My Old Front Line

Masefield wrote his short but evocative description of the Somme battlefield just months after the fighting there had wound down. It was published in 1917 soon after the Germans had unilaterally withdrawn to the Hindenberg Line. The battlefield was still very fresh when he passed through it; no real effort would have been made to "clean it up". It would have been strewn with the detritus of war, equipment and the as yet unburied remains of men from all sides.

Masefield wrote beautifully and elegantly in prose quite unusual in describing a battlefield. Through his poetic descriptions and imagery the landscapes, the villages and the woods of the Somme battlefields come alive, especially so if the reader has some prior familiarity with the geography of those hallowed and harrowed fields.

I had been visiting the Somme and the Western Front for several years before reading The Old Front Line in July of 2014, just as a period of one-hundred year commemorations was about to begin. Over the next four years, as I attended some of the services, the idea of walking the front line myself slowly germinated. Events, including of course the pandemic, conspired to delay my Old Front Line walk until suddenly, in the autumn of 2022, the opportunity presented itself. It was now or never.

I had initially planned to start my journey at the extreme northern end of the battlefield but circumstances ruled that out; I would have had to leave my car out in a farmers field, perhaps not ideal during the harvest and hunting seasons. Instead I parked at the Gommecourt church and walked the 400 odd metres to the Gommecourt Wood Cemetery. This is a kilometer or so to the south of the northern end of the Somme frontline and is exactly in the middle of no man's land (which I'll hereafter refer to as NML) as things stood on 1 July 1916.

Looking north-east one sees open ground perhaps 300 yards wide with what was german-held Gommecourt wood and the heavily fortified Gommecourt village on the right and over to the left the trees and village of Foncquevillers. It was from there that the 46th (North Midlands) Division men would scale the ladders out of their trenches at 7:30 am and walk (as directed) into the smokescreen towards the waiting German defences. Similar attacks were taking place at that same moment for 20 miles down the line as far as Maricourt, where the British sector bordered the French.

Behind me the 56th division would attack the other side of the Gommecourt Park Wood salient with the hope of meeting up with the 46th thereby pinching off that salient. Some objectives were reached by a few men, but by nightfall these advances were abandoned and those men that could crawled back to the start trenches. Hundreds lay dead in NML, many wounded were trapped and many died there in the coming days. These horrific scenes were being repeated along the Somme front.

Unbeknown to most of the participants here at Gommecourt the attacks by the 46th and 56th divisions were purely diversionary and were not at the time considered to be part of the main Somme offensive. I wonder what the 143 men of the North Midlanders buried in this cemetery would have made of that.

In my efforts to stay as much as possible between the two front lines (ie NML) I opt to wend my way round the northern edge of the Gommecourt Park Wood. This is a big mistake. Although the track from the village starts off all very fine and dandy it soon peters out, as do many farm tracks around these parts. In my frequent explorations by vehicle I have sometimes started up a good road, which turns into a track and eventually a dead end grassy strip with no place to turn, meaning a reversal of sometimes hundreds of meters. But that is not my problem today. The "way" is now brambles, thistle, waist-high stinging-nettle and suchlike. And unusually for the Somme area, there is livestock here and consequently barbed-wire fences to negotiate.

It's an arduous, slow start but never-the-less, once clear of these hindrances I eventually settle into a rhythm of sorts. About 400 meters away off to my right across freshly-harvested fields, on the skyline, I can see a small low bunker. Apart from the cemeteries this is the first physical evidence I encounter that something terrible here once happened.

The bunker was, I believe, built by the French earlier in the war and later used by the British as an observation post when they took over this part of the front. I will visit that another day, it's easily accessible by car, on the Foncquevillers-Hébuterne road.

It is the opening days of the hunting season. As I am not particularly interested in getting shot in the very fields where one of my great uncles was killed in 1918, I have donned what purports to be a hi-viz jacket but in reality is merely a type of brief jerkin carried in the trunk of my car in case of a breakdown. Still, I figure it's better than nothing, and it is very bright.

I soon happen upon some hunters. They are ensconced on the edge of the wood. I might not have seen them but for a cheery "bonjour" when I was not five meters away, giving me a helluva fright. They have settled in behind a small blind made of brown sacking. No doubt there is a small bottle of something quite warming stashed there.

