A British aerial photograph of the village of Pozieres taken on 23 June 1916 before the British ...

A British aerial photograph of the village of Pozieres taken on 23 June 1916 before the British attack and the subsequent artillery bombardment by both sides during the bitterly contested attacks and counter-attacks of the First Battle of the Somme. The British attack commenced on 1 July and was halted by the British High Command on 14 November 1916. The German Army occupied the area on the right of the photograph and the O.G. (old German) trench lines can be seen starting on the top of the image running across the landscape to the bottom right hand corner. The regular white splashes in the O.G. Line indicate deeper excavations into the chalk substrata common in this area of France. Referring to the action of the 1st, 2nd and 4th Divisions on Pozieres Ridge, Charles Bean wrote in Anzac to Amiens (p264); “On that crowded mile of summit the three Australian divisions engaged lost 23,000 officers and men in less than seven weeks. The Windmill site, bought later by the Australian War Memorial Board-with the old mound still there-marks a ridge more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth.” Of the 23,000 causalities it is estimated that approximately one third were killed or missing. An aerial photograph of the village taken on 7 August 1916 is held as J00268. Both photographs, along with a key to British and German positions at the start of the battle, were published in the Photographic Record of the War, Volume 12 of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18. See plates 203 to 205.