Shortly after daybreak on 1 July 1916, around 100,000 troops of Sir Henry Rawlinson’s 5th Army left their trenches and advanced on the German trenches across no-man’s-land. Many, if not most, expected the 5-day artillery bombardment to have destroyed all but the hardiest of German defensive works and to have killed, wounded or stunned the German defenders. In short, they expected to walk into the German lines largely unopposed. However, as we know today, the attack was anything but the walk-over expected. The massive British artillery barrage had damaged the surface of the German defenses, but most defenders survived unharmed in dug-outs (known in German as Stollen) deep below the surface. When the barrage ended and the British troops attacked, the shaken but unharmed German defenders emerged and poured a deadly fire into the advancing lines of British troops. By the end of the day, the German defenders had inflicted one of the most stunning defeats on any army. Close to 60 percent of the British attackers were dead, wounded or missing, and in most places along the 5th Army’s front, the surviving attackers were forced back to their starting points. However, the attack on 1 July was only the beginning. Although the Germans emerged victorious on this day, over the next 4½ months, the battle would ebb to and fro, all the while the three armies involved, the British, French and German, would suffer horrible casualties.

Initially, the Anglo-French attack on the Somme was welcomed by the German high command. Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the German General Staff and the de facto commander-in-chief of the German army, had been long expecting the attack. In February, he had launched an assault on the French fortress of Verdun that was designed to ‘bleed white’ the French army and force the French government to peace talks. Falkenhayn believed that before the final French collapse the British would launch an offensive of their own, designed to relieve pressure on their beleaguered ally. Given the disastrous performance of the British army in previous offensives, the German general believed that this new British offensive would also be easily defeated. After this, Falkenhayn intended to launch an offensive of his own that would possibly drive the British from the Continent and force the French to concede defeat. The results of 1 July seemed to confirm this critical assessment of the British.

From 2 July until 13 November, the British and their French ally continued to attack. While on 1 July the British had planned a war-winning advance, after the shock of the initial assault, the British changed their tactics. Learning the lessons of 1 July, they would generally employ more methodical methods in an effort to achieve more limited results for the remainder of the battle. Rather than attempting to achieve a decisive breakthrough of the German lines, the British army instead aimed at capturing pieces of terrain – woods, hills, villages, etc. – that were key to the successive lines of trenches that made up the German defensive position. To take these terrain features, the British relied heavily on intense artillery bombardment of a limited area. They also applied more widely creeping barrages, during which the infantry would follow close behind a slowly advancing wave of artillery fire for protection against the German defense. All of these factors slowly took their toll on the Germans. Weeks and months of heavy artillery bombardments battered down the German defensive works, caved in the deep Stollen, and killed German defenders. The battle had shifted from being an attempt to break through the German line and win the war quickly to a slow attritional battle designed to kill and wound German soldiers.

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