It was after this fashion that the pressure on Verdun was relieved. Sir Douglas Haig is quite clear on this point. He admitted that, ‘north of the valley of the Ancre, on the left flank of our attack, our initial successes were not sustained’; that ‘the enemy’s continued resistance at Thiepval and Beaumont Hamel (29th Division) made it impossible to forward reinforcements and ammunition, and, in spite of their gallant efforts, our troops were forced to withdraw’; and that ‘the subsidiary attack at Gommecourt also forced its way into the enemy’s positions; but there met with such vigorous opposition that ... our troops were withdrawn’[60]. These were the first day’s experiences. The succeeding days, as we have seen, brought certain adjustments for the better, even in the difficult region where General Perceval’s gallant troops had to fight their troublesome way up slopes of mud from the valley of the Ancre to the deeply fortified positions which the Germans held with machine-guns, rifles and liquid flame. But they did not bring conspicuous success. They were not expected to bring it, as a fact. As we have looked at the fighting at close quarters, so we are to look at the results through Command spectacles. The Battle of the Somme was not won, nor was it intended to be won, between Thiepval village and Authuille, where the Leipsic Salient bulged inwards. ‘The British main front of attack,’ we are told in the same Despatch, ‘extended from Maricourt on our right, round the Salient at Fricourt, to the Ancre in front of St. Pierre Divion’; that is, from the bank of the River Somme to the Albert-Bapaume road and north of it. But ‘to assist this main attack by holding the enemy’s reserves and occupying his Artillery’ (not, note, by capturing his defences), ‘the enemy’s trenches north of the Ancre, as far as Serre inclusive, were to be assaulted simultaneously’; and, further north, ‘a subsidiary attack’ was to be made at Gommecourt. So clear did this distinction become in the early stages of the battle, and so plain was the dividing line between the holding and the pushing forces, that Sir Douglas Haig decided to separate the Commands: ‘In order that General Sir Henry Rawlinson might be left free to concentrate his attention on the portion of the front where the attack was to be pushed home, I also decided to place the operations against the front, La Boisselle to Serre, under the command of General Sir Hubert de la P. Gough.... My instructions to Sir Hubert Gough were that his Army was to maintain a steady pressure on the front from La Boisselle to the Serre Road, and to act as a pivot, on which our line could swing as our attacks on his right made progress towards the north.’ Moreover, ‘our attacks on his right’ (Sir Henry Rawlinson’s on Sir Hubert Gough’s) must be associated, in a larger survey, with the simultaneous French attacks under their own Command. Accordingly, it is wholly just to say that the containing