The village of La Boisselle forms part of the small commune of Ovillers-la-Boisselle about 22 mi (35 km) north-east of Amiens in the Somme department in Picardie in northern France.

[3] A night attack on Bécourt, about 0.93 mi (1.5 km) south of La Boisselle to capture Albert was planned for the evening of 7 October; the Bavarian infantry found that keeping direction in the dark was impossible.

[7] Next day, XI Corps broke through the German defences at La Boisselle cemetery but was stopped a short distance forward in front of trenches protected by barbed wire.

[7] Many of the German units that fought on the Somme in 1914 remained in the area and made great efforts to fortify the defensive line, particularly with barbed-wire entanglements to hold the front trench with fewer troops.

Railways, roads and waterways connected the battlefront to the Ruhr from where material for minierte Stollen (dug-outs) 20–30 ft (6.1–9.1 m) underground for 25 men each, excavated every 50 yd (46 m) and the front divided into Sperrfeuerstreifen (barrage sectors).

[8] January began frosty, which solidified the ground but wet weather followed and soon caused diggings to collapse, making movement impossible after a few days, leading to tacit truces to allow supplies to be carried to the front line at night.

[9] The rains eased and Bavarian Engineer Regiment 1 continued digging eight galleries at the south end of La Boisselle, towards L'îlot, which had been captured by the French in December and which became known as Granathof (Shell Farm) to the Germans and later Glory Hole by the British.

On 9 August, the arrival of the British was revealed when Private William Nicholson of the 6th Black Watch, 51st (Highland) Division was shot and captured during a German trench raid.

On 6 June, Below reported that air reconnaissance indicated that an offensive was being prepared at Fricourt and Gommecourt and that the French had been reinforced south of the Somme, against whom XVII Corps was overstretched, its twelve regiments holding 22 mi (36 km) of front with no reserves.

More railway activity, fresh digging and camp extensions around Albert, opposite the 2nd Army was seen by German air observers on 9 and 11 June and spies reported an imminent offensive.

At Verdun on 24 June, Crown Prince Wilhelm was ordered to conserve troops, ammunition and equipment and further restrictions were imposed on 1 July, when two divisions were put under OHL control.

(Long-range fire was more successful and a 12-inch railway gun chased Generalleutnant Hermann von Stein, the XIV Reserve Corps commander and his staff out of Bapaume on 1 July.

Parties of the 15th Royal Scots were left behind to attack Sausage Redoubt and the trenches in the vicinity, as the rest advanced straight up the slope straying into the XV Corps sector, held by the 21st Division.

The infantry advance continued for about 1 mi (1.6 km), before the error in navigation was realised thirty minutes later, at Birch Tree Wood beyond the sunken road into Fricourt, where 21st Division troops were encountered.

Small groups had managed to press on to the Fricourt–Pozières road and some parties accompanied by a few 24th Northumberland from the left-hand brigade column got to Acid Drop Copse and the fringe of Contalmaison.

As news filtered back, Gore sent the 16th Royal Scots headquarters forward to take command and the positions gained were consolidated, creating a defensive flank for the XV Corps.

[38] The brigade column on the left advanced five minutes after the rest of the division, to avoid debris from the Lochnagar mine and because the German line to the south curved back around Sausage Valley.

Small-arms fire from Sausage Redoubt, the trenches nearby in Sausage Valley and from La Boisselle, which had hit the right-hand column, was turned on to the second column and within two minutes the 10th (Service) Battalion Royal Lincolnshire Regiment (the Grimsby Chums) and the 11th (Service) Battalion Suffolk Regiment had been raked by machine-gun fire, before they had got beyond the British front line and the 11th Suffolk was also bombarded by German artillery.

Parties of bombers attacked towards La Boisselle to cover the 102nd Brigade columns as they moved past but were repulsed, despite the Stokes mortar bombardment on the village, which had been falling for twelve minutes.

As soon as the garrison emerged unharmed from deep shelters under the village, they engaged the third column with machine-guns and enfiladed the British infantry, as they tried to move past and caused many casualties to all three battalions.

On the left flank, three tunnels which had been dug before the attack and one was used as a covered way, to reach the Tyneside Scottish in the German defences south of La Boisselle and supply water, food and ammunition, which enabled the footholds to be held.

The German defenders had ceased firing and supplies were easily moved across no man's land to the two footholds and two companies of the 7th East Lancs of the 56th Brigade (Brigadier-General F. G. M. Rowley) were put under the command of the 34th Division, to attack Sausage Redoubt.

The deception succeeded and German artillery fired on Ovillers but not La Boisselle, where a frontal attack was made by the 6th Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment and the 9th Royal Welch Fusiliers (9th RWF).

[55]aircraft of 3 Squadron flew over the III Corps sector and observers reported that the 34th Division had reached Peake Wood on the right flank, increasing the size of the salient driven into the German lines north of Fricourt.

The mines were expected to provide some protection against German machine-gun fire by creating mounds around the crater rims and a smoke screen was to cover La Boisselle at zero hour, although the wind blew it away from the village.

Prior and Wilson criticised the bombardment plan for lifting the heavy artillery off the German front line at 7:00 a.m., thirty minutes before the infantry advance, which meant that its fire for the rest of the day was ineffective.

[65] In 2013, Ralph Whitehead calculated that Reserve Infantry Regiment 110 lost 58 men killed in the village and the right-hand defensive sectors on 1 July but could not give a figure for the wounded.

[67] On the left the 19th Division bombers skirmished all day and at 6:00 p.m. a warning from an observer in a reconnaissance aircraft, led to an advance by German troops towards Bailiff Wood being ambushed and stopped by small-arms fire.

The attack moved forward in four waves, with mopping-up parties following, through return fire from the garrison and reached a trench at the edge of the village, forcing the survivors to retreat into Contalmaison.

[70][71][72] In the afternoon, air reconnaissance saw that the British defence of the line from Montauban and Ervillers was collapsing and the RFC squadrons in the area made a maximum effort to disrupt the German advance.