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The Somme

The Ypres Salient

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Remembering

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British Cemeteries and Memorials

"Behind that long and lonely trenched line
To which men come and go, where brave men die,
There is a yet unmarked and unknown shrine,
A broken plot, a soldier’s cemetery..."

These words were written by John William Streets in the poem A Soldier's Cemetery. John Streets went over the top on 1 July 1916 at the start of the Battle of the Somme. He was killed during the day and his body was missing for 10 months.

The battlefields of the Somme today contain many thousands of individual graves and several memorials to the missing soldiers who have no known grave. The land on which the British cemeteries and official memorials are situated was given by the French government for those soldiers buried or named there to remain in perpetuity. Some cemeteries contain a small number of graves of soldiers buried where they fell in action. Others are large so-called 'collecting' cemeteries, where the remains of identified and unknown soldiers have been brought together from smaller cemeteries or individual plots.

• Thiepval Memorial to the Missing

French Cemeteries

There are ten French military cemeteries on the old battlefields of the Somme.

• Cimetière de Serre-Hébuterne

German Cemeteries

• Fricourt

Upkeep of Somme Battlefield War Graves

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

War Grave Agencies

Copyright Joanna Legg & Graham Parker © 2004 All rights reserved