ut from the red trench against
the skyline. So the fighting could not be severe at the moment on the
crest of the hill.

Yet we were clearly not holding the whole of that skyline trench. On its
southern or right-hand shoulder the hill ran into Fricourt Wood, which
covered all that end of it. At the lower end of the wood, standing out
against it, was the dusty yellow ruin which once was Fricourt. Behind
that shoulder of the hill was a valley, of which we could see the gentle
green slopes stretching away to Mametz and Montauban, both taken the day
before, in the first half-day's fighting. The green slopes must have
been covered with the relics of that attack. But the kindly grass, the
uncut growth of two years, hid them; and the valley, except for a few
thin white trench lines, might have been any other smiling summer
landscape.

When the wave of our attack swept through that country the Germans in
Fricourt village and wood still held on. Another promontory was left
jutting out into the wave of our attack in a similar village on our
left--La Boiselle, where the main road for Bapaume runs straight out
from our lines through the German front. We could see this heap of
yellow-brown ruins sticking up beyond the left shoulder of the opposite
hill much as Fricourt did on its right. There was a valley between, but
it could only be guessed. Boiselle, too, had the remains of a small wood
rising behind it. The bark hung from its ragged stumps as the rigging
droops from the broken masts of a wreck.

We were looking another way, watching our troops trying to creep up to
the extreme right-hand end of the red trench on the top of the hill. We
could see them on the centre of the crest; but here, where the trench
ran into the upper end of Fricourt Wood, there was apparently a check.
Men were lined up at this point, not in the trench, but lying down on
the surface a little on our side of it. From beyond that corner of the
wood there broke out occasionally a chatter of machine-gun fire.
Evidently the Germans still hung on there. The bursts of machine-gun
must have been against small rushes of our men across the open. I
believe that one British unit was attacking round this left-hand corner
of the wood while another was attacking around its right. The drive
through the wood was going forward at the same time. Clearly they were
having some effect; for out of the wood there suddenly appeared a number
of figures. Someone thought they were o