CLERY CHURCH AND VILLAGE.
The French were held to the east of Hem (see sketch-map, p. [71]), by the strong defences around the village. These positions consisted of: a wood full of barbed-wire entanglements, situated to the north, near the station of the Albert-Péronne light railway; to the north-east, other strongly organised small woods and a quarry.
Further to the east, on the Combles-Feuillères road (G.C. 146), Monacu Farm—a veritable fortress with numerous strong-points—was connected with other defences which had been organised in the slag-heaps of the phosphate of lime works belonging to the St. Gobain Glass Manufactory. These defences extended as far as the Somme marshes, where the long reeds hid the numerous machine-guns.
The French carried all these centres of resistance at the end of July and beginning of August, and kept them in spite of fierce German counter-attacks, some of which lasted thirty-six hours. At Monacu Farm the German efforts assumed a particularly violent character. The French artillery, posted on the top of the cliffs, enfiladed the attacking waves, which were each time forced to fall back in disorder with very heavy losses, without being able to reach the French lines.
These successful operations, while enabling the French to secure the whole second line of the German defences, also gave them an outlet, on the north, into Combles Valley—the long, dry and sinuous ravine along which runs the Albert-Péronne light railway. On the south, they also commanded the bridges and roads leading to Feuillères, on the left bank of the Somme.
The bridges were immediately rebuilt, and direct communication ensured between the troops engaged north and south of the river.
Three kilometres from Curlu, take the Feuillères-Maurepas road (G.C. 146) on the left, to Hem Wood (500 yards further on). Here take the G.C. 213, on the right, to Cléry-sur-Somme—an important village on the north of a bend in the river. Fine view of the Somme, towards Péronne.
In the Middle-Ages, Cléry was a fortified town commanding the valley of the Somme. Here the Dukes of Créquy, then lords of the district, built a fortified castle in front of the river marshes, to which the family device: "Nul s'y frotte" ("Meddle not with me") was given. Before the war some fourteenth century vestiges of the castle were still to be seen.
