The Old Front Line | Page 6

at a gap in the broken parapet, or a grey
figure flitting from the light of a starshell. Aeroplanes brought back
photographs of those unseen lines. Sometimes, in raids in the night, our
men visited them and brought back prisoners; but they remained
mysteries and unknown.

In the early morning of the 1st of July, 1916, our men looked at them as
they showed among the bursts of our shells. Those familiar heaps, the
lines, were then in a smoke of dust full of flying clods and shards and
gleams of fire. Our men felt that now, in a few minutes, they would see
the enemy and know what lay beyond those parapets and probe the
heart of that mystery. So, for the last half-hour, they watched and held
themselves ready, while the screaming of the shells grew wilder and the
roar of the bursts quickened into a drumming. Then as the time drew
near, they looked a last look at that unknown country, now almost
blotted in the fog of War, and saw the flash of our shells, breaking a
little further off as the gunners "lifted," and knew that the moment had
come. Then for one wild confused moment they knew that they were
running towards that unknown land, which they could still see in the
dust ahead. For a moment, they saw the parapet with the wire in front
of it, and began, as they ran, to pick out in their minds a path through
that wire. Then, too often, to many of them, the grass that they were
crossing flew up in shards and sods and gleams of fire from the enemy
shells, and those runners never reached the wire, but saw, perhaps, a
flash, and the earth rushing nearer, and grasses against the sky, and then
saw nothing more at all, for ever and for ever and for ever.
* * * * *
It may be some years before those whose fathers, husbands and
brothers were killed in this great battle, may be able to visit the
battlefield where their dead are buried. Perhaps many of them, from
brooding on the map, and from dreams and visions in the night, have in
their minds an image or picture of that place. The following pages may
help some few others, who have not already formed that image, to see
the scene as it appears to-day. What it was like on the day of battle
cannot be imagined by those who were not there.
It was a day of an intense blue summer beauty, full of roaring, violence,
and confusion of death, agony, and triumph, from dawn till dark. All
through that day, little rushes of the men of our race went towards that
No Man's Land from the bloody shelter of our trenches. Some hardly
left our trenches, many never crossed the green space, many died in the

enemy wire, many had to fall back. Others won across and went further,
and drove the enemy from his fort, and then back from line to line and
from one hasty trenching to another, till the Battle of the Somme ended
in the falling back of the enemy army.
* * * * *
Those of our men who were in the line at Hébuterne, at the extreme
northern end of the battlefield of the Somme, were opposite the enemy
salient of Gommecourt. This was one of those projecting fortresses or
flankers, like the Leipzig, Ovillers, and Fricourt, with which the enemy
studded and strengthened his front line. It is doubtful if any point in the
line in France was stronger than this point of Gommecourt. Those who
visit it in future times may be surprised that such a place was so strong.
All the country there is gentler and less decided than in the southern
parts of the battlefield. Hébuterne stands on a plateau-top; to the east of
it there is a gentle dip down to a shallow hollow or valley; to the east of
this again there is a gentle rise to higher ground, on which the village of
Gommecourt stood. The church of Gommecourt is almost exactly one
mile northeast and by north from the church at Hébuterne; both
churches being at the hearts of their villages.
Seen from our front line at Hébuterne, 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