This first day was always going to be hard work, because quite apart from the difficulties of the wood (which on reflection I possibly could have avoided by instead following one the rides through the wood) most of the local roads and tracks cut across my intended route meaning in order to stick within NML and to avoid long zigs and zags I will have to go cross-country. I have studied Google satellite views, IGN maps and trench maps and plotted routes along farm boundary and field lines, which remain pretty much the same until a periodic "remembrement" during which farmers and officials come together to exchange parcels of land based on potential yield, the goal being to re-consolidate land that has become fragmented over the decades, or generations. Following these lines can mean heavy going as they are often rough underfoot with high weed growth and rubble, occasionally even iron harvest - unexploded munitions ploughed up by farmers and stacked at fields edge to be collected by the military. Even though by late September most crops have been harvested and winter crops are not yet sown, I avoid the temptation to walk over smoother, easier going of the open field. Most of the time.

At the Gommecourt Cemetery No. 2 I take a break to patch myself up. The earlier circumnavigation of the Gommecourt wood has left several cuts and wounds.

Just yonder, over the wall to the north of the cemetery and on the old German lines I can see the location of Nameless Farm, or as marked on French military maps Ferme sans nom. This no-name place intrigues me; it must have once had a name. A family had undoubtedly lived there, and farmed there. But at the time of the Somme battle this farm was merely ruins and ideal for defense; the Germans used it as such. Unlike the vast majority of destroyed farms and villages on the Somme battlefields, this farm was not rebuilt after the war, there's nothing there now and so it remains non-existent and .. well.. nameless.

An interesting facet of the front lines in this area is that when the Germans withdrew to their newly-built Hindenburg Line in early 1917 and the violence moved away, the myriad of trenches remained largely untouched and intact, embloomed by a summer of relative peace and hardened by several months of extreme winter cold. When fighting returned here in 1918 the aspect of the battle had changed some 90 degrees. The 1916 trenches were again put into use but this time many of the communication trenches became front line trenches and the old front trenches became communication trenches.

This meant that in 1918 some of the old 1916 trenches were shared by friend and foe alike. Of course blocks were put in to help avoid confusion!

Onwards. Hébuterne is now to the rear. I will return in later days to visit my great uncle Bill who lies in the beautiful Hébuterne Cemetery.

Off in the distance to my left front is Rossignol Wood. The wood and its surroundings were the scene of fierce fighting in 1918. Young Leutnant Ernst von Junger would later write an intense and vivid account of the battle here, his own personal encounter with NZ soldiers and the wood's subsequent and final loss to the New Zealanders in August 1918.

The legendary "King Of No Man's Land" Dick Travis and a few handpicked mates would roam NML around here, raiding the german lines, gathering intelligence, destroying outposts and capturing prisoners for interrogation. On 25th July Sgt Travis, who had already earned a DCM and an MM for exploits earlier in the war, was killed by a shell somewhere in the fields just to the south of Rossignol Wood. He was posthumously awarded a VC. Of some interest here is the small Rossignol Wood British Cemetery which, unusually, contains almost twice as many german graves as british, most of whom were killed in 1918 in the surrounding fields. Seven New Zealanders are also buried here though not Dick Travis; he lies in the Couin British Cemetery, 10 kilometers distance.

But all that was to come in 1918 and I'm not particularly concerned with that on this journey.

I have just skirted a small unnamed copse, walking through long wet grass, when I receive a call from a friend in Australia. He is surprised to learn where I am and is interested in the crops he can see in the far background behind me, which in turn surprises me as I hadn't realized we were doing video. I explain the crops are of maize and some as yet unharvested sugarbeet, a commonly grown crop in these parts.

After following the edge of maize crops up, over and across several fields I join the Hébuterne to Serre road, and head left. Ahead of me is Touvent farm, rebuilt on its new site here after the war; it stands on a kink in the 1916 British front trenches. This is quite a moment for me, having recently read Vera Brittain's memoir "Testament of Youth", considered by many to be one of the most powerful anti-war memoirs of the period.

It was here that Brittain's fiance Lt. Roland Leighton, a budding author and poet, was mortally wounded by a sniper on the night of 22-23 December when he and his platoon crept out into no man's land to repair barbed wire. He died the next day and is buried some 15 km away in the Louvencourt cemetery.

