Fricourt, Mametz Contalmaison & the other villages are absolutely flat:

TCD MS 10821 folio 45 recto

TCD MS 10821 folio 45 recto

August 12th [1916]. We started off from Buire about 5 am in a thick fog: this did not lift the whole way & we arrived at our camping ground in the thickest of mists. The march was only 7 miles but the road was very badly cut up by the vast quantity of traffic along it. We passed enormous dumps of stores & shells on the way, shells of every size. When the mist cleared we found our camp pitched on the slopes of a hill, a little behind our original first line& with wonderful views over Fricourt, Caterpillar Valley & right away to Bazentin. The ground appeared covered with a maze of trenches & it seems marvellous that we <were> able to advance at all. Fricourt, Mametz  Contalmaison & the other villages are absolutely flat: there is literally not one brick left upon another. German shells were falling here & there all over the ground & particularly beyond Fricourt wood. Our bivouacking ground looks almost like a moon in the distance owing to the enormous number of thistles which have sprung up everywhere. A couple of months ago no one could have wandered here by day. After lunch we went up King Georges Hill, across our old front line: it was really a wonderful sight: between the lines were a succession of huge mines, fifty & sixty feet deep & one running into another. We