Ovillers Military Cemetery

POZIERES BRITISH CEMETERY, OVILLERS-LA BOISSELLE

Visited on our WW1 11/04/2014.

more info from :-

@montymotorhome on twitter
blog :

Above The Battlefield: Ovillers Military Cemetery, Somme

Above The Battlefield is a project to film the WW1 Battlefields from above using a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ Drone. All filming is done with permission and special thanks to Commonwealth War Graves Commission:

This video covers the battlefield at Ovillers the scene of heavy fighting in Mash Valley, where the cemetery is located, on 1st July 1916: the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The valley and village was attacked again several times as the battle moved on. The cemetery shown here was started during the winter of 1916/17 and burials added post-war. There are 3,440 burials here, of which 2,480 are unknown.

More information on the project on:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despair and Triumph Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Communes de la Somme / Ovillers-la-Boisselle

Connaught Cemetery, Thiepval.

More at:-

La Boisselle, France

This video shows the area to the west of the village of la Boisselle, France.

On 1st July 1916, the British Front line ran parallel to the modern D20 across Mash Valley. As the soldiers went over the top they advanced up hill towards the German machine guns: and were cut to ribbons. No soldier in this sector advanced more then about 80m.

Want to travel to this location but do not know how to find it? Battlefields By GPS ( has self-drive tours of the Somme with full GPS packages for Garmin sat nav devices.

Please take a look at Video History Today , the first web site to offer unique collections of re-usable original video clips designed for teachers and students.

WW1 - La Bosielle - English 34th Division - Stuart Curry

Battle of the Somme 1st July 1916. Western Front Battlefields, France. Mash Valley 25th Northumberland Fusiliers, 102 Brigade, 3rd Corps. German Machine Gun positions at La Boisselle.

Help find the Photos and Identify WW1 Diggers from the Great War.

Ovillers British Cemetery, Somme, World War 1, Iron Harvest

Blighty Valley Cemetery, Authuille Wood.

More at:-

La Boisselle video.mp4

November 2011 dig at La Boisselle in France

Cimetière militaire d’Ovillers (80)

Ovillers est une commune française, située dans le département de laSomme en région Picardie

Ovillers fut repris aux allemands en juillet 1916 mais de nouveau reperdu pendant les mois en 1918. Ce cimetière fut commencé en 1916 et considérablement agrandi pour regrouper les tombes des champs de batailles alentour après l’armistice. Il contient les tombes de 3265 soldats britanniques, 95 canadiens, 57 australiens, 6 néo-zélandais, 13 sud-africain et 120 français. Le cimetière d'Ovillers avec de nombreuses tombes de soldats de la Bretagne tués en 1914-1915.

Ovillers La Boisselle 11 novembre 2016

Commémoration du 11 novembre au Lochnagar Crater
Video Drone by Aurélien BERNARD

The Lochnagar mine crater at La Boiselle (Somme-France)

Along the D20 in La Boisselle a sign points to the right to 'La Grande Mine'. High on a hill outside the village is 'La Grande Mine', a great crater known to the British as the 'Lochnagar Crater', caused by the detonation of a British mine at 7.28 am on 1 July 1916, just before the opening assaults of the Battle of the Somme. Second Lieutenant C A Lewis, Royal Flying Corps, saw the explosion from the air:

The whole earth heaved and flashed, a tremendous and magnificent column rose up into the air. There was an ear--splitting roar, drowning all the guns, flinging the machine sideways in the repercussing air. The earth column rose higher and higher to almost 4,000 feet [1,220 metres]. There it hung, or seemed to hang, for a moment in the air ... then fell away in a widening cone of dust and debris.

Lewis, quoted in Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, London, 1977, p.120

Lochnagar Crater - Attack on La Boisselle

The Somme. Lonsdale Cemetery 1,542 graves.

Mist hangs over the battle fields. The figure at 11 seconds stands were the 01/07/1916 British front line was. The almost silence hangs heavy as the mist hides the rest of the area.

Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery, Souchez, France

Video of this cemetery in northern France - CWGC says

Caberet Rouge was a small, red-bricked, red-tiled café that stood close to this site in the early days of the First World War. The café was destroyed by shellfire in March 1915 but it gave its unusual name to this sector and to a communication trench that led troops up the front-line. Commonwealth soldiers began burying their fallen comrades here in March 1916. The cemetery was used mostly by the 47th (London) Division and the Canadian Corps until August 1917 and by different fighting units until September 1918. It was greatly enlarged in the years after the war when as many as 7,000 graves were concentrated here from over 100 other cemeteries in the area. For much of the twentieth century, Cabaret Rouge served as one of a small number of 'open cemeteries' at which the remains of fallen servicemen newly discovered in the region were buried. Today the cemetery contains over 7,650 burials of the First World War, over half of which remain unidentified.

