Today I found in Mamet's wood a certain cure for lust of blood.

Hi, I'm Paul Reid, a military historian and of blood.

I'm Paul Reed, a military historian and writer, and I've spent most of my life walking the

battlefields of the Great War.

Welcome to the old front line.

In this regular podcast we'll travel together across the haunting battlefields from Epe to the Somme and beyond.

And this week we're amongst the birds and under the trees the canopy and mammoth's wood on the som.

That quote we began with comes from Robert Graves, the author, poet and veteran of the Great War,

one of many writers to bring alive the story of Mamet's Wood, a fiercely fought over corner

of the Somme battlefields, and it's there we'll be walking in this week's podcast.

We'll come back to Graves and the Wood later,

but we'll begin our journey outside a cemetery,

close to the village of Mametz, Danzig Alley.

Danzig Alley Cemetery was named after a German trench that ran between the village of Mermetz, to our left,

across towards the next village, Montevac, at the other end of the road that we're standing on.

It was part of the German second line of defence here on the first day the the Battle of the Somme and British troops reached

and captured this position on that day. It then became effectively our front line in this area

until the Battle of the Somme continued and the attacks took British troops down these

slopes towards the woods, the horseshoe of woods, including Mamets, which we can just

see in the distance in the valley below us. As we go through the cemetery gates and up the steps,

the original plot is on the right. It was made later in the battle when this was behind the British front line and part of the evacuation routes for wounded.

So there was medical facilities here and some of the men brought in here died of their wounds and were buried on this spot.

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