Conclusion!
Yet more images those battlefields of the Great War:
"The Fading Battlefields of World War I"
Thanks to the Atlantic and the photo-essay by Alan Taylo.
"This year will mark the passing of a full century since the end of World War I—a hundred years since the 'War to End All Wars.' In that time, much of the battle-ravaged landscape along the Western Front has been reclaimed by nature or returned to farmland, and the scars of the war are disappearing. Some zones remain toxic a century later, and others are still littered with unexploded ordnance, closed off to the public. But across France and Belgium, significant battlefields and ruins were preserved as monuments, and farm fields that became battlegrounds ended up as vast cemeteries. In these places, the visible physical damage to the landscape remains as evidence of the phenomenal violence and destruction that took so many lives so long ago."
The Atlantic photo-essay many captions mentioning the Newfoundland Regiment. Canadian army unit of the Great War their ordeal during the Battle of the Somme [1916] the details of which are most horrific.
As related in the wiki entry and thanks to same:
"Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Lovell Hadow, the battalion [1st] commander, decided to move immediately into attack formation and advance across the surface, which involved first navigating through the British barbed wire defences. As they breasted the skyline behind the British first line, they were effectively the only troops moving on the battlefield and clearly visible to the German defenders. Subjected to the full force of the [German] 119th (Reserve) Infantry Regiment, most of the Newfoundland Regiment who had started forward were dead, dying or wounded within 15 to 20 minutes . . . So far as can be ascertained, 22 officers and 758 other ranks were directly involved in the advance. Of these, all the officers and slightly under 658 other ranks became casualties. Of the 780 men who went forward only about 110 survived unscathed, of whom only 68 were available for roll call the following day. For all intents and purposes the Newfoundland Regiment had been wiped out, the unit as a whole having suffered a casualty rate of approximately 90 percent"
NINETY PERCENT LOSSES IN LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR AND FOR ZERO GAIN!!
coolbert.