Battle of the Somme (1916): The Bloodiest Day in British History

The Battle of the Somme was a joint British and French offensive against the German army on the Western Front, fought along the River Somme in northern France from 1 July to 18 November 1916. Its first day was the bloodiest in the history of the British Army, with more than 57,000 casualties, and by the end over a million men on both sides had been killed, wounded or captured. The Somme also saw the first use of tanks in war and became the defining memory of the First World War in Britain and much of the Commonwealth.

Background: planning an Allied offensive

At a conference at Chantilly in December 1915 the Allies agreed to launch coordinated offensives in 1916 on the Western, Eastern and Italian fronts. The French commander-in-chief, General Joseph Joffre, and the new British commander, General Sir Douglas Haig, planned a joint attack where their armies met astride the Somme.

Germany struck first, attacking at Verdun in February 1916. As the Battle of Verdun drew in more and more French divisions, the French share of the Somme offensive shrank and the British took the leading role. Relieving the pressure on Verdun became one of the battle’s purposes.

Haig himself had hoped to attack further north in Flanders, but agreed to the Somme to keep the alliance with France working. The chalk uplands of the Somme had been a quiet sector since 1914, which gave the Germans nearly two years to build strong defences, including deep dugouts, fortified villages and several lines of trenches.

Much of the British force consisted of Kitchener’s “New Army”, volunteers who had joined in 1914 and 1915. Many served in “Pals battalions” raised from the same towns, workplaces or sports clubs, so that friends and neighbours fought and died together.

The bombardment and the plan

The main attack was made by the British Fourth Army under General Sir Henry Rawlinson, with the French Sixth Army attacking to the south. From 24 June 1916 British artillery fired around 1.5 million shells over a week at the German lines, intended to destroy the barbed wire, trenches and guns.

The bombardment failed to achieve this. Many shells were shrapnel, which was poor at cutting wire, and a significant proportion were duds. German troops sheltered in deep dugouts dug into the chalk, some 10 metres or more below ground, and survived largely intact.

The first day: 1 July 1916

At 7.20 a.m. a large mine was blown under the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, an explosion filmed by Geoffrey Malins. At 7.28 a.m. further mines exploded, including the huge Lochnagar mine at La Boisselle, whose crater can still be seen. At 7.30 a.m. the infantry left their trenches.

In many sectors the attackers, carrying heavy equipment, walked into machine-gun fire from Germans who had emerged from their dugouts as soon as the bombardment lifted. Uncut wire funnelled men into killing zones. North of the Albert-Bapaume road, most attacks failed with appalling losses.

The 36th (Ulster) Division briefly took the Schwaben Redoubt near Thiepval but could not hold it. At Beaumont-Hamel the 1st Newfoundland Regiment lost most of the roughly 800 men who attacked, in about half an hour. In the south, British divisions took Montauban and Mametz, and the French, with heavier artillery and weaker German defences, reached most of their objectives.

By nightfall the British had 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead. Some battalions lost more than half their strength within minutes, and whole communities at home, especially in the industrial towns of northern England and in Ulster, learned in the following weeks that many of their young men had been killed together.

German losses on 1 July were far lighter, perhaps around 10,000 to 12,000, although the French attack south of the river inflicted serious damage on the German defenders there.

The long battle: July to November

Haig continued the offensive. A night approach and dawn attack on 14 July captured part of the German second line at Bazentin Ridge. The South African Brigade fought for Delville Wood from mid-July, and Australian divisions captured Pozières at a cost of some 23,000 casualties in about six weeks.

On 15 September, at Flers-Courcelette, the British used tanks for the first time. Of 49 Mark I tanks allocated, around 32 reached their starting points, and many broke down or became stuck, but a few helped infantry take the village of Flers. Canadian and New Zealand troops also played major roles in this phase.

