On 15 July 1916, the 1st South African Infantry Brigade advanced into a square kilometre of wood on the outskirts of the village of Longueval, during what became known as “the battle of the Somme”. Six days later, of the 3,153 men who had entered the wood, 780 were able to walk. The rest were dead, wounded or missing, buried under earth that days earlier had been a stand of beech, oak, maple and hornbeam; with a name few South Africans had heard before: Delville Wood.