The Sunken Lane

On this path, also called The Sunken Lane or The Sunken Road, soldiers of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers assembled on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. After detonating the nearby German fortification of "Hawthorn Ridge" by dug-in explosives at 7:20, the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers began their assault on the German lines at 7:30. The Germans, warned of the attack by the explosion, took the British under fire in "no man's land", inflicting many casualties. Before the British began their attack, they had been filmed lying in cover on The Sunken Lane. The footage of this is part of the 2018 documentary They Shall Not Grow Old.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Koos Winkelman

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