100th Anniversary of the end of World War One - a thought provoking image.

[4mastacker]

I came across the following, very thought provoking image on another site. It's not my image so I hope the owner doesn't mind me posting it here at this particular moment.

It's a body density map of the Somme battlefield which was drawn up in 1919.

The blue numbers record the number of bodies that were recovered in each 250 x 250 metre square.

It brings home the horrifying cost and sheer waste of life that conflict brought about.

somme map.jpg (243.6 KiB) Viewed 3693 times

Lest we forget.

[CremeEgg]

Thanks for this sobering map. Brings back memories of cycling round the battlefields trying to track down my great uncle - sadly only found on the huge memorial at West Berks Extn at Thiepval. The whole area quite stunning and very very moving. The poppies at the Tower of London brought it all back to me - so many people in stunned silence in the middle of a busy city. Perhaps the best book I've read is Somme Mud by EPF Lynch - a very different antipodian take on the war. The reality of digging trenches through, over and under previous trenches and coming across huge numbers of bodies. Many thanks 4mastacker - I've since googled "body density maps somme" and come across some great reading for the next few weeks.

[Woody]

From the artist that produced the Poppy displays

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-460862 ... ce-tribute

[Undried Plum]

Square S11A, to the NorthEast of Longueville, is particularly shocking.

That is a corpse every ten yards in every direction, over an area of 500 yards by 500 yards. That's just the dead casualties. You can treble the number of dead to estimate the number of casualties. That's a casualty every three or four yards.

The scale of the carnage of the Somme is extremely difficult to comprehend.

[G-CPTN]

I watched the Peter Jackson film last night, which I found informative and a little shocking.
I suspect that the content was sanitised to permit general viewing.