g the ridge towards Mouquet Farm. It has been hard
fighting all the way, and what was three weeks ago a German salient
into the British line is now a big Australian salient into the German
line. But I think that the hardest fight of all was that of the second
and third phases--the battle for Pozieres Ridge.

Pozieres village itself was not on the crest of the hill. It was on the
British side of it, where the German was naturally hanging on because it
was almost the highest point in his position and gave him a view over
miles of our territory. On the other hand, the German main second line
behind Pozieres was practically on the summit; in some parts farther
north it was actually on or just over the summit. It was from two to
seven hundred yards beyond the village itself.

The German line on the hill-crest was attacked as soon as ever the
village was properly cleared. The Australians went at it in the night
across a wide strip of waste hill-top. The thistles there, and the brown
earth churned up in shell craters, and the absolute absence of any kind
of movement (simply because it was too dangerous to move), call to one's
mind Shakespeare's old stage direction of a "blasted heath." There had
been a short artillery preparation; the attack reminded one of our old
raids up on the Armentieres front.

I have seen Germans who were in the line in front of that attack. They
state that they were not surprised. In the light of their flares they
had seen numbers of "Englishmen" advancing over the shoulder of the
hill. When the rush came, one German officer told me, he, in his short
sector of the line alone, had three machine-guns all hard at work. The
attack reached the remnants of the German wire. Some brave men picked a
path through the tangle, and, in spite of the cross-fire, managed to
reach the German trench. They were very few. We have since discovered
men in the craters even beyond the front German trench. The German
officer told me that his men had afterwards found an Australian who had
been lying in a crater in front of his line for four days. He had been
shot through the abdomen and had a broken leg, but he had been brought
in by the Germans and was doing well. We also afterwards brought in both
Australians and Germans who had been out there for six days, wounded,
living on what rations they had with them.

It was a brave attack. On the extreme left it succeeded. But the
trenches won by the Victorians there were on the f