Battle of the Somme | The Great War | Instruments of Death (Part 1)

for anyone traveling through these peaceful French towns and Villages and looking out over these beautiful Fields it's almost impossible to imagine what happened here in 1916. we're on the som the very name epitomizes the waste futility and the horror of the Great War it was here on a Battlefront stretching almost 16 miles that a flawed battle plan of a great summer offensive doomed a generation of young men the figures beggar belief 20 000 men killed on the first day alone to make matters even worse the same tactics that destroyed kitchener's Army were repeated time and again over the next hour we'll see and hear about the weapons that cause such Carnage here on the sun and throughout the first world war we'll also hear about the Grim realities of life and War in the trenches and also about the efforts of the medical Corps who try to deal with the awful wounds inflicted by the weapons of the Great War I'm Carly de Martinez from an early age I was thrown into the exciting world of jousting and historical combat stunt displays I've always been fascinated with what it was like for the common Soldier throughout history what did they experience what Horrors did they witness and how devastating were their weapons on the battlefield how important were these instruments of death [Music] laughs if there was any foreshadowing of the Carnage that occurred here in this now Infamous part of France it came 50 years earlier during the American Civil War [Music] the numbers of killed and wounded there boggles the mind and that was before the development of a rapid killing weapon like the machine gun but transplant antetum or Cold Harbor or Gettysburg to the Somme and the basic battle tactic wasn't a whole lot different it was still the full frontal assault with the American Civil War there had been conscription so there were large numbers of troops there had been industrial production of munitions but technology had changed by World War One what was being produced was that much more efficient with that much longer ranges and the space in which these things would be deployed was Far smaller but what was really different about trench warfare in World War one was that it locked whole fronts solidly although the Gatling gun which was a forerunner of the machine gun was used by Union forces during the American Civil War most infantry attacks were against muzzle loaded rifles and artillery that was bad enough but fast forward 50 years and infantry weapons had been developed that massively increased rate of fire and accuracy what hadn't changed a great deal was the tactics to deal with the new warfare generals grounded in the ways of a bygone age struggled to find ways to combat these new modern weapons the British lien field rifle typified this new wave of devastating Firepower introduced in 1895 this 10 round bolt action rifle was one of the finest infantry weapons of the first world war with the ability to fire 20 to 30 aimed rounds per minute by a trained Rifleman German soldiers sometimes mistakenly thought that they had faced a machine gun when in fact it had been scores of these rapid firing rifles guns such as the Lee-Enfield now provided a mobile and Powerful presence on the battlefield I travel to Cornwall to see how powerful these rifles were tell me a little bit more then about this weapon that you've got on your shoulder it's an Enfield isn't it it is it's uh short magazine Lee Enfield uh from the first World War uh it's considered to be one of the best uh Ball action rifles probably ever made uh it was uh first saw a serious battle in the first world war and it was really quite a success unexpected from some parts it was not considered to be previous war as good as the Mauser but when I actually became Battlefield weapon it was found to be super reliable and was loved by the troops who were carrying it well what what made it so special was it was it the bolt action was it the was it it was the bolt action in theory it wasn't as strong a locking mechanism as the Mauser but because of its design it was a lot faster to fire so so run me through why the soldiers liked it so much then just because it was it was simple and reliable it hardly ever let them down it could get dirty it would carry on going okay and what does it actually fire it fires a a 303 rimmed around okay and a 10 round magazine okay 10 rounds a trained Marksman would it be expected to fire 20 aim rounds in a minute that's quite quick isn't it Fire Two magazine Falls in a minute that's quite quick it is and how old's this one you can see from the plate it was um look at that yeah 1913. yeah made by Birmingham Small Arms in 1913. Birmingham look at that and we've got the stamp on it and everything it tells you oh okay well I'm looking forward to seeing you uh let's put some rounds in it and yeah and can we can we fire some off can we shoot yeah yeah I'll put a few rounds button we'll see what it does yeah brilliant [Music] oh [Music] they oh look at this Ian that's from the front I didn't actually notice but look at that it's taking the whole side of the chunk out of it that's just gone straight through that's completely massive on the inside yeah completely mashed it look how it's so the bullet's gone in and it's just gone that's amazing that's really because you can see how lethal this weapon was I mean can you imagine that going through a soldier yeah that's just completely mullered it absolutely I mean look at that but pretty simple to use though it's an infantryman's weapon and uh