. Battlefields of the World War, western and southern fronts; a study in military geography . ttlefield The most striking characteristic of the Somme battlefield isits monotonous succession of low, rolling plain. It is true thatthe faint northwest-southeast folds, which have produced inthe region immediately to the west a marked parallelism ofvalley trenches and upland strips, are continued into the areanow under discussion. A layered map of the battlefield (Fig. 28)shows a suggestion of the northwest-southeast alignment oftopography in the form of alternate belts of slightly higherand lower l
. Battlefields of the World War, western and southern fronts; a study in military geography . ttlefield The most striking characteristic of the Somme battlefield isits monotonous succession of low, rolling plain. It is true thatthe faint northwest-southeast folds, which have produced inthe region immediately to the west a marked parallelism ofvalley trenches and upland strips, are continued into the areanow under discussion. A layered map of the battlefield (Fig. 28)shows a suggestion of the northwest-southeast alignment oftopography in the form of alternate belts of slightly higherand lower land—the higher belts representing up-folds, oranticlines, and the lower belts down-folds, or synclines. Inthe 1916 Battle of the Somme the French and British were SURFACE FEATURES 97 fighting to get from the lower land of the Somme syncline tothe crest of the anticline next north and to force the Germansdown into the next syncline beyond. But while slight varia-tions of altitude are of critical military importance, these un-dulations are so faint and the differences in average elevation. Fig. 31—German camouflage of a road across the Somme battlefield. Roads onthe white chalk of the barren plain are readily visible for great distances; hencethe necessity for concealing them by strips of this type, which prevent effectiveobservation from enemy captive balloons or other points near the horizon. (Frenchofficial photograph.) are so small that even the trained geographer would scarcelyremark them. He would probably describe the Battlefield ofthe Somme as a plain of low relief, dissected by the branchesof the Somme River and neighboring streams to a late-maturestage of erosion, in which valleys with gently sloping sides areseparated by low, rounded hills or by remnants of the flatupland surface which descend gradually toward their margins tomerge with the valley slopes (Fig. 29V The topography is not 98 BATTLEFIELD OF THE SOMME unlike that of the Great Plains in the vicinity of B
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectworldwar19141918
