First day on the Somme
1 July 1916 · in Battle View, played out step by step on the ground where it was fought
British and French offensive against German lines on the Somme from July to November 1916. The first day alone cost the British Army about 57,000 casualties.
The sides
- British, led by Douglas Haig: about 120,000 men
- Germany, led by Fritz von Below: about 50,000 men
- France, led by Émile Fayolle: about 50,000 men
States that fought: German Empire, French Third Republic, Kingdom of Great Britain.
How it went
First day on the Somme
Two years into the First World War, Britain's new citizen armies, volunteers who joined up together from the same towns and offices, are to break the German line on the Somme alongside the French, and draw German strength away from Verdun.
The bombardment
For a week 1,500 guns fire some 1.5 million shells at the German lines. The plan says nothing can live through it. But many shells are duds, the wire is often uncut, and the Germans wait it out in dugouts ten metres deep.
Zero hour
At 7:28 on 1 July huge mines go up under the German line, at La Boisselle and Hawthorn Ridge. At 7:30 the whistles blow and the first waves climb out and walk across no man's land in lines.
Cut down in the north
In the north the Germans come up from their dugouts and man their machine guns before the British arrive. Whole battalions fall in minutes at Serre, Beaumont-Hamel and La Boisselle. At Thiepval the Ulster Division breaks into the Schwaben Redoubt, but no one can reach it and it is driven out.
Gains in the south
In the south, where the guns were better and the Germans weaker, XV and XIII Corps take Mametz and Montauban. The French, with far more heavy guns, take every objective along their front.
Evening
By nightfall the British have 57,470 casualties, 19,240 of them dead: the worst day in the history of the British army. Most of the ground gained is in the south.
The Somme
The battle goes on for four and a half months, until November, and moves the line some 10 km. More than a million men are killed or wounded on both sides. The first day becomes, for Britain, the war's symbol of courage and waste.
Infantry in the attack and in the front-line positions, rounded. The front lines are simplified; British casualties are the army's own count, German losses less certain.
People and wars
- World War I (1914–1918 CE): A global war from 1914 to 1918 between the Allies and the Central Powers, fought largely in trenches on Europe's Western and Eastern Fronts. Around 9 million soldiers died, and four empires collapsed.