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Wiltshire Regiment and barbed wire, Thiepval, The Somme, 7 August 1916
The worst day in the history of the British army
1 July 1916 was the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the biggest offensive yet launched against the Germans by the British and the French. But that first day ended with 57 000 British casualties.
It was the worst day in the history of the British army. Nevertheless, the battle of the Somme dragged on until the middle of November 1916. By then 419 654 men from Britain and her Empire were dead or wounded from this battle on the Somme alone. So were 202 567 French and (so far as anyone can discover, since there are no complete official figures) somewhere between 500 000 and 600 000 Germans.
‘The Germans were all on higher ground, ‘remembered Private Roy Bealing, of the Wiltshire Regiment. He was near La Boiselle, a village at the centre of the British front.
‘And they could see us all coming down in a single file, perhaps a thousand of us going to this trench, and they started shelling. One shell pitched right in front of me and knocked out Sergeant Viney and two or three more. We had to keep going and we had to step over one and step over another to carry on. But we had to keep going.’
And that was even before Roy Bealing got to the front line, where he picks up the story: ‘the Germans had a machine-gun trained on it going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, traversing and coming round every couple of minutes, and the bullets were cutting the sandbags on the parapet just as if they were cutting them with a knife.’
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A big gun on The Somme - the British army had very few of these. The Germans had many and this is what men in tin hats were sent out against
A trip to the Battlefields gives you a quick sense of exposure to the German guns
If you want to understand why the Battle of the Somme was such a disaster for the British, and especially that first horrifying day, then you should take a trip to the battlefields. You’ll need to go with a guide who can tell you what happened because only a few of the battle sites are marked. Everything is now green, a quiet landscape gently rolling between low hills and little farms and pretty villages.
But once you know the story and you stand where the British and Imperial soldiers stood, the whole thing suddenly becomes not only vividly real, but also much more shocking. Look around and you get a terrible sense of exposure to the German guns and the horrifying odds the men were expected to accept. It’s quickly and completely obvious, from what is in front of your eyes, that much of the British battle plan was ludicrous from the start.
Go to the battlefields and the very first thing that strikes you is that, in almost every single stretch of the line, the British and French were having to attack uphill. Exactly as Roy Bealing saw at La Boiselle, the Germans were entrenched at the tops of the slopes, along the ridge at Vimy, on the hills that encircle Ypres, everywhere. In an epoch when almost all fighting was still done on foot, and when the big guns relied on spotters who could find a high place to look down over the enemy, this represents an enormous advantage.
Episode 02 - They just pretended to shoot
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Almost everything you thought you knew about the Battle of the Somme is wrong
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British cavalry cleaning lances
Right from the start Douglas Haig tried to rewrite what happened
As soon as you begin to research the Battle of the Somme you discover that almost everything you thought you knew about it was wrong. The whistles didn’t all go at 7.30 that morning. British and Imperial soldiers had already been climbing silently out of their trenches for hours. They didn’t advance in straight lines. Many took up initial positions in no-man’s land. Some crept through underground tunnels. Others ran in small raiding parties.
Had British Corps commanders understood machine gun warfare they would not have sent British infantrymen across No Man’s Land unprotected from the German machine gun crews. We explain why the British army need never have been in the position it was in on the Somme, scrabbling about at the bottom of hills, peering up at German fortifications in all the strategic locations.
We look at its refusal to take trench warfare seriously even though it had been around for 60 years. The majority of the officer class remained wedded to the horse. They would fight cowardly Germans, who cowered in their fortified trenches with their ungentlemanly machine-guns, with moral superiority, lance-carrying cavalry, and an inexhaustible supply of common infantrymen. The stories would be humorous if the result hadn’t been so catastrophic.
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Jon’s Interview with Emma Cox on his book Partisan Politics
From TOMORROW 5 January you can hear Jon talking about the background to his book and the 18th Century in general with Emma Cox whose great… great grandfather, Charles Cox - a currier (as in a curer of leather) was an 18th century mayor of Taunton and features in Jon’s book.
Jon talks about what it was like to be a mayor in the 18th century and the society and party politics of politically crucial small towns.
You can hear our own podcast – a humorous taster for the book – From Mayor to Meatmarket. Getting elected in the 18th Century Politics went right from the top to the bottom - from the mayor in charge of the corporation to the butchers in the meatmarket. [And on Apple podcast]
Jon's evidence uniquely shows that 18th century politics was more democratic than it is now, even though we didn't have one man/woman one vote. No longer do historians believe that 18th century toffs bribed their way into power. It may happen now but it didn't happen then!
Check out Emma Cox's always fascinating podcast about genealogy, local history and how to do history research. Apple / Spotify / Stitcher / Tune In / Pocketcast / Google podcasts
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