The Historial de la Grande Guerre (in Péronne, Somme, Picardie), is a fine museum in a beautiful setting.
An exhibition that tells for the first time the story behind the Livens Large Gallery Flame Projector. Employed only ten times during the war - nine of which were on the Somme. The machine was 19 metres long, 40 centimetres wide, and weighed 2.5 tonnes. It was deployed from a tunnel beneath No Man's Land by a specially-trained crew of seven, and fired a jet of flaming oil 100 metres long over the German trenches: the strangest, rarest and most horrifying weapon of the Great War.
In May 2010 historians and archaeologists excavated a section of the British trenches near the village of Mametz in search of the remains of a Flame Projector believed to have been abandoned underground in late June 1916, just before the Battle of the Somme. The results were extraordinary, and for the first time for almost 100 years some of the original parts found in 2010 can be viewed alongside a specially-commissioned replica constructed by local students of vocational training centres.
2012: Missing of the Somme, Missing but not forgotten
2012 sees the 80th anniversary of the official opening of the Thiepval Memorial and the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Historial, Museum of the Great War in Péronne (located 17 miles S.E. of Thiepval on the Circuit of Remembrance).
The theme of the exhibition will be remembrance, as well as providing some background to the Memorial and how these men became, and remain, "The Missing of the Somme." The major part of the exhibition will tell the story of an individual recorded as missing on each of the 141 days of the Battle of the Somme. The stories will be supplemented by personal objects as well as others which illustrate a general remembrance theme.
The exhibition will also explore how the fate of these men affected society for many years afterwards and why remembrance continues to be important today.
About the Livens Projector
Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livens_Large_Gallery_Flame_Projectors.
Model of the Livens Large projector image courtesy Wikimedia