they would be expected to load and fire this weapon in all weather conditions in mud and really quite horrible working conditions and they managed it and the rifle was capable of taking that sort of punishment right if you know what that means don't you I think you're gonna have to have a go I want to go yeah brilliant come on let's set up a Target let's do it the Liam field was pretty effective it was of a reasonably handy length it was also fairly Swift fire glasses on glasses on you might like those yeah yes please I didn't get didn't get these before okay and now you're saying it's fairly easy to cycle you can keep it on your shoulder you can lift the uh the bolt draw it back you'll eject and push it Forward again okay keep fighting I can do a few rounds in into my target can I you can yes are you ready bring it to your shoulder right push the safety forwards and you're ready to fire okay thank you foreign [Music] [Music] field was certainly a valuable weapon for the British soldier but in such a long and drawn-out campaign of trench warfare strategy would be the ultimate Victor eventually one side would need to make a decisive move in order to break the deadlock as it turned out the opening day of the battle of the Somme was fought on the middle day of the middle year of World War One by this time early 1916 there was a stalemate Across the Western Front both sides were firmly dug in their trenches refusing to give an inch meanwhile to the south at Verdun German and French forces were pounding each other in one of their most infamous battles of the war so many lives were lost that it earned a terrible nickname the mincer the French generals had pledged to defend Verdun to the last drop of blood and they did but Bloodshed and Slaughter brought the French army to the brink of mutiny it had been assumed that world war one would be a mobile War a war that perhaps could be ended during 1914. and to this end the German Schlieffen Plan through most of its armies against France on a great Wheeling maneuver in an attempt to surround Paris this quickly went wrong and of course by the time of the battle of the man the German offensive had been halted both sides went over to entrenchments by July 1916 the idea that the British army would be backed by Christmas 1914 was now a long forgotten dream and the two sides were now firmly entrenched in the paralysis of trench warfare well aware of the Folly of a full frontal attack both sides had spent the opening months of World War One trying to outflank each other resulting in the race to the Sea and the creation of a line of fortified defenses stretching from Switzerland to the coast of Belgium as they each checked the others movements for the common soldier on the front line part of their life was now spent in a 12-foot deep zigzagging line of never-ending trenches with sniper fire and artillery and ever-present threat I spoke to Jeff elsom of this Staffordshire regimental Museum to find out what conditions were really like for the men on the front line this is our representation of a 1917 trench which had been in the reserve area trench itself is much wider than a proper trench would be obviously if you're allow School parties to come through you need more space otherwise so how wouldn't narrow would they have been then about two-thirds of this really just barely enough for a man to be against the wall and a stretcher to come by that that would be the width of it so you use the minimum work to what you can to do it and to keep it safe for the men inside the soldiers were just sort of knee-deep Waist Deep were they and well yeah it depends on the situation where particular part of land is where you were nearer the coast the water table's higher obviously so the more and more there is but further Inland it's not so bad right that time in the early part of the trenches when they weren't too well constructed you're open to the elements you've got your great coat you've got your your cape but you've got to keep your weapon in your ammunition dry if you're continually in water and you can't get your feet above the water then you're never going to dry out so it was getting such a problem in the end it was given down to the platoon offices for their responsibility to check their men's feet at least once a day in the trench how was the discipline maintained within the troops what kind of order was there well within the British army you work on a small regular regimental basis so you've got your platoons your companies your chops your train together you know you before war was commenced I think you're all trained together so you've got this little Bond of you know working together and you'll you'll look after each other roughly how many men were were we losing then on the on you can say on the whole of the Western Front which goes in from the Belgian Coast right down to Switzerland you're looking average trench losses per day of 500 men that's you know you're sniping self-inflicted wounds German artillery shells just normal trench wasters as they called it I'm talking about the dead what what happens to the dead yeah Dead uh they just get left there well yeah it's been done obviously between the two trenches You've Got No Man's Land um you're not going to stick your head up and go out during the day the early days of the truth is in 1914 were long gone it just wasn't done that you went out in daylight to pick up your so if you went on a trend trade that night um you left somebody out in no man's land wounded the Germans would be basically waiting for anybody who was stupid