Pozières Memorial

Pozières is a village 6 kilometres north-east of the town of Albert, on the straight Roman road running from Albert to Bapaume, along which the Allies attempted to advance at such cost in 1916.

The Pozières Memorial encloses Pozières British Cemetery which is a little south-west of the village on the north side of the main road.

The Memorial relates to the period of crisis in March and April 1918 when the Allied Fifth Army was driven back by overwhelming numbers across the former Somme battlefields, and the months that followed before the Advance to Victory, which began on 8 August 1918. The Memorial commemorates over 14,600 casualties of the United Kingdom and South African Forces, who have no known grave and who died on the Somme between 21 March and 7 August 1918.

The memorial to the missing of the Fifth Army was originally intended to be in St Quentin, but following protests about the amount of land being required for British memorials in France, it was situated here at Pozières - despite the fact that during the retreat of 1918, Pozières was in the Third Army area.

It should also be noted that, although the memorial stands in a cemetery of largely Australian graves, it does not bear any Australian names. The Australian soldiers who fell in France and whose graves are not known are commemorated on the National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux.