Wyn Griffith survived unscathed the devastating German bombardment of the approaches to the wood, carefully pre-registered by their gunners and deliberately designed to cut the units within the wood off from either reinforcement or successful withdrawal, and found himself on this spot.

"My first acquaintance with the stubborn nature of the undergrowth came when I attempted to leave the main ride to escape a heavy shelling. I could not push through it, and had to return to the ride...Heavy shelling of the southern end had beaten down some of the young growth..Equipment, ammunition, rolls of barbed wire, tins of food, gas-helmets and rifles were lying about everywhere. There were more corpses than men, but there were worse sights than corpses. Limbs and mutilated trunks, here and there a detached head, forming splashes of red against the green leaves, and, as in advertisement of the horror of our way of life and death, and of our crucifixion of youth, one tree held in its branches a leg, with its torn flesh hanging down over a spray of leaf"