re a lazy lot who were a disgrace to the Fatherland.
After the battle began they could add to the defenses improvements
adapted to the needs of the moment. Of course, large numbers of Germans
were killed and wounded by British shell fire in the process of
"thinning" out the woods; but that was to be expected, as the Germans
learned during the battle of the Somme.

How the British ever took Mametz Wood I do not understand; or how they
took Trones Wood later, for that matter. A visit to the woods only
heightened perplexity. I have seen men walk over broken bottles with
bare feet, swallow swords and eat fire and knew that there was some
trick about it, as there was about the taking of Mametz.

The German had not enough barbed wire to go all the way around the
woods, or, at least, British artillery would not let him string any more
and he thought that the British would attack where they ought to
according to rule; that is, by the south. Instead, they went in by the
west, where the machine guns were not waiting and the heavy guns were
not registered, as I understand it. A piece of strategy of that kind
might have won a decisive battle in an old-time war, but I confess that
it did not occur to me to ask who planned it when I heard the story.
Strategists became so common on the Somme that everybody took them as
much for granted as that every battalion had a commander.

Mametz was not taken with the first attack. The British were in the
woods once and had to come out; but they had learned that before they
could get a proper _point d'appui_ they must methodically "clean up" a
small grove, a neighboring cemetery, an intricate maze of trenches
called the Quadrangle, and a few other outlying obstacles. In the first
rush a lot of Tyneside Scots were marooned from joining in the retreat.
They fortified themselves in German dugouts and waited in siege, these
dour men of the North. When the British returned eighty of the Scots
were still full of fight if short of food and "verra well" otherwise,
thank you. At times they had been under blasts of shells from both
sides, and again they had been in an oasis of peace, with neither
British nor German gunners certain whether they would kill friend or
foe.

Going in from the west while the Germans had their curtains of fire
registered elsewhere, the British grubbed their way in one charge
through most of Mametz and when night fell in the midst of the
undergrowth, with a Briton not knowing