LAND & WATER 
October 12, 1916 
rangf. It is 13,000 yards from the positions just above 
Ciommecoiirt to the foremost British positions in front 
of Le Sars. Tlie real ranges concerned, however, are 
much more tiian this, because the batteries He, of course, 
Jar behind the most advanced positions held. The 
salient of Beaiicourt is, therefore, not one so small in scale 
that it can be called tactical. Its degree of strength or 
vuhierability must be tested rather by conditions of ground. 
\o\v it is precisely here, in the condjtions of ground 
involved in the problem, that the greatest interest appears. 
Let us consider what those conditions of ground are : 
(.5) The whole of the country north of the Ancre 
Valley is, at hrst sight, a confused mass of rolling ground.^ 
From Le Sars itself, and from the fields immediately to 
the north of that village, you do not command that ground 
with the eye. Le Sars is not much more than forty feet 
abo\e the Ie\el of the upper ..'\jjcre. Between it and the 
Ancre, west of Pys, are shoulders over 100 feet above the 
water level. But once these shoulders are reached you 
see, beyond the Ancre Valley, the swelling uplands to the 
north almost bare of wood and marked only by the 
groups of irees round rare farms. Now a comparison of 
this \iew with the map shows you that in spite of the 
confusion of the ground it falls roughly into lines of 
height running from north-west to south-cast. 
Upon the horizon, about seven or eight miles away, you 
see what may be called the ridge of Bucquoy, from that 
large village or small country town which lies in a slight 
depression of the roll of land. The reader must not think 
of this horizon line as a true ridge, sharp and well defined ; 
it is rather a hea\'c of l^nd which, at its highest point is 
about 150 feet above the river of the Ancre, and averages 
perhaps 100. It is marked at one end, the south-eastern, 
by the village of Little Achiet. Its north-western end 
runs up behind Gommecourt. I have given it upon Map III 
the letters A-B. 
Ne.xt. in front of this fairly defined height of land you 
have running below and parallel to it a valley which 
holds the little brook usually called in this countryside 
the Brook of Miraumont, because it there joins the Ancre. 
It is, in reality, the main source of the Ancre, which little 
river is fed by streams commg not only from this northern 
direction, but from Courcclette and from the slope at 
Thiloy underneath Bapaume. I have marked this stream 
with the letters S-S-S. Further on again, south of that 
depression, you have a second ridge which I may call the 
ridge of Puisieu.x, far less defined than that of Bucquoy 
I have roughly indicated its course by the letters C-D upon 
the map. 
A third ridge, roughly parallel to the other two, may 
l)e called the ridge of Miraumont. It rises immediately 
above that town to a height of 100 feet above the river 
Ancre (which here begins to show a clearly defined marshy 
\alley) touches 150 feet and bends round between the high 
farm of Tousvents, joining the enemy's present line of 
trenches between Hebuterne and Beaumont. 
Now it will be clear to the reader that with the ground 
running roughly in these chspositions, the guns with 
which the enemy supports this salient are protected by 
rises of land facing south-west and their positions would 
be uncovered and enfiladed by fire which could be directed 
from the south-east. The axis of cover runs everywhere 
in this salient from north-west to south-east, and the best 
))ositions arc to be discovered upon the slopes above this 
little stream S-S-S. 
It is the characteristic of the situation that no very 
ronsiderable advance from the present positions in'front 
of Le Sars would begin to command all this disposition of 
the ground beyond the Ancre. This swing round towards 
the north uncovers of itself, as it proceeds, all the best 
battery positions of the enemy beyond the railway. If 
you stand on the edge of Loupart Wood, for instance, 
\ou look over empty lields and an intervening ridge, but 
little lower than your own standpoint, and completely 
view the whole of the deprcSssion in front of Bucquoy 
which is followed by the stream S-S-S. You are standing 
on a height of about 100 feet above water level and 
dominate the whole of that little valley which up to now 
has been entirely screened from direct observation by the 
liritish. From the edge of the hummock called Butte de 
Walencourt you have a distant and less complete view of 
the depression near Puisieux. 
