In this revised edition of The Somme Then and Now, published on the 70th anniversary of the start of the ‘Big Push’, John Giles has succeeded in recapturing the atmosphere of an era when men fought savage battles in and around water-filled trenches amongst the stinking litter of war. Eye-witness accounts of the bitter fighting are blended with contemporary photographs and comparison pictures taken by the author of the same spots today. The result is a salute to all those men who marched along the roads of Picardy, from Amiens and the surrounding camps, through the ruined town of Albert and onwards to the trenches of the Somme battleground. Sadly for so many of them, there was no return.