The 74-acre (300,000 m2) preserved battlefield park encompasses the grounds over which the Newfoundland Regiment made their unsuccessful attack on 1 July 1916 during the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

[11] The 119th (Reserve) Infantry Regiment had been involved in the invasion of France in August 1914 and had been manning the Beaumont-Hamel section of the line for nearly 20 months prior to the battle.

[11] The German troops were spending a great deal of their time not only training but fortifying their position, including the construction of numerous deep dugouts and at least two tunnels.

[11][12] The infantry assault by the 29th British Division on 1 July 1916 was to be preceded ten minutes earlier by a mine explosion under the heavily fortified Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt.

[14] Following the explosion, troops of the 119th (Reserve) Infantry Regiment immediately deployed from their dugouts into the firing line, even preventing the British from taking control of the resulting crater as they had planned.

With the exception of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers on the right flank, the initial assault foundered in No Man's Land at, or short of, the German barbed wire.

[16] At divisional headquarters, Major-General Beauvoir De Lisle and his staff were trying to unravel the numerous and confusing messages coming back from observation posts, contact aircraft and the two leading brigades.

[Note 2] In an effort to exploit the perceived break in the German line he ordered the 88th Brigade, which was in reserve, to send forward two battalions to support attack.

[17] The Newfoundland Regiment was situated at St. John's Road, a support trench 250 yards (230 m) behind the British forward line and out of sight of the enemy.

[19] Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Lovell Hadow, the battalion commander, decided to move immediately into attack formation and advance across the surface, which involved first navigating through the British barbed wire defences.

[26] With the German withdrawal in March 1917 to the Hindenburg Line, about 30 kilometres from Beaumont-Hamel, the battlefield salvage parties moved in, many dugouts were closed off and initial efforts were probably made to restore some of the land to agriculture.

[27] Until the Battle of Amiens and the German withdrawal in late August 1918, the antagonists confronted each other over the same ground, although the only actions were those of routine front line trench raids, patrols and artillery harassment.

[29] Much of the credit for the establishment of the 74-acre (300,000 m2) memorial site is given to Lieutenant Colonel Tom Nangle, the former Roman Catholic priest of the regiment.

[30] Since Newfoundland's confederation with Canada in 1949, the Canadian Government, through the Department of Veterans Affairs, has been responsible for the site's maintenance and care.

[34] The site is one of the few places on the former Western Front where a visitor can see the trench lines and no-man's land of the First World War and the related terrain in a preserved natural state.

[38][39] The ever-increasing number of visitors to the Memorial has resulted in the authorities taking measures to control access by fencing off certain areas of the former battlefield.

Lieutenant-General Beauvoir De Lisle, wartime commander of the 29th British Division, unveiled the monument the morning of the official opening of the site on 7 June 1925.

[30] Afterwards, this detachment, joined by French infantry from Arras formed the honour guard for the unveiling of the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial.

He recommended that the government accept British sculptor Basil Gotto’s plan to erect five identical caribou statues in memory of the regiment.

[30] The landscape architect who designed the sites and supervised their construction, was Rudolph Cochius, a native of the Netherlands living in St.

[30] Those that participated or were present included Chief of the French General Staff, Marshal of France Marie Émile Fayolle, Newfoundland Cabinet Secretary Sir John Robert Bennett, Lieutenant Generals Aylmer Hunter-Weston and Beauvoir De Lisle, Major-General D. E. Cayley and former regimental commanding officers Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Lovell and Adolph Ernest Bernard.

[44] The base of the monument consists of rough blocks of Rubislaw granite which were produced by Garden & Co. in Aberdeen, Scotland, and are assembled in a pyramid form.

[26] Company Sergeant Major Bob Rowan of the Glasgow Highlanders was used as the model for the kilted figure atop the memorial.

On the front is a plaque inscribed in Gaelic: La a'Blair s'math n Cairdean which in English translates as "Friends are good on the day of battle".