Ovillers was a shambles, in a fight of
primitive earth-men like human beasts. Yet our men were not beast-
like. They came out from those places--if they had the luck to come
out--apparently unchanged, without any mark of the beast on them, and
when they cleansed themselves of mud and filth, boiled the lice out of
their shirts, and assembled in a village street behind the lines, they
whistled, laughed, gossiped, as though nothing had happened to their
souls--though something had really happened, as now we know.
It was not until July 14th that our High Command ordered another
general attack after the local fighting which had been in progress
since the first day of battle. Our field-batteries, and some of our
"heavies," had moved forward to places like Montauban and
Contalmaison--where German shells came searching for them all day
long--and new divisions had been brought up to relieve some of the men
who had been fighting so hard and so long. It was to be an attack on
the second German line of defense on the ridges by the village of
Bazentin le Grand and Bazentin le Petit to Longueval on the right and
Delville Wood.
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