There were several days’ interval between the failure of the first attack on Pozieres and the night on which the Australians were put at it.  The Germans probably had little chance of improving their position in the meanwhile, for the village was kept under a slow bombardment with heavy shells and shrapnel which made movement there dangerous.  Our troops could see occasional parties of Germans hurrying through the tattered wood and powdered, tumbled foundations.  The garrison lost men steadily, and on about the night of Thursday or Friday, July 20th or 21st, the Second Guard Reserve Division, which had been mainly responsible for holding this part of the line, was relieved; and a fresh division, from the lines in front of Ypres, was put in.  The new troops brought in several days’ rations with them, and never lacked food or water.  It was probably a belated party of these new-comers that our men noticed wandering through the village in daytime.

During the afternoon of Saturday our bombardment of Pozieres became heavier.  Most of these ruined villages are marked on this shell-swept country by the trees around them.  It is not that they originally stood in a woodland; but when the village is a mere heap of foundations powdered white the only relic of it left standing erect, if you except a battered wall or two, is the shredded trunks and stumps of trees which once made the gardens or orchards or hedges behind the houses.  Our troops had three obstacles before them—­first a shallow, hastily dug trench in the open in front of the trees around the village; then certain trenches running generally through the trees and hedges and behind a trench railway; thirdly, such lines as existed in the village itself.  The village is strung out along a stretch of the Albert-Bapaume road up which the battle has advanced from the first.  Just beyond the village, near what remains of the Pozieres Mill on the very top of the hill, is the German second line still (at time of writing) in possession of the Germans.  Another line crossing the road in front of the village was then in their hands.

On Saturday afternoon our heavy shells were tearing at regular intervals into the rear of the brickheaps which once were houses, and flinging up branches of trees and great clouds of black earth from the woods.  A German letter was found next day dated “In Hell’s Trenches.”  It added:  “It is not really a trench, but a little ditch, shattered with shells—­not the slightest cover and no protection.  We have lost 50 men in two days, and life is unendurable.”  White puffs of shrapnel from field guns were lathering the place persistently, so that when the German trenches were broken down it was difficult to repair them or move in them.

Our men in their trenches were cleaning rifles, packing away spare kit, yarning there much as they yarned of old over the stockyard fence or the gate of the horse paddock.