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updated: May 28, 2003
THIEPVAL MEMORIAL
Thiepval Memorial
As a Battle Memorial, it witnesses to the Anglo-French offensive on the Somme in 1916. As a Memorial to the dead, it covers the period from July, 1915, when the British Third Army was formed to take over the Somme front from the French, to the 20th March, 1918, the eve of the German offensive on the Somme; and it covers the area taken over by the Third Army, and held subsequently by the Third, Fourth and Fifth Armies. The period began and ended, on the Somme and the Ancre, in unusual calm; its days of active movement and heavy casualties lasted from the 1st July, 1916, to the end of March, 1917.