This feature, which provided some cover for the men, was the position from which the battalions of the 38th (Welsh) Division launched their second attack on Mametz Wood on 10th July, and crops up in several accounts, including David Jones's. In fact they were already taking casualties from an accurate German shrapnel barrage before the whistles blew, the vicious ordnance raining down on the exposed backs of the men as they lay waiting on this bank.

"Seven minutes to go . . . and seventy times seven times to the minute
this drumming of the diaphragm.
From deeply inward thumping all through you beating
no peace to be still in
and no one is there not anyone to stop can't anyone - someone turn off the tap
or won't anyone before it snaps."

Even when the front line had moved away from here, the killing did not stop, as the area remained well within range of German batteries for the duration of the battle. On 28th July Major-General Edward Charles Ingouville-Williams, C.B., D.S.O., G.O.C. 34th Division was killed on this spot while walking to meet his car, having reconnoitred in the area of Contalmaison on foot, an act which in itself quietly throws into stark relief the oft-quoted fiction that the senior officers routinely kept themselves well away from the fighting.