Fricourt was heavily fortified, with extensive installations linking the cellars to the underground and concrete works on the surface. It was a support point for the famous "Fricourt salient", which the Germans considered an almost impregnable pillar of their defense system. It failed to justify their hopes, falling to the British on July 2, 1916. Of the 17,027 soldiers buried in this necropolis, around 1,000 were killed between late August 1914 and June 1916; 10,000 between late June and mid-November 1916, during the Battle of the Somme; just over 6,000 perished during the 1918 offensives, between March and October. Built in the early 1920s, the cemetery briefly housed the grave of the "ace of aces" of the Great War, German pilot Manfred von Richthofen, nicknamed the Red Baron. In 1925, his body was transferred to Berlin, before being finally buried in Wiesbaden.
