Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
It is a question often asked: what was the worst day in Britain’s military history?
Depending perhaps on their definition of ‘Britain’, some might point to 14 October 1066, when a Norman victory at the Battle of Hastings set these isles on a new course. Others might claim it was 29 March 1461, during the Wars of the Roses, when an estimated 50,000 soldiers clashed at Towton, the largest and bloodiest battle fought on home soil. For his part, no less a figure than Winston Churchill was certain, when he described the WWII Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 as truly the ‘greatest disaster’ ever to befall the British Army.
While these may all be worthy contenders for the ignominious title of Britain’s worst military debacle, it is another date – one that fell 110 years ago this summer – that for many will spring most readily to mind. When it comes to the grim business of wholesale slaughter and the futile waste of young British lives, 1 July 1916 – the first day of the Battle of the Somme – rightly holds a unique place in the national consciousness.
British losses on that date numbered a staggering 57,470, including those ‘missing’, with 19,240 killed in action – making it the bloodiest single day in the Army’s history. Among those laying down their lives on that summer’s day were the young volunteers of Lord Kitchener’s inexperienced ‘New Army’, whole battalions of which were destroyed within hours of seeing action for the first time.
The battle would continue along a 25-mile front until 18 November – four months during which the flower of the nation’s youth would be held firmly to the butcher’s block. By the time the fighting was finished, Britain had suffered some 420,000 casualties, and the French around 204,000, while German losses may have reached 670,000 according to one estimate (the number is contested): a total of more than a million mostly young men, and all for little or no strategic gain.
In the first part of our special feature for this issue, MHM tells the story of a titanic struggle that for many sums up the horror of 20th-century warfare. In the second part, we look in more detail at the Battle of the Boar’s Head, the lesser known clash of arms that immediately preceded the Somme, whose appalling casualty rate laid down a marker for the carnage to come.
The glory and the graveyard: The Battle of the Somme, July-November 1916
The First World War marked the end of innocence. When war was declared in the summer of 1914, most Brits believed the fighting would quickly be over. The conflict solidified into stalemate – yet innocence persisted until July 1916 and the opening of the first Battle of the Somme, which finally killed it dead. The battle was so momentous that John Buchan, the bestselling author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, devoted a tome of some 263 pages to it; and, 110 years after its conclusion, it remains a byword for futility and the mechanised horror of the Western Front. The historian Basil Liddell Hart put it pithily, describing the Somme as both ‘the glory and the graveyard’ of Kitchener’s Army; while Friedrich Steinbrecher, a young officer in the German Army, proved equally terse: ‘Somme – the whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word!’
A flawed plan
The Somme offensive, which took place across a 25-mile front between 1 July and 18 November 1916, was a series of related assaults by Anglo-French forces on well-established German positions to the south of Arras, in north-east France. Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig (1861-1928), the commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, would become synonymous with his attritional strategy, which resulted in appalling casualties – including on the Somme, where he believed a powerful offensive might win the war. Haig favoured massed frontal attacks – perhaps because of the inadequate training of the ‘New Army’ created by Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (1850-1916), who had been appointed Secretary for War in 1914.
The operation would become mainly British, because of the German assault on the fortress city of Verdun from February to December 1916, the longest battle of WWI (see MHM 150, February/March 2026), which impacted Somme preparations. The French reduced their contribution from 40 divisions to 16, which saw their front also reduced. In fact, the Somme was first envisaged as a French offensive, but Verdun losses changed that, with the British now dominant and a smaller French presence on the right.
The objective was as straightforward as ever: to smash through German positions, thereby ending trench warfare’s stalemate, with open fields beckoning and the inevitable cavalry charge thrown in for good measure. The plan wouldn’t release the cavalry, though, because it was flawed from inception – relying, as it did, on an intensive bombardment inspired by the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle, which had achieved some success in March 1915. The Somme was different. A lower water table saw the Germans burrowing more deeply – up to 30 feet, in parts – while the barbed wire was thicker and deeper. At the same time, the weight of fire of the initial bombardment was proportionately just half that at Neuve-Chapelle; and the sending out of reconnaissance patrols to establish what the bombardment had achieved was ruled out in favour of a uniform advance. Going over the top here would be hit and hope. That there was hope – not least, that the guns had done their work – was exemplified by a company of 8th East Surreys dribbling footballs across no-man’s land.
‘Such a hell’
As with so many WWI battles, the Somme was preceded by a long, intensive bombardment telegraphing Allied intentions – a week-long fusillade that began on 24 June along the Allied front. More light and medium ammo was expended during this period than had been manufactured in Britain during the war’s first 11 months – the previous year’s ‘munitions crisis’ was clearly over. The bombardment consisted of a mix of ‘heavies’ (field guns and trench mortars, their individual tones indistinguishable amid the overall din) and reached a peak as it came to a close at about 7.15am on 1 July.
