The Sunken Lane: Before Zero Hour on 1 July 1916

There is a photograph, actually a film still, that most people who have studied the Somme have seen. Men in a sunken lane, sitting and standing against the chalky bank, rifles between their knees, waiting. Some look at the camera. Most do not.

It was filmed on the morning of 1 July 1916, shortly before zero hour at 7:30am. The men are from the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers. The lane is the Sunken Lane near Beaumont-Hamel, on the northern part of the Somme battlefield.

You can stand in that lane today. It looks almost exactly the same.

The film and the filmmaker

Geoffrey Malins was an official British war cinematographer assigned to film the opening of the Somme offensive. He was at Beaumont-Hamel on 1 July 1916 and filmed both the men waiting in the Sunken Lane and the detonation of the Hawthorn Ridge mine at 7:20am.

The film he produced, "The Battle of the Somme," was released in British cinemas in August 1916. It was seen by approximately 20 million people in its first six weeks, roughly half the population of Britain at the time. It is considered the first feature-length documentary film of a war, and remains one of the most important historical film documents of the First World War.

The Sunken Lane sequence is the most recognisable part of the film because the faces are visible and the moment is legible: men waiting to go forward, knowing what is about to happen.

What you can see at the Sunken Lane today

The lane itself. The Sunken Lane is a pre-existing farm track that sits below the level of the surrounding fields, hence "sunken." The chalk banks are still there. The depth and width of the lane are unchanged. When you stand in it, the angle of the bank and the narrowness of the space are exactly what the film shows.

The view from the lane. The lane sits in dead ground, below the sight line from the German positions on the ridge above Beaumont-Hamel. This is why the men could gather there without being under direct observation. Looking up from the lane, you can see the slope rising towards the German lines. The men waiting in the film had to leave this sheltered position, climb that slope, and cross into no man's land at zero hour.

The proximity to Beaumont-Hamel. The Sunken Lane is approximately 500 metres north of the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial park, on foot across the fields. The two sites are usually visited together.

What happened to the men in the film

The 1st Lancashire Fusiliers attacked at zero hour on 1 July 1916. The battalion suffered heavy casualties on that day, as did every unit attacking in the Beaumont-Hamel sector.

The film does not record what happened after the men left the lane. The subsequent footage from the assault, some of it, was staged after the fact, as Malins could not have filmed the actual moment of going over the top safely. The waiting sequence in the Sunken Lane is genuine.