Butte de Warlencourt

 hill, First World War 1914-1918, interesting place

The Butte de Warlencourt is an ancient burial mound alongside the Albert-Bapaume road, north-east of the village of Le Sars in the Somme département of northern France. During the final stages of the 1916 Battle of the Somme, the Butte de Warlencourt was the subject of a number of costly and unsuccessful attacks by the British Fourth Army. It was never captured, only being relinquished by the Germans following their retreat to the Hindenburg Line in February 1917.

An officer summed up the fatal attraction of the Butte:

"The Butte itself would have been of little use to us for the purposes of observation. But the Butte de Warlencourt had become an obsession. Everybody wanted it. It loomed large in the minds of the soldiers in the forward area and they attributed many of their misfortunes to it. ... So it had to be taken. It seems that the attack was one of those tempting, and unfortunately at one period frequent, local operations which are so costly and which are rarely worthwhile. But perhaps that is only the narrow view of the Regimental Officer."