The St Pierre Vaast Wood is a woodland in the Somme department of northern France, which was a heavily fortified German position during the Battle of the Somme,[1] where it was the site of repeated French attacks.[2] The fighting around the wood is described by Ernst Jünger in a chapter of his memoir Storm of Steel, entitled The Woods of St-Pierre-Vaast.[3] On 14 March 1917, German artillery began shelling its own front line on the western edge of St Pierre Vaast Wood, one of the earlier signs to British forces that the Germans were abandoning more forward positions for the more defensible Hindenburg Line.[4]
References
- ↑ "Du 21 mars au 12 juillet 1916, secteur entre le col de la Schlucht et le col de Sainte-Marie..." (in French). Service historique de la Défense. Retrieved 27 August 2026.
- ↑ The Somme, Volume I: The First Battle of the Somme (1916–1917). Clermont-Ferrand: Michelin & Cie. 1919. p. 25 – via Project Gutenberg.
- ↑ Jünger, Ernst (1929). "8. At St Pierre Vaast". Storm of Steel. Translated by Creighton, Basil.
- ↑ Kipling, Rudyard (1923). The Irish Guards in the Great War. Vol. II: The Second Battalion and Appendices. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company. p. 12.