This cemetery, placed at the foot of the Somme Memorial and within the small park which surrounds it, was made to symbolise the common effort of the French and British armies, not only in the Battles of the Somme, 1916, but also on the wide battlefields of Europe, Asia and Africa in all the years of the Great War.

The Somme Memorial stands on a site of nearly 16 hectares of state land in Thiepval and Authuile, near the South boundary of what was the park of the Chateau of Thiepval. It commemorates the Anglo-French offensive on the Somme which began on the 1 st July 1916: and it also bears the names of more than 73,000 British officers and men who fell in the original Third Army area, from 1915 to March 1918, and whose graves are not known. It was erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission on behalf of all the Governments and peoples of the Empire; and it was unveiled on the 1 st August 1932 by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, in the presence of the President of the French Republic.