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THE FIRST WORLD WAR
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THE OFFENSIVE OF THE SOMME
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'Aussie Rick'
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Jun 10, 2011 02:23PM
Great post Bentley, very interesting story.
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by Peter HartSynopsis
The experiences of the British army on the Somme in 1916 have become a legend of endurance and sacrifice, but little has been written in recent years on the air war above the battlefield. This account does not draw primarily upon official histories or previously published memoirs, but rather on never-before published accounts recorded by the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive in London. The atmosphere in England after the war did not encourage candid accounts, and the Sound Archives contain incidents and perspectives that would otherwise not have been preserved.
Photographic reconnaissance and artillery spotting were the primary duties of the air forces, with fighters being developed to attack aircraft engaged in these tasks. The conflict between fighters turned into a war of its own, with new weapons, tactics and aircraft constantly being developed to gain the upper hand.
Thanks for the post Jerome. It's difficult to find words to describe the Somme. Flying was learn as you go and those who were drawn to it were an amazing lot.
I think that this headline from the Sun newspaper in Britain pretty much summarizes the total horror of the Battle of the Somme. I can't quite grasp the scope and inhumanity of this first day of battle.
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by William J. Philpott (no photo)Synopsis:
For decades, the Battle of the Somme has exemplified the horrors and futility of trench warfare. Yet in Three Armies on the Somme, William Philpott makes a convincing argument that the battle ultimately gave the British and French forces on the Western Front the knowledge and experience to bring World War I to a victorious end.
It was the most brutal fight in a war that scarred generations. Infantrymen lined up opposite massed artillery and machine guns. Chlorine gas filled the air. The dead and dying littered the shattered earth of no man’s land. Survivors were rattled with shell-shock. We remember the shedding of so much young blood and condemn the generals who sent their men to their deaths. Ever since, the Somme has been seen as a waste: even as the war continued, respected leaders—Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George among them—judged the battle a pointless one.
While previous histories have documented the missteps of British command, no account has fully recognized the fact that allied generals were witnessing the spontaneous evolution of warfare even as they sent their troops “over the top.” With his keen insight and vast knowledge of military strategy, Philpott shows that twentieth-century war as we know it simply didn’t exist before the Battle of the Somme: new technologies like the armored tank made their battlefield debut, while developments in communications lagged behind commanders’ needs. Attrition emerged as the only means of defeating industrialized belligerents that were mobilizing all their resources for war. At the Somme, the allied armies acquired the necessary lessons of modern warfare, without which they could never have prevailed.
An exciting, indispensable work of military history that challenges our received ideas about the Battle of the Somme, and about the very nature of war.
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by Gerhard Hirschfeld (no photo)Synopsis:
This book discusses in detail the experience of German warfare in the first World War, focusing specifically on the battle of the Somme. The Somme, together with other regions of northern France, had also lain under German domination. Its inhabitants had been rigorously suppressed and their possessions carted off as booty. Finally, during their 1917 withdrawal, the Germans had subjected the whole region to Operation Alberich, a retreat involving unparalleled brutality which left the population in occupation of a wilderness wrought by war (the "scorched earth policy"). A well-known, and well-researched account, the authors have combined their research skills to produce a book which includes private testimonies. Amongst these are many unknown or previously unpublished letters and diaries as well as numerous photographs.
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by Robin Prior (no photo)Synopsis:
In the long history of the British Army, the Battle of the Somme was its bloodiest encounter. Between July 1 and mid-November 1916, 432,000 of its soldiers became casualties--about 3,600 for every day of battle. German casualties were far fewer despite British superiority in the air and in lethal artillery.
What went wrong for the British, and who was responsible? Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson have examined the entire public archive on the Battle of the Somme to reconstruct the day-by-day course of the war. The result is the most precise and authentic account of the campaign on record and a book that challenges almost every received view of the battle. The colossal rate of infantry casualties in fact resulted from inadequate fire support; responsibility for tactical mistakes actually belonged to the High Command and the civilian War Committee. Field-Marshall Haig, the records show, was repeatedly deficient in strategy, tactics, command, and organization. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died for a cause that lacked both a coherent military plan and responsible political leadership. Prior and Wilson decisively change our understanding of the history of the Western Front.
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by Gary Sheffield (no photo)Synopsis:
A new analysis of the notorious Battle of the Somme, using archives from both sides not previously available, finds some positive outcomes: the battle may have hurt the Germans even more than the British, and it taught an inexperienced British army the hard way how to fight a modern war.