enough to go out they would bead in on that wounded man they'd have the machine guns weighed in on him and also the uh their trench mortars and their snipers would be looking out for you so poor Lads here are able to saw a shop in the middle of no one's land screaming his head off he's badly wounded but they can't do nothing about it and plus you've got bodies that are left in no man's land uh continual shelling you're going to get bits of bodies and everything it's not very pleasant for people in the trance because obviously a body decomposes you get problems with rats the rats um you know these stories are about to be in the size of cats and things like this because they're basically they've got a never-ending food food source Jeff went on to show me some of the artifacts at the Staffordshire regimental Museum that graphically demonstrated the dangers that the common Soldier faced whilst living in the trenches this one as you can see he's obviously got a bit of bullet damage now this job lucky the bullet is coming through the front and exited through the back there but it's missed his scalp I think all he got was a slight scalp wound they survived you survived no way yeah he survived yeah you can see uh obviously it's not going to protect you against a great Lumber sharpness look at that how it's gone through there that's absolutely amazing quite a heavy gauge yeah it's obviously a lot heavier and there again what we're doing a bit of extra weight will save your life of course not all fighting conducted during the Great War was at long range even in this in the most static of Wars fighting was sometimes at Close Quarters an often forgotten aspect of the campaign was the trench rate these small-scale attacks on enemy positions were fought at Close Quarters often with basic improvised Weaponry causing Havoc [Music] there were two very different sorts of trench raid that were the reconnaissance Patrols and the weather fighting Patrols and the reconnaissance patrols were often very small maybe just two or three men and their main objective would be to gather information and the fighting Patrol was actually to engage the enemy break into the trench system raid bunkers throw grenades below ground and generally cause Mayhem and demoralize the enemy [Music] trench raids became an integral part of Allied fighting policy with one of the aims being to maintain the fighting Spirit of the army historical weapons expert Kevin Hicks showed me how even in this Industrial Age the fighting could still be basic and brutal so Kevin a time of very industrial Warfare either we had machine guns we had gas attacks trench warfare was quite primitive still wasn't it it was very basic we were still using weapons that were very primitive I used to hand-to-hand business isn't it you know down to your clubs your daggers and that kind of thing using your instincts to survive what kind of weapons are we talking about handmade clubs you Bane it uh knives knuckle dusters they're not sort of army issue are they oh no your rifle and Bane it with your main weapons and of course later on in the war you had your hand grenades and that kind of thing so that improved it so would there be trench raids literally just to go and Slaughter as many people as possible is it that pretty it's it's it is that brutal uh you can imagine 200 guys going across no man's land or even a snatch Squad of three you you tool yourself up um well just noticed the tools there just quickly run through what we've got there I can see ax I can see is that a knuckle duster that's a knuckle dust though that's actually a dagger there yeah well they would actually use that oh good lord yeah I mean these were not uncommon in uh in Normal walks of life I mean if you were to use this if I was to smack you in the face now with this I'd rather you know break your jaw yeah some of them actually had um daggers of fit a fixed to them the Americans they had a lot of issue Close Quarter weapons and a trench gun for that kind of thing you know what's this they've just made it themselves a bit of wood with some pickaxe handle yeah yeah with some bolts in it that have been ground down and I will tell you this that that is quite a handy tool very brutal that's worse at the end of the day when you're eye to eye with the Enemy you've got to put him down so what about the techniques can we see some of our other techniques were used you come over here I'll show you come on [Music] that's impressive bit of meat action you know the one thing we haven't mentioned is is the basic weapons they were they were issued with the the Enfield rifle for the British let me just show you the bone the bayonet and the Lee Enfield they were basically the uh part of the soldier really wasn't it nice bread and butter yeah and they were trying to fight with it now it is scary isn't it yes but that coming exhausting at you well that's a formidable weapon so obviously there must have been some kind of technique in the use of it the training surely you know they they train quite extensively with the bayonet but it wasn't all just on guard and charging forward you can shorten your arms you know so you're when you're fighting in the trench or close quarter you can bring it back down and then thrust and if you've got people coming over the top of the trench they were trained then to bring it back and then to thrust up yeah I mean I'll show you it's a standing start if you like how how easy it is to get this inside a body oh well that's gone in about what's going on only went all the way through yeah look at that yeah