France 1916: The Battle of the Somme

Pozières, First Australian Division Memorial

Scene of the first operation – The First Australian Division Memorial

The First Australian Division Memorial at the western end of the village of Pozières as seen from the main road. The Notre Dame de Bon Secours (Our Lady of Good Comfort) shrine is on the left. [DVA]

Australian street sign, Pozières [DVA]

In Pozières there is a street named after an Australian military formation. At the western end of the village, just off the main road (the D929), stands a shrine to Notre Dame de Bon Secours (Our Lady of Good Comfort) leading into ‘First Australian Division Street’. At the corner of that street and the Rue de L'Eglise, in its own grassed space, is the First Australian Division Memorial. The view from the memorial stretches northwards across the fields to where the tip of the great British memorial to the ‘missing’ of the battles of the Somme at Thiepval appears above the trees. To the west, the view stretches back over the countryside towards Albert.

The First Division Memorial, Pozières. The top of the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme can be seen above the trees in the distance. [DVA]

Plaque, First Division Memorial, Pozières [DVA]

Pozières British Cemetery. [DVA]

A large walled structure about a kilometre along that road is the Pozières British Cemetery. It was to that cemetery that the soldiers of the First Division came on 8 July 1917 to gather for a commemorative ceremony around a large wooden cross. The cross had been erected in memory of those men of the division who had lost their lives in the battles around Pozières between July and September 1916. In those actions the division estimated that it had taken 7,700 casualties of whom 5,285 (68 percent), had been killed or wounded on just four days: 23–26 July 1916.

Pozières British Cemetery. [DVA]

After the war the First Division built its official divisional memorial, an obelisk, here at the western end of Pozières. On its eastern face a bronze plaque lists the division’s official battle honours and first among them is ‘Pozières’. Why Pozières? A divisional document explains:

As the scene of the first operation on a large scale undertaken by the 1st Division in France, because of its strategical importance in the Battle of the Somme, 1916, and on account of the intensity of the fighting and gallantry shown by both sides in its capture and retention, Pozières so impressed itself on the minds of the members of the 1st Australian Division that its selection as the site of the memorial to be erected to the fallen of the Division was unanimously endorsed.

‘1st Australian Division Memorial’, 623/4, AWM 27

First Division Memorial

Bataille de la Somme, Pozières, Paul Mansard. [Hand–coloured etching, aquatint on paper AWM ART12265] This French etching was presented to the Australian War Memorial by Sister Constance Stone of the Australian Army Nursing Service who had served in France in World War I. It shows the church in Pozières.

The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme can be seen across the fields in the distance to the right of the First Divison Memorial, Pozières. [DVA]