The Old Front Line | Page 4

and horses, is called Usna Hill. On the right, where the grass
is green and the chalk of the old communication trenches still white and
clean, it is called Tara Hill. Far away on the left, along the line of the
Usna Hill, one can see the Aveluy Wood.
Looking northward from the top of the Usna-Tara Hill to the dip below
it and along the road for a few yards up the opposite slope, one sees
where the old English front line crossed the road at right angles. The
enemy front line faced it at a few yards' distance, just about two miles
from Albert town.
The fourth of the four roads runs for about a mile eastwards from
Albert, and then slopes down into a kind of gully or shallow valley,
through which a brook once ran and now dribbles. The road crosses the
brook-course, and runs parallel with it for a little while to a place where
the ground on the left comes down in a slanting tongue and on the right
rises steeply into a big hill. The ground of the tongue bears traces of
human habitation on it, all much smashed and discoloured. This is the
once pretty village of Fricourt. The hill on the right front at this point is
the Fricourt Salient. The lines run round the salient and the road cuts
across them.
Beyond Fricourt, the road leaves another slanting tongue at some
distance to its left. On this second tongue the village of Mametz once
stood. Near here the road, having now cut across the salient, again
crosses both sets of lines, and begins a long, slow ascent to a ridge or
crest. From this point, for a couple of miles, the road is planted on each
side with well-grown plane-trees, in some of which magpies have built
their nests ever since the war began. At the top of the rise the road runs
along the plateau top (under trees which show more and more plainly
the marks of war) to a village so planted that it seems to stand in a
wood. The village is built of red brick, and is rather badly broken by
enemy shell fire, though some of the houses in it are still habitable.

This is the village of Maricourt. Three or four hundred yards beyond
Maricourt the road reaches the old English front line, at the eastern
extremity of the English sector, as it was at the beginning of the battle.
These four roads which lead to the centre and the wings of the
battlefield were all, throughout the battle and for the months of war
which preceded it, dangerous by daylight. All could be shelled by the
map, and all, even the first, which was by much the best hidden of the
four, could be seen, in places, from the enemy position. On some of the
trees or tree stumps by the sides of the roads one may still see the
"camouflage" by which these exposed places were screened from the
enemy observers. The four roads were not greatly used in the months of
war which preceded the battle. In those months, the front was too near
to them, and other lines of supply and approach were more direct and
safer. But there was always some traffic upon them of men going into
the line or coming out, of ration parties, munition and water carriers,
and ambulances. On all four roads many men of our race were killed.
All, at some time, or many times, rang and flashed with explosions.
Danger, death, shocking escape and firm resolve, went up and down
those roads daily and nightly. Our men slept and ate and sweated and
dug and died along them after all hardships and in all weathers. On
parts of them, no traffic moved, even at night, so that the grass grew
high upon them. Presently, they will be quiet country roads again, and
tourists will walk at ease, where brave men once ran and dodged and
cursed their luck, when the Battle of the Somme was raging.
Then, indeed, those roads were used. Then the grass that had grown on
some of them was trodden and crushed under. The trees and banks by
the waysides were used to hide batteries, which roared all day and all
night. At all hours and in all weathers the convoys of horses slipped
and stamped along those roads with more shells for the ever-greedy
cannon. At night, from every part of those roads, one saw a twilight of
summer lightning winking over the high ground from the never-ceasing
flashes of guns and shells. Then there was no quiet, but a roaring, a
crashing, and a screaming from guns, from shells bursting and from
shells passing in the air. Then,