Buchan recorded of the enemy trenches that it was ‘such a hell it seemed that no human could live’. He wouldn’t be alone in being disabused – with the writer also reporting another sound, coming from the north, as the Germans began a counter-bombardment on part of the British front-line. As the British bombardment grew on the morning of 1 July, so too did the enemy’s – as if the offensive was mocked before beginning. Before British infantry left their trenches, those at the front-line had been plastered with high explosive, a mix of 6- and 8-inch shells falling along the line, before and behind the first trench. Such was the damage done that in some cases trenches had disappeared, and assaulting troops were required to form up in rearward open ground. There would also be an intense barrage of shrapnel, which followed the troops as they moved forward.
Mistakes on one front were repeated elsewhere.
The offensive itself began at precisely 7.30am. After a brief lull, the guns resumed, for, along the 25-mile front, the Allied infantry had vacated rabbit warrens, gone ‘over the top’, and commenced the advance – with the British occupying a front towards the town of Bapaume, and the French objective being Péronne, a dozen miles south. At the same time, at Beaumont Hamel, below the German field fortification of the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, the British detonated a huge mine, which sent several acres flying upwards, the troops gamely advancing in the shadow of a pall of dust that turned the morning to twilight like an eclipse. The underground chamber had taken seven months to build, with top-notch Lancashire miners prominent, and was ‘as big as a picture palace’, according to one eye-witness. The blast took everything skywards: wagons and wheels, horses, tins and boxes, and Germans too.
The initial British objective was the German first position. Running north–south, the advance (see the map on p.22) encompassed Gommecourt; slipped east of Hébuterne; followed high ground before Serre and Beaumont Hamel; crossed the Ancre, which cut the line in two, with steep slopes rising from the valley bottom; then ran in front of strongly fortified Thiepval (a place now synonymous with its memorial), east of Authuille, just covering the hamlets of Ovillers and La Boiselle. It then passed south around Fricourt, a woodland village, turning at a right-angle to the east, covering Mametz and Montauban. Halfway between Maricourt and Hardecourt, the line veered south again, covering Curlu, before crossing the Somme itself at a wide marsh near Vaux, then taking in Frise, Dompierre, and Soyecourt, passing to the east of Lihons and then moving into the French sector.
Though the plan sounded good on paper, it didn’t factor in enemy intentions or difficulties of terrain – a knowledge gap that also undermined the 1915-1916 Gallipoli campaign. Mistakes on one front didn’t inform what followed elsewhere. British forces were arranged thus: from opposite Gommecourt to just south of Beaumont Hamel was the right wing of Sir Edmund Allenby’s Third Army and General Hunter-Weston’s 8th Corps. From just north of the Ancre to Authville came General Thomas Morland’s 10th Corps. East of Albert was General William Pulteney’s 3rd Corps, one division directed at Ovillers, another versus La Boiselle. South of here lay General Henry Horne (not Home as Buchan calls him) and his 15th Corps, curving around the Fricourt salient to Mametz. The right flank comprised General Walter Congreve’s 13th Corps.
Over the top
Private Sidney Williamson of the 1/8th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, described going over the top at 7.30am: ‘To the left as far as Gommecourt and to the right as far as Beaumont Hamel, lines of soldiers going forward as though on parade in line formation.’ He and another had the burdensome task of carrying a box containing a signalling lamp – but, just ‘over the top’, the soldier helping with the box ‘stopped and fell dead. I had to go on, but without the box.’ He reached the first German line ‘where there were many German dead’, then ‘went forward from shell hole to shell hole’. With enemy machine-gun fire proving ‘deadly’ and British bombs exhausted, there was no option but for odd groups to dig in. It was eventually time to return, shell hole by shell hole, and Williamson finally reached British lines at 7.30pm: ‘The sight that met my eyes was terrible. Hundreds of dead soldiers were everywhere.’
Matthaus Gerster of the German Army gave another perspective. ‘The intense bombardment was realised by all to be a prelude to the infantry assault. At 7.30am the hurricane of shells ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Our men at once clambered up the steep shafts leading from the dug-outs to daylight and ran singly or in groups to the nearest shell craters. The machine- guns were pulled out of the dug-outs and hurriedly placed into position… a rough firing line was thus rapidly established… when the leading British line was within one hundred yards, the rattle of machine-guns and rifle-fire broke out from the whole line of craters… [and] a mass of shells from the German batteries in rear tore through the air and burst among the advancing lines… the advance rapidly crumbled under this hail of shells and bullets.’
As the British troops began crossing no-man’s land, the Germans were able to re-man their ruined parapets, and commenced rapid fire with machine-guns and automatic rifles. They deployed special light Musketen battalions – troops who took guns into no- man’s land, commencing enfilading fire into the slowly advancing enemy. There were also machine-gun pits ahead of the parapets, which were connected to the trenches via deep tunnels, secure from shell-fire. As the British advanced in lines, one after the other, those lines evaporated under a deluge of machine-gun fire, shrapnel, high explosives, and rifle- fire – a withering hail that was maintained long into the day. Individuals or isolated detachments broke into enemy positions, and sometimes beyond, but never in sufficient numbers to hold what they’d taken.
