L'îlot de La Boisselle

During the Battle of Albert (25–29 September 1914), French units were forced back from Bapaume but were able to stop the German advance along the D 929 Albert–Bapaume road at La Boisselle.

[4] The Germans, meanwhile, remained in the ruins of La Boisselle and fortified the ground they had gained with barbed-wire entanglements so that the front trench could be held with fewer troops.

The site thus became part of the Western Front, a line that stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland and which remained essentially unchanged for most of the entire war.

[9] After the Black Watch arrived at La Boissselle at the end of July 1915, existing trenches, originally dug by the French, were renamed by the Scottish troops which explains the presence of many Scotland-related names for the Allied fortifications in that front sector.

[10] At La Boisselle, elaborate precautions were taken to preserve secrecy, since no continuous front line trench ran through L'îlot, which was defended by posts near the mine shafts.

The tunnelling companies were to make two major contributions to the Allied preparations for the battle by placing 19 large and small mines beneath the German positions along the front line and by preparing a series of shallow Russian saps from the British front line into no man's land, which would be opened at Zero Hour and allow the infantry to attack the German positions from a comparatively short distance.

[13] At La Boisselle, two mines with 3,600-kilogram (8,000 lb) charges (known as No 2 straight and No 5 right) were planted at L'îlot, at the end of galleries dug from Inch Street Trench by the 179th Tunnelling Company.

To assist the attack on the village, two further mines, known as Y Sap and Lochnagar after the trenches from which they were dug, were placed to the north-east and the south-east of La Boisselle.

[11] On 2 July, the British managed to cross L'îlot, capture the German front line trench, occupy the west end of the ruined village by 9:00 p.m. and to dig in near the church.

[14] After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the former inhabitants of La Boisselle returned and L'îlot became private land again, although the farm and the other houses that had stood there before the First World War were not rebuilt.

The deeply-cratered ground was left to the elements and the site gradually overgrew with grass and shrubs, thus preserving many wartime features of this former sector of the front line.

In 2011, British researchers around Peter Barton started an archaeological, historical, technological and genealogical study of La Boisselle with a special focus on L'îlot.

After the removal of bushes and undergrowth, excavations revealed that the site still holds traces of trenches, shelters and extensive tunnels related to underground warfare.