The Battle of the Somme was the largest all out offensive planned by the British against the German Army up to this point in First World War. The mastermind of the offensive was Lt.. Gen sir Douglas Haig, who had previously been in command of the B.E.F. 1st Corps and had recently been promoted to commader of all British forces on the western front. The main responsibility of the offensive fell to the the 4th Army under Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson.
Haig's plan called for a massive artillery barrage that was to knock out all German resistance along an 18 mile long section of the front. He employed the use of 1,500 British guns backed by almost the same amount of French artillery. As the barrage commenced, British infantry would flood into the front line trenches in preparation to advance on the broken German front. The barrage was set to begin on the June 24, 1916. Following the taking of the German lines, the British would then sweep through to Cambrai and Douai, breaking the German line in two.
The massive barrage began on schedual at pounded the German lines for seven days non stop. However, the British lacked high explosive shells in their arsenal at the time and the concussion shells used did little damage to the German trenches and barbed wire tangles which went unnoticed by the British high command. The Germans remained in their dug outs for the duration of the barrage, quite safe from the artillery.
At 7:00 AM on July 1st, zero hour, the barrage lifted and the infantry were ordered over the top. The British were confident that the barrage had all but wiped out the German defenders and that they would find only empty trenches across no man's land. The British units, most of them formed from Kitchner's Army, advanced in close order, bayonets fixed, towards the German lines. As the first units of the B.E.F. got into the middle of no man's land, German machine gun nests sprung up to meet them.
The British idea of a quick victory faded quickly as regiment after regiment fell before the German machine guns. Soon the German artillery joined in the attack. Many British regiments were killed still at their starting points, never making it out of their trenches. The 1st Lancashire Fusiliers and several other regiments from the 29th Division, were pinned down in a sunken road halfway to the German lines and were subsequently shot to pieces by the German machine guns. Only a handful of British soldiers managed to actually make it to the barbed wire tangles and even fewer to the German front line itself. By the end of the first day, the British had lost 60,000 men on the assault. Among the units decimated during the first day of the battle was the 36th Ulster Division, the 1st Newfoundland Regiment, which had actually made it to the German wire tangles, the 10th Battalion West Yorkshires, which got into the German trenchline and was surrouned and oblitereated, and the 1st Essex Regt.
Gen. Haig was still confident that the battle would succeed as long as the British infantry kept pressure on the Germans despite the mounting losses.The battle rage on for weeks. The French gained small amounts of land on the southern section of the line but the gains overall were minimal. On September 25, the British again tried a large scale assault on the German lines with the same consequences. However, the British had managed to move somewhat in the north allowing them to take Beaumont-Hamel in mid November.
By the end of November, the Somme Front had stabilized. The battle was considered over by November 28 and by this point had claimed 420,000 casualites for the British, 195,000 for the French, and 650,000 for the Germans trying to stop them. Gen. Haig finally gave into pressure from his subordinates and acknowleged the offensive's failure. There would be no significant actions on this front again until late 1917.
The Battle of the Somme, I think is the one if not the most remembered battles of the first world war. Sadly not for a good reason it's remembered because of the casualties suffered by all side's. As you can see above the number of men who fought and died for Britain, Germany and France. Over 1 million men dead at the end, could you image if the British army was taking those kind of casualties today. I know it would take some thing like WW3 to ever see those kind of casualties again, I can't imagine how the public must of felt when they heard how many men had been killed.
I myself have studied allot about history, mostly military history. I've read, watched and visited a number of battles fields in my life. And out of all of them I find the Battle of the Somme, to be the saddest, most bloodiest battle that the British army has fought in. That's the way I feel about it, not saying the rest of the battles that the British has been involved in are any less bloody, but to me the Somme stick's out above all over's.
But I have seen a number of documentaries on Galipolli and found them a great source of information.
