Spirit of the troops.
Much of this preparatory work had to be done under very trying conditions, and was liable to constant interruption from the enemy's fire. The weather, on the whole, was bad, and the local accommodations totally insufficient for housing the troops employed, who consequently had to content themselves with such rough shelter as could be provided in the circumstances. All this labor, too, had to be carried out in addition to fighting and to the everyday work of maintaining existing defenses. It threw a very heavy strain on the troops, which was borne by them with a cheerfulness beyond all praise.
Formidable enemy position on the Somme and the Ancre.
The enemy's position to be attacked was of a very formidable character, situated on a high, undulating tract of ground, which rises to more than 500 feet above sea level, and forms the watershed between the Somme on the one side and the rivers of Southwestern Belgium on the other. On the southern face of this watershed, the general trend of which is from east-southeast to west-northwest, the ground falls in a series of long irregular spurs and deep depressions to the valley of the Somme. Well down the forward slopes of this face the enemy's first system of defense, starting from the Somme near Curlu, ran at first northward for 3,000 yards, then westward for 7,000 yards to near Fricourt, where it turned nearly due north, forming a great salient angle in the enemy's lines.
Some 10,000 yards north of Fricourt the trenches crossed the River Ancre, a tributary of the Somme, and, still running northward, passed over the summit of the watershed, about Hébuterne and Gommecourt, and then down its northern spurs to Arras.
On the 20,000-yard front between the Somme and the Ancre the enemy had a strong second system of defense, sited generally on or near the southern crest of the highest part of the watershed, at an average distance of from 3,000 to 5,000 yards behind his first system of trenches.
German methods of making position impregnable.
During nearly two years' preparation he had spared no pains to render these defenses impregnable. The first and second systems each consisted of several lines of deep trenches, well provided with bomb-proof shelters and with numerous communication trenches connecting them. The front of the trenches in each system was protected by wire entanglements, many of them in two belts forty yards broad, built of iron stakes interlaced with barbed wire, often almost as thick as a man's finger.
Veritable fortresses.
Machine-gun emplacements.