Six stands in one day: walking the Somme battlefield

Stand 6: Newfoundland Memorial, Guedecourt - July 1 1916

New Zealand Memorial, Guedecourt - map of the battleground at the time of the Somme

• Very nearly the limit of the advance in this sector. The Caribou here commemorates the Newfoundland Battalion, which had suffered more losses in its attack on Beaumont Hamel on 1 July than any other battalion, and was still fighting here at the battle's end, capturing a nearby trench on 12 October.
• The scene of the last burst of fighting on the Somme, officially the Battle of Transloy Ridges, 7-20 October.
• By this time the weather had broken. There was a sea of mud behind the British trenches. It took at least four men to carry a stretcher back, and there was no wheeled transport for 3,500 yards until a light railway track at Longueval. Frost bite and trench foot were running at about 1000 cases per week by the autumn.
• A great tract of ground to the east was given up by the Germans in early 1917 when they fell back to the Hindenburg Line.