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 V's 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.