The Somme Battlefields of WW1, France

British gun crew at the Battle of the Somme 1916 (1)

The British Army took over from the French Army in the Somme sector on the Western Front in August 1915. At that time the British line on the Somme Front ran from south of Arras to the Somme river. The British Army fought a major offensive here in the summer of 1916. It was attacked on this front by the German Army in March and April 1918. It remained in this sector until the Allied forces gradually pushed the German Army out of its defensive positions in the heavily fortified Hindenburg Line (Siegfriedstellung) during the Second Battle of the Somme beginning on 21 August 1918.

Battles of the Somme

The Somme Area Map

This is a current map showing the location of the battlefields of the Somme in northern France (Départment de la Somme). The map includes main towns, main roads and motorways, railways, rivers and canals, and the villages featured during the Battles of the Somme 1916.

Map

Towns in the Somme

The famous golden virgin on Albert cathedral. She was hit by shellfire but remained in position until the end of the war. (2)

Bapaume and Albert are the two major towns on the Somme battlefield. Bapaume was occupied by the Second German Army at the end of September 1914 as the German forces attempted to push the French Army in a westerly direction in the so-called 'race to the sea'.

The French Army managed to hold the German Army advance on a line north of the town of Albert. The German Army began to dig in. During the course of the following year this sector of the Western Front became relatively quiet. The Germans gradually established a very strong line of defence incorporating unrivalled vantage points on the high ground, large mined bunkers in the chalky soil, and numerous Somme villages as strong points such as Serre, Beaumont Hamel and Fricourt.

Somme Museums

The battlefields in the Département de la Somme today offer a number of public and private museums or sites of special interest.

Museum index and map

Somme Cemeteries

British military cemetery Cross of Sacrifice

The battlefields of the Somme are the final resting place of many thousands of soldiers who served with the British, French and German Armies during the Great War.

Somme Cemeteries

Somme Memorials

In addition to the cemeteries, several memorials list the names of "The Missing", whose bodies were never found and commemorate those who died and who have no known grave in the Somme.

Somme Memorials

Acknowledgements

Photograph (1): Photo courtesy of the WW1 Image Archive

Photograph (2): Photo courtesy of the WW1 Image Archive