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Although seventy-eight years have passed since the Battle of the Somme was fought, interest in this, the bloodiest battle of the First World War, has never waned. It was, in the words of one historian, `a catastrophe without parallel in British history' and the names of those magnificent corners of a foreign soil, such as Mametz, High Wood and Fricourt, have ever since been inscribed in blood upon the tablet of the nation's memory.
This reason is not hard to find; no less than 616 infantry battalions took part in the battle and the total butcher's bill for the British came to an appaling 419,000 men, which means that there were few households in the land who did not have a relative involved.

Over the years Ray Westlake, a leading authority on the First World War, has received hundreds of enquiries from historians, from researchers, and above all, from descendants of those who fought on the Somme, wanting to know exactly which units were where in those terrible days between 1 July and 18 November, 1916. He has now collated all the information so painstakingly to produce the first comprehensive compendium of the exact movements of every battalion involved in the battle. This book will be invaluable not only to researchers but to all those visiting the battlefield and anxious to trace the movements of their forebears.