

551



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



'Why, they were in an eyrie here; our
fellows had no chance at all.' There
is no wonder, then, that the approach
is strewn with graves. The line stands
at the top of a smooth, open slope,
commanding our old position and the
Ancre Valley. There is no cover of any
kind upon the slope except the rims
of the shell-holes, which make rings of
mud among the grass. Just outside



gunners in the fortress felt indeed
that they were in an eyrie."

THE ATTACK IS TRANSFERRED TO THE
ANCRE FRONT.

The last blow delivered by the Allies
before settling into winter conditions
fell upon the Ancre front at the spot
where the initial drive of July I had
been blocked. Little by little, since
that time, Sir Hubert Cough's forces




APPROPRIATING THE ENEMY'S ROOF AND THRESHOLD



Secure for the moment in a trench that recently sheltered the Boches, these Tommies are using a temporary pause
in activities, as Nature suggests. One has fallen into sound sleep after who knows what hours of driving exertion.
The other has lost himself in writing and is, perhaps, far away in fancy, among different scenes.



the highest point of the front line there
is a little clump of our graves. Just
inside there is a still unshattered con-
crete fortlet, built for the machine
gun by which those men were killed.

"All along that front trench of the
Schwaben, lying on a parapet half
buried in the mud, -are the belts of
machine guns, still full of cartridges.
There were many machine guns on
that earthen wall last year. When our
men scrambled over the tumbled
chalky line of old sandbags, so plain
just down the hill, and came into view
on the slope, running and stumbling
in the hour of attack, the machine

552



had moved up nearer and nearer to
the vast and solid fortress wherein the
enemy had put his confidence. "The
position was immensely strong, and
its holders not without reason be-
lieved it to be impregnable. All the
slopes were tunneled deep with old
catacombs, many of them made orig-
inally as hiding-places in the Wars of
Religion." Stretching across the Ancre
these fortified works extended for
nearly five miles, from Serre to where
the British now stood upon the
Schwaben Redoubt., South of the
Ancre, and under direct observation
from the redoubt, St. Pierre Divion



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



presented a formidable defensive posi-
tion, which was serving as a "ganglion
of German communications at the
mouth of the valley." From well
sheltered entrances on the river valley
level, a tunnel ran back into the hill
for 300 yards, then branched in a T
shape, with the ends of the cross
gallery opening through stairways and
passages into trenches on the edge
of Thiepval ridge, west of Schwaben
Redoubt. In the galleries were great
storehouses and chambers, some used
for dressing stations, some for officers'
quarters, some as shelters for the men.
On the northern side of the Ancre,
Beaucourt, somewhat back from the
German front line and situated in a
hollow, formed, with its deep dugouts
under the ruins of its buildings, a
station for masses of reserves. Beyond,
farther northwest, stood Beaumont
Hamel, "a tumbled heap of ruins,"
seated in a fold of the slope and backed
by a strongly organized plateau reach-
ing north as far as Serre. So wide and
deep were the successive tiers of wire
entanglements guarding the trenches
before Beaumont Hamel that, in their
rusted condition, they gave the ap-
pearance of a broad brown belt of
ploughed land. Prepared at the be-
ginning of the war as an impregnable
barrier commanding the valley, which
at this point had a width of about 500
feet, the caves of the position were
"subterranean barracks impervious to
shell fire."

THE DIFFICULTY OF TAKING THE Y
RAVINE.

But between Beaumont Hamel and
the point where the battle line crossed
the Ancre, a gorge, known because of
its shape as the Y Ravine, furnished
the most difficult problem for attack.
With the branches, or prongs, of the Y
opening upon the German front line
trench and the end of the stem resting
upon the road connecting Beaumont
Hamel with the Ancre, the ravine had
a length of 800 yards or more. At the
western entrances the precipitous sides,
at places even overhanging, were
perhaps more than thirty feet deep,
furnishing abundant opportunity for
hidden burrows and lairs. Some of



the caves were able to accommodate a
battalion and a half of soldiers each,
and provide them with perfect shelter.
A tunnel dug from the forward end of
the ravine back to the German 4th
line made it possible for reinforce-
ments to be poured into the hollow
while it was being besieged from
outside.

Of the whole 8000 yards of front to
be attacked, 5000 yards lay north of
the Ancre, and 3000 on the south side.
With the British upon the Thiepval
ridge, this part of the German line had
become a salient, which could be
attacked from the south and west at
the same time. A preliminary bom-
bardment, starting at 5 A. M. on No-
vember ii and lasting until the hour
for the advance, just before six on the
morning of November 13, crushed and
obliterated barbed wire and other
surface obstacles, leveling the way
for the infantry. Fog and darkness
shrouded the lines in their forward
rush, which seems to have taken the
enemy by surprise. For the first few
hours the fighting was so confused that
results could not be reported with
certainty until a day or two afterward.
Then the gains were found to be even
greater than had been supposed, in-
cluding St. Pierre Divion, Beaucourt,
and Beaumont Hamel with their en-
virons.

HOW THESE DIFFERENT HAMLETS WERE
TAKEN ONE BY ONE.

For the attack on the area south of
the Ancre two divisions of the New
Army were responsible. Rapidly se-
curing their objectives east of St.
Pierre Divion, they had its garrison
shut in between themselves and the
river. For a while the prisoners out-
numbered the attacking force. With
the aid of a tank, the hamlet was
completely occupied, its caverns and
tunnels cleared. The new ground won
on the southern side of the Ancre was a
wedge-shaped piece whose base along
the river measured about 1500 yards
and whose apex was an acute angle
resting upon Regina Trench. One
division alone had taken 1400 pris-
oners, suffering in the action a loss of
not more than 600 casualties.

553



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



On the other bank of the Ancre,
progress was not so smooth and
rapid at all points, especially at the
entrances to the Y Ravine. A Naval
Division between the end of the
ravine and the river were flanked on
the left by a Highland Territorial
Division lying before Beaumont Hamel
and the ravine. While the extreme
right of the Naval Division swept
along on the level of the valley bottom



action, had already gained a reputation
for bravery at Gallipoli. Wounded in
crossing No Man's Land on the morn-
ing of November 13, and twice more
in the next twenty-four hours, he did
not lay down his command until his
men had pushed on, taken Beaucourt,
and established posts beyond it. A
fourth and severe wound was received
in the charge upon Beaucourt on the
morning of the fourteenth.




MISERY, AS THE INVADERS LEFT IT

The village of Misery, situated about six miles southwest of Peronne, suffered wreck at the hands of the Germans
before they evacuated it There was no military reason or excuse for its destruction. The object was to appal the
minds of the civil population in France in the hope of hastening a negotiated peace.



and the extreme left moved along the
highest ground, the centre, attacking
diagonally on the slope, was held up
by a strong redoubt between the Ger-
man first and second lines. Right and
left extended their lines and joined
hands along the Beaucourt-Beaumont
Hamel road, holding their position all
night until the redoubt had fallen. A
tank, arriving at three o'clock in the
morning, hastened the surrender of
the garrison of 360 unwounded men.
Lieutenant-Colonel C. B. Freyberg,
who was the leader and inspiration of
the Naval Division in their valiant

554



THE HIGHLANDERS HAVE A SHARE OF
THE FIGHTING.

While the Naval Division had been
thus engaged, there had been stubborn
and savage fighting by the Highlanders
around the ravine. It was entered
from north and south just behind the
fork of the Y and from the western