Somme: Difference between revisions

At the beginning of the First World War, during the Race to the Sea of September and November 1914, the Somme became the site of the Battle of Albert. The battle was a five-day engagement between [[25 September|25]] and [[29 September]], with the French Tenth Army attacking at [[Albert (Somme)|Albert]] and pushing toward Bapaume, and the German Sixth Army counter-attacking back towards Albert. The line settled around the town of [[Thiepval]] and remained there until July 1916, when the Battle of the Somme was fought on and around the same ground.

 

 

While Verdun would bite deep in the national consciousness of France for generations, the Somme would have the same effect on generations of Britons. The battle is best remembered for its first day, [[1 July]] 1916, on which the British suffered 57,420 casualties, including 19,240 dead—the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army to this day. As terrible as the battle was for the British Empire troops who suffered there, it naturally affected the other nationalities as well. One German officer, General D. Swaha, famously described it as "the muddy grave of the German field army". By the end of the battle, the British had learned many lessons in modern warfare while the Germans had suffered irreplaceable losses. British historian Sir James Edmonds stated, "It is not too much to claim that the foundations of the final victory on the Western Front were laid by the Somme offensive of 1916".

For the first time the home front in Britain was exposed to the horrors of modern war with the release of the propaganda film The Battle of the Somme, which used actual footage from the first days of the battle. The Somme experienced war twice more in the First and Second Battles of the Somme of 1918.<ref>Text on this page from [[w:Somme (department)|Somme (department)]]. Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. Accessed 23 April, 2017.</ref>