.... there are many "Armchair Generals " with opinions of the Somme .... much has been written and discussed about that terrible first day of that battle ! ... my aim here is to just give an idea of what happened using the information that is available on the web site of " Military History Encyclopedia on the Web" ........ it's my opinion that they make it easy to understand for the beginner .... as I said many books have been written about the subject ... if you'd like to learn more ... check a few of them out ! The Battle for the Somme has a unique place in British military history. Haig was in the middle of preparations for a British offensive but came under strong pressure to mount an attack due the French commitment to the Battle for Verdun, a city which held an important place in the nation's psyche and that the Germans had attacked in February 1916. Any Allied offensive would therefore have to be carried mainly by the British. Haig was therefore forced to undertake an offensive near to where the British and French lines met, near Bray-sur-Somme in Picardy, although he would have preferred to attack further north and to have had longer with which to prepare his new army. The battlefield was bisected by both the Albert – Bapaume Road and the River Somme, and was a series of gentle chalk ridge lines into which the Germans had dug a series of well-prepared fortifications. Haig's plan called for Rawlinson's Fourth Army to achieve a breakthrough in the centre (in the process capturing the Pozières ridgeline) after which Gough's Reserve Army (later renamed the Fifth Army) that happened to include cavalry, would exploit, roll up the German defences and capture Bapaume. Allenby's Third Army would undertake a diversionary attack on Gommecourt, which lay to the north. The massive preparatory bombardment, meant to destroy the German defences started on 24 June 1916 at 06.00. Over 1.7 million shells were fired but a high proportion, some 30 percent, failed to explode as the Ministry of Munitions had abandoned any semblance of quality control in order to be able to produce the quantities needed in time. Tunnelling companies dug hollowed out chambers underneath key German strongpoints and filled them with explosives. The shelling had started on 'U' Day and was meant to go on until 'Z' Day, which was 29 June 1916 but heavy rains caused the approach roads, trenches and crater ridden No-Man's land too muddy and so the assault was postponed until 1 July. Just after dawn on 1 July, the first British wave clambered out of their trenches and started to make their way towards the German frontline. As they did, seventeen enormous mines were detonated and the barrage moved forward. The infantry followed behind and although there were local gains on the first day – the 36th Ulster Division had some success near Thiepval and Montauban was taken – generally things looked bleak. The British suffered 57,470 casualties (19,240 killed and 2,152 missing) that was an unprecedented experience for the British Army. Some thirty-two battalions lost over 500 men – twenty were from Kitchener's 'New Army', many being 'Pals' battalions, groups of men who had joined up together. Seven 'New Army' divisions attacked, alongside three Territorial and four regular Army divisions. The French attack on the right of the British line was smaller than had been originally intended as troops had to be diverted to the fighting around Verdun but their attack went relatively successfully and the preponderance of heavy guns in the French sector also helped the British forces adjacent to them. Astonishing though the casualties on the first day were, they tend to cloud the image of the entire campaign. The British Army suffered, over the course of the entire 142-day campaign, some 415,000 casualties, which works out to be around 3,000 per day. So the casualty rate on the 1 July should be seen as a historical anomaly. The image of disproportionate British casualties can also be viewed against the casualties for the Germans – perhaps as high as 650,000, and so could be argued to be a freak day of battle and unrepresentative of 1916 and even the war as a whole. The Somme campaign involved some twelve separate battles and finally came to and end on 18 November when the 51st Highland Division took Beaumont Hamel that had in fact been an objective for the first day. After the initial setback of the first day, Gough's Fifth Army took over the task of attacking Pozières in the north, while Rawlinson's Fourth Army focused on securing a series of ridgelines in the Mametz-Montauban area. The 38th (Welsh) Division suffered heavy casualties taking Mametz Woods and the fighting up to 13 July cost the Fourth Army around 25,000 casualties. On 14 July, Longueval and Bazentin fell to a well coordinated night attack that managed to open a gap in the German second line. However, Delville Wood took longer to subdue and German reinforcements arrived to plug the gap between High Wood and Delville Wood and remained there for the rest of the summer. On 15 September 1916 tanks made their first ever appearance in warfare and supported the attack on Flers-Courcelette that led to the breakup of the German third line and the capture of High Wood. Although 1 July had not seen the breakthrough achieved as predicted, by the middle of November, Haig could claim a victory of sorts. Territory had been taken; the Germans had been pushed back and badly mauled. One officer has described the Somme as the 'muddy grave of the German field army' but it should be remembered that the French also fought on the Somme with eleven divisions and suffered 200,000 casualties. The battle has remained deeply controversial ever since. Some have contended that the British Army emerged from the blood-letting on the Somme a better-trained machine than when it started and that mistakes were made on both sides, as many German counterattacks were bloodily repulsed, just as British attacks failed with high casualties. Unfortunately Haig and Rawlinson had fundamentally different conceptions as to how the battle should have been fought – the latter had in mind a series of more modest 'bite-and-hold' attacks and had no real confidence regarding the breakthrough he was expected to achieve. In saying that, Fourth Army showed little inclination to 'bite' as many of the same objectives were attacked repeatedly with little originality behind too light a barrage. http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_somme.html
It is to be remembered that the British Army was under the overall control of the French. They held the CinC post as the battles were being fought on French Soil. It was actually a German officer that described the Somme as the "muddy grave of the German Field Army"...
It was... and as I said elsewhere the British went before they wanted, and it was an attack of political expediency rather than military necessity...
The first battle of the Somme: https://archive.org/stream/sommeano00cler#page/n0/mode/2up The second battle of the Somme 1918: https://archive.org/stream/thesomme02cler#page/n0/mode/2up
