nding it. It had a
lofty and pretentious brick church of a modern type. Below and beyond
it to the east is a long and not very broad valley which lies between
the eastern flank of Ovillers Hill and the next spur. It is called
Mash Valley on the maps. The lines go down Ovillers Hill into this
valley and then across it.

Right at the upper end of this valley, rather more than a mile away,
yet plainly visible from our lines near Ovillers, at the time of the
beginning of the battle, were a few red-brick ruins in an irregular
row across the valley-head.

A clump of small fir and cypress trees stood up dark on the hill at
the western end of this row, and behind the trees was a line of green
hill topped with the ruins of a windmill. The ruins, now gone, were
the end of Pozieres village, the dark trees grew in Pozieres cemetery,
and the mill was the famous windmill of Pozieres, which marked the
crest that was one of the prizes of the battle. All these things were
then clearly to be seen, though in the distance.

The main hollow of the valley is not remarkable except that it is
crossed by enormous trenches and very steeply hedged by a hill on its
eastern flank. This eastern hill which has such a steep side is a spur
or finger of chalk thrusting southward from Pozieres, like the
ring-finger of the imagined hand. Mash Valley curves round its
finger-tip, and just at the spring of the curve the third of the four
Albert roads crosses it, and goes up the spur towards Pozieres and
Bapaume. The line of the road, which is rather banked up, so as to be
a raised way, like so many Roman roads, can be plainly seen, going
along the spur, almost to Pozieres. In many places, it makes the
eastern skyline to observers down in the valley.

Behind our front line in this Mash Valley is the pleasant green Usna
Hill, which runs across the hollow and shuts it in to the south. From
this hill, seamed right across with our reserve and support trenches,
one can look down at the enemy position, which crosses Mash Valley in
six great lines all very deep, strong, and dug into for underground
shelter.

Standing in Mash Valley, at the foot of Ring Finger Spur, just where
the Roman Road starts its long rise to Pozieres, one sees a lesser
road forking off to the right, towards a village called Contalmaison,
a couple of miles away. The fork of the road marks where our old front
line ran. The trenches are filled in at this point now, so that the
roads may be