Below a ridge on the rolling chalk downlands of the Somme stood a mighty German defensive position, the Schwabin Redoubt.

Throughout the battles of 1916, this became a defining point in the soldiers' experience of the battles around Tiafal.

For our final episode of 2023, we return to the Somme battlefields, and we return to a village that we've visited on previous occasions

on the old front line podcast. We're at Chiapval, Thiefval, as it's often called, a village that

sat on a ridge that bore that name, the Thiepval Ridge, and that was once one of the larger villages on the Somme front.

Dominated by a chateau that employed a large number of people, there were rows of terraced houses here where the estate workers lived.

The village was centred around a church in a village green. The chateau kind of dominated

and looked down not just on the wood below, Chappfal wood, with a big park area beneath it that links

the building of the chateau with the wood itself, but the chateau also looked down in many respects

on the village itself. It was the dominant building.

And today, more than a century after the Battle of the Somme, nothing remains of the chateau.

And what dominates the village of Tiapval now is the huge Luchens Memorial, mighty Tiapval,

the memorial that commemorates those who fell on the Somme,

the missing of the Somme men who were killed here in 1916.

In fact, from when the British first arrived in 1915

through to the eve of the German offensive in 1918,

but the majority of them from 1916 who have no known grave.

But it's not that memorial to the missing that we've come to see in this episode.

Where are we?

Well, we're in the village of Chiavall itself.

The memorial to the missing is behind us, as is the modern visitor centre, and we're standing

outside the church in the middle of this village.

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