Visit to the Somme

The D163 is a quiet rural road in eastern France that runs from the village of Auchonvillers east towards the small town of Beaumont-Hamel. This is farm country, in a ‘department’ (shire) named after the river Somme which flows nearby. Tranquil and bucolic, the region’s many ridgelines are marked with huge wind-turbines, a recent addition to the scenery. Scattered all over are compounds with low stone walls each surmounted by a cross bearing a sword. These are the cemeteries that dot the landscape in this part of France, a mute reminder of the immense death toll that was extracted here between 1915 and 1918 when the…