The British followed up their success by attacking the fortified positions to the north and north-east, on the line of hills which dominate the Valley of the Ancre near Grandcourt, where the Germans had also made formidable entrenchments, comprising the Stuff Redoubt (to the north-east), the Schwaben Redoubt (to the north), and between the two, astride of the Thiepval-Grandcourt road (G.C. 151), the Hesse Trench. Behind these, in the direction of Grandcourt, the Shiff and Regina Trenches, likewise powerfully organised, formed a second line of entrenchments.
From September 27 to October 1, the fighting was bitter and incessant, both redoubts and the Hesse Trench changing hands several times. Finally, the British remained masters of these positions, but were afterwards held by the following trenches—the Shiff and Regina—to which they had to lay siege. Progress was very slow, in spite of incessant grenade fighting, and when winter arrived, they had not yet conquered the whole of these trenches.
THE RUINS OF THIEPVAL.
WHERE THE CHÂTEAU OF THIEPVAL USED TO STAND.
The recapture of the Thiepval Plateau by the Germans at the end of March, 1918, did not give rise to any important engagement, no special effort being made to defend it. In the same way, it is said that when the British finally drove out the Germans a few months later (August 24, 1918), they did not lose a single man.
Everything was pounded to bits by the shells. Of the one-time flourishing village, nothing remains. A shapeless mass of broken stones marks the site of the Castle (photo above). The place has become a desolate waste overrun with weeds and grass. Here and there traces of the defence-works: redoubts, trenches, etc., and the graves of British and German soldiers, conjure up visions of the bloody struggle which took place there.
Return to Pozières, take again N. 29 on the left, towards Bapaume.