The Somme sector of the Western Front was held by French forces until early 1916, when the British and Dominions Third and Fourth Armies moved into the northern part, before the joint First Battle of the Somme from July to November 1916. In 1917, with the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, British responsibility moved further south.

Martin and Joan Farebrother are both retired, after working in South East England hospitals, and for five years in Saudi Arabia; Martin as general and chest physician and Joan as a senior pharmacist. Martin has always been interested in railway history and contemporary transport policy, and Joan in architecture and industrial archaeology. They have owned a cottage near Montreuil in the Pas-de-Calais département since 1990. Interest in the closed railways in that area led to their first railway book, Tortillards of Artois: The Metre Gauge Railways and Tramways of the Western Pas-de-Calais (Oakwood Press, 2008). During research into this they became interested in the area to the east, which was the WWI Arras sector of the front line, and since then more generally in WWI railways.