THE SOMME BATTLEFIELDS: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE FROM CRECY TO THE TWO WORLD WARS.

London: Viking, 1991. 385 pp, large 8vo (9 1/2" H). Map endpapers. B&w photographs, maps/battle plans. "The French department of the Somme has seen many battles. The Romans were there. In 1066 William the Conquerer set out from a port on the Somme coast to invade England. The French and British fought at Crecy in 1346, and Henry V's army marched through the area on its way to Agincourt in 1415. The Prussians came in 1870. The two World Wars swept back and forth across the Somme. In the First World War the Somme was particularly tragic for the British. There were three great battles, and it was always the men of the British Empire who were most closely involved and suffered the greatest losses. Approximately half of the 400,000 soldiers who died on the Somme in 1914-18 were British. There are 242 British cemeteries, and the bodies of 50,000 British soldiers who were never found still lie under the Somme fields. (This book) sets out to describe every place on the Somme where there is a military cemetery, a memorial, a preserved trench, a crater or other reminder of battle, a chateau in which a general had his headquarters, not just from the First World War but from the earliest trace of old battles until the day in 1944 when Allied forces advancing from Normandy swept the Germans out of the Somme. Martin Middlebrook has combined the experience of twenty years of writing military history in writing the text. Mary has been mainly responsible for the photographs, diagrams and the thirty maps that will help the visitor to find more than 500 places on the Somme and on the routes from the Channel ports and the Channel Tunnel. The result is an original, detailed work with an unrivalled sureness of touch. It is a history book as well as a guide because each section is introduced with its background; it is 'history on the ground'." Large gift inscription on verso of front free endpaper, minor wrinkling at top of spine, two very small creases at top corner of pages 181/182, bump at bottom corner of rear board. Dust jacket has been price-clipped, has wrinkling at top/bottom of spine and flap-folds, cellotaped small tear at bottom of spine, tiny tear with crease on rear panel, shallow dint on spine and front hinge, very light rubbing.. Hard Cover. Very Good-/Good+.