*VIRTUAL TOUR - The Somme 1 Continued*

THE SOMME BATTLEFIELD

The Battlefield extended over the Picardy plateau, North and South of the Somme river. Before the War, the region was rich and fertile, the chalky ground had a covering of loose soil of variable thickness. The slopes of the undulating hills and the broad tablelands were covered with endless fields of corn, sugar beet, and other crops. Here and there were small woods, which were traces of the Arrouaise Forest, which covered the whole Country in the Middle-Ages. There were scarcely any isolated houses, but occasionally a windmill, farm, or sugar refinery would break the monotony of the landscape. On the plateau, the villages were surrounded by orchards, and their low, red-tiled houses were generally grouped around the local church. Wide, straight roads bordered with fine looking elms crossed the landscape.

The War robbed the district of its former characteristics; the ground, which was reduced to a state of complete upheaval, was almost levelled in places, while the huge mine craters and remnants of Artillery shells which pot marked the area, gave it the appearance of a lunar landscape. The ground was churned up so deeply that the upper covering of soil had almost entirely disappeared and the limestone bedrock, which was laid bare, was overrun with thick course vegetation. From Thiepval to Albert, Combles to Péronne, and from Chaulnes to Roye, the ground was so completely decimated; it rendered it useless for agriculture for many years. Nearly all of the villages were razed to the ground, and formed many huge heaps of debris all over the landscape; this Battlefield was a striking example of the total destruction wrought by the Great War.

North of the Somme, the Battle zone, bounded by the rivers Ancre, Somme and Tortille, the latter doubled by the Northern Canal, formed a strongly undulating plateau, which descended in a series of hillocks, separated by deep depressions to the valleys of the rivers. The higher parts of the plateau formed a ridge, one of whose tapering extremities rests on the Thiepval Heights, on the bank of the river Ancre. Running West to East, the ridge crosses the Albert-Bapaume road at Pozières, passes Foureaux Wood, then North of Ginchy. It is the watershed which divides the rivers flowing Northwards to the Escaut and Southwards to the Somme.

The second line of German positions were established on this ridge, while the first line extended along the undulating slopes which descended towards the Allies' positions. These positions took in the villages and small woods of the region, all of which, fortified during the previous two years, bristled with defence-works and machine-guns. Some of the villages, Courcelette, Martinpuich, Longueval, Guillemont. and Combles, hidden away in hollows, were particularly deadly for the Allies; the Defenders were able to snipe their assailants as their silhouettes appeared on the hilltops. The Allies had to encircle these centres of resistance before they were able to take them.

South of the Somme, the theatre of Battle, bounded by the large circular bend of the Somme at Péronne, formed a kind of arena. The vast, flat table lands of the Santerre district, separated by small valleys, descend gently towards the large marshy valley of the Somme, through which the canal runs parallel with the river. The Germans were forced to establish their positions close behind one another due to the narrowness of this zone, and were, therefore, in danger of being taken in a single assault. On the other hand, the Allies’ rapid advance was hampered, then held by the marshy valley, which prevented them from following up their brilliant initial success. During the Battle, the Germans, driven from their first positions, hastily prepared new ones and clung desperately to the counter-slopes of the hills which descend to the valleys.