The Canadian Connection

Many different Commonwealth units served in this sector during the war and the cemetery contains the graves of British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand, Indian and South African soldiers. It is also the final resting place of over 70 officers of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force. Cabaret Rouge has a particularly close connection with the Canadian Infantry, however, as hundreds of Canadians who were killed at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917 were ultimately laid to rest here.

The cemetery and shelter buildings were designed by former Canadian Army officer Frank Higginson. Higginson worked as an architect for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in the 1920s and later acted as Secretary to the Commission.
In May 2000 the remains of an unknown Canadian soldier were taken from this cemetery and buried in a special tomb at the foot of the National War Memorial in Ottowa, Canada. A focal point for remembrance, he represents more than 116,000 Canadians who lost their lives during the First World War. A headstone in plot 8, Row E, Grave 7 marks his original grave.


The Importance of Vimy Ridge

German forces seized the village of Souchez and the surrounding countryside as they advanced through Northern France in 1914. German artillery units were able to control this sector of the front from two ridges which flanked the village -- Vimy Ridge to the east, and Notre Dame de Lorette to the west. After 12 months of bitter fighting, the French forces captured the high ground at Lorette in the autumn of 1915. When the French handed this part of the line to the Commonwealth forces in March 1916, Vimy Ridge was still in German hands.

Vimy Ridge was the key to the German defensive system in this sector. It protected an area of occupied France in which coal mines and factories were in full production for the German war effort and the fortified vantage points on the ridge dominated the surrounding battlefields.
The Battle of Vimy Ridge formed part of the opening phase of the British-led Battle of Arras which began on 9 April 1917. The Canadian forces managed to capture most of the German positions on the ridge on the first day of the attack and by 12 April they had occupied the village of Thélus and pushed the Germans back to the Oppy-Méricourt line. By taking the ridge the Canadians achieved a major tactical success, but in just four days of fighting they suffered over 10,000 casualties, 3,500 of whom were killed. The battle was the first action in which all four divisions of the Canadian Corps fought together and had a major impact on Canadian national identity.

Pozières - La Bataille de la Somme #3

Troisième épisode de Libido Sciendi sur la Bataille de la Somme. Aujourd'hui, nous visitons Pozières et le Lochnagar Crater d'Ovillers la Boisselle.

---
Réseaux sociaux :

Facebook :
Twitter :

---
Matériel utilisé :

Vidéos / Photos : Canon 1200D
Son : Sony PCM-M10
Montage audio : Audacity
Montage vidéo : iMovie

---
Crédits :

Le Lochnagar Crater en 1916 :

---
Sources utilisées :

Bataille de Pozières :




Le Gibraltar :



Le Site du Moulin à vent :


Le cimetière des Colonnes :




Lochnagar Crater :

Thessaloniki. The military cemetery and World War I memorial park Zeitenlik - 06/2015

The military cemetery and World War I memorial park Zeitenlik. The 5th of June 2015
The main entrance - The Italian cemetery - The English cemetery - The French cemetery - The Russian cemetery - The Serbian cemetery
***
Η Θεσσαλονίκη. Τα Συμμαχικά νεκροταφεία του Ζέιτενλικ. 5 Ιουνίου 2015
Η κύρια είσοδος - Το Ιταλικό νεκροταφείο - Το Αγγλικό νεκροταφείο - Το Γαλλικό νεκροταφείο - Το Ρωσικό νεκροταφείο - To Σερβικό νεκροταφείο
***
Салоники. Военное кладбище Зейтинлик. 5 июня 2015
Главный вход - Итальянское кладбище - Английское кладбище - Французское кладбище - Русское кладбище - Сербское кладбище
***
Солун. Српско војничко гробље на Зејтинлику. 5. јун 2015
Вход - Италијанско гробље - Енглеско гробље - Француско гробље - Руско гробље - Српско гробље

WW1 - La Boisselle - Battle of the Somme

One of the German machine gun postions at La Boisselle that caused so much damage to the attacking British Army during the Battle of the Somme. 60,000 casualties in one day of fighting, most in the first 10 minutes. The valley this side was called Mash Valley and at the start of the Major Offensive two huge underground mines were blown up. One on this side called Y-Sap far left of picture and the other bigger one known as the glory hole was blown in the Sausage Valley.

For more information go to my WW1 Research website CURRYWW1.COM


Help find the Photos and Identify WW1 Diggers from the Great War.