Revist 'The Camera Returns' (47) Beaucourt-en-Santerre with Google Street View

The Camera Returns (47) Beaucourt-en-Santerre. Original research by Steve Wall and Bob Grundy.

Travel the roads of the Western Front in the footsteps of Steve Wall and Bob Grundy courtesy of Google Street view. See for yourself how Steve and Bob have kept returning over the last 30 years to the very place where an photograph of the First World War was taken. ‘The Camera Returns’ has featured in Stand To since the summer of 1986 and boasts 95 editions.

Here we return to The Camera Returns (47) which featured in Stand To! No.65. (p.32)

Battle of Amiens. Cavalry passing through Beaucourt en-Santerre to attack Le Quesnel, 9 August 1918. Stereoscopic. (C) IWM

Readers who have in their library Volume 2 of Sir Ernest Swinton's Twenty Years After (p.1028) or George Newnes Ltd. undated book entitled The Western Front Then and Now (p. 191) will find this photograph, which purports to be a comparison shot of IWM Q8198

Unfortunately the Keystone Press photographer, as our comparison shows was in the wrong place.

It seems that the 1930s photographer was standing in the D137 road looking northwest towards Demuin. He should have walked further up the road to get an accurate comparison. Bricks from the now demolished wall can be seen on the ground to the left of our photograph.

Beaucourt British Cemetery, which contains mainly Canadians killed in the fighting on 8 and 9 August 1918, is about a hundred yards distant, on the road to Le Quesnel. Martin Middlebrook has described it as one of the 'loveliest small cemeteries' he has visited, an opinion with which we readily concur

Beaucourt-en-Santerre had been lost in the German advance in March 1918 but had been recaptured by the 3rd Cavalry and 4th Canadian Division the day before the photograph was taken. Beaucourt-en-Santerre is situated fifteen miles southeast of Amiens, just north of the D934 Amiens-Roye road.