To the left of the Roman Road, only a stone's throw from this ruined graveyard, a part of our line is built up with now rotting sandbags full of chalk, so that it looks like a mound of grey rocks. Opposite the mound, perhaps a hundred yards up the hill, is another, much bigger, irregular mound, of chalk that has become dirty, with some relics of battered black wire at its base. The space between the two mounds is now green with grass, though pitted with shell-holes, and marked in many places with the crosses of graves. The space is the old No Man's Land, and the graves are of men who started to charge across that field on the 1st of July. The big grey mound is the outer wall or casting of a mine thirty yards deep in the chalk and a hundred yards across, which we sprang under the enemy line there on that summer morning, just before our men went over. La Boisselle, after being battered by us in our attack, was destroyed by enemy fire after we had taken it, and then cleared by our men who wished to use the roads. It offers no sight of any interest; but just outside it, between the old lines, there is a stretch of spur, useful for observation, for which both sides fought bitterly. For about 200 yards, the No Man's Land is a succession of pits in the chalk where mines have been sprung. Chalk, wire, stakes, friends, and enemies seem here to have been all blown to powder. The lines cross this debated bit, and go across a small, ill-defined bulk of chalk, known as Chapes Spur, on the top of which there is a vast heap of dazzlingly white chalk, so bright that it is painful to look at. Beyond it is the pit of a mine, evenly and cleanly blown, thirty-five yards deep, and more than a hundred yards across, in the pure chalk of the upland, as white as cherry blossom. This is the finest, though not the biggest, mine in the battlefield. It was the work of many months, for the shafts by which it was approached began more than a quarter of a mile away. It was sprung on the 1st of July as a signal for the attack. Quite close to it are the graves of an officer and a sergeant, both English, who were killed in the attack a few minutes after that chasm in the chalk had opened. The sergeant was killed while trying to save his officer. The lines bend down south-eastward from Chapes Spur, and cross a long, curving, shallow valley, known as Sausage Valley, famous, later in the battle, as an assembly place for men going up against Pozieres. Here the men in our line could see nothing but chalk slope to right, left, or front, except the last tree of La Boisselle, rising gaunt and black above the line of the hill. Just behind them, however, at the foot of the Sausage Valley they had a pleasant wooded hill, the hill of Becourt, which was for nearly two years within a mile of the front line, yet remained a green and leafy hill, covered with living trees, among which the chateau of Becourt remained a habitable house.