Redan Ridge Cemetery No.1
"It is early evening by the time I make my way to Beaumont-Hamel. I walk along a footpath to a small cemetery on the top of a low hill. From the cemetery gate I can see the crosses of four other small cemeteries. The headstones are arranged in three lines, facing east. It is a perfect spot ... The light is softening, stretching out over the fields. Soft and sharp, gentle and bright ... Light, field, the crosses of the other cemeteries ... It is the opposite of lonely, this cemetery: friends are buried here together ... Scarves of purple cloud are beginning to stretch out over the horizon, light welling up behind them. The sun is going down on one of the most beautiful places in the world."
Geoff Dyer, The Missing of the Somme, 1994, Penguin ed. 1995 pp.129-30.
Images Copyright © Phillip Tardif with all rights reserved as set out in this Use of Material policy.