during the winter, for it looked most
splendid; afterwards, it was salved and went to fight again.

From this part of Thiepval one can look along the top of the Leipzig
Spur, which begins here and thrusts to the south for a thousand yards.

There are two big enemy works on the Leipzig Spur: one, well to the
south of the village, is (or was, for it is all blown out of shape) a
six-angled star-shaped redoubt called the Wonder Work; the other,
still further to the south, about a big, disused, and very
evil-looking quarry, towards the end of the spur, is, or was, called
the Leipzig Salient, or, by some people, the Hohenzollern, from the
Hohenzollern Trench, which ran straight across the spur about halfway
down the salient.

In these two fortresses the enemy had two strong, evil eyries, high
above us. They look down upon our line, which runs along the side of
the hill below them. Though, in the end, our guns blasted the enemy
off the hill, our line along that slope was a costly one to hold,
since fire upon it could be observed and directed from so many
points--from the rear (above Hamel), from the left flank (on the
Schwaben and near Thiepval), and from the hill itself. The hill is
all skinned and scarred, and the trace of the great works can no
longer be followed. At the top of the hill, in the middle of a filthy
big pool, is a ruined enemy trench-mortar, sitting up like a swollen
toad.

At the end of the spur the lines curve round to the east to shut in
the hill. A grass-grown road crosses the lines here, goes up to the
hill-top, and then along it. The slopes at this end of the hill are
gentle, and from low down, where our lines are, it is a pleasant and
graceful brae, where the larks never cease to sing and where you may
always put up partridges and sometimes even a hare. It is a deserted
hill at this time, but for the wild things. The No Man's Land is
littered with the relics of a charge; for many brave Dorsetshire and
Wiltshire men died in the rush up that slope. On the highest point of
the enemy parapet, at the end of the hill, is a lonely white cross,
which stands out like a banner planted by a conquerer. It marks the
grave of an officer of the Wilts, who was killed there, among the
ruin, in the July attack.

Below the lines, where the ground droops away toward the river, the
oddly shaped, deeply-vallied Wood of Authuille begins. It makes a
sort of socket of woodland so curved as to take the end of the spur.