Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
trenches dug by the British and their French allies (overprinted in blue). In many cases, spe-
cial secret editions were prepared that showed the Allied trenches too.
This example comes from a set of around 30,000 maps brought together for the use of the
researchers tasked with writing the British government's Official History of the Great War.
It is made up of portions of several 1:10,000-scale map sheets trimmed and joined together
to cover the area required - in this instance, part of the département of Somme in northern
France. The resulting collage has also been heavily annotated in coloured pencil and ink, with
an entirely hand-drawn patch glued over part of the right-hand side. These additions show the
distribution of units within the British army's VIII Corps on 1 July 1916, the first day of the
Battle of the Somme. To the south, the 29th Division have Beaumont-Hamel in their sights;
to the north, the 31st Division stand ready to attack Serre; and the 4th Division are poised
between the other two.
None of the ambitious Allied objectives for this attack (marked here as dark blue lines)
were achieved. Despite making some initial gains, the British were forced to retreat as their
opponents successfully defended their position. After 24 hours, the Allies had made no sig-
nificant gains in this area and very few elsewhere on the Somme. Casualties had been excep-
tionally heavy: more than 19,000 British deaths and twice as many injuries. The Newfound-
land Regiment (formed of men from the Dominion of Newfoundland) suffered a casualty rate
of more than 90 per cent. Large numbers of dead and wounded men would continue to be a
feature of the Battle of the Somme throughout its 141 days.
Alongside the cost to human life, the conflict wreaked terrible damage upon the physical
environment. Just as the landscape detail of maps such as this one is obscured by overprinting
and annotations, so was the peacetime world of roads, woods and villages obliterated by the
network of trenches.
The Western Front during the First World War was far from being the first situation where
dugout fieldworks were used in a long military campaign, but it was certainly the most com-
plex and enduring example of trench warfare to date. In the popular imagination, it remains
the archetype of combat by attrition, characterised by achingly slow progress and retreat, and
extended periods of stalemate. For some, it is the ultimate illustration of the futility of war.