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Jerome, Assisting Moderator - Upcoming Books and Releases
(last edited Sep 14, 2015 11:50AM)
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Release date: October 15, 2015
Elegy: The First Day on the Somme
by
Andrew RobertsSynopsis:
On July 1, 1916, after a five-day bombardment, 11 British and five French divisions launched their long-awaited "Big Push" on German positions on high ground above the Rivers Ancre and Somme on the Western Front. Some ground was gained, but at a terrible cost. In killing-grounds whose names are indelibly imprinted on 20th-century memory, German machine-guns—manned by troops who had sat out the storm of shellfire in deep dugouts—inflicted terrible losses on the British infantry. The British Fourth Army lost 57,470 casualties, the French Sixth Army suffered 1,590 casualties, and the German 2nd Army 10,000. And this was but the prelude to 141 days of slaughter that would witness the deaths of between 750,000 and 1 million troops. Andrew Roberts evokes the pity and the horror of the blackest day in the history of the British army—a summer’s day turned hell on earth by modern military technology—in the words of casualties, survivors, and the bereaved.
And now I've got another Roberts book for my "to read" shelf...I heartily enjoyed and highly recommend:
by
Andrew RobertsThanks Jerome!
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Release date: August 19, 2015
Hold at All Costs!: The Epic Battle of Delville Wood 1916
by Ian Uys (no photo)Synopsis:
Delville Wood in the Somme was the most famous battle ever fought by South Africans. Through this action other nations learnt to respect the fighting qualities of the men from the fledgling Union of South Africa. Erstwhile foes, Boer and Briton, fought shoulder to shoulder against the pride of the German Army. They withstood waves of attacking infantrymen; were subjected to savage artillery fire which reached a crescendo of seven shells a second, pulverizing the wood and obliterating the defenses; then fought hand to hand until overrun; threw back the enemy; and fought on with unbelievable tenacity.
The bone-weary survivors defended the wood through five days and six nights of hell, eventually being forced into a corner of the wood. The orders were to hold on at all costs – and this they did despite appalling casualties. The saga of Delville Wood will never be forgotten by South Africa, yet the story of the battle, told through the eyes of the participants was never fully documented – accounts read like fiction, yet are wholly true.
We learn about youngsters from the plains of Southern Africa who earned the admiration of their enemy. After being shelled for eight hours they stood up from the mud to repel fresh assaults. We read of the Victoria Cross won through rescuing a wounded officer under fire; a man blown up and buried who continued on to deliver his message and earn the DCM; the officer who was captured then knocked out his guard to return to the fighting; the colonel who fought like a private with rifle and mills bombs; and many more.
The Germans’ experiences are also chronicled. Extracts from their regimental histories paint a picture of their dogged determination to retake the wood. Their order was that the enemy was not to advance except over corpses! The author interviewed many of the South African survivors, now long gone, and has visited the wood on many occasions during the past thirty-three years. The trilogy of books he wrote on the battle has been combined into a riveting account of ‘the bloodiest battle hell of 1916’.
In 1917 The Times of London recounted, ‘No battlefield on all the Western Front was more bitterly contested than was “Devil’s Wood”... [where] South African forces won their imperishable fame – grimly hanging on against overwhelming odds and repulsing counter attacks by troops five and six times their number.”
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Jerome, Assisting Moderator - Upcoming Books and Releases
(last edited Dec 04, 2015 08:01AM)
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Release date: June 14, 2016
Somme 1916: Success and Failure on the First Day of the Battle of the Somme
by Paul Kendall (no photo)Synopsis:
Much controversy has surrounded the Somme offensive relating to its justification and its impact upon the course of the war. General Sir Douglas Haig's policies have been the subject of considerable debate about whether the heavy losses sustained were worth the small gains that were achieved which appeared to have little strategic value. That was certainly the case on many sectors on 1 July 1916, where British soldiers were unable to cross No Man's Land and failed to reach, or penetrate into, the German trenches. In other sectors, however, breaches were made in the German lines culminating in the capture that day of Leipzig Redoubt, Mametz and Montauban. This book aims to highlight the failures and successes on that day and for the first time evaluate those factors that caused some divisions to succeed in capturing their objectives whilst others failed. An important new study, this book is certain to answer these questions as well as challenging the many myths and misconceptions surrounding the battle that have been propagated for the last 100 years.
