A strategy of active attrition demands a battle, and a battle requires certain definite objectives. Our aim was to crumble the enemy’s defences on the Bapaume Ridge so completely that he could not find an alternate position of equal strength, and would be slowly forced into open warfare. The British front of attack was from Gommecourt in the north to Maricourt in the south, whence the French carried the battle across the Somme to a point opposite the village of Fay. It was Sir Douglas Haig’s intention to make his main attack between the Ancre and Maricourt, and it is clear from his dispatch that he regarded the movement of his left wing as a subsidiary operation. The final campaign of 1918 proved that in this he judged wrongly, and that the Bapaume Ridge was most vulnerable to a flanking attack from the north. The effort of the British left on the first day failed, and thereafter the battle became a stubborn frontal attack up the slopes from the west. The enemy’s fortress was assaulted on its most formidable side, and when after six months he admitted defeat and fell back, he yielded not to any strategical brilliance in our plan, but to the incomparable valour and tenacity of the Allied troops. [Sidenote: _July 1._] On 30th June, the day before the battle began, the South African Brigade, comprising the four infantry battalions, the 64th Field Company R.E., the 28th Brigade M.G. Company, and the South African Brigade Trench Mortar Battery, moved to Grove Town, a large dump on the outskirts of Bray, the 9th Division being in general reserve to Sir Walter Congreve’s XIII. Corps. That night the weather suddenly cleared to a blue midsummer evening. Next morning, Saturday, 1st July, at half-past seven, under a cloudless and windless sky, the Allied infantry went over the parapets, and the battle began. The result of that day was that the German first line was carried almost everywhere from the Ancre southward. In no part of the field was the success more notable than in the area of Congreve’s XIII. Corps, which took Montauban, and came to the edge of Bernafay Wood. For the next few days, while our centre was struggling for Ovillers and Contalmaison, Congreve, on the British right wing, working in co-operation with the French, was endeavouring to clear the woods of Trônes and Bernafay, which intervened between the first and second German positions. Bernafay soon fell; but Trônes Wood, being commanded from the south by the Maltzhorn Ridge and from the north by the German position at Longueval, was a hard nut to crack, and though we took most of it, we could not hold it. The place became a Tom Tiddler’s ground, which neither side could fully claim, since it was at the mercy of both the British and German artillery fire. That was the position by the 13th of July, when the capture of Contalmaison allowed Sir Douglas Haig to begin the second stage of the action. [Sidenote: _July 5._]