Location 18 – The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing

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Directions - Return to the D151 and continue towards Thiepval. On the river heights to the right was the Schwaben Redoubt, the German defensive position reached by the 36th (Ulster) Division on the 1st July. Proceed to the crossroads, then straight across following the signs to the Memorial to the Missing. Park in the new car park next to the recently opened Visitor Centre.

Practical Information – Along with Newfoundland Memorial Park and Lochnagar Crater at La Boisselle, this is one of the most visited locations on the Somme battlefield. As such substantial numbers of visitors come here, particularly during high summer and it is, therefore, best to visit towards the end of the day when crowds are dwindling.

Historical Notes – Thiepval was the fulcrum of the German defences on the 1st July and was to remain a breakwater to the further ambitions of the British well into September. Deep dugouts and a complex network of well-sited trenches on higher ground crushed the attack of the 32nd Division towards the village on the first day and, despite much elan and gallantry, arrested the incredible advance of the 36th (Ulster) Division into the Schwaben Redoubt. Only when Thiepval had been effectively outflanked to the east and some of the outlying redoubts such as Leipzig and the "Wonder Werk" reduced, was another concerted attempt made on the main village and the Schwaben and Stuff Redoubts beyond. The eventual capture of Thiepval by the 18th (Eastern) Division on 26th September is recounted in more detail in the Brief History and it is their memorial which crowns the top of the ridge in the shadow of its enormous neighbour.

The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and built between 1928 and 1932 on the ridge that so many died to capture. It is, quite simply, the largest memorial to Great Britain's missing anywhere in the world. Etched into the portland stone on its great brick columns are recorded the names of 72,194 men who were killed in the Somme region up to 20th March 1918 and have no known graves. Ninety per cent of these went missing during the events we have covered in this guide – the Battle of the Somme from 1st July to November 1916. South Africa's missing are also included on this memorial, whilst those of Australia, Canada and New Zealand are recorded on their own memorials - Villers-Bretonneux, Vimy Ridge and Longueval.

That tens of thousands of individuals could be lost in this seemingly benign region of northern France is incomprehensible to our modern sensibilities. Some were, of course, practically consumed by shellfire leaving behind insufficient matter to bury. Many more, their original resting places obliterated by the guns and their remains re-discovered by post-battle burial parties, lie in the myriad graves "Known Unto God" which are such an integral part of the "silent cities" as Rudyard Kipling coined them. Others lie out there still, in a corner of a foreign field...

Speaking personally, however, the red brickwork, with its elegant arches, decorated with stone wreaths carrying the names of struggles passing into history, "Delville Wood", "Guillemont", "La Boisselle", "Mametz"…and shrouded in the names of the fallen, conjures up another powerful image. It is not the familiar one of the First World War – waste, futility and horror, but an altogether more modest, more intimate image. The military historian, Richard Holmes, best encapsulated it when he said of the Thiepval Memorial, "It harks to a lost world, of brass bands and cricket pitches, pit-head cottages and broad acres."

One of the names on the memorial is that of Lt George Butterworth MC of the 13th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry. Described by many contemporaries as the most promising composer of his generation, he was killed on 4th August 1916, buried by his men and his grave lost in the fighting that followed. His works evoke the peaceful tranquillity of the English pastoral landscape, and perhaps, more than any others, capture the essence of that lost world – before the war changed it forever.