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Helm's Deep took place along the line of Helm's Dike.

An isolated scrap of drafting that was not finally used evidently belongs with the original story and may be included here:
 
    Aragorn was away behind the defences tending the wound in Snowmane's shoulder, and speaking gentle words to the horse. As the fragrance of athelas rose in the air, his mind went back to the defence on Weathertop, and to the escape from Moria. 'It is a long journey,' he said to himself. 'From one hopeless corner we escape but to find another more desperate. Yet alas, Frodo, I would be happier in heart if you were with us in this grim place. Where now do you wander?'
 
Written on this same page is an outline in which the radical alteration of the story of the assault first enters.
     
    When Eomer and Aragorn reach Dike they are challenged. Heorulf has left watchers on Dike. They report that the fort of Helm's Gate is manned - mainly older men, and most of the folk of the Westmarch have taken refuge in the Deep. Great store of food and fodder is in the caves.
    Then follows story as told above until rescue of King. (17)
    Eomer and Aragorn decide that they cannot hold Dike in dark (without archers). The Dike is over a mile - 2 miles? - long. The main host and King go to Stanrock. The horses are led to the Deep. Aragorn and Eomer with a few men (their horses ready in rear) hold the inlets as long as they dare. These they block with stones rolled from the rampart.
    The assault on the inlets. Soon drives in as the Orcs clamber up rampart in between. Ladders? Wild men drive in from North Inlet. The defenders flee. Tremendous assault upon the mouth of the Beep where a high stone wall was built. [Added here but at the same time: breastwork crowned with stones. Here G[imli] speaks his words. Reduce description of Helm's Dike - it is not fortified.] Orcs boil round foot of the Stanrock. Then describe the assault as above. (18) Orcs piling up over the wall. Wild men dimb on the goblins' dead bodies. Moon... men fighting on the wall top. (19) Disadvantage of the Riders. The wall taken and Rohan driven back into the gorge. Dawn. Eomer and Aragorn go to the Stanrock to stand by the King in the Tower.

    They see in the sunlight the wonder of the Wood.

    Charge of Théoden (Eomer left, Aragorn right). [? With day fortunes change.] Men issue on horses. But the host is vast, only it is disconcerted by the Wood. Almost [? the watchers could] believe it had moved up the valley as the battle raged.
    Trees should come right up to Dike. In the midst out rides Gandalf from the wood. And rides through the orcs as if they were rats and crows.
 
My father began a new text of the chapter before important elements in the story and in the physical setting had been darified, and as a result this (the first completed manuscript) is an extremely complicated document. It was only after he had begun it that he extended the ride from Eodoras by a further day, and described the great storm coming up out of the East (TT pp. 131-2); and when he began it he had not yet realised that Helm's Dike was not the scene of the great assault: 'what really happened' was that the men manning the Dike were driven in, and the defence of the redoubt was at the line of a great wall further up at the mouth of the gorge - the 'Deeping Wall' - and the Hornburg. At this point in the manuscript the story can be seen changing as my father wrote: in Eomer's reply to Aragorn's question 'Shall we soon find ground where we can turn and stand?' (p. 13) he begins as before with an account of the fortification of the Dike ('crowned with a rampart of great stones, piled in ancient days'), but by the end of his reply he is saying that the Dike cannot be held:
 
    '... But we cannot long defend it, for we have not enough strength. It is near two miles from end to end, and is pierced by two wide breaches. We shall not be able to stand at bay till we get to the Stanrock, and come behind the wall that guards the entrance