f there was the waste
of pale yellow mud, and the piles of white chalk which marked the side
of the trench in which were deep dugouts. There were many wooden huts,
too, which were used as offices. The road went on down the slope on
the other side of the hill to La Boisselle, where it forked into
two--one going to Contalmaison, the other on the left to Pozieres and
finally to Bapaume. La Boisselle stood, or rather used to stand, on
the point of ground where the roads parted. When we saw it, it was
simply a mass of broken ground, which showed the ironwork round the
former church, some broken tombstones, and the red dust and bricks of
what had been houses. There were still some cellars left in which men
found shelter. A well there was used by the men for some time, until
cases of illness provoked an investigation and a dead German was
discovered at the bottom. The whole district was at all times the
scene of great activity. Men were marching to or from the line;
lorries, limbers, motorcycles, ambulances and staff cars were passing
or following one another on the muddy and broken way. Along the road
at various points batteries were concealed, and frequently, by a
sudden burst of fire, gave one an unpleasant surprise. If one took the
turn to the right, which led to Contalmaison, one passed up a gradual
rise in the ground and saw the long, dreary waste of landscape which
told the story, by shell-ploughed roads and blackened woods, of the
deadly presence of war. One of the depressions among the hills was
called Sausage Valley. In it were many batteries and some (p. 138)
cemeteries, and trenches where our brigade headquarters were. At the
corner of a branch road, just above the ruins of Contalmaison, our
engineers put up a little shack, and this was used by our Chaplains'
Service as a distributing place for coffee and biscuits. Some men were
kept there night and day boiling huge tins of water over a smoky fire
in the corner. A hundred and twenty-five gallons of coffee were given
away every twenty-four hours. Good strong coffee it was too, most
bracing in effect. The cups used were cigarette tins, and the troops
going up to the trenches or coming back from them, used to stop and
have some coffee and some biscuits to cheer them on their way. The
place in the road was called Casualty Corner, and was not supposed to
be a very "healthy" resting place, but we did not lose any men in
front of the little canteen. The work had b