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The first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, 1 July, was so grim that many people forget that it went on until 18 November, and that it comprised a number of smaller battles during the five months duration. One of those battles was the one for Delville Wood, or Devils Wood, which sits just east of the village of Longueval and which, at the time, was 156 acres of mostly beech and hornbeam and a very dense undergrowth. Difficult fighting territory. The Battle of Delville W

The Roll of Honour of the black South African soldiers buried in France numbers 445.* It starts with the driver J Lutas buried in the Abbeville Communal Cemetery Extension and ends with Lance Corporal Alpheus Zwane buried at Arques-La-Bataille Military Cemetery in Deppe. It includes the name of 3009 Private Beleza Myengwa, buried at the Bleville Community Cemetery just north of Le Harve, but in June 2014 exhumed and re-interred at the South African Memorial at Dellville Wood.

Photo: Author's own Of the 60 million shells fired in the battle of Verdun during the 300 days and nights in 1916 about one in eight of them remained unexploded in this tract of land outside the city. The government declared this 10 000-hectare area a red zone, or ‘zone rouge’; part of the larger 150 000- hectare area stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss border: Its destruction so absolute it was considered not fit for human or animal habitation and too expensive to cle