Hamel Mill, and the bridge across the Ancre linking Hamel and Thiepval, lay effectively between the opposing lines, and the once quite substantial buildings were destroyed in the fighting, though the great wheel and its retaining wall survived to be photographed in the 1920s. This is all that remains now, the foot of that wall and the weir below the mill race, isolated amongst the marshes, the silver birches and the willows of the Ancre valley. The ruin was evidently a haunting sight to the troops posted to this sector, amongst whom, at various times, were the young writers Edmund Blunden, J.R.R.Tolkien, and A.A. Milne.