On this 98th Anniversary of the end of the Battle of the Somme, this image of the Thiepval Memorial was taken with the Phantom Drone being used for the Above The Battlefield project.

Good friend and author Mary Freeman, author of Poets & Pals of Picardy, coined the phrase ‘Mighty Thiepval’ which sums up what the memorial is about very well indeed – it can be seen all over the Somme battlefields and dominates the Thiepval ridge on which it stands.

When first constructed in 1932 the Thiepval Memorial commemorated more than 73,000 soldiers who fell on the Somme who have no known grave. Since many have been found and reburied in the Somme’s Silent Cities but today the total of 72,193 names still makes it the largest British war memorial in every sense from the number of men it commemorates to the size of the structure.