*VIRTUAL TOUR - The Somme Offensive Continued*

COMMONWEALTH WAR CEMETERY POZIÈRES


The village of Pozières was attacked on the 23rd July 1916, by the 1st Australian and 48th (South Midland) Divisions, it was taken on the following day. However, it was lost on the 24th to 25th March 1918, during the German Army’s large-scale Offensive, code named Operation Michael, and recaptured by the 17th Division on the 24th August 1918.


The Pozières Military Cemetery plot II contains the original burials of 1916, 1917 and 1918, carried out by fighting Units and Field Ambulances. The remaining plots were made after the Armistice when graves were brought in from the Battlefields immediately surrounding the Cemetery, the majority of them of Soldiers who died in the Autumn of 1916, but a few represent the fighting in August 1918. There are now 2,760 Commonwealth Servicemen buried or commemorated in this Cemetery. 1,382 of the burials are unidentified, but there are special Memorials to 23 casualties known, or believed to be buried among them; there is also a solitary German Soldier buried here too. The Cemetery is enclosed by the Pozières Memorial which is mounted on the perimeter wall, which relates to the period of crisis in March and April 1918, when the Allied Fifth Army was driven back, by overwhelming numbers, across the former Somme Battlefields, and the months that followed before the Advance to Victory, which began on the 8th August 1918.

The Memorial commemorates over 14,000 casualties of the United Kingdom, and 300 of the Commonwealth South African Forces, who have no known grave and who died in France during the Fifth Army area retreat on the Somme from the 21st March to the 7th August 1918. The Corps and Regiments most largely represented are The Rifle Brigade with over 600 names, The Durham Light Infantry with approximately 600 names, the Machine Gun Corps with over 500 names, The Manchester Regiment with approximately 500 names, and The Royal Horse and Royal Field Artillery with over 400 names. 




Directions
You should continue your tour by following your SatNav back to your hotel. However, should you prefer not to use modern technology, follow our route from the Cemetery towards Albert on the Route d’Albert (D929). Continue on the D929, around Albert, and on towards Amiens. When you arrive at Amiens, follow the reverse of your outward journey, back to your hotel.

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