Battlefield Tours with Specialist Guides

The Battle of the Somme, which began on a summer’s day – the 1st July 1916 – has become one of the great symbols of sacrifice in WW1. On that first day alone – the Blackest Day in British Military History – more than 57,000 soldiers became casualties: the majority in the first 30 minutes.

Many ‘Pals’ Battalions fought here: men raised from the same community, who all served together. Young men from Accrington, Barnsley, Bradford, Hull and Sheffield fell in the droves at villages like Serre on the first day of the Somme.

But the Somme was a battle of contrasts: terrible losses at the start gave way to new approaches in fighting at battles like Bazentin Ridge on 14th July 1916, to the first use of tanks at Flers-Courcelette on 15th September 1916 and the successful Battle of the Ancre ending the battle between 13th-18th November 1916.

Along with the Somme and Ypres, Arras was one of the key British battlefields of the First World War. Every regiment of the British Army has it as a Battle Honour and there are more than 100 cemeteries in the region.

After the Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line in early 1917, the fighting at Arras began on 9th April 1917 when the Canadians took Vimy Ridge in the north and British troops attacked in the centre, while Australians advanced near Bullecourt some days later. On average more than 4,000 British soldiers became casualties each day at Arras: making it one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Tanks had been first used on the Somme in 1916, but the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917 was the first time a massed tank attack took place, when more than 400 British Mark IV tanks went into battle.

The battle showed what tanks were capable of doing, but there was heavy fighting at places like Bourlon Wood and Welsh Ridge. The Germans counter-attacked at the end of the battle, retaking ground and capturing immobilised tanks, later re-using them against the Allies in 1918.

On 25th April 1915, British and Commonwealth forces landed on the Gallipoli coastline in a bid to reach Constantinople (now Istanbul) and knock the Ottoman Empire, allied to Germany, out of the war.

Australian and New Zealand, so-called ANZAC troops, landed to the north (on a day which for them would become ANZAC Day and remembered every year), and British units landed to the south at Cape Helles. The campaign soon got bogged down like the Western Front, with heavy fighting at Krithia and Lone Pine, and despite landings at Suvla Bay in August 1915, Gallipoli ended in failure and a withdrawal in January 1916.

Following the end of the fighting in Normandy at Falaise, the Allies liberated Paris in August 1944 and advanced across Northern France into Belgium up to the border of the Netherlands.

Operation Market Garden in September 1944 was General Bernard Montgomery’s bold plan to land American and British Airborne forces deep into Holland, and then send ground troops from XXX Corps to advance more than 60 miles up a narrow road to link up with them.

At the far end of the operation the British 1st Airborne Division dropped near to Arnhem and advanced on the city to take the bridge and await the arrival of ground troops. However, few got to the bridge and most fought in the Oosterbeek Perimeter. Arnhem has often been called ‘A Bridge Too Far’ as it ended in the destruction of the British Airborne force in September 1944.

In December 1944, the Nazis launched the last offensive in the West with Operation Wacht Am Rein, the assault in the Ardennes forest in eastern Belgium.

The aim was to break through the American positions in the Ardennes forest close to the Siegfried Line, split the Allied forces and retake Antwerp which was now the main base of supplies for the fighting in Europe. Hugely ambitious, it ended in failure in January 1945 with heavy losses in men and equipment. British troops were also involved, rushed in to help their American buddies.

From 1940 to 1944 most of the European mainland was occupied by the German War Machine and was subjected to Nazi tyranny. This lead to the rise of resistance in places like Belgium and France, but also the wholesale deportation of people during the Holocaust; many sent to death camps in German occupied Poland.

The Holocaust resulted in the death of more than six million civilians, the majority of them Jewish, in what the Nazis called ‘The Final Solution’. Concentration camps were established across Europe with infamous death camps like Auschwitz in German occupied Poland being among the most notorious. Many Jewish Ghettos, such as one in Krakow, were established, and people persecuted in every country in Europe.

Occupied Europe was attacked by the Allies from the air using men from Bomber Command and the American Eight Airforce, and along the coast by Commando and Ranger forces, most notable at Dieppe and in the ‘Greatest Raid of All’ at St Nazaire in March 1942.

Meanwhile the Germans built the Atlantic Wall from Scandinavia right down to the coast of southern France. Huge concrete bunkers and gun sites were mean to keep the Allies out of occupied Europe. Meanwhile at Peenemunde the Germans developed V-weapons such as The Doodlebug and V2 to bombard Britain, with many launch bases built in Northern France.

The Nazis came to power in 1933 and Adolf Hitler proclaimed the start of a ‘Thousand Year Reich’. A dozen years later Nazi Germany was in ruins and millions had died.

Germany under Hitler saw a nation transformed with huge rally sites in places like Nuremberg, autobahns – motorways – across the country, the construction of the Berlin Olympic Stadium for the 1936 Olympics, and bunkers and Flak towers to defend against the Allies.

Starting in the streets of Bavarian towns and cities, the Third Reich ended in carnage among Berlin’s most significant landmarks which had dominated European history for centuries. Hitler committed suicide in a bunker near the Reich Chancellery while the Allies brought the war to the heart of Nazi Germany.