The line continues (with some slight eastward trendings, but without a
change in its gentle quiet) southwards from this point for about a
mile to a slight jut, or salient in the enemy line. This jut was known
by our men as the Point, and a very spiky point it was to handle. From
near the Point on our side of No Man's Land, a bank or lynchet, topped
along its edge with trees, runs southwards for about a mile. In four
places, the trees about this lynchet grow in clumps or copses, which
our men called after the four Evangelists, John, Luke, Mark, and
Matthew. This bank marks the old English front line between the Point
and the Serre Road a mile to the south of it. Behind this English
line are several small copses, on ground which very gently rises
towards the crest of the plateau a mile to the west. In front of most
of this part of our line, the ground rises towards the enemy trenches,
so that one can see little to the front, but the slope up. The No
Man's Land here is not green, but as full of shell-holes and the ruin
of battle as any piece of the field. Directly between Serre and the
Matthew Copse, where the lines cross a rough lump of ground, the enemy
parapet is whitish from the chalk. The whitish parapet makes the
skyline to observers in the English line. Over that parapet, some
English battalions made one of the most splendid charges of the
battle, in the heroic attack on Serre four hundred yards beyond.
To the right of our front at Matthew Copse the ground slopes southward
a little, past what may once have been a pond or quarry, but is now a
pit in the mud, to the Serre road. Here one can look up the muddy road
to the hamlet of Serre, where the wrecks of some brick buildings stand
in a clump of tree stumps, or half-right down a God-forgotten kind of
glen, blasted by fire to the look of a moor in hell. A few rampikes of
trees standing on one side of this glen give the place its name of Ten
Tree Alley. Immediately to the south of the Serre road, the ground
rises into one of the many big chalk spurs, which thrust from the main
Hebuterne plateau towards the Ancre Valley. The spur at this point
runs east and west, and the lines cross it from north and south. They
go up it side by side, a hundred and fifty yards apart, with a
greenish No Man's Land between them. The No Man's Land, as usual, is
the only part of all this chalk spur that is not burnt, gouged,
pocked, and pitted with shell fire. It is, however, enough marked by
the war to be bad going. When they are well up the spur, the lines
draw nearer, and at the highest point of the spur they converge in one
of the terrible places of the battlefield.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account