This new edition of Paul Reed's classic book Walking the Somme is an essential traveling companion for anyone visiting the Somme battlefields of 1916. His book, first published over ten years ago, is the result of a lifetime's research into the battle and the landscape over which it was fought. From Gommecourt, Serre, Beaumont-Hamel and Thiepval to Montauban, High Wood, Delville Wood and Flers, he guides the walker across the major sites associated with the fighting. These are now features of the peaceful Somme countryside. In total there are 16 walks, including a new one tracing the operations around Mametz Wood, and all the original walks have been fully revised and brought up to date. Walking the Somme brings the visitor not only to the places where the armies clashed but to the landscape of monuments, cemeteries and villages that make the Somme battlefield so moving to explore.

A history of the British Army’s experience at the Battle of the Somme in France during World War I. After an immense but useless bombardment, at 7:30 AM on July 1, 1916, the British Army went over the top and attacked the German trenches. It was the first day of the battle of the Somme, and on that day, the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, two for every yard of their front. With more than fifty times the daily losses at El Alamein and fifteen times the British casualties on D-day, July 1, 1916, was the blackest day in the history of the British Army. But, more than that, as Lloyd George recognized, it was a watershed in the history of the First World War. The Army that attacked on that day was the volunteer Army that had answered Kitchener’s call. It had gone into action confident of a decisive victory. But by sunset on the first day on the Somme, no one could any longer think of a war that might be won. Martin Middlebrook’s research has covered not just official and regimental histories and tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality that it was for front-line soldiers. Praise for The First Day on the Somme “The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words.” —The Guardian (UK)

While best known as being the scene of the most terrible carnage in the WW1 the French department of the Somme has seen many other battles from Roman times to 1944. William the Conqueror launched his invasion from there; the French and English fought at Crecy in 1346; Henry Vs army marched through on their way to Agincourt in 1415; the Prussians came in 1870.The Great War saw three great battles and approximately half of the 400,000 who died on the Somme were British a terrible harvest, marked by 242 British cemeteries and over 50,000 lie in unmarked graves. These statistics explain in part why the area is visited year-on-year by ever increasing numbers of British and Commonwealth citizens. This evocative book written by the authors of the iconic First Day on the Somme is a thorough guide to the cemeteries, memorials and battlefields of the area, with the emphasis on the fighting of 1916 and 1918, with fascinating descriptions and anecdotes.

The Missing of the Somme is part travelogue, part meditation on remembrance—and completely, unabashedly, unlike any other book about the First World War. Through visits to battlefields and memorials, Geoff Dyer examines the way that photographs and film, poetry and prose determined—sometimes in advance of the events described—the way we would think about and remember the war. With his characteristic originality and insight, Dyer untangles and reconstructs the network of myth and memory that illuminates our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.

'He looked up at the sky, crystal blue and cloudless ... he closed his eyes, put the whistle to his lips and blew.' The first of July 1916 and in the French countryside tens of thousands of doomed British soldiers are being killed and wounded as the bloody Battle of the Somme begins. Captain Edward Harris, vainly encouraging his men over the top and headlong into the murderous German machine guns, is badly wounded. Crawling to a shell hole for cover, he lies helpless as the carnage continues around him. October 2015 and Tom Harris has no interest in the First World War. For him it's a conflict from another age. But during a visit to the battlefields he becomes fascinated by a headstone in a British war cemetery showing his namesake. Desperate to learn more Tom begins to delve into the past where he discovers ordinary men consumed by extraordinary times. And in doing so he unearths a remarkable and moving story of loss, despair, hope and redemption.

The Battle of the Somme is one of the most famous, and earliest, films of war ever made. The film records the most disastrous day in the history of the British army—1 July 1916—and it had a huge impact when it was shown in Britain during the war. Since then images from it have been repeated so often in books and documentaries that it has profoundly influenced our view of the battle and of the Great War itself. Yet this book is the first in-depth study of this historic film, and it is the first to relate it to the surviving battleground of the Somme.The authors explore the film and its history in fascinating detail. They investigate how much of it was faked and consider how much credit for it should go to Geoffrey Malins and how much to John MacDowell. And they use modern photographs of the locations to give us a telling insight into the landscape of the battle and into the way in which this pioneering film was created.Their analysis of scenes in the film tells us so much about the way the British army operated in June and July 1916—how the troops were dressed and equipped, how they were armed and how their weapons were used. In some cases it is even possible to discover what they were saying. This painstaking exercise in historical reconstruction will be compelling reading for everyone who is interested in the Great War and the Battle of the Somme.

A visit to the battlefield of Verdun is usually dominated by the forts of Douamont and Vaux, the museum at Fleury and the striking, huge Ossuary. Although this gives a flavor of the horrific fighting that took place in the area, particularly in 1916, the visitor will be hard pressed to get much more than an impression from such places. This book seeks to guide the battlefield pilgrim into parts of the battlefield that get rarely visited by means of a series of walks, a number of which include the major sites. The four tours have been carefully walked. All are practicable for a reasonably healthy adult; the tours vary in length, most taking a half day to complete and the longest (the last) a day. In a twist to the usual walks to be found in the Battleground series, Christina makes full use of the numerous field graves and isolated memorials that are to be found on the Verdun battlefield, a number of which will bring visitors to the most visited sites. In the course of these walks many physical remnants will be found, such as gun positions, bunkers and trench systems, the significance of which is fully explained. The walks have not been chosen at random; by following these the tourer will get a far greater understanding of why the fighting at Verdun developed as it did and why such places as Fort Vaux were so significant to both sides. The field graves and memorials to the combatants, very often of individuals, provide an opportunity to give their story and the unit action in which they were fighting when they were killed. Verdun is a battlefield where the story of units and individuals can easily become lost in the horror of the incessant fighting that raged over ten months; and over ground which is extremely difficult to read because of the post war forestation program. Profusely illustrated and with excellent mapping, a hallmark of Christina Holstein's books, a visitor who follows the walks in this book will be left with a far clearer idea of the men who fought and died here and of the features of the battlefield and their significance in this battle that so challenged the endurance of the armies of two nations.