Great was the excitement after the departure of the Brigadier, and many the conjectures as to the nature of the “opportunity” we had so long been waiting for; even the visit of King George V., for whom we lined the road that afternoon, did little or nothing in removing the one thought that was uppermost in the mind of each one of us.
Having no scheme of our own, it was evidently the duty of Divisional or Brigade H.Q. to devise some scheme for us, and this they were not long in doing, for on the 12th of July—four days after the visit of the Brigadier—we received orders that instead of proceeding up the line with the rest of the Brigade we would occupy Comak Camp in the neighborhood of Berthonval Farm and there carry out practices over taped trenches for a raid, the details of which would be disclosed to us later.
The Raid.
Just to the south of the Village of Avion there is situated a colliery called Fossé 4, with its necessary attendant, a large and ugly slag heap, shaped like a truncated cone. If our front line, at that time, might be considered as a line running due east and west and just to the south of Avion, then Fossé 4 was almost entirely within the German lines, with just the southern fringe of the slag heap extending into “No Man’s Land.”
The German front line, so far as this account is concerned, extended round the base of the slag heap and then south-east, where it joined a system of trenches known as the Méricourt Maze at about two hundred and fifty yards distance.
About 300 yards behind the German front line and running parallel to it was a railway embankment, scarcely less than 24 feet in height; and about midway between the German lines and our own and parallel to our line was a road (Quebec Road). Scatter around a few rows of ruined houses, a garden fence, and a couple of brick piles and you will have what the 3rd Divisional Staff considered to be an ideal location for a raid.