Things befell the Ulstermen, when they appeared in the open, which were things indeed. The fortunes of war varied along the British advance. A group of war correspondents on a height near the town of Albert, about midway in the line, noticed that while some of the British battalions were comparatively unmolested, the resistance of the enemy to the left or west was of the fiercest and most desperate character. The Germans seem to have expected the main assault at this part of the field of operations. Their guns and men were here most heavily massed. On the left of the valley made by a curve of the river Ancre is a crest, in a crease of which lay on that July morning the village of Beaumont Hamel, or rather its site, for it had been blown almost out of existence by the British artillery fire. Under the village--as shown by explorations made after it fell--were a vast system of passages and cellars, in which whole battalions of Germans found shelter from the bombardment. On the right of the valley is the plateau of Thiepval. It was as strong a position as the consummate skill of German engineers and gunners could make it. On the sky line at the top of a ridge of the plateau were the ruins of the village of Thiepval--heaps of bricks and slates and timber that once were walls and roofs of houses--encircled by blackened stumps of trees that once in the spring were all pink and white of the apple blossom. The ground sloping down to the valley, and the valley itself was a network of German trenches--mostly turned into a maze of upheaved earth-mounds by shell-fire--studded with many machine-gun posts. The main part of the Ulster Division advanced across the valley that rose gently, with many undulations upwards, to the slopes on the western or left side of Thiepval. They had to take what were called the A, B and C lines of trenches. As will be seen, they pushed far beyond their objective. Clouds of smoke had been liberated from the British lines to form a screen for the attackers. Into it the men disappeared as they marched, line after line, in extended order, over the intervening stretch of ground. But almost immediately they were all scourged--especially the Ulster battalions on the extreme left moving towards Beaumont Hamel--with machine-gun fire poured at them from various points, to the continuous accompaniment of short, sharp, annihilating knocks. The bullets literally came like water from an immense hose with a perforated top. The streams of lead crossed and re-crossed, sweeping the ranks about the ankles, at the waist; breast high, around their heads. Comrades were to be seen falling on all sides, right, left, front and rear. So searching was the fire that it was useless to seek cover, and advance in short rushes in between. So the lines kept undauntedly on their way, apparently not minding the bullets any more than if they were a driving and splashing shower of hail.