On the morning of 20th July Frank Richards, a signaller in 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers, was detailed to form a semaphore transmitting station in the windmill on the high ground above Bazentin cemetery, relaying visual messages by flag or heliograph from the units attacking High Wood back to Brigade HQ at Mametz Wood. The mill was some 600 yards in front of High Wood and a prominent landmark. His activities were soon spotted by the Germans in the wood, and the mill came under increasingly ferocious artillery fire - this is likely to have been the same barrage in which Robert Graves was wounded a hundred or so yards away.

'The brigade runner, who was not a signaller... volunteered to write the message down, and stood behind me in the doorway of the mill whilst I read it. When I was halfway though it, he gave a shout; I turned round and found him groaning on the ground. A shell splinter which must have passed high up between my legs had hit him in the thigh. It was a nasty wound.'

This view looks along the front of the now tree-clad mill mound, the distinctive whaleback of Trones Wood visible in the distance. High Wood is left of the frame.