Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.For a complete list, please see the end of this document.
The attack on the fortified village of Gommecourt, which Mr. Liveingdescribes in these pages with such power and colour, was a part of thefirst great allied attack on July 1, 1916, which began the battle ofthe Somme. That battle, so far as it concerns our own troops, may bedivided into two sectors: one, to the south of the Ancre River, asector of advance, the other, to the north of the Ancre River, acontaining sector, in which no advance was possible. Gommecourtitself, which made a slight but important salient in the enemy line inthe containing sector, was the most [8]northern point attacked in thatfirst day's fighting.
Though the Gommecourt position is not impressive to look at, most ofour soldiers are agreed that it was one of the very strongest pointsin the enemy's fortified line on the Western Front. French and Russianofficers, who have seen it since the enemy left it, have described itas "terrible" and as "the very devil." There can be no doubt that itwas all that they say.
The country in that part is high-lying chalk downland, something likethe downland of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, though generally barerof trees, and less bold in its valleys. Before the war it wascultivated, hedgeless land, under corn and sugar-beet. The chalk isusually [9]well-covered, as in Buckinghamshire, with a fat clay. As theFrench social tendency is all to the community, there are few lonelyfarms in that countryside as there would be with us. The inhabitantslive in many compact villages, each with a church, a market-place, awater