Dan Hill

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2,255 appearances 12 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 5d ago

Dan Hill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WW1: Not So Quiet On The Western Front! · Episode 135: The Somme’s Northern Disaster · 6 Jul 2026 podcast

but also the area that's going to be attacked.

So let's maybe touch on those two things in sequence.

I mean, first of all, the Somme is like a deceptively large battlefield.

We're talking about 25 miles, 40 kilometers end to end.

If you go right up from the northern tip of the British diversionary attack up at Gommacourt, right down to the southern end of the French tip, which is over the other side of the Somme River, that's about...

25 miles, that's a long way.

It's a hell of a lot of line that you've got to cover.

And of course, with those curves and loops and bends, it's significantly longer than that.

Now, also the actual terrain itself, the Somme is not pan-flat like it is up at Fromelles where the British Army have been fighting around Albers Ridge and Neu Chapelle.

It's not those kind of very gentle rises that we see in the Ypres Salient, but it's also not the Vosges Mountains.

It's really a kind of rolling terrain.

Somme is classically agricultural land.

It's the kind of place, had there not been a First World War there,

You wouldn't see any tourists there probably ever.

It's beautiful countryside, but there's not a huge amount going on.

Very agricultural, ancient villages, which actually typically are sited in prominent locations, usually on top of hills or slight ridges.

And then you get this kind of rolling terrain interspersed with old country roads and then importantly, lots of woods.

Now, those things offer a good opportunity for a defender.

You can dig in and fortify woods.

You can dig in and fortify villages.

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