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Release date: July 1, 2016
The Battle of the Somme
by Alan Axelrod (no photo)Synopsis:
The Battle of the Somme took place from July 1 through November 18, 1916, making 2016 the 100th anniversary of this major battle of World War I, the "war to end all wars," as Woodrow Wilson called it. The book offers an exciting popular narrative, with emphasis on the key personalities and its strategic and political significance. The battle is set in the context of the history of modern warfare, technologically, culturally, and politically. Although it was fought in Europe, the American perspective is included prominently.
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Battle of the Somme DocumentaryThe Battle of the Somme is a 1916 British documentary and propaganda film, shot by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell. The film depicts the British Army in the preliminary and early days of the battle of the Somme (1 July – 18 November 1916). The film had its première in London on 10 August 1916 and was released generally on 21 August.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhHdZ...
(Source: YouTube)
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Thanks, Bentley. I did not know that this documentary existed and found out about it while reading a book about the Somme......and there it was on YouTube. What a piece of history!!!!....although some of the scenes were re-enactments, they were shot on the battlefield at the time of the battle. I'm surprised the film survived the ravages of time.
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Release date: July 1, 2016
Somme: Into the Breach
by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (no photo)Synopsis:
The notion of battles as the irreducible building blocks of war demands a single verdict of each campaign―victory, defeat, stalemate. But this kind of accounting leaves no room to record the nuances and twists of actual conflict. In Somme: Into the Breach, the noted military historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore shows that by turning our focus to stories of the front line―to acts of heroism and moments of both terror and triumph―we can counter, and even change, familiar narratives.
Planned as a decisive strike but fought as a bloody battle of attrition, the Battle of the Somme claimed over a million dead or wounded in months of fighting that have long epitomized the tragedy and folly of World War I. Yet by focusing on the first-hand experiences and personal stories of both Allied and enemy soldiers, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore defies the customary framing of incompetent generals and senseless slaughter. In its place, eyewitness accounts relive scenes of extraordinary courage and sacrifice, as soldiers ordered “over the top” ventured into No Man’s Land and enemy trenches, where they met a hail of machine-gun fire, thickets of barbed wire, and exploding shells.
Rescuing from history the many forgotten heroes whose bravery has been overlooked, and giving voice to their bereaved relatives at home, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the Somme campaign in all its glory as well as its misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle when seen through the eyes of those who lived it.
The memorial to the missing, who died at the Somme. It is located at Thiepval Chateau in France.
The inscription reads:
Here are recorded names of officers and men of the British Armies who fell on the Somme battlefields July 1915 February 1918 but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their
comrades in death.
Peter Liddle has updated his reassesment for the centennial: The 1916 Battle of the Somme Reconsidered
byPeter H. Liddle(no photo)Twenty-four years after the publication of his classic study of the Somme, Peter Liddle reconsiders the battle in the light of recent scholarship. The battle still gives rise to fierce debate and, with Passchendaele, it is often seen as the epitome of the tragic folly of the First World War. But is this a reasoned judgment? Peter Liddle, in this authoritative study, reexamines the concept and planning of the operation and follows the course of the action through the entire four and a half months of the fighting. His narrative is based on the graphic testimony of the men engaged in the struggle, not just concentrating on the front-line infantryman but also the gunner, sapper, medical man, airman and yes, the nurse, playing her crucial role behind the line of battle. The reader is privileged in getting a direct insight into how those who were there coped with the extraordinary, often prolonged, stress of the experience and maintained to a remarkable degree a level of morale adequate for what had to be endured.
My two cents :
This book was a disappointment. With a title like this, one looks forward to a dominant amount of analysis and historical debate, but these make up only a third of the pages. The most interesting parts of the book are thus the first and final chapters. In the first, the current trends in historiography are under discussion.
Broadly speaking, the consensus be situated halfway between the Lions led by Donkeys school of the 1960's and the merciless revisionism of notable Commonwealth historians. The controversy surrending the direction of the battle still centers on Field Marshall Douglas Haig, demonised in Denis Winters' Haigs Command: A Reassessment (1991) but since moderately rehabilited in works such as Haig: A Re-Appraisal 80 Years On.
From this deducts that some of the criticisms voiced by enfant terribles Tim Travers ( The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare ........ ,1987) and Trevor&Wilson (The Somme ,2005) have gained acceptance, but not all.
The academic debate still searches for better solutions to the operational quagmire of the Somme than "More guns. Always add more guns." but agrees, for example, that the notion that the Somme offensive was a knee-jerk reaction of the Entente to the attack on Verdun must be banished from the popular mind; an offensive on such a scale couldn't have been organised on such short notice; the British just took up a larger part of the task so that the French Army could maximize its Moria system on the Meuse front. Of note is also that the heavily burdened greenhorns of the British New Armies did not uniformily advance shoulder to shoulder, but locally adapted more open formation, sometimes inspired by the seasoned habits of the French infantry on the right wing. The kicking of a football across No Man's Land is a famous example of this.