I have seen blood and death, but all has ending, And even Horror is but made to cease; I am sickened with Love that lives only for lending, And all the loathsome pettiness of peace. - from “Ploegsteert,” by Leighton, Roland

My thoughts turn to Brittain; she ended the war as the sole survivor of a close-knit group of five aspiring young friends, which included her brother Edward and Leighton. She herself served from August 1917 until the end of April 1918 as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at No 24 General Hospital, Étaples.

Leighton had written to her in early December 1915, telling her that he had obtained some leave and would be home for Christmas. On the 26th of December, as she waited for him at the Brighton hotel in which her parents were temporarily living, she was called to the phone. She presumed it was Leighton calling to explain his delay, and to say where he was. But sadly, it was a friend with news of his death.

I head off the tarmaced road and south-east along a long straight farm track past the site of the original Touvent Farm and eventually, quite literally, drop over the back wall and into the Railway Hollow Cemetery which lies at the bottom of the Sheffield Memorial Park. Time for some kai and contemplation. It’s very peaceful. A warm September afternoon.

Here, in the hollows and trenches behind copses Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, the Accrington Pals and other Pals Battalions waited nervously for the whistle.

I walk slowly up the hill through the Park, through the trees, past old trenches and cratered ground and regimental memorials. Most of the Pals had not yet experienced battle. I can almost feel their apprehension, their fear.

It's not until I come close to the park entrance that the ground in the front, rising across open fields towards the village of Serre comes into view. And this is where the Pals came into full view of the German machine gunners, dug in on the crest. Nowadays Queens Cemetery is almost exactly halfway between the park entrance and the location of the German front line trenches. I walk up to the cemetery, look back to the park then up the rise in the opposite direction.

On my way out to the Serre road I meet some Englishmen who had parked by the road and are walking into the Park. I tell them that the track is quite good, they could've driven in. They in turn inform me that not anymore, there's been trouble afoot and altercations, to put it mildly, with the local farmer; there's a notice on the CWGC site, Queens Cemetery page, confirming this.

[A few days later I find that the track in from the opposite direction, off the Hébuterne-Serre road and near Touvent Farm has been upgraded and there seems to be no objection from the farmer there.]

Moving on, across the D919 Puisieux-Mailly Maillet road, busy and quite dangerous for walkers at this time of the year, with huge trucks hauling sugarbeet to the sugar refinery. Then uphill on a minor road leading to Beaumont Hamel. This runs along the location of the German front line trenches. On my right a field sloping back down to the main road. Here in January 1917 Wilfred Owen manned a dugout in no man's land. He wrote to his mother, apologizing for not writing for some days..

His experiences there, during which a sentry on duty was blinded, resulted in his harrowing poem "The Sentry".

The dugout was located and subsequently excavated in 2003. There’s nothing to see here now as the field was later returned to its original condition.

The road here on what was known as the Redan Ridge is one of the highest points on the Old Front Line; it affords me magnificent views, particularly to the east. Can that be High Wood I can see, a good ten or twelve kilometers distant? Without binoculars its hard to tell, but the profile looks about right.

Also visible from here are at least seven British cemeteries, including to the east smaller ones like Munich, Waggon Road and Frankfurt and behind me the enormous Serre Road No. 2 cemetery.

I cross over to the tiny Redan Ridge No 3 cemetery and loiter. Geoff Dyer wrote of this place in "The Missing Of The Somme". I well remember his closing paragraph..

I cannot agree more, I have often thought the same although I've never found the words to put it quite so eloquently. Thanks Geoff, it is indeed a beautiful place. Just beyond this cemetery ran a trench named Freddy Street. I lived 15 years in a street named Alfred Schindler strasse, our house became known as FreddyStreet. It too was a beautiful place, it became very important to me, with many great gatherings, and good times. But happy ones, unlike those at this FreddyStreet.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this uncanny coincidence, best not too think about it too much.

I walk down the deeply rutted track past Redan Ridge Cemetery No.1 to the tarmac road, past a Château d'eau amongst trees on my left and after a few hundred meters on to yet another farm track, going by the Redan Ridge Cemetery No. 2 and eventually slipping into the top end of the famed Sunken Lane. Famed because it was here in this lane in the middle of NML, that Geoffrey Malins filmed men of the Lancashire Fusiliers as the clock ticked down to zero hour. These scenes are well known to the modern visitor, including the Polish group I meet here, who are taking photos of themselves posing, as I myself did on an early visit, in the same positions as the Lancashire men more than 100 years earlier.