The bloodiest day
The Germans were clearly expecting the attack and had a good idea where it would come – between Arras and Albert – so were ready with a full concentration of men and matériel. If they were less well prepared anywhere, it was south of Albert, and particularly south of the Somme. The battle therefore became two battles: one in the north, where resistance was toughest and the British therefore failed; and one in the south, where there were successes – but without a general advance in the north, this only represented a failure overall. By the evening of the first day, this imbalance was manifest – so the weight of attack focused south.
While the Germans were initially outnumbered by at least six to one, the advantage lay naturally with the defenders of trenches. As a result, the British achieved little success, with heavily laden infantry unable to move fast enough to deliver a rigid and over-ambitious time schedule – more shades of Gallipoli. The British losses on the first day numbered a staggering 57,470, including those ‘missing’, with 19,240 killed in action – making it the bloodiest single day in the Army’s history.
With three divisions of this ‘New Army’ in action, whole battalions were destroyed the first time they saw action. Also present were two divisions of the ‘regulars’ who had been prominent in Flanders and Gallipoli, as well as a Territorial brigade. The British contended with a chain of fortified villages, each beefed up to be all but impregnable, including Gommecourt, Serre, Beaumont Hamel, and Thiepval. Here, they were met by labyrinths of catacombs, often two storeys deep, with underground passages between firing line and shelter to the rear, and pits for machine-guns during bombardment. Typically, there were enemy positions on higher and better ground, too, while to the rear the Germans had guns massed on the plateau behind, and were further aided by excellent observation. A combo of direct observance and deep, impregnable shelters for machine-guns unhinged the British attack between Gommecourt and Thiepval. By evening, between these places, the attack had been everywhere held up, and British troops, or at least those remaining, were back in their old line, having faced the core of the German defence.
Tanks were introduced for the first time in these Somme engagements, but with limited success – even if their mechanised venture portended things to come. The tanks first rumbled into action on 15 September, their inaugural use by the British, but on ground that was too soft. They had been held back by hostility among military authorities, and even when released they achieved little because of their small numbers: 49 Mark Is (each weighing 30 tons, with a top speed of 5mph, and developed from an agricultural tractor) were set to be deployed – but, according to some sources, mechanical breakdowns and the shell-blasted terrain meant that just 18 made it on to the field. The fullest advantage was certainly not achieved.
Bert Chaney, of the 7th London Territorial Battalion, observed an early incident of ‘friendly fire’, when three tanks inadvertently began firing on a British front-line trench before turning their attention on the enemy: ‘One of the tanks got caught up on a tree stump and never reached their front-line and a second had its rear steering wheels shot off and could not guide itself.’
End game
The French counter-attacked at Verdun from 24 October, led by General Charles Mangin – but, although they retook a couple of forts, their advance of about two miles wouldn’t lead to an opening up at the Somme, and the battle gradually petered out in the perennial rain and mud of the Western Front.
The Allies conquered some 125 square miles of territory, but nothing representing prime strategic importance. The maximum advance achieved anywhere was around 5 to 7 miles – but this was the exception. In most places, gains were far less, so that much sought-after breakthrough was illusory. Casualties were universally heavy. Britain suffered 420,000 and the French 204,000, while the Germans lost 670,000 according to one estimate (another has Germans losses at between 400,000 and 500,000).
Ultimately, no strategic gains were made. When the fighting subsided, the Allies had inched forward, rather than galloping, and in some sectors any advance had been achieved only at great cost. The British Secretary of State for War, David Lloyd George, surveyed the battlefield in September 1916, and talked of the ‘illusions’ of Western strategists. Witnessing squadrons of cavalry ‘clattering proudly to the front’, he asked Haig their purpose. The reply was: ‘they were brought up as near the front- line as possible, so as to be ready to charge through the gap which was to be made by the Guards in the coming attack.’ As it was, the attack failed and Raymond Asquith, the brilliant son of the Prime Minister, was among the dead. Illusions indeed – or, as Lloyd George put it, those responsible for Allied strategy were ‘quite incapable of looking beyond and around or even through the struggle in front of them.’
For all its futility, and despite the appalling human toll, the Somme did have its effects. These came in the form of Germany’s withdrawal in February-March of the following year to the more easily defended Hindenburg Line – a retreat that shortened its front by 25 miles – and its reliance on the unrestricted submarine warfare that would eventually bring America into the war on 6 April 1917. These were tacit admissions that the war of attrition – of which the Battle of the Somme was the prime example – had damaged the Germans even more than it had the Allies.
All images: Wikimedia Commons, unless otherwise stated
You can read the second part by Stephen Roberts about the Battle of the Boar’s Head here and find an infographic about the Somme in 10 objects here.
