"On many occasions sandwiches of Scots and Germans wrestled and strove in the constricted space.... Bodies of men were prisoners and captors many times over before the struggle approached a decision.... In the midst of the fighting vast stores were tapped, and the men began to smoke as they went about their business. Some of them found time to change their underclothing when a large supply of spare shirts was found."[32] [32] O'Neill, "History of the War," p. 664. And these men were not even the "Contemptibles," but only "mercenaries" who had been civilians till a year or so before! Truly the German preconceived notions as to the British must have suffered rude shocks. Plate 73 (again from an official photograph) was taken after the 1918 fighting, which covered episodes as noteworthy as those of four years earlier. The photograph is taken from a point near the "cross-roads" at Beaumont-Hamel, looking across the Ancre valley to the northern (lower) end of the Thiepval Ridge, and beyond it to the higher ground on which Bapaume stands. The final attack across the Ancre began under Thiepval, when troops of the 14th Welsh crossed the river, wading breast deep through the flooded stream under heavy fire, holding their rifles and pouches above their heads, and formed up in the actual process of a German counter-attack, along the line held by the two companies who had crossed the previous morning.[33] A day later a part of the 64th Brigade (New Zealanders) started at 11.30 p.m. on a pitch-dark night, crossed the valley, and gained and held positions, half surrounded, until the covering troops arrived. This was on the slope near Miraumont seen across the valley in Plate 73. [33] Haig's Despatches, p. 268. [Illustration: _PLATE LXIX._ ALBERT IN WINTER. _The ruins of Albert under snow in the early spring of 1919._] [Illustration: _PLATE LXX._ ALBERT CATHEDRAL. _The great heap of stone and brick rubbish was once the tower on which stood for a long time a statue of the Madonna at an angle which appeared to defy gravity. I am afraid that it was our shelling in 1918 which eventually brought it down._] [Illustration: _PLATE LXXI._ IN THE ANCRE VALLEY. _The road along the Ancre Valley, entering Albert from the north._] [Illustration: _PLATE LXXII._ AVELUY. _The swampy, but once well wooded, valley of the Ancre, with the Thiepval Ridge as its farther bank._] IX.--THE OISE AND THE AVRE (PLATES 74 TO 78.)