The 30th August 1917 found the 1/4th Battalion much reduced in strength moving from Arques to Bapaume, to the great satisfaction of all ranks, for all had been expecting a return to the unhealthy conditions of the Ypres Salient. On detrainment at Bapaume an evening march was made to Beaulencourt, where quarters were allotted in a concentration camp. This march was not without interest as it was the Battalion's first introduction to the "devastated area," the appalling lifeless and ruined belt of country left behind him by the Bosche in his retirement from the Ancre-Scarpe salient to the Hindenburg line. Beaulencourt lies between Bapaume and Le Transloy, and is thus on the ridge which lay beyond the old Lesbœufs lines and which had proved the final check to the Battalion's advances in the Somme battles of 1916. From the village the Lesbœufs-Morval Ridge was visible, though of those two ill-fated villages no ruins were discernible. The whole area was a vast waste of rank vegetation which was rapidly covering the scars of the previous year's battles without healing them. Shell fire had contributed comparatively little to the desolation, but villages had been completely demolished and trees felled, and the British troops themselves provided the only relief to the awful silence of this strange land from which the life of the fields had vanished. The Battalion was now attached to the IV Corps (Woollcombe), and the first few days were spent in very necessary reorganisation of its slender resources in personnel. The casualties of the Ypres action were not replaced by drafts, and each company was reduced to two platoons. That such work as was possible was done to good purpose was shown on the 4th September, when the Corps commander inspected the Battalion and expressed himself gratified at the completeness and good order of its clothing and equipment in view of its recent withdrawal from the Flanders battlefield. This day was the third anniversary of the Battalion's departure from England. Between the 5th and 8th September the 56th Division took over from the 3rd the left sector of the IV Corps front. The new sector was held with all three Brigades in line, each Brigade area being occupied with two battalions in front trenches, one in Brigade support and one in Divisional reserve, in positions facing the Hindenburg line from the neighbourhood of Lagnicourt on the left to south of the Bapaume-Cambrai Road in the vicinity of Demicourt on the right. Activity on the enemy's part was evidently not anticipated in this area, for by this relief the 56th Division became responsible for a front of approximately 10,500 yards.