In the vast open fields at the heart of the Song battlefields, what connects an English composer,

a street in Canada that gave three of its sons who would go on to be awarded the Victoria Cross,

a black cat that would go into battle in a fighting vehicle during the birth of tank warfare

and a young officer who collected old books.

Walk with us as we uncover these stories along the old front line.

We're back on the Somme this week in the village of Posseer, right in the heart of the

1916 Somme battlefields. In September 1916, when the Canadians moved into this sector

relieving Australian troops, little was left of this village. And you've got to imagine it,

raised to the ground by the bombardments

of that two months of fighting from when it was captured by Australian troops in July of 1916.

Posier's was dust, but beyond it was the Posier's Ridge, that bit of high ground that dominated this part of the battlefield, and that would see the next phase of fighting in this area for the remainder of the month of September of 1916.

We'll begin on the Albaer-Bapom Road, the old Roman road that runs through the middle of the village, and we'll turn off on the road to Basanta and follow that road out of the village towards

a bend where off to our left is a track. And on the corner of that junction is a memorial to an

English composer, George Butterworth. George St. and Kay Butterworth was born in London,

but he grew up in York. He was a Yorkshire boy in

many respects. His father had moved there because he worked for the northeastern railway, which was based in the city.

He went on to be educated at Oxford, and he studied music, and he became a friend of the composer

Vaughan Williams, and Butterworth himself composed a great

deal of music before the Great War, but very little of it survives. He appears to have discarded

a lot of it during the war itself in case he never came back, and it was not considered in the long

run to be good enough. Perhaps his most immortal bit of music is the banks of the green

willow. And as we walk past Butterworth's memorial out into the vast open fields beyond the village

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