Malins had had to hurry. He needed to drag his bulky equipment back through the low, narrow access tunnel and be set up on the escarpment that runs at right-angles back into British territory, an area here known as White City, in time to film the Hawthorn Ridge mine exploding.

The result is probably the most famous of all WW1 film footage, a huge mushroom of earth flying hundreds of feet into the air.

Here I end the first day of my Old Front Line. I had not set off early, it was a difficult start, but I am happy with the day. Dougie has just arrived to pick me up.

The next morning I encounter two van loads of gilets orange, all toting shotguns. Seeing my anxious looks they assure me I am safe and I head across the Beaumont Hamel - Auchonvillers road and up the access track to the Hawthorn Crater, all the while checking to confirm that no alarmed pheasant had inserted itself between me and the jackets below.

This walking track has been greatly improved and fenced since I was last here. The crater, really two craters formed from mines blown at different times, has also been fenced and a good track now runs the perimeter. It's eerie here, especially when one is familiar with Malins’ film and aware that hundreds of German soldiers were blown to bits on this spot.

The first mine, the 1st July one, was detonated, controversially, 10 minutes before zero hour giving the survivors and nearby defenders ample time to gather their wits, set up MGs on the rim of the new crater and to directly engage British tommies coming across the slopes from the direction of Auchonvillers, and to bring enfilade fire on the Lancashire Fusiliers coming up over the lip of the Sunken lane. Some of these scenes were caught on camera by Malins ensconced on his vantage point on the escarpment. His footage is believed by historians to be the first ever live film of men falling in battle.

I skirt the crater and head over to the Hawthorn Ridge Cemetery before angling down a tilled slope to the rear (CWGC service) entrance to the Newfoundland Memorial Park.

I am at the head of the infamous and heavily fortified Y Ravine. The tough, experienced German 119th Reserve Regiment had turned the deep Y-shaped ravine into one of the strongest positions on the entire Somme front, with deep well-supplied dugouts and tunnels.

I have been to the park and the ravine many times but have never approached from this angle. I get a very different perspective when looking across the ravine and up the still-cratered slopes of the park past the Danger Tree, a small now fossilized tree that reputedly existed here at the time of the battle, to the British start line. At 9:30 am on 1st July the Newfoundland Regiment charged down these slopes as part of the third wave. They were ordered to advance above ground as the trenches were clogged with the dead and wounded from earlier waves. Most got no further than the Danger Tree. Within a few minutes they had suffered more than 90% losses; only 68 of the 800 men who went over the top answered roll-call.

I'm moving along the grassy track veering away from the ravine. Suddenly I am on another unexpected video call, this time with a friend in New Zealand who has also visited the battlefields a couple of times. We talk as the track swings right and drops down into the wide bottom end of Y-ravine. Here the ravine is clothed in large trees, overhanging and wet from recent rain. I fully expect to lose signal. But reception stays loud and clear. I find this kind of ridiculous; I am on the site of one of the worst tragedies of the Somme offensive, on a video call to the uttermost end of the earth. The families of the Newfoundlanders who died here were not made fully aware of the scale of this national tragedy until weeks after the event.

I bid goodbye to my mate and leave the ravine. Up the steep rise, now great open fields. Potatoes have recently been harvested here. A pair of locals are digging and picking up leftovers, a common activity around here.

The slope is now downwards and long, into the Ancre valley. The road from Albert, and the railway, and the clear winding threads of the Ancre stream, a gang of three, share this wooded valley. They had dissected the old front lines and were at once both friend and foe to the human belligerents.

Over the road, the railway and the river and now to the left. A local is using a chainsaw somewhere in amongst the trees between the road and the river.

In the tiny riverside village of St Pierre Divion, not a soul around, I spot steps leading down to a beautiful quiet pool resplendent with lilies. I was later told there were once carp in this pool, but I see none. Nearby a small wood-framed shelter with a bench against its one wall. A nice place to rest, to rehydrate. Ten minutes only; there's still a long way to go. I am now once more in former German held territory. At the village church I head to my right up a steep farm track, after 1000 yards arriving at the location of the infamous German strong-point, the Schwaben Redoubt, a large and complex array of trenches, tunnels, dugouts and MG posts some 500 meters long. It commanded a wide field of view, from Thiepval Village and its chateau on the left, to the dense Thiepval wood below and to the aforementioned potato fields far over the Ancre valley to the right. Behind me on the German 2nd and 3rd lines were other strong points like Stuff (Feste Staufen) and Goat (Zollern) Redoubts.

