s near the
bottom, and is greenish and foul and has the look of dead eyes staring
upwards.

[Illustration: An Artillery Team taking the Bank]

All that can be seen of it from the English line is a disarrangement
of the enemy wire and parapet. It is a hole in the ground which cannot
be seen except from quite close at hand. At first sight, on looking
into it, it is difficult to believe that it was the work of man; it
looks so like nature in her evil mood. It is hard to imagine that only
three years ago that hill was cornfield, and the site of the chasm
grew bread. After that happy time, the enemy bent his line there and
made the salient a stronghold, and dug deep shelters for his men in
the walls of his trenches; the marks of the dugouts are still plain in
the sides of the pit. Then, on the 1st of July, when the explosion
was to be a signal for the attack, and our men waited in the trenches
for the spring, the belly of the chalk was heaved, and chalk, clay,
dugouts, gear, and enemy, went up in a dome of blackness full of
pieces, and spread aloft like a toadstool, and floated, and fell down.

From the top of the Hawthorn Ridge, our soldiers could see a great
expanse of chalk downland, though the falling of the hill kept them
from seeing the enemy's position. That lay on the slope of the ridge,
somewhere behind the wire, quite out of sight from our lines. Looking
out from our front line at this salient, our men saw the enemy wire
almost as a skyline. Beyond this line, the ground dipped towards
Beaumont Hamel (which was quite out of sight in the valley) and rose
again sharply in the steep bulk of Beaucourt spur. Beyond this lonely
spur, the hills ranked and ran, like the masses of a moor, first the
high ground above Miraumont, and beyond that the high ground of the
Loupart Wood, and away to the east the bulk that makes the left bank
of the Ancre River. What trees there are in this moorland were not
then all blasted. Even in Beaumont Hamel some of the trees were green.
The trees in the Ancre River Valley made all that marshy meadow like
a forest. Looking out on all this, the first thought of the soldier
was that here he could really see something of the enemy's ground.

[Illustration: A View in Hamel]

It is true, that from this hill-top much land, then held by the enemy,
could be seen, but very little that was vital to the enemy could be
observed. His lines of supply and support ran in ravines which we
could not se