o the front; to the
right of it are other woods, Bazentin Woods, Big and Little, and
beyond them, rather to the right and only just visible as a few sticks
upon the skyline, are two other woods, High Wood, like a ghost in the
distance, and the famous and terrible Wood of Delville. High Wood is
nearly five miles away and a little out of the picture. The other
wooded heights are about three miles away. All that line of high
ground marked by woods was the enemy second line, which with a few
slight exceptions was our front line before the end of the third week
of the battle.

From this hill-top of the salient the lines run down the north-eastern
snout of the hill and back across the valley, so as to shut in Mametz.
Then they run eastward for a couple of miles, up to and across a
plateau in front of the hamlet of Carnoy, which was just within our
line. From our line, in this bare and hideous field, little could be
seen but the slope up to the enemy line. At one point, where the road
or lane from Carnoy to Montauban crossed the enemy line, there was a
struggle for the power to see, and as a result of the struggle mines
and counter-mines were sprung here till the space between the lines is
now a chaos of pits and chasms full of water. The country here is an
expanse of smoothish tilted slopes, big, empty, and lonely, and
crossed (at about the middle point) by a strange narrow gut or gully,
up which the railway once ran to Montauban. No doubt there are places
in the English chalk counties which resemble this sweep of country,
but I know of none so bare or so featureless. The ground is of the
reddish earth which makes such bad mud. The slopes are big and
gradual, either up or down. Little breaks the monotony of the expanse
except a few copses or sites of copses; the eye is always turning to
the distance.

[Illustration: View of Mametz]

In front, more than half a mile away, the ground reaches its highest
point in the ridge or bank which marks the road to Montauban. The big
gradual sweep up is only broken by lines of trenches and by mud heaped
up from the road. Some of the trees which once made Montauban
pleasant and shady still stand over the little heaps of brick and
solitary iron gate which show where the village used to stand. Rather
to the right of this, and nearer to our lines, are some irregular red
heaps with girders protruding from them. This is the enemy fortress of
the brickworks of Montauban. Beyond this, still f