Again, there's little to see here now. But I have just spotted something buried in the track which could be of interest. I have nothing with which to dig out. I note its location, maybe I’ll come back another, or maybe not. Over the years I have come across a few artifacts. A British trenching tool, for instance. But perhaps most alarming, in 2017, while walking along a roadside I had absentmindedly kicked at what I thought was a small rock, half-buried and caked in earth. As it lay on the surface I realized it was a live british Mills bomb. I had been told these devices are especially dangerous. And I had just kicked and disturbed its 100 year hibernation.

Looking down the slope towards the Thiepval wood the rear wall of the Mill Road cemetery is just visible. Then a little further to my right the Ulster Tower protrudes from trees commemorating the courageous Ulstermen of the 36th Division who attacked the redoubt. The Tower is a replica of an Ulster landmark, Helen’s Tower, in County Down.

After much fierce hand-to-hand fighting the paddies had some remarkable success, some even reaching the distant Stuff Redoubt. But that success ultimately proved unsustainable. Faced with multiple counter attacks from an enemy determined not to relinquish control of one of his major strong points, the failure of the flanking divisions to take their objectives and some British commanders' timidity, lack of initiative and willingness to exploit the situation, the Irishmen were finally forced to fall back to their original lines. They had incurred great losses, both during the attack and their withdrawal. The division reported 5500 casualties, including 2500 killed, for the 1st and 2nd of July.

Back on sealed road, a small group of English ramblers have just been dropped off. We chat briefly, they're heading the way I have come, over and down to St Pierre Divion. I tell them of the pool. The leader of the group knows it already.

I'm heading now towards Thiepval. A car pulled up beside me, an elderly French couple. They ask the way to Miraumont. I dutifully point the way, tell them 2 or 3 km. They thank me and drive on, following my directions.
[I later figure it's more like 7, but nevermind, the direction is right].

I pass the site where the grand Thiepval Chateau once stood, now a farm, then through the village, and the visitors center without pause. I have been here several times, no need to stop.

I do stop to sit a while within the grounds of the great imposing Thiepval Memorial. The day is now quite gray. There are very few people. I can see three, silhouetted beneath the great arches, pondering, perhaps searching, the massive stone panels bearing the names of more than 72000 men, Missing With No Known Grave.

Moving on up the greasy farm track to the south. To the left of the track was another German strong point, the Wundtwerk, now long disappeared under the plough.

After 1000 yards, an ancient chalk-pit that was used by the Germans as part of yet another Redoubt, the Leipzig. It is now inhabited by a small copse, with the track passing through. One hundred yards on I reach a tee intersection. To the right, ten minutes down the slope is Authuille village, my place of abode. For a fleeting moment I consider heading in for a quick break. No, I have a job to do, instead left, towards Ovillers-la-Boisselle. A group of English motorcyclists come towards me from Ovillers, looking to reach the memorial. They're considering the track I have just walked. Not a great idea, boys, I advise, it's not a way for heavy road bikes, and besides it's interdit. I point out the better way, via Authuille. They will be at the visitors center in less than five minutes.

The Leipzig Redoubt stood on a sharp right angle in the line, a quite prominent salient.

The way to Ovillers-la-Boisselle cuts on a long diagonal from the German trench lines to the British. It's nice easy walking here, gently descending. There's a small valley in front of me, with trees at the base. Over to my right front I glimpse the Great Cross of the Lonsdale cemetery, which is nestling in the lee of Authuille Wood as it was known. The wood here, on my right, narrows to a point jutting out towards the German lines, on my left.. The British called this The Nab. The trenches on the edge of The Nab were barely 150 yards from those of the enemy.

Along the valley floor ran a narrow gauge railway which meandered down through the wood to connect with the main Albert-Arras line near Aveluy. It has long since gone but I can discern from the form of the land where it lay. Like many other such lines around here, it dissected the front lines, presumably both sides would have put their respective sections to good use.

