Back at Buire

A French woman passes Australian soldiers being billeted in Buire, in the Somme Valley, northern France. The Somme was the scene of carnage in 1916 and Australian soldiers suffered terrible casualties fighting at Pozières and Mouquet Farm between 23 July and 3 September of that year. The Australians stayed in Buire in October en route to the Flers battlefront. Buire was far enough from the front to provide some measure of safety but official historian Charles Bean described the billets, typically barns, as 'miserable'.