y-first Division, the Eleventh Division, and the Thirty-sixth
Division belonging to the Seventeenth Danzig Corps.

[Illustration: Sector where Grand Offensive was Started.]

The British General Staff had decided that the Fourth Army under
General Sir Henry Rawlinson should make the attack. General Rawlinson
was a tried and experienced officer, who at the beginning of the
campaign had commanded the Seventh Division, and at Loos the Fourth
Army Corps. His front extended from south of Gommecourt across the
valley of the Ancre to the north of Maricourt, where it joined the
French. There were five corps in the British Fourth Army, the Eighth
under Lieutenant General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston; the Tenth under
Lieutenant General Sir T. L. N. Morland, the Third under Lieutenant
General Sir W. P. Pulteney, the Fifteenth under Lieutenant General
Home, and the Thirteenth under Lieutenant General Congreve, V. C. The
nucleus for another army, mostly composed of cavalry divisions, lay
behind the forces along the front. Called at first the Reserve, and
afterward the Fifth Army under the command of General Sir Hubert
Gough, it subsequently won renown in some of the hottest fights of the
campaign.

The French attacking force, the Sixth Army, once commanded by
Castelnau, but now by a famous artilleryman, General Fayolle, lay from
Maricourt astride the Somme to opposite Fay village. It comprised the
very flower of the French armies, including the Twentieth Corps, which
had won enduring fame at Verdun under the command of General
Balfourier. It was principally composed of Parisian cockneys and
countrymen from Lorraine, and at Arras in 1914, and in the Artois in
the summer of 1915, had achieved memorable renown. There were also the
First Colonial Corps under General Brandelat, and the Thirty-fifth
Corps under General Allonier. To the south of the attacking force lay
the Tenth Army commanded by General Micheler, which was held in
reserve. The soldiers of this army had seen less fighting than their
brothers who were to take the offensive, but they were quite as eager
to be at the enemy, and irked over the delay.

During the entire period of bombardment the French and British
aviators, by means of direct observation and by photographs, rendered
full and detailed reports of the results obtained by the fire. The
British and French General Staffs thus followed from day to day, and
even from hour to hour, the progress made in the destruction of