Somme winter

The scene shown in this diorama is near a sunken road, “Fritz’s Folly”, mainly held by the Germans and taken and lost in some of the most difficult fighting of the war. It illustrates the appalling conditions in which both sides lived and fought on the Somme during the dreadful winter of 1916-17. The constant bombardments of the summer and autumn had pulverised the soil and the abnormal rainfalls which ushered in the winter reduced it to mud, almost impassable until duckboard tracks were eventually laid. The scene in this trench is typical. It shows a man carrying a duckboard to floor the trench, the arrival of rations, a man taking precautions against trench feet, a Lewis gun post, sentries standing-to, and a derelict tank bogged in the mud. The diorama re-creates the general air of exhaustion and depression that permeated life in this environment. Louis McCubbin painted the original figures, background and modelling. Figures were cast into metal in 1931. The background was repainted by George Browning in 1968 and retouched by Don Evans in 1990-91.