serious damage and you didn't really have much of a run up there no just not at all right next to it so can you imagine really swinging for it you're going straight through the other side the other way if you're actually on the top of the trench and the guy who's down below you've got the momentum there yeah that's gone right through that's gone right through through the wood that's good let's go right through unbelievable I can see the other side of the blade and you've gone right through the fleshiest part of the pick yeah amazing yeah what about some more of those DIY ones that you've got down there that one that looks very basic indeed this is just a pickaxe handle so they're taking the pickaxe head off stuck a couple of bolts in there that have been ground down basically they had Engineers who would help them to manufacture this stuff now you're close quarters so you haven't got that much of a swing but you've just shattered his ribs yeah and when he's on the floor you finish him off or you might have the knife in the other hand whether it's up like that or simply they're done okay so I get it so it's not just one particular weapon is it it's a barrage It's a combination of all the useful weapons that they had there and literally it was just a Mass Attack this is the business of War it's the kill it's it's not for fun is it you know I mean these arrays are sharp look at that yeah brutal absolutely blue the utter brutality of trench raids were in stark contrast to long periods of boredom in this Perpetual stalemate on the front so after two years of warfare something was needed to break this deadlock and plans were put in place by the French and British generals for a big push partly to relieve the pressure on the French Verdun and partly to try and break that stalemate on the Western Front the place chosen for the offensive That was supposed to turn the tide of war in favor of the Allies was the Valley of the Somme in the picardi region of northern France at beaumor Hammel on the Northern flank of the intended line of attack Battlefield guide Rodney Bedford told me about why the British decided to launch the offensive there what I want to know is why was it here why this area for the song wow well we've already had from 1914 to 1915 in various battles on the Western Front from epra the first and second battles of uber 1914-15 we've got the French fighting down in Verdan in early 1916 and at that time there was a focus between the British and the French that if the French could push from the south in Verdun up to a place called Sudan and if the British could push once more back from Eep towards mons like the princes of balls of the horns the Zulu's once call it as that Gap closes like my chest the Germans must leave France this hadn't worked in 1914-15 so the French have suggested here on the Somme we should attack together because we are side by side so we're standing by the front line here aren't we yeah and where are the where where are the Germans if you look across the field towards the Sheep there's a little Stone Kern there with a little Scottish Soldier on top of it from the base of that Memorial and along the forward edge of this Ridge before the trees fall to the trees and down towards the cemetery is a German front line and the reserve lines are up on the Hills moving away from us so would we have had the advantage being up here where we are then unfortunately not as soon as you attack downhill you're attacking towards an enemy you lose command and control of them and you expose your men to incoming fire so from here these men are on a forward slope assault the Germans downhill are far in up the hill towards them an overhead Fire coming from them and just by looking at this ground from this trench to the trench behind when our men Advance how many guns can we fire here to support them we are outnumbered greatly here at Birmingham for the Germans here they had the advantage of Defense having arrived here in 1914 they would hold the French here on the Somme they would then reverse back to where they want to be dig in their trenches Place their barbed wire sight their artillery in the machine guns and when they were ready they would let that those men come back to the fighting line and with the French Advanced to when we shot down that's where they would have to dig in and we would end up on the second best position now we might think that's a Germans being particularly bright but in fact it's just what the Romans did to the pigs with Adrian's wall you chased the pigs up onto the hills build Adrian's wall and then say Come on come and get it so sometimes in war some things are great strategies can't change the time the place the weaponry and the date and time changes but some things stay the same the men that were going to be doing the fighting here were the man of kitchener's army the ordinary man driven by patriotism and field Marshal kitchener's vigorous recruiting campaign to take the king's Shilling these were the famous Pals and Chums battalions and they saw men folk of entire towns and Villages sign up and surf together the enthusiasm of the times brought forward many new volunteers and some of these battalions had a very unique character they were Pals or Chums they had perhaps a different view a different expectation of War perhaps the one that we hold today they were expecting a quick War they were expecting a war in which there would be decisions a war in which perhaps the ethos of the 19th century was more represented than some of the horrors that we think of today [Music] one of the