The four chapters making up the middle are a conventional, if usefully brief, history of the battle. If you read this diagonally, there's a lot of operational analysis to the point on offer; it beats weeding through the hundreds of pages by Trevor & Wilson. Some of the testimonials shed light on lesser-known aspects of the Somme battle, such as the attritional cost among pilots to establish air suppremacy.
The final chapter "A verdict" tries to assign credit and blame where due, but it is clear that when framed in the larger context of the war, without the benefit of hindsight, without material constraints or a 21st-century mentality frame, the fight went as well as it could. One of the small plates attached to the planks of the walkway around the Lochnagar mine quotes a veteran who died in 1990 : "I did what I had to do". The contemporary voice definitely seems to make less fuss over the possibility of a less-than-perfect direction.
Cited works :
byDenis Winter(no photo)
byBrian Bond(no photo)
byTim Travers(no photo)
byRobin Prior(no photo)
Is Liddle's re-assessment of the battle much different from his first book on this subject from 2001. It's been years since I read the 2001 edition and wonder how, why, and what he changed that makes it worth reading. As I recall, I rather liked the first book but I was not on GR at the time so have no review to which to refer.Your "two cents worth" is enlightening!!
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by Peter H. Liddle (no photo)
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by Jack Sheldon (no photo)Synopsis:
This book will provide an entirely fresh way of looking at the Battle of the Somme 1916. It will not be a rehashed narrative history of the battle. Instead, drawing heavily on examples that can be illustrated through exploitation of the primary sources still available in abundance in the archives at Stuttgart and Munich and anecdotal accounts, it will explain how and why the German defense was designed and conducted as it was. There will be descriptions of the reasons for the dominance of the Great General Staff, the tensions between commanders and staff, the disagreements between the commanders of First and Second Army and the replacement of General von Falkenhayn with the duumvirate of Hindenburg and Ludendorff.
Specific case studies will include the loss and recapture of Schwaben Redoubt on 1 July, the British assault on the Second Position of 14 July, the tank attack at Flers 15 September and the autumn battles for Sailly Saissisel and St Pierre Vaast Wood.
This will ensure that there is plenty to interest the general reader as well as showing how the various levels of command from regiment to army group operated and responded to emergencies and crises. Space will be devoted to changes in command philosophy, the introduction of new weapons and equipment and the evolution of tactics to counter the massive Allied superiority in manpower and materiel
The making of the movie the Battle of the Somme(1916).It does not deal with the reception or significance.
Ghosts on the Somme: Filming the Battle, June-July 1916
by Alastair Fraser(no photo)Synopsis:
The Battle of the Somme is one of the most famous, and earliest, films of war ever made. It records the most disastrous day in the history of the British army 1 July 1916 and it had a huge impact when it was shown in Britain during the war. Since then images from it have been repeated so often in books and documentaries that it has profoundly influenced our view of the battle and of the Great War itself. Yet this book is the first in-depth study of this historic film, and it is the first to relate it to the surviving battleground of the Somme.
The authors explore the film and its history in fascinating detail. They investigate how much of it was faked and consider how much credit for it should go to Geoffrey Malins and how much to John MacDowell. And they use modern photographs of the locations to give us a telling insight into the landscape of the battle. This painstaking exercise in historical reconstruction will be compelling reading for everyone who is interested in the Great War."
My two cents:
If you decide you want an in-depth look at the making of the 1916 blockbuster Battle of the Somme , this is the book for you. If not, the level of detail in the still-based analysis will go straight over your head.
The illustrations do tell their own story, however. The technology may have had problems with clouds and movement, but not with the exhausted eyes of the wounded or the alternation of relief and shell-shock on the faces of Bavarian prisoners. A crouched corpse, the left had darkened with pooled blood, carries a pathos that even Michelangelo's Pieta cannot match.
Time has not softened the impact upon the public. One widow [mis]identified her husband on-screen in October, a month after she'd received the KIA notice. One great-granddaughter almost saw her father or brother on-screen in 2011, who had inherited the mannerisms and smile of an ancestor that was to be dead within the hour.