Up and over the hill to the village of Ovillers. This village stood at the head of Mash Valley and together with La Boisselle on the opposite spur, was strongly fortified and garrisoned by the 28th (Baden) Reserve Division. Some 750 yards separated the front lines in Mash Valley, the widest of the entire length of the British front. Across this space men of the 8th division were expected to advance and take their objective, Ovillers, an almost impossible task. Indeed several junior and middle ranking officers protested to senior commanders who merely questioned their moral fiber and told them to go away and do their job.

Two battalions (2 Middlesex and 2 Devonshires) somehow managed to get men into the German lines but were fired on from 3 sides and were forced to retire. A small group hung in for a time but they soon ran out of ammo and they too had to fall back. These two battalions suffered a total of more than 1000 casualties. One of their officers, Lieutenant-colonel Edward Sandys commanding 2nd Battalion Middlesex was wounded and evacuated to the UK. He recovered from his physical wounds but he was severely depressed at the loss of so many of the men who had trusted him. He shot himself in a London hotel room and died 2 days later.

8th Division's Official History records a total of 5,121 casualties on 1st July 1916.

I walk across the head of the valley, my gaze being frequently, magnetically, drawn to my right and the scene of the slaughter, another of many that day. But this one seems particularly senseless. How could the generals have been so utterly stupid? Did no senior commander or staff officer ever actually venture out from their safe places near Albert and over the Usna Hill to check out the lie of the land?

Across the busy Albert - Bapaume highway, built by the Romans, dead straight for nearly 17 kilometers. I pass down through the quiet, almost deserted streets of La Boisselle, check my trench map. Here now the two front lines are only forty yards apart! More or less the present-day frontage of just two houses, numbers 7 and 9 Rue de la 34 Ème Division. Opposite is a 3 hectare patch of shell- and mine-pocked land known to the British as the Glory Hole. This was the scene of horrific battles, both underground and above, first between the French and Germans and later between the British and the Germans. In 2012 archaeologists re-opened some of these tunnels. Historian Peter Barton made a documentary about this for the BBC.

As I move through Sausage Valley towards Bécourt I can see off to my left the rim of the enormous Lochnager mine crater, the largest of them all. Tourists walking the rim stand out against the glooming northern sky. For a fleeting moment I think fancifully of the well-known image of a line of Tommies silhouetted against the sky marching to the front during the 1917 third battle at Ypres.

Intense fighting took place around the new crater rim with attacks and counter attacks, advances and withdrawals. A group of Tyneside Irish were apparently spotted on 1st July in Contalmaison, a small chateau and village about 3 miles to the east. They were never seen again and the matter remains a mystery.

It's easy walking into the pretty little village of Bécourt, but I'm getting tired. It's 5pm Saturday. A fête is getting underway at the Grand Chateau. Sausages are being grilled, wine and beer is flowing. I consider joining in on the bouncy castle but sadly Janice, my lift, has just arrived to deliver me back to my own car at the Sunken Lane.

Next day, Sunday morning in Bécourt. Workers are arriving to clean up after the festivities. Gazebos are coming down. The bar is being dismantled. The bouncy castle is deflating. It seems I am too late for a Sunday morning bounce. Most disappointing.

Beautiful weather. Feeling great. I amble down the hill, past the Norfolk British cemetery, through the underpass below the main Albert - Peronne highway. Then I have no choice but to walk along the highway for 200 meters, hair-raising moments as there's no real shoulder and even on a Sunday there is much speeding traffic. Now up on to a rough stony farm track running along a low ridge. A straggly row of small stunted trees border the track. Down below, about half-a-mile away, lies the village of Fricourt. The village was strongly fortified and the Germans held out here with tenacity for some time. But as the threat of being cut off by regiments of the British 17th division grew they withdrew during the night 1-2 July. On the far side of the village on the road to Contalmaison is one of the largest German cemeteries in France, with some 17,000 burials, about 10,000 being men killed in the Battle of the Somme. A notable early burial here was Manfred von Richthofen AKA the Red Baron. He was later reinterred in Berlin, eventually settling in his home town of Wiesbaden. The grave of one Sebastian Paustian now occupies Manfred’s spot here.

