29/8/1918 Bapaume falls to the Allies #1918Live

British and Commonwealth soldiers are forcing the Germans back across the 1916 Somme battlefield, with French troops also applying pressure on the enemy. Albert and Roye have already been liberated while the Germans are also being pressed on the road to Cambrai. And today troops from New Zealand capture the town of Bapaume (or what is left of it).

Bapaume is of no great strategic importance but it has a symbolic value. It was one of the objectives on the first day of the Somme in 1916, but by the end of that long battle it remained in German hands. The Germans voluntarily surrendered it in 1917, when they withdrew to the Hindenburg Line, and then recaptured it during the first phase of their offensives in March. That the Allies have now managed to take Bapaume in battle is yet another sign of how the sun is now starting…