The Somme, Volume 1. The First Battle of the Somme (1916-1917) (Albert, Bapaume, Péronne) — Inside the Classic

A Guidebook's Dual Purpose

The text serves two functions simultaneously. It recounts the 1916 offensive with a clarity that suggests official sources, noting that the Allies aimed to 'regain the initiative' and 'immobilise the largest possible number of German divisions.' Yet it also functions as a practical itinerary, advising motorists to bring a 'luncheon basket and petrol' from Amiens. This duality—strategic narrative alongside travel logistics—shapes every page. The guide's language is precise about distances and road conditions, but also about the human cost: villages are described as 'completely destroyed,' with only 'fragments of walls and half-burnt beams' remaining.

The Landscape as Witness

Terrain is rendered in exacting detail. The Somme's 'high chalky cliffs,' its 'marshes and peat-bog,' and the 'large bend in the river' near Frise are not mere scenery but tactical elements. The guide explains that Frise's position on an isthmus 'made it very difficult to defend the village.' Such observations tie geography directly to military outcomes. The repeated mention of 'poplar-trees' and 'canal' creates a consistent visual frame, while the condition of buildings—a church with 'four watch-towers,' two destroyed—offers a measurable record of destruction. The landscape is never static; it is a battlefield first, a tourist site second.

Objects Left Behind

The guide pauses over material remnants. In one village, German forces left behind 'three bells, a quantity of metallic objects, chandeliers, candlesticks, crucifixes, and six greatly damaged ecclesiastical ornaments.' This inventory, drawn from a German notice, reads like an archaeological list. Elsewhere, the guide notes that 'the large modern church has disappeared, the tottering ruins having been pulled down.' Such details ground the narrative in physical evidence. The guide does not moralize; it records. The effect is cumulative: readers encounter a landscape littered with the debris of war, catalogued with the same neutrality as hotel addresses.

Voice and Omission

The authorial voice is impersonal, yet choices of inclusion reveal priorities. The guide names General Foch and describes the 'brilliant attack' that retook Frise, but it offers no soldier's testimony or civilian account. The dead appear only in the dedication 'to the Michelin workmen and employees who died gloriously for their country' and in the mention of 'Franco-British cemetery' and 'French military cemetery.' The living are reduced to 'inhabitants who have returned and are being housed in huts.' This restraint is a deliberate authorial stance: the guide documents what can be seen and verified, not what can be felt. The result is a text that trusts the reader to infer the horror from the ruins.

Readers should approach this guide as a period artifact, not a comprehensive history. Its value lies in what it chooses to show—roads, canals, church towers—and what it leaves unspoken. The juxtaposition of hotel listings with descriptions of obliterated villages creates a dissonance that is itself instructive. For those interested in how contemporaries processed the war's material aftermath, this volume offers a unique, unadorned record.

Reading these precise descriptions of the Somme’s ruined villages, I remembered standing on a grassy ridge at Thiepval myself, trying to match the guide’s words to the quiet fields. It felt like piecing together a ghost story. Years ago, the poetic ruin-reports in The Bombardment of Reims — Background and Themes gave me that same ache—landscape as a scarred, living witness, not just a place. That particular melancholy stays with me.