Autumn rain turned the battlefield into mud. The Battle of Thiepval Ridge in late September and the Battle of the Ancre in November, which captured Beaumont-Hamel on 13 November, were the last major actions. The offensive was halted on 18 November 1916, with snow falling on the battlefield.

Over the four and a half months the British learned important lessons. Artillery began to use the “creeping barrage”, a curtain of shellfire moving ahead of the advancing infantry, and infantry tactics became more flexible, with platoons using Lewis guns, rifle grenades and bombs. Aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps were used intensively for observation and for directing artillery fire.

The German side

The German Second Army, and later the First Army, under General Fritz von Below, defended the sector. German doctrine required lost ground to be retaken by immediate counter-attack, which added greatly to German losses. Soldiers came to call the battle a “Materialschlacht”, a battle of material, dominated by artillery. Many German veterans described the Somme as even worse than Verdun, because of the sheer weight of British and French shellfire they endured in the later months.

In early 1917 the Germans withdrew to the newly built Hindenburg Line, a shorter and stronger position, partly as a result of the strain of the Somme.

Key people

• Douglas Haig (1861–1928), commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, whose decisions at the Somme remain the subject of fierce debate.
• Henry Rawlinson (1864–1925), commander of the British Fourth Army, which made the main attack.
• Joseph Joffre (1852–1931), French commander-in-chief who planned the offensive with Haig.
• Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929), who commanded the French army group on the Somme.
• Fritz von Below (1853–1918), German commander defending the sector.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1915, December: The Chantilly conference agrees on Allied offensives for 1916.
• 1916, 24 June: The preliminary bombardment begins.
• 1916, 1 July: The first day of the Somme; 57,470 British casualties.
• 1916, 14 July: Dawn attack on Bazentin Ridge.
• 1916, 23 July: Australian attack on Pozières begins.
• 1916, 15 September: First use of tanks at Flers-Courcelette.
• 1916, 26 September: Battle of Thiepval Ridge begins.
• 1916, 13 November: Beaumont-Hamel is captured.
• 1916, 18 November: The offensive is halted.

Legacy and debate

The official film “The Battle of the Somme”, released in August 1916, was watched by millions of people in Britain, many seeing the war for the first time. After the war, the Thiepval Memorial designed by Edwin Lutyens, unveiled in 1932, was built to record more than 72,000 British and South African men with no known grave. The Newfoundland Memorial Park at Beaumont-Hamel and the Ulster Tower at Thiepval are places of national pilgrimage. In Newfoundland and Labrador, 1 July is still observed as Memorial Day, a solemn contrast with Canada Day celebrations elsewhere in Canada.

Many men who later became famous served on the Somme. The writer J. R. R. Tolkien fought there as a signals officer with the Lancashire Fusiliers before being invalided home with trench fever, and the future British prime minister Harold Macmillan was badly wounded in September 1916. On the German side, a young corporal named Adolf Hitler was wounded near Bapaume in October 1916.

Historians continue to debate the battle. A long tradition, popularised by the phrase “lions led by donkeys”, sees it as a futile slaughter caused by incompetent generals. Other historians argue that the Somme was a costly but necessary stage in a “learning curve”, in which the British Army developed new tactics in artillery, infantry and tanks that contributed to victory in the Hundred Days Offensive of 1918.

Myths and facts

• Myth: All British soldiers were ordered to walk slowly towards the enemy. Fact: Tactics varied by division; some units crept forward into no man’s land before zero hour or rushed the German lines.
• Myth: The Somme achieved nothing. Fact: It failed in its larger goals, but it relieved Verdun and wore down the German army, whose own commanders described it as a severe ordeal.
• Myth: The first day was a disaster for every Allied unit. Fact: French and British troops in the southern sector reached many of their objectives.

Why it matters

The Battle of the Somme changed how Britain understood war, sacrifice and leadership, and it still shapes remembrance in Britain, Ireland, Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Together with Passchendaele, it became a byword for the human cost of the Western Front.