The Advance on Monastir 
The advance on Monastir has now reached a main defen- 
si\c position which we should do well to study. The 
political importance of Monastir is frankly its only value. 
Did not the town stand there, or were not that town the 
symbol it is to all the Balkan people, the Bulgarian defen- 
sive would not stand where it does, but certainly in the 
gates of the mountains to the north. As things are, how- 
ever, Monastir irmst be defended. Let us see wh.at the 
conditions of that defence are. 
The town of Monastir stands in a plain between two 
roughly parallel masses of mountain. That to the west 
is far the higher and rises to a crest which averages some 
4,000 feet to 5,000 above the plain. It is composed 
of steep, broken, ai\d very difficult ground, rising quite a 
thousand feet to a mile. This mountain mass which 
stretches far to the north seems to form a fairly secure 
Hank upon which any defensive line in front of Monastir 
can repose. 
The other mountain mass, upon the east of the plain, is 
less abrupt and more readily permits of manceuvre. It 
is also less high. It does not reach a jjoint much over 
2,000 feet abo\e the plains for some miles north of it;> 
first slopes above the river Czerna. But this eastern 
mass has, close in the neighbourhood ot the river, a feature 
which interrupts manceuvre, and which consists in sharj) 
" scars " of rock, unclimbable cliffs which are indeed not 
continuous, but present a formidable obstacle to direct 
northerly advance. These scars are especially numerous 
in the immediate neighboiuhood of the river. Right 
round this eastern mass of mountain curls the river Czerna, 
that is, the Black River. The plain between the two 
m.issc.i oi mountains is everywhere about ten miles broad. 
Tne di'fence, fiowever, has to consider a somewhat longer 
line towards the west than the line of the plain, because 
manceuvre is possible upon the lower and easier slopes 
of the western movmtains. Should the defence, however, 
be forced back nearer to Monastir, it has the advantage 
ot a shorter line because it there finds marshy ground every- 
wiiere lining the western shores of the upper reaches of 
the Czerna. What the military \alue of this marsh 
obstacle may be it is extremely difficult to discover, for 
it is variously described by different travellei-s, and this I 
conceive to be due to its different state at different times 
of the year ; but I believe we may take it that free 
manoeuvre is impossible at this moment in the marshy 
belt. 
The elements of the defensi\-e line, therefore, which the 
Bulgarians now hold in front of ^Monastir are as follows : 
An obstacle of some value, but fordable, is the moun- 
tain river Czerna, from A-B on the following Map IV, 
over a distance of about eight miles. Next, proceeding 
westward, a line of trenches across the plain j-rom Czerna 
to the foot of the mountains of (iradeshnitsa, passing 
through the Iiamlet of Kenali and the village of Mesjidli. 
This trench line across the plain covers almost exactly ten 
miles. Lastly, there are two or three more miles of con- 
tinuous work, or, at any rate, of posts following up the 
lower slopes of the western mountains. This line of posts 
and perhaps of trenches continues right over the mountains 
to the large lake, Prespa, beyond which is not shown upon 
the sketch map. But it is improbable that any decision 
could be arrived at in the hills themselves. Monastir 
lies not more than six miles behind the nearest point of 
the advanced trenches. It is upon this line that the enemy 
has elected to stand, having retreated in the course of 
our offensi\e from Fiorina and the line of the river Brod 
and across the old frontier. 
Against the line of trenches in the plain thus described 
the Allied effort has not as yet succeeded. The enemy 
describes the first effort against those trenches as a serious 
repulse for the Allies and puts that operation down to last 
Simday. But we must be \ery cautious to-day before we 
accept the description of any action sent out from Berlin. 
It is especially upon the point of degree that these 
descriptions err, and sometimes they issue downright 
inventions describing the repulse of Allied attacks which 
never took place. 
At any rate, whatever has occurred, the Bulgarian 
