The Maps

Map belonging to:Lt Albert Edward Odell MC (Centre), 149th Inf Brig Signals Officer 50th(Northumbrian) Divisional Signal Company Royal Engineers.

These maps have brought home to me the enormous scale of the Great War. It is almost incomprehensible, to imagine the hours involved in producing them in such fine detail, and it is a million times more incomprehensible to imagine the task of digging the miles of trenches, in sometimes the most appalling of conditions. The sheer manhours and effort required are astonishing.

Access to the maps has previously only been available in major institutions, and time constraints mean that very few maps could be viewed at any one sitting. It has therefore been almost impossible to view them in any wider context. It is a credit to these institutions, that this priceless record of mapping, has remained in such excellent condition.

Many are the ‘Secret’ editions, only available to Brigade staff, and showing many of the British trenches.

Trench maps were produced in a variety of scales, 10, 20 and 40,000 :1, however, only the 10 and 20,000 maps showed any trenches. The 10,000 scale maps were by far the most detailed, being intended for the use of infantry. The 20,000 maps were designed primarily for artillery. The maps were based on pre war Belgian maps, using the Belgian Bonne projection, which was subsequently extended west and south to cover France, and redrawn many times as the battle moved.

The Bonne projection was not a good one, but can be considered a wartime expedient. The maps were redrawn to the French Lambert projection immediately after the war. The Bonne Projection did, however, retain bearing as opposed to area, and was suited to Artillery. The Metric based projection grid was further divided into 1000 yard squares (which did not quite fit), and a system of map squares devised to enable an exact position to be plotted.

Ghosts of Action.

When you and I are buried

With grasses overhead,

The memory of our fight will stand

Above this bare and tortured land

We knew ere we were dead.

Though grasses grow on Vimy,

And poppies at Messines,

And in High Wood the children play,

The craters and the graves will stay

To show what things have been.

Lieutenant E. A. Mackintosh, M.C.

Killed 21^st November1917 Battle of Cambrai

Opening verses only.

Link to Great War Poetry Page