Battle of the Somme Trench at Beaumont-Hamel - vintage version
by Weston Westmoreland
Title
Battle of the Somme Trench at Beaumont-Hamel - vintage version
Artist
Weston Westmoreland
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
Battle of the Somme Trench at Beaumont-Hamel. Vintage version.
Image of the close zig-zagging British first-line trench of the Somme front preserved at the Newfoundland Beaumont Hame Memorial site. Thousands of British soldiers went over the top and fell here on July the 1st, 1916, during the first two hours of the Battle of the Somme. The only Newfounland Battalion would go over the top of the third line trench and never reach the second...
Those are some of the best preserved trench structures from the Western Front and are considered sacred land as many of the young British and Newfoundlander men who died here were never buried elsewhere.
Newfoundland has always been a demanding place to live. Scarcely populated, at the time of the Great War the Newfounlanders were about 200,000 souls. Their biggest city was inhabited by about 5,000 people. Nevertheless they managed to form a battalion and sent it to war. These men were together for two years, friends of old, relatives, neighbors... they belonged to a close-knitted community, and those two years got them even closer.
Their first serious war engagement for them came the first day of the battle of the Somme, on the first of July, 1916. Thirty minutes after the order to go over the top was issued, less than 70 of the over 700 young men that were to fight that day remained alive.
Beaumont-Hamel is where it happened. Five years later, the Newfounlanders gathered money and bought that land to honor their fallen. Today, their symbol, the Caribou, watchers over the place of their sacrifice, in one of the most moving memorials to visit, and one of the best preserved front lines of those terrible times.
You can learn more about what drives me in my blog:
http://inspiringthoughtsandimages.com/
Weston Westmoreland.
Uploaded
September 20th, 2016
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