Just beyond the cemetery is a farm which I refer to as Bernards farm. On a visit in 2017, Bernard, the owner, had proudly displayed unexploded shells he had harvested from his fields, insisting my sister pose with them for photographs, which she did, timidly and not long. Nearby a solid concrete building the Germans had constructed to protect a well-head. It was from here a year earlier in September of 2016 that I set out to follow in the footsteps of my great uncle Alf on what would be his one-way overnight trip to the front line at the village of Flers, passing through Happy Valley, Death Valley and past Mametz Wood.

Mametz Wood, in which the Welsh 38th Division sacrificed so many and of which soldier-poet David Jones vividly wrote in the climatic Part VII his monumental masterpiece In Parenthesis..

Now, on my right, is a large field, sloping upwards away from me. In this field the men of the Auckland regiment were camped in September and early October 1916, the New Zealand division's stint on the Somme. I wonder exactly where the Wellington regiment was bivouacked. Uncle Alf and two other great uncles were serving with 2 Wellington.

The track crosses a tarmac road then rises slightly across open farm land for some 500 yards towards a wood named during the war as Bois de Francais, now known as Bois d’Engrement. On the edge of the wood I notice a dilapidated sign indicating a track leading into the trees. Inquisitively I follow this, after a few yards coming upon a small clearing in which lays a large flat tomb with white stone posts at the corners, the two at the head being molded in the shape of 8 inch shells. It seems quite new, or just perhaps well maintained. The granite plaque reads Thomassin, François Henri, soldier 1st class of the 26th Infantry Regiment, killed on September 30, 1914, at Fricourt.

I google his name.. This sector was held by the French until the summer of 1915, when they were relieved by the British. The French had built two cemeteries nearby (Point 110, old and new), in February 1915, it is quite surprising that the tomb of a simple private should remain alone in this wood.

The local hunters nearby in the wood are imagining themselves as American GIs in Vietnam; this is not a nice place to loiter. I bid Henri au revoir and hurry on.

Parts of the wood are quite open. It's fenced and I don't venture in but from the track I can see many craters and old trench lines. This was the French, and from 1915, the British frontline.

Now I take what turns out to be a wrong way and end up tracking across a recently harvested cornfield arriving at the back end of the Devonshire Cemetery. I have been here several times; it is still, for me, the most poignant cemetery of all.

A stone at the entrance is inscribed "The Devonshires Held This Trench. The Devonshires Hold It Still".

As the visitor walks along the two long rows of headstones they will soon notice the dates of death and the regiment of the dead. Indeed, of the 153 burials here, all are Devonshire men and only one was not killed on 1st July 1916. There are 10 unidentified.

In the weeks before the Battle of the Somme Devonshire officer- poet Lieutenant William Hodgson wrote one of the most beautiful of WW1 poems, "Before Action", the final verse being..

I, that on my familiar hill, Saw with uncomprehending eyes A hundred of thy sunsets spill Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice, Ere the sun swings his noonday sword Must say good-bye to all of this;– By all delights that I shall miss Help me to die, O Lord.

Captain Duncan Martin had also been creative. He had made a plasticine model of the area of the Devonshire's front. He had noted the German MG emplacements, especially one placed near a shrine in Mametz Communal Cemetery. Martin realized the difficulty of the task that lay ahead, it would be a slaughter. He, like other junior officers along the front, raised the matter with his superior officers, but to no avail.

Captain Martin and Lieutenant Hodgson are buried close to one another at the far end of the cemetery. Crossing over to the Mametz Communal Cemetery with its shrine still intact and looking back at the Devonshire's positions I cannot help but agree with Captain Martin. It was a practically impossible task.

I elect to pass on through Mametz and head directly towards Montauban rather than double back from the cemetery along a rather overgrown track towards Carnoy. [Later, reflecting on this decision, I regret I had not taken the way to Carnoy before heading north to Montauban. It would've taken me close to the extreme southern end of the British sector, And also it would have been only 700 meters further. I resolve to do that another day, an 8 km loop].

A short break in Mametz. Now that journeys end is in sight I should call Douglas to give him a time and place to meet me.

But my phone battery is flat. I slot in a spare, but the phone still won't kick in. Uh oh, this could be a problem. I can see myself having to walk back to my car, a good 10k by the shortest route, 25 for the day.

But wait, an idea. I take out my slow old steam-driven tablet which I use mainly for French IGN and trench maps. It has an old fashion texting capability and luckily my contacts have synchronised. I send off a text and pray. A minute later a reply - "received and understood".

