The Western Front: Battlefields, Memorials and Cemeteries of the First World War

The area of Belgium and northern France that was the Western Front during World War I is a place like no other. In a line running seven hundred kilometers from the English Channel to the Swiss border, millions of men over the course of four years witnessed the horrors of trench warfare. When the war finally ended, entire communities were devastated, and the ensuing grief can still be seen today in the countless cemeteries and memorials that dot the landscape.
 
Though much has been written of the British experience and the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to erect national memorials, there has been substantially less research on the American, French, and German sites. The Western Front seeks to fill this gap. In 2013, photographer Marcel Belley and a friend traveled the entire length of the Western Front. Belley’s images, collected here, tell the powerful story of the Front and capture many memorials overlooked in guidebooks and more popular narratives.
 
One of the only books to explore the efforts of the major combatants along the entire length of the Western Front, this beautifully illustrated book will be essential to anyone wishing to have a complete picture of the war.