WW13+Somme

=Overview of strategies and tactics to break the stalemate including key battles: Verdun, the Somme, Passchendaele=

The Battle of the Somme
//Battle of the Somme (1 July to 18 November 1816). After a week’s intensive bombardment, the British Fourth Army, with the French Sixth Army on its right, launched the first of a series of attacks on German positions along a twenty-mile front north of the river Somme between the towns of Albert and Péronne. Twenty thousand British soldiers perished on the first day of the battle (1 July)... The offensive was intended to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun. During twenty weeks of successive offensives the allies advanced some ten miles and lost 600,000 men, two-thirds of them British. use of tanks for the first time (by the British on 15 September) was not entirely successful because of the muddy and marshy terrain. Although the Germans were forced back to new positions, they held the vital railway junction at Bapaume, threatened by the British attacks. Subsequently German military historians claimed that the Somme, together with Verdun, so weakened their army that it was never again possible to find a trained nucleus upon which to build an efficient fighting force: hence it has been argued that the Somme, despite its futile costliness, was the turning point of the war in France.// Alan Palmer, //Dictionary of Twentieth Century History//, Penguin, 1979, p.350


 * A British offensive against German lines.
 * Date: 1 July – 18 November 1916
 * Place: along an 18 mile front north of the river Somme in Picardy.


 * Aim**:
 * to break the German lines and end the stalemate.
 * to relive pressure on the French at Verdun.

A German machine-gunner recalls the first day of the Battle of the Somme: //We were surprised to see them walking, we had never seen that before. The officers went in front. I noticed one of them walking calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started to fire we just had to load and reload. They went down in their hundreds. We didn’t have to aim, we just fired into them.// Laffin, J., //British Butchers and Bunglers of World War I//, 1988, p.68 (in Webb p.59)
 * The Battle**:
 * Bombardment: For a week before the battle, the German lines were bombarded by British artillery. 1.6 million shells were fired. The bombardment could be heard in London. The aim was eliminate all German life in the trenches so that on the 1st July, the British troops would be able to walk across no man’s land to the German trenches without facing enemy fire.
 * The German trenches were deep and well-established and they were able to survive the barrage. When the bombardment ended and the battle began, the Germans left their deep bunkers, bringing their machine guns with them to the surface.
 * 1st July was the worst day in British military history with 60,000 casualties including 20,000 dead.


 * The battle continued until November with huge losses on both sides.
 * Tanks were first used (unsuccessfully) by the British in September.


 * Result**: The British gained 8 km at enormous cost.


 * Before Action**

... I, that on my familiar hill Saw with uncomprehending eyes A hundred of Thy sunsets spill Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice, Ere the sun swings his noonday sword Must say good-bye to all of this;- By all delights that I shall miss, Help me to die, O Lord.

This was the last poem of **William Noel Hodgson**, written just before the Battle of the Somme. He died on the first day of the battle near Mametz.

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