Known as Burt to the troops who fought here in 1916,

the small French town of Albaea sat at the heart of the Somme.

Here countless thousands marched to and from the trenches

beneath the shadow of the Golden Virgin.

More than a hundred years ago, it seemed as if all roads led to Albert.

We're on the Somme battlefields this week, and we're standing outside the railway station

in the town of Albert.

Albert, or Bert, as the troops called it, was the main staging post for the British

Army on the Somme Front throughout its operations here in 1916. In the early phase of the war,

this had been a French sector, the French armies had stopped the Germans in the advance to the sea

in the battles here in September

and October of 1914. And then the front lines had stabilised on the outskirts of the town

from the northern villages like Gomelcourt and Seir and Beaumont-Hamel through Thiepval

down to overlars and La Boiselle and across towards the southern part of the Somme sector

as it moved towards the river valley in villages like Mehmetz and Montabaa

and beyond that villages like Kirlu and Hem close to the River Somme itself

following the early battles around Albaea the front became static it was a quiet sector. There were some operations here and there in 1915, but the bulk of France's efforts was elsewhere on the Western Front at that time, whether in the north at Notre Dame de Lorette, Souchet and Hill 145 or Vimy Ridge, as we'd call it, or down around reams in the champagne

with the attacks on positions like Navarand Farm

and the Mandar Mersij, places that we've mentioned in previous podcasts.

The Somme was quiet.

There was, to a degree, a live system.

That was, until the summer of 1915 when British units began to arrive in this sector coming down from the northern part of the Western Front as the British Army gradually extended its line.

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