![]() ![]() The British infantry offensive was preceded by a week-long artillery bombardment in which 1,537 tubes fired more than 1.5 million shells, in the expectation that these would destroy the German fortifications, incapacitate the defenders, and cut the barbed wire in front of the German lines. ![]() The operational goals set by the commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig (1861-1928), were overly ambitious and the commander of the Fourth Army, Sir Henry Rawlinson (1864-1925), was unable to mount a sufficiently powerful preliminary bombardment to defeat the strong German defences. British training, however, was far from complete, and British planning was also confused. After the French army was engaged at Verdun, the offensive shrank in ambition, as did the French army’s contribution, leaving the British to take the principal role in the attack on 1 July 1916. The Battle of the Somme was the Anglo-French contribution to the general Allied offensive during the 1916 campaign, whose objective was to overstretch and wear down the Central Powers’ armies. It was these positions that the British army, which relieved the French north of the Somme in summer 1915, later attacked. In 1915, after a French attack at Serre, the German defences were heavily strengthened. In October, during the “race to the sea”, trench lines were established along the Somme. On 26 August 1914 a French reserve corps was surprised and routed at Moislans as the German army swept through northern France, pushing as far as Amiens. ![]() ![]() The best remembered and most notorious of these battles is the 1916 Battle of the Somme, a 141-day battle of attrition in which Britain’s New Armies suffered greatly.įighting occurred near the Somme in the first month of the war. Fighting was concentrated on the Thiepval Ridge north of and the Santerre Plain south of a bend in the Somme and west of the market town of Péronne. The Picardy region in France was a theatre of war from 1914 to 1918. ![]()
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