most damning phrases of the Great War was that the men who fought in it were Lions led by donkeys the counter-argument runs that the generals who would have done things differently hadn't yet been born whatever side of the argument you favor the undeniable truth was that the tactics hadn't yet caught up with the Weaponry it's often forgotten that there were three divisions of Cavalry waiting behind the British front line this in a battle where thousands were killed by the machine gun thank you to the scene in the early hours of July the 1st 1916. imagine thousands of men in their trenches waiting nervously waiting for zero hour when they'll go over the top they'd been trained they were prepared and they'd been given their orders the troops were ordered to advance at a steady Pace now to Modern mines that sounds suicidal but the basic notion that you don't run throughout the attack was in fact the sound one because anybody who left a trench 5 600 700 yards away from the enemy and started to run with fairly heavy kit would of course be totally exhausted and moving at a snail's pace by the time he arrived so obviously the idea was to move at a steady Pace first so energy was conserved for the last hundred yards or so there'd been a thunderous artillery barrage of the German positions during the five days leading up to the attack it's said that the bombardment could be heard in parts of Southern England the idea was to destroy the German positions and the huge belts of barbed wire that protected them unfortunately it didn't work only a third of the 1400 guns that the British army was able to use were actually heavy enough to reach the bunkers underneath the German trenches but of course during most of the bombardment most of the Germans were actually Underground so it was far less effective than most people thought it was going to be there were also some other ideas for softening up the enemy ahead of the Som attack seven huge mines were placed under the German trenches that were to be detonated before the main attack these were supposed to blow everyone and everything around them to Smithereens the Infantry was going to March over and mop up the pieces or so went the theory [Music] foreign so a five-day barrage huge mines and a well-prepared army Sir Douglas Hague and his generals believed that they had devised a foolproof plan a slow but determined infantry assault on The Battered enemy trenches mop up dazed and shell-shocked German prisoners send in the Cavalry next stop Berlin [Music] at 7 20 on the morning of July the 1st the first of the mines were detonated spewing Earth and rock thousands of feet into the air the mine explosions killed many Germans but they also created deep craters which became new Killing zones soon put to deadly use by the German machine Gunners when the British attacked [Music] the craters created by the explosions still survive this is the lot nagar crater located just to the south of the village of Labor cell on the front line on that day in July 1916. at almost 300 feet wide and 70 feet deep the lot nagar mine is still the largest wartime man-made crater ever today these craters are silent reminders of where the big push began to go horribly wrong at 7 30 a.m a moment of eerie silence then thousands of men climbed out of the trenches formed into lines as they had been ordered to do and began to March slowly towards German lines it was now a Race Against Time would the British get to the German lines before the Germans could man their guns the answer came quickly the Germans got to their machine guns they opened up and all hell was let loose soon no man's land was strewn with dead and wounded men many had Advanced only a few yards entire battalions were destroyed in just a few short minutes a hundred thousand men began to make their way towards the German lines in some sectors battalions ignored the orders from the top and they didn't set off at a walk in other sectors they followed their instructors rigidly so at the Northern end of Battlefield the advancing battalions were in rigid lines and they were struck from the front from the side and the attack quickly began to fall apart in fact in many parts of the Northern end of the line no British troops actually reached the Germans so a very different picture begins to emerge quite quickly but that picture emerges for us in hindsight it doesn't emerge for Hague it doesn't immediately emerge for the British High command because of course the problems of getting reliable information back from those attacking battalions are such that initially it's not realized how badly things are going so more waves are thrown in and good is thrown after bad the weapons that devastated the British troops that morning included the machine gun the German machine Governor 08 could fire up to 400 rounds a minute from covered defensive positions the 08 like most machine guns of the time was derived from the British built Maxim machine gun of the 1880s the fast self-powered machine gun the machine gun allowed a single soldier to put down a murderous spread of fire but how powerful were these guns and what were they like to fire I traveled to Bisley rifle range to find out more [Music] all right John hello everyone this is it this is the legendary Vickers machine gun that's right this is a a vicious machine gun over around about 1915 by the serial number on the top here okay so we can roughly date it because it's a very early number literally it was designed to just spray the battlefield and take down the enemy soldiers there are various stories of guns