The battles of the Somme by Philip Gibbs

Author:Philip Gibbs [Gibbs, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Somme, 1st Battle of the, France, 1916
Published: 2013-11-20T07:00:00+00:00

THE HIGH GROUND AT POZffiRES 171

The new part of the German second line now in our hands makes up with the other part of his line captured on July 14 a distance of nearly 10,000 yards.

3

AUGUST 7

All last night, which was still and calm, as the weather goes, there was a great hammering of guns, and this morning, when I went out in the direction of Thiepval, the artillery on both sides was hard at work. The enemy was dropping " heavy stuff" in the neighbourhood of Pozieres, with occasional shots at long range into fields about quiet villages behind the lines which look utterly peaceful in the warm light of this August sun gleaming upon their church spires and upon the thick foliage of the trees around them.

It was in the midst of a tumult of guns and below the long resonant journeying of great shells on their way to the enemy's territory that I sat to-day with some of the officers who have just chased the Germans out of their trenches-to the north of Pozieres.

They were all men of Kent around me. The captain is a merry soul, who laughs most heartily over his hairbreadth escapes and still more loudly when he describes little exploits w T hich would make most men shudder at the mere remem brance.

The colonel of his battalion, who sat opposite, is of a different type, quiet and thoughtful, but with a sense of humour also that lights his eyes. And two places off was the M.O.—a doctor who loves his men and would not leave this battalion of the Kents for any other in the army (he has patched up all their bodies after every scrap and did heroic work for them the other night).

Before the fighting began the colonel took the jovial captain up to the line " to view the Promised Land," as he called it. And the Promised Land looked very uninviting on this high ridge—above the blackened ruins of Pozieres—where the German second lines were guarded by a tangle of barbed wire. It was also difficult to look at it very long or very closely, because the enemy was " lathering " the field of observation with every kind of " crump " and shell.

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