A Hand-Drawn Map of the Western Front
A soldier's hand-drawn trench map of the Western Front near Cambrai, France, during the First World War.
Maps like this one, sketched by hand rather than issued from headquarters, helped individual officers navigate the maze of frontline, support, and reserve trenches that stretched roughly 700 kilometers from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. For most of 1915 through 1917 the line barely moved despite offensives that cost hundreds of thousands of casualties apiece, as barbed wire, machine guns, and artillery favored the defense. Cambrai itself, the location shown here, became famous in November 1917 as the site of one of the war's first large-scale tank attacks, briefly breaking the trench deadlock before German counterattacks reclaimed most of the lost ground. See Verdun and the logic of attrition.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