firing over a million rounds you know on the song you know in a day in 24 hours um we're just starting a few firing pins and spring snapping uh and just a couple of barrel changes you know and ammunition wise uh these look very similar to the Lee Enfield rifle that's right this exactly the same this ammunition could be swapped backwards and forwards if they needed to okay and then that would just feed through with it and that would just feed through here so these are just box standard cloth belts with little uh brass tabs that are stapled on them but later on in the war the ammunition came up in boxes to feed the into the cloths you'd have usually around between a four and a six-man gun team that would be on a gun like this or a maximum it's a lot of things to carry I mean you've got a it's quite a heavy gun you've got the water to carry you've got the ammunition to carry particularly the quantity of ammunition what's the range again the range is 3000 meters maximum okay obviously you can you know you've got a very high elevation to do that yeah how about you have a go I would absolutely love to have a go okay show me show me show me let's make it happening [Applause] [Music] looking forward to this John hey can you tell [Music] [Music] [Applause] short bursts short burst okay what would it have done what kind of Destruction it would have just ripped through people wouldn't it poor people to Pieces mowing them down tall people to pieces can we do something to see how devastating it would have been yes we can we have some clay which we can bring in and we'll show you what happens to the clay when it goes through and the cavitation effect of a 303 round which uh as it penetrates through flesh and and body it causes a big cavity which is what causes the damage no no no no no foreign [Music] look at that and that is scary that is absolutely scary look at the perfectly formed hole that's just absolutely completely blown it apart isn't it well that's what it does that's the size of the bullet it's 0.303 of an inch we line that up there you can see the size and diameter of the hole it makes yeah this is Clay obviously unlike flesh it will stay in its position okay it hasn't got a memory but that's what it does to the human body and it's called a cavitation effect and as it goes through your body your body is made up of 70 liquid it will push that all around the hydraulic shock that it affects all the other organs is absolutely devastating so rip you apart rip it to Pieces also if it doesn't rip into pieces it would certainly cause you serious serious injury that you'd probably die of secondary injuries the bullet also mushrooms as it goes through it doesn't go through as a nice little sharp projectile it actually mushrooms out in a mushroom shape so obviously it pushes more and more damage it can break and fragment it doesn't necessarily come out the same trajectory the hole here as it would come out the back Ricochet around the bones and come out break up so the damage that it would cause to human body is horrific it's absolutely terrifying we go back to the first day of the Somme when they're all running over the top or running into the guns okay and you knew that that was the effect it was going to have to you think of the bravery and the courage of the soldiers in that period knowing that that could happen to them or to their friends no they had to run towards that it humbles you it's actually quite terrifying to go [Music] it was all very different to the battle plan men who had literally been told they could walk into these German trenches with their slippers on smoking their pipe because there wouldn't be a German Left Alive or suddenly being killed in their thousands field hospitals stretcher bearers had been told to expect casualties but nothing on this scale snapshot of the disaster that was unfolding all over the Somme that day was the story of the Newfoundland regiment now a part of Canada in the first world war Newfoundland was a British colony and they took part in the fighting at beaumore Hamill as a regiment of the British army by mid-morning and after witnessing an earlier unsuccessful attempt to take one of the newly made craters at Hawthorne Ridge the newfoundlanders were instructed to make another attack because of the amount of dead bodies that had already accumulated that morning the newfoundlanders couldn't even make it to the front line trenches and had to start their Advance a full 200 meters before the front line in full view of the German gunners bunching up as they tried to squeeze through the gaps in the British barbed wire they proved easy targets for the German machine Gunners who continuously rakes them with fire they suffered 694 casualties or 91 of their entire strength in one morning a whole generation of young newfoundlanders had been wiped out [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Element 18

Views: 173,642

Keywords: firearm, infamous, gatling, artillery, combat, warfare, firepower, british, story, soldier, rapid, fire, test, best, mauser, historical, film, element18, capacity, experimental, shooting, fruit, clay, bullet, infantry, target, slomo, campaign, strategy, deadlock, verdun, mincer, meat, grinder, artifacts, danger, rats, raid, reconnaissance, fighting, patrol, kevin, hicks, expert, historian, brutality, stalemate, picardy, france, battlefield, push, frontline, patriotism, battalion, maxim, recoil, ammunition, 303, round, damage, cavitation, effect, shell

Id: KOweIUiHcoU

Length: 37min 45sec (2265 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023