A huge sigh of relief. On leaving Mametz I soon come to the small Danzig Cemetery on the crest of a slight rise. A british-plated car is parked there but all is quiet and still, there is no one around, not in the cemetery nor around it. They're probably exploring, or like me, just wandering. Or perhaps they’ve walked 600 meters down to the Queens Nullah, a 300 meter-long bank behind which David Jones and his alter-ego John Ball sheltered before going over top in the welsh attack on Mametz Wood on 19th July 1916

"A week or so later, on 22nd July, Major-General Ingouville Williams, known to his men as Inky Bill, was killed by a shell in The Nullah while on a visit to the front.

Instead of walking the tarmac road I veer to the right opposite the cemetery onto a track heading over the brow and into a wide shallow valley. From here I can easily see the Maricourt-Longueval road which was the boundary between British and French armies. Then, in the valley, the long gradual ascent up to Montauban, its church spire just visible, about 2 km distant.

A short pause in the churchyard in Montauban, water and a handful of "studentenfutter". Not far now, about an hour at most.

East of Montauban, a quite new house, in a field. Just that, an isolated unfenced house in a field, no garden, nor lawn, nor even a driveway. I wonder about this, I have seen it several times on this journey and on other visits to these parts. Maybe the occupants do have 5 year plans to do something outside, eventually. Or maybe not.

Now Bernafay Wood and the old railway station, converted into a B&B. Trones Wood comes into view. Trones was the first of the four hotly contested woods on the Somme to fall, in the first week of July. The last, High Wood, would not fall until mid-September.

I notice I'm walking faster now, God knows why, there's plenty of time, what's the hurry. I tell myself to slow, but I take no notice.

A little off to my right, out in the field where two dirt tracks converge, a heap of rubble with an unexploded 5 inch shell and a smaller mortar shell. Unusually I haven't seen a lot of iron harvest on this trip.

Guillemont is now in view, little more than a kilometer distant, the end of "My Old Front Line".

On the left, as on my first day way back at Gommecourt in the middle of what was No Man's Land, another cemetery, the Guillemont British Cemetery. I quickly pop in. Just inside the entrance, in the first row on the left is the grave of Raymond Asquith, 38, a lawyer and eldest son of the British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. No man is exempt. Another 200 meters further on the right is a track, a sunken track. This was part of the German front line facing Trones Wood. Ernst von Junger recounts in Stahlgewitter (Storm of Steel) his and his company's breathless journey in darkness to this trench. He has no clear idea of the situation and the sergeant he is relieving is anxious to begone…

Another few hundred meters and I'm suddenly in Guillemont. I pass Rue Ernst von Junger, with its two old underground bunkers in a private orchard and then I'm at the church. End of my line.

I had intended to finish at the Calypso II bar in Longueval to celebrate but it's Sunday, it's a further 3 km and it's starting to rain. And Longueval wasn't on the frontline on 1 July 1916 anyway.

Postscript. I have wandered several times, alone, in Mametz Wood. Each time I cannot help but recall the final passage of David Jones's great work In Parenthesis. To my mind this, more than any of all the great verse written during and about World War One, speaks to goodness in all men but ultimately to the utter pointlessness of War.

The Queen of the Woods has cut bright boughs of various flowering. These knew her influential eyes. Her awarding hands can pluck for each their fragile prize. She speaks to them according to precedence. She knows what’s due to this elect society. She can choose twelve gentle-men. She knows who is most lord between the high trees and on the open down. Some she gives white berries some she gives brown Emil has a curious crown it’s made of golden saxifrage. Fatty wears sweet-briar, he will reign with her for a thousand years. For Balder she reaches high to fetch his. Ulrich smiles for his myrtle wand. That swine Lillywhite has daisies to his chain—^you’d hardly credit it. She plaits torques of equal splendour for Mr. Jenkins and Billy Grower. Hansel with Gronwy share dog-violets for a palm, where they lie in serious embrace beneath the twisted tripod. Sion gets St. John’s Wort—that’s fair enough. Dai Great-coat, she can’t find him anywhere—she calls both high and low, she had a very special one for him. Among this July noblesse she is mindful of December wood —^when the trees of the forest beat against each other because of him She carries to Aneirin-in-the-nullah a rowan sprig, for the glory of Guenedota. You couldn’t hear what she said to him, because she was careful for the Disciplines of the Wars.