he village of Gommecourt stood. The church of Gommecourt is
almost exactly one mile northeast and by north from the church at
Hebuterne; both churches being at the hearts of their villages.

Seen from our front line at Hebuterne, Gommecourt is little more than
a few red-brick buildings, standing in woodland on a rise of ground.
Wood hides the village to the north, the west, and the southwest. A
big spur of woodland, known as Gommecourt Park, thrusts out boldly
from the village towards the plateau on which the English lines stood.
This spur, strongly fortified by the enemy, made the greater part of
the salient in the enemy line. The landscape away from the wood is not
in any way remarkable, except that it is open, and gentle, and on a
generous scale. Looking north from our position at Hebuterne there is
the snout of the woodland salient; looking south there is the green
shallow shelving hollow or valley which made the No Man's Land for
rather more than a mile. It is just such a gentle waterless hollow,
like a dried-up river-bed, as one may see in several places in chalk
country in England, but it is unenclosed land, and therefore more open
and seemingly on a bigger scale than such a landscape would be in
England, where most fields are small and fenced. Our old front line
runs where the ground shelves or glides down into the valley; the
enemy front line runs along the gentle rise up from the valley. The
lines face each other across the slopes. To the south, the slope on
which the enemy line stands is very slight.

[Illustration: Artillery Transport crossing a Trench Bridge into
the Bapaume Road]

The impression given by this tract of land once held by the enemy is
one of graceful gentleness. The wood on the little spur, even now, has
something green about it. The village, once almost within the wood,
wrecked to shatters as it is, has still a charm of situation. In the
distance behind Gommecourt there is some ill-defined rising ground
forming gullies and ravines. On these rises are some dark clumps of
woodland, one of them called after the nightingales, which perhaps
sing there this year, in what is left of their home. There is nothing
now to show that this quiet landscape was one of the tragical places
of this war.

The whole field of the Somme is chalk hill and downland, like similar
formations in England. It has about it, in every part of it, certain
features well known to every one who has ever travelled in a c