On July 1st, 1916, the men of Newfoundland stormed into battle in a small field outside the village of Beaumont Hamel, northern France. The 801 men of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment advanced point blank into the German machine guns. After just 30 minutes of fighting, there were only 68 men left to answer the regimental roll call. Almost every outport, village and town in Newfoundland lost men in the battle. An entire generation wiped out in one day. Today the battle site is one of only two national historic sites outside Canada.