On July 2 and 3, the battle of the Somme continued without cessation of infantry fighting, while the big guns thundered on both sides.  The British offensive took Fricourt on the 2nd, after a tremendous bombardment, and occupied several villages, while the French advanced to within three miles of Peronne.  Ten thousand more prisoners fell into the hands of the Allies on these two days.  On the 4th, German resistance temporarily halted the British, but the French offensive took German second-line positions south of the Somme on a six-mile front.  Violent counter-attacks by the Germans on July 6 failed to wrest from the French the ground won by them during the previous five days, and the Allied troops resumed their advance, taking the German second-line trenches all along the front in the face of a heavy fire.  Next day Contalmaison was won by the British, but recaptured by the Prussian Guard, who held the town for three days, when they were again driven out.

A desperate struggle for the possession of the Mametz woods marked the fighting from the 10th to the 12th, the British and the Germans alternating in its possession.  Victory at this point finally lay with the British, who on July 12 gained possession of the whole locality, together with the Trones wood, which had also been the scene of a bloody straggle.  By this time some 30,000 German prisoners had been taken by the Allies during the offensive, while the losses in killed and wounded on both sides, in the absence of official reports, could only be estimated in appalling numbers.

TRAGIC TALE OF A GERMAN PRISONER

A typical description of some of the horrors of the battle, as it surged around Contalmaison, was given by a German prisoner on July 12 to the war correspondent of the London Chronicle.  He spoke English, having been employed in London for some years prior to the war.  With his regiment, the 122nd Bavarians, he went into Contalmaison five days before his capture.  Soon the rations they took with them were exhausted, and owing to the ceaseless gunfire they were unable to get fresh supplies.  They suffered agonies of thirst and the numbers of their dead and wounded increased day after day.

“There was a hole in the ground,” said the German prisoner, whose head was bound with a bloody bandage and who was still dazed and troubled when the correspondent talked with him.  “It was a dark hole which held twenty men, all lying in a heap together, and that was the only dugout for my company, so there was not room for more than a few.  It was necessary to take turns in this shelter while outside the English shells were coming and bursting everywhere.  Two or three men were dragged out to make room for two or three others, then those who went outside were killed or wounded.