Week 6

 

Tasks

• Begin to dig into the books that I checked out from the McIntyre Library
• Add descriptions to the features on my ArcGIS Online front lines map
• Continue searching for more useful sources
• Road blocks
• Future Goals

 

 

 

Literature

 

The Somme: The day-by-day account

This was the first of two books that I rented from the McIntyre Library. When I decided to check this book out I had only skimmed throught the pages, but I was intrigued by the numerous amount of maps that it contained. But once I started to look into the book I realized that this wasn't what I was expecting and it wouldn't help me with where I wanted to go with my project. My project for the Battle of the Somme is a very broad overview of the battle with focuses on key events and the change in the front lines throughout the battle. This book was very, very specific as to what happened each day and even the slightest movement or action of each regiment. The maps in this book were magnificant, but much too specific for my project that I am working on.

 

 

The 1916 Battle of the Somme

This was the second book that I rented from the McIntyre Library. Right away this book caught my eye because it seemed to be written in the same format as the project that I am working on. It takes the battle in chunks and focuses on the main events for a certain amount of time.

 

This book begins with a chapter on the concept, planning, and preperation for the Battle of the Somme.  Before the Battle of the Somme General Joffre stated, "We have to destory the moral of the German army and nation." While that may have been the main goal of the overall war, the Battle of the Somme was more in order to divert attention. "The original objectives were; 1) to relieve the pressure on Verdun, 2) to assist our Allies in the other theatres of war by stopping any further transfer of German troops from the Western Front, 3) to wear down the strength of the forces opposed to us." This chapter also focuses on the processes of obtaining artillary and the training of infantry men.

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                        

 

The second chapter in this book is The First of July. The beginning of this chapter goes through maps of the cities Montauban, Mametz, Fricourt, Ovillers La Boisselle, Thiepval, Beaumont Hamel, Serre, Gommecourt and shows the allignment of trenches and front lines of each side. Also talked about were the mine explosions during the first day and of course the massacre that took place on the first day.

 

 

 

An example of a trench map located in this chapter

 

 

 



Another topic located in this chapter was message sending edicate on the front lines. This included what was, and was not acceptable to send over the lines.

 

 

The five orders for message sending on the front lines

 

 

This is as far as I've gotten in this book thus far. I will continue to keep digging for more information as well as continue to look for more sources to complete my project.

 

 

 

Descriptions

 

In my previous blog I showed you the project I had strated on my map from the front lines of The Battle of the Somme, but I had not yet inserted the descriptions for each feature I had put on the map. But before I did that I found out you can add a summary and description for the entirety of the map. So this is what I decided to work on first. To get to this all you had to do was before you enter the map there is a button on the toolbar that says edit. Clicking that enables you to edit those certain features. For the summary I just put the beginning and ending dates of the battle, July 1, 1916 - November 18, 1916. After that I inserted a summary of the significace of the battle and what my map will be showing you.

 

 

 

 

 

After I completed this I continued by adding descriptions to each individual feature. 

 

Feature Descriptions

The Hawthorn Crater was the explosion that was caught on film and is used in almost every WWI film. The Lochnagar Crater was the single largest mine explosion in all of WWI and is now a memorial. The front line of July first when the mines were exploded and the British charged into no-man's-land, only to be slaughtered by German machine guns. The front line of July 14th where a series of artillery bombardments help the British to gain more ground. The front line of September 15th which was gain through the use of tanks by the British. The front line of November 18th which was the final day of the battle. And finally the arrows that show the direction of movement for the front lines and the British pushed back the Germans at the Somme.

 

 

An example of the description editor

 

 

So after I added all of the descriptions you can then exit the editor mode and when you click on a certain feature the name and description of that feature will be shown.

 

 

 



 An example of when you click on a feature and the title and description that appear near the selected feature

 

 

 

Additional Sources

 

I found another site that talks about the end of the war in casualties. The site states ,"The final tally included 420,000 British casualties, 200,000 French and the Germans 500,000. The reward for this effort was the six-mile movement of the British front line into German territory." I really like this quote because it does give you hard numbers on the amount of men that were lost by each side in a matter of five months or so. But then, almost sarcastically, it calls the six-mile movement of the front lines a "reward". This shows you why so many felt this war was a waste of resources with the amount of casualties compared to the amount of land gained by the Allies.

 

 

Road Blocks

 

This is something I had brought up last week, but I would really like to be able to put my map into a template to make it more viewer friendly. The only problem I have had with this is the legend on the ArcGIS Online site seems to be un-editable. While I could very well work around this it would mean that I would have to describe what each feature represents, when a legened could do that for me. I had tried putting my map into several templates and I do believe I have found one that I am fond of. This template would allow the viewer to see the map, read a description of the battle, and view the legend to know what each feature represents. Now with my lack of being able to edit the legend you can see why this would be considered a road block for me. Hopefully I can get that figured out becuase I think that template would accent my map very well.

 

 

This is what my map would look like in this template, as you can see the legend is not up to par

 

 

 

Hopefully I can figure out the legend, add a more in-depth description of the battle, and produce a map that is not only pleasing to those who wish to become more knowledgable, but also visually pleasing to the random viewer.



 

 

Goals

 

For next week I hope to get a solid start on my picture story map of the Battle of the Somme. Now that I have a majority of the sources I will use for this project at my disposal I believe this will come along quite smoothly. Also I hope to figure out the legend on my ArcGIS Online map and compete that project as well.