Dialogue has been reconstructed by professional lip-readers and dialect linguists. I hope that these efforts, in combination with the process of colourisation, might give us a Techicolor Talkie version one day. The fake footage is limited to a minute. Real combat, even viewed close enough to be knocked off your feet by enemy artillery rounds, looks tame and soo far away across the expanse of a WWI battlefield. So we get some explosions at a practise range and that overused picture that has been captioned all over the Western Front and even as the 29th (regular) Division at Gallipoli :
" Reading miniature helmet lettering and reconstructing colours from grainy pictures where the untrained eye cannot go beyond "He has two eyes, a nose and a mouth" in combination with Then-and-Now battlefield archeology is a skill to envy. It serves to trace the bulky tripods of Geoffrey Malins and his lesser-known partner John McDowell (guess which one does not have his own Wikipedia page) in the week around 1 July 1916.
The book comes with seven area maps, which will serve the Somme student in combination with other books, and a minute-by-minute list of the screen captures discussed, which will serve the proud owners of the DVD (in my case, a German edition of the IWM release...)
24 Hours at the Somme: 1 July 1916
by
Robert KershawSynopsis:
The first day of the Somme has had more of a widespread emotional impact on the psyche of the British public than any other battle in history. Now, 100 years later, Robert Kershaw attempts to understand the carnage, using the voices of the British and German soldiers who lived through that awful day. In the early hours of July 1, 1916, the British General staff placed its faith in patriotism and guts, believing that one "Big Push" would bring on the end of World War I. By sunset, there were 57,470 men who lay dead, missing, or wounded. On that day, hope died. Juxtaposing the British trench view against that from the German parapet, Kershaw draws on eyewitness accounts, memories, and letters to expose the true horror of that day. Amongst the mud, gore, and stench of death, there are also stories of humanity and resilience, of all-embracing comradeship, and gritty patriotic British spirit. However, it was this very emotion which ultimately caused thousands of young men to sacrifice themselves on the Somme
My two cents:
Move over, Martin Middlebrook! To his decumvirate of main characters, we now have a cast of dozens dozens presented prior to the feature presentation. To his anglocentric view, we now find ourselves in the German dugouts as they are subjected to the nerve-grating terror of the Somme's week-long opening bombardment. The French, unfortunately, remain out of sight on their riverbanks. But Kershaw brings us as close to the horror of the first day on the Somme as a historian can.
When the storm of steel finally lifted, the Ländser were both relieved to be in possession of their senses and fired up to give the approaching lines of confident Engländer a warm welcome. The Commonwealth monuments that now dot the green hills of Picardy show us where the most memorable subsequent fighting took place. The tower of the 36st Ulster Division: at great cost it shoved its head into the German line while the shoulders couldn't follow. The Caribou at Beaumont-Hamel, where the Newfoundland regiment was annihilated. The imposing Thiepval Memorial, perched on top of that most impregnable hill. In between them, the 26th Bavarian Division held, lost and recaptured the Schwaben Redoubt. Both infantry and artillery went to two or three ammunition resupplies, while the heaped casings around some overrun machine-guns totalled up to 20.000 rounds.
In front of them, white flares went up along most of the line as the attack came to a standstill and no-man's land was covered with dead and wounded. Craters were filled to the brim with both of them. Some crawled back, others were too immobilised. All suffered from thirst and the scent of heated blood under the July sun. One man who got caught in barbed wire remembers it retrospectively as worse than the smell of gas.
Most of his kind did not survive; like pinned butterflies, nocturnal German patrols finished them off with a rifle butt to the skull. This contrasts with an officer who was buried alive for hours after the Lochnagar mine went up. magnanimously, he had his men pull in dozens of British wounded for medical treatment. Where the first wave was cut down and its scant walking survivors retreated, some riflemen would stand on the parapet to take better aim but more than one machine-gunner, suddenly confronted with the feebly moving tapestry in front, would shout "Let'em go! They've had enough!".
The British called it German cruelty; the Germans speak of wounded taking potshots at them. Certainly they did not have a monopoly on bloodlust; the close-quarter frenzy of trench fighting with bayonet and grenade saw to that. An elderly reservist or a crying 17 year old might be spared by one man who'd just lost his batallion of Pals and shot by the next, who'd served on Gallipoli and lost a brother. Bangalores stuffed with white phosphorus, designed to melt through barbed wire, proved equally useful to roast the occupants of a dug-out alive, if a smoke grenade did not send them flying up the stairs and into the sight of coldly relaxed Tommies on a human pheasant hunt.
