any months, for the shafts by which it was approached began
more than a quarter of a mile away. It was sprung on the 1st of July
as a signal for the attack. Quite close to it are the graves of an
officer and a sergeant, both English, who were killed in the attack a
few minutes after that chasm in the chalk had opened. The sergeant
was killed while trying to save his officer.

The lines bend down south-eastward from Chapes Spur, and cross a long,
curving, shallow valley, known as Sausage Valley, famous, later in the
battle, as an assembly place for men going up against Pozieres. Here
the men in our line could see nothing but chalk slope to right, left,
or front, except the last tree of La Boisselle, rising gaunt and black
above the line of the hill. Just behind them, however, at the foot of
the Sausage Valley they had a pleasant wooded hill, the hill of
Becourt, which was for nearly two years within a mile of the front
line, yet remained a green and leafy hill, covered with living trees,
among which the chateau of Becourt remained a habitable house.

The lines slant in a south-easterly direction across the Sausage
Valley; they mount the spur to the east of it, and proceed, in the
same direction, across a bare field, like the top of a slightly tilted
table, in the long slope down to Fricourt. Here, the men in our front
lines could see rather more from their position. In front of them was
a smooth space of grass slightly rising to the enemy lines two hundred
yards away. Behind the enemy lines is a grassy space, and behind
this, there shows what seems to be a gully or ravine, beyond which the
high ground of another spur rises, much as the citadel of an old
encampment rises out of its walled ditch. This high ground of this
other spur is not more than a few feet above the ground near it, but
it is higher; it commands it. All the high ground is wooded. To the
southern or lower end of it the trees are occasional and much broken
by fire. To the northern or upper end they grow in a kind of wood
though all are much destroyed. Right up to the wood, all the high
ground bears traces of building; there are little tumbles of bricks
and something of the colour of brick all over the pilled, poxed, and
blasted heap that is so like an old citadel. The ravine in front of it
is the gully between the two spurs; it shelters the sunken road to
Contalmaison; the heap is Fricourt village, and the woodland to the
north is Fricourt Wood. A glance