The Somme Battlefields - A Comprehensive Guide from Crécy to the Two World Wars
In the Somme département of France, writes Martin Middlebrook, 'nearly half a million human beings were killed or died of wounds, gassing, illness or privation in two world wars'. Even more than the French or the Germans, it was the forces of the British Empire who bore the brunt of the battles on the Somme.
In this evocative, original book, the author of the classic First Day on the Somme provides a definitive guide to the cemeteries, memorials and battlefields from the age of Crécy and Agincourt to the great Allied sweep which drove the Germans back in 1944. Brief chapters consider the routes from the Channel ports, the western Somme and the towns of Amiens and Doullens, but the bulk of the text covers the scenes of ferocious fighting in 1916 and 1918. Soldiers were buried by comrades where they fell, just behind the lines, in local French graveyards, around medical stations and in 'concentration cemeteries' constructed after the war. Martin and Mary Middlebrook list each site and set them in historical context. The result is both a traveller's companion and a poignant work of commemoration.