The Somme Battlefields of WW1, France
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 SommeThe 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.
MapTowns in the Somme
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 mapSomme Cemeteries
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 CemeteriesSomme 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 MemorialsFurther Information
The Battle of the Somme
Total Running Time: 74 minutes (approx.)
A pioneering battlefield documentary that was seen by huge audiences in the UK when it was released in August 1916, barely a month after the events it depicted. The film inaugurated a debate about the on-screen depiction of combat that continues to this day, and is the origin of some of the most widely used and iconic moving images of the First World War. This remarkable film, digitally restored by the Imperial War Museum’s Film and Video Archive and Dragon Digital Intermediate is a startling improvement on previously released video versions.
This Carnival of Hell
Edited by Richard A. Baumgartner
The Somme, 1916 — one of the biggest, longest and most terrifying battles ever fought. For a million or more German soldiers the toll was immense. At least 200,000 of them perished in this small region of France between July and November 1916. Only a few previously published works have focused attention on the German side of the Somme battle. This book, featuring first-person narratives from more than 85 participants and dozens of rare photographs, provides a compelling picture of what it was like for the German soldier at the apex of combat on the Western Front.
Acknowledgements
Photograph (1): Photo courtesy of the WW1 Image Archive
Photograph (2): Photo courtesy of the WW1 Image Archive