Croisille and Cherisy were targets of German guns, and I saw them
ravaging among the ruins, and dodged them. But our men, who lived
close to these places, stayed there too long to dodge them always.
They were inhabitants, not visitors. The Australians settled down in
front of Bullecourt, captured it after many desperate fights, which
left them with a bitter grudge against tanks which had failed them and
some English troops who were held up on the left while they went
forward and were slaughtered. The 4th Australian Division lost three
thousand men in an experimental attack directed by the Fifth Army.
They made their gun emplacements in the Noreuil Valley, the valley of
death as they called it, and Australian gunners made little slit
trenches and scuttled into them when the Germans ranged on their
batteries, blowing gun spokes and wheels and breech-blocks into the
air. Queant, the bastion of the Hindenburg line, stared straight down
the valley, and it was evil ground, as I knew when I went walking
there with another war correspondent and an Australian officer who at
a great pace led us round about, amid 5.
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