There is little room for Rawlingson and Haig in their HQ, where the ubiquitous breakdown in communications disclosed only slowly the degree of failure on the "worst day in the history of the British Army". The tactical significance of the Somme, where a breakthrough with limited means gave way to a war of attrition based upon firepower rather than manpower, was lost to the communities from whence the men on the ground came. They were now inundated with "fallen on the field of honour" telegrams by the street. This book belongs to those twenty thousand.
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Joe SaccoSynopsis:
Launched on July 1, 1916, the Battle of the Somme has come to epitomize the madness of the First World War. Almost 20,000 British soldiers were killed and another 40,000 were wounded that first day, and there were more than one million casualties by the time the offensive halted. In The Great War, acclaimed cartoon journalist Joe Sacco depicts the events of that day in an extraordinary, 24-foot- long panorama: from General Douglas Haig and the massive artillery positions behind the trench lines to the legions of soldiers going "over the top" and getting cut down in no-man's-land, to the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers retreating and the dead being buried en masse. Printed on fine accordion-fold paper and packaged in a deluxe slipcase with a 16-page booklet, The Great War is a landmark in Sacco's illustrious career and allows us to see the War to End All Wars as we've never seen it before.
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by Commonwealth War Graves Commission (no photo)Synopsis:
The Battle of the Somme was the most devastating engagement in which British troops fought during the First World War.
The 141 days of conflict saw 400,000 British and Commonwealth casualties, with 60,000 on the first day alone. Since the end of the war, the battlefield has become hallowed ground as visitors fall silent at the sight of the rows of white gravestones marking the resting place of tens of thousands of soldiers.
Published in partnership with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), this is a thematic guide to about 30 locations on the Somme. Released as part of the commemorations of the anniversary of the battle, this a high quality, weather resistant battlefield companion, spiral bound and containing a map and battlefield trails.
It suggests sites to visit, and reveals some of the lesser-known stories behind CWGC sites and the men and women they commemorate, providing a snapshot of the day's fighting and its casualties.
This is an invaluable resource for anyone travelling to the Somme in this centenary year.
Table of Contents:
About this Book
The Battle of the Somme
- The British Army on the Somme
Exploring the Battlefields
- Visiting CWGC cemeteries and memorials
- The Cemeteries of the Somme
Battlefield Trails
- The North: Serre Road Cemetery No.2
• Serre Road Cemetery No. 1
• Redan Ridge Cemetery No. 3
• Beaumont-Hamel British Cemetery
• Newfoundland Memorial Park
• Ancre British Cemetery
- The Southern Advance: Bapaume Post Military Cemetery
• Fricourt New Military Cemetery
• Devonshire Cemetery
• Dantzig Alley British Cemetery
• Carnoy Military Cemetery
• Peronne Road Cemetery
• Quarry Road Cemetery, Montauban
• Caterpillar Valley Cemetery
- Thiepval Ridge: Connaught Cemetery and Mill Road Cemetery
• Lonsdale Cemetery *Ovillers Military Cemetery
• Pozieres British Cemetery
• Thiepval Memorial
- Attrition: Delville Wood Cemetery *Bernafay Wood British Cemetery
• Guillemont Road Cemetery
• Guards' Cemetery, Lesbœufs
• Bulls Road Cemetery *London Cemetery and Extension
• Courcelette British Cemetery
• Adanac Military Cemetery
• Warlencourt British Cemetery
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
About the Author:
Dr Glyn Prysor is Chief Historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
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Release date: March 26, 2026
The Somme 1916: The Blasted Battle
by Andrew RobertshawSynopsis:
The Battle of the Somme raged from 1 July to 18 November 1916 and was one of the bloodiest fought in military history. It has come to signify for many the waste and bloodshed of the First World War as hundreds of thousands of men on all sides lost their lives fighting over small gains in land. Yet, this battle was also to mark a turning point in the war and to witness new methods of warfare, such as all-arms integrated attacks, with infantry units and the new Tank Corps fighting alongside each other. In this Battle Story, Andrew Robertshaw seeks to lift the battle out of its controversy and explain what really happened and why. Complete with detailed maps and photographs, as well as fascinating facts and profiles of the leaders, this is the best introduction to this legendary battle.
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Somme 1916: The Blasted Battle (other topics)CWGC Battlefield Companion Somme 1916 (other topics)
The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme (other topics)
24 Hours at the Somme: 1 July 1916 (other topics)
Ghosts on the Somme: Filming the Battle, June-July 1916 (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Andrew Robertshaw (other topics)Commonwealth War Graves Commission (other topics)
Joe Sacco (other topics)
Robert Kershaw (other topics)
Alastair Fraser (other topics)
More...
