We were looking another way, watching our troops trying to creep up to the extreme right-hand end of the red trench on the top of the hill.  We could see them on the centre of the crest; but here, where the trench ran into the upper end of Fricourt Wood, there was apparently a check.  Men were lined up at this point, not in the trench, but lying down on the surface a little on our side of it.  From beyond that corner of the wood there broke out occasionally a chatter of machine-gun fire.  Evidently the Germans still hung on there.  The bursts of machine-gun must have been against small rushes of our men across the open.  I believe that one British unit was attacking round this left-hand corner of the wood while another was attacking around its right.  The drive through the wood was going forward at the same time.  Clearly they were having some effect; for out of the wood there suddenly appeared a number of figures.  Someone thought they were our men coming back, until it was noticed that they were unarmed, and held their hands up.  They were a party of the enemy who had surrendered, and for the next quarter of an hour we watched them being marched slowly down the hill-side opposite.

Our advance here seemed to be held up by some cause we could not see.  German 5.9 shell were falling just on our side of Fricourt village, and in a line from there up the valley behind our attack.  It was not a really heavy barrage—­big black shell-bursts at intervals on the ground, helped by fairly constant white puffs of shrapnel in the air above them.  Just then our attention was attracted in quite another direction:  La Boiselle.

It had been fairly obvious for some time that La Boiselle was about to be attacked.  While the rest of the landscape before us was only treated to an occasional shell-burst, heavy explosions had been taking place in this clump of ruins.  Huge roan-coloured bouquets of brickdust and ashes leaped from time to time into the air and slowly dissolved into a tawny mist which floated slowly beyond the scarred edge of the hill.  It must have been a big howitzer shell, or perhaps a very large trench mortar bomb, which was making them.  Gradually most of our artillery in the background to the left of us seemed to be converging upon this village.  Suddenly, at a little before 4 p.m., there lashed on to the place the shrapnel from three or four batteries of British field guns.  They seemed to be fired as fast as they could be served.  Shell after shell laid whip strokes across the dry earth as swiftly as a man could ply a lash.  One knew perfectly well that our infantry must now be advancing for the attack, and that this hailstorm was to make the garrison, if any were left, keep its heads down.  But the shoulder of the hill prevented us from seeing where the infantry was going to issue.