FEUILLÈRES CHURCH AND VILLAGE (not in Itinerary).
On the canal between Frise and Biaches, they were violently bombarded in 1916.
The brick and rubble houses of Herbécourt stood at this cross-roads. Nothing remains of them now, except a few walls, beams and fragments of the timber frameworks of the battered farm-houses.
The façade, steeple and roofing of the church were destroyed. Only a few battered fragments of the sides, walls, and choir are still standing.
Leave Herbécourt by the G.C. 71. A blockhouse for machine-guns is seen on the left, near the last ruins.
The road runs across a bare plateau, then passes through the destroyed hamlet of Becquincourt, after which Dompierre is reached.
Dompierre was the central point in the zone of attack on July 1, 1916. It was carried on the first day, after a brilliant assault, together with the neighbouring hamlet of Becquincourt and Bussus farm, to the south. The German system of defence-works comprised three successive lines of trenches connected with one another by communication trenches, and reinforced with redoubts and concrete shelters for machine-guns. Here were to be found the "Gatz" trench, and the "Misery" and "Thirst" communication-trenches. The bombardment which preceded the attack was terrific, the whole area being upturned by the shells; not a single square yard of the ground was left intact.
