Heavens Killing Fields

Heavens Killing Fields is a photographic journey following the British First World War front line which stretched from Ypres via Arras to the Somme river valley.


Its 200 images and maps identify and explain the significance of forgotten battlefields along the northern British sector where two million volunteer soldiers died in a septic duel between Europe's declining empires. Between the autumn 1914 and spring 1918 the thin ribbon of front line trenches hardly moved yet the cost in human lives was immense. The army of the old British Empire alone suffered an average of 200.000 dead each year as they battled the neighbours, who suffered equally.


This publications is limited to the 120 kilometres of the British line and its three theatres of battle which are separately covered. The campaigns in each sector are followed in chronological order and include the four Ypres campaigns, the Aubers Ridge 1914, Loos 1915, Fromelles 1916, Vimy and Arras 1917 battles in the Lys sector, the Somme summer of slaughter of 1916 and the Kaisers final gamble, Operation Michael and George, which ended his empire and the war in 1918.


The images identify the old trench lines and are accompanied by eyewitness accounts by British, Australian, Canadian, Indian and Irish troops who battled for forgotten crossroad villages and fields.