IN JUST UNDER FOUR HOURS OF INTENSE FIGHTING, the once-tranquil and pristine western end of the Bourguébus–Verrières feature had transformed into a ravaged, raw landscape, pockmarked with shell craters and ripped and scarred by slit trenches, scrapes, tank tracks and scorched grain. Along the Black Watch’s axis of advance, a bloody trail of the dead, the dying, the wounded, shocked and concussed testified to the massacre unfolding out of sight of the men in the valley below.
