Why The Somme Was One Of the Bloodiest Battles In Human History | Battle Of The Somme | War Stories

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] all along the Bosch front line black and yellow white and gray puffs of smoke dance in Mighty cruel Glee Fountains of brown sand or black clay shoot up high carrying with them Bunches of steaks all tangled up with wire look [Music] the heavy shells throw back volumes of smoke some 300 feet in the air it is a series of huge bangs developing at times into a continuous Roar the whole air throbs with sound it seems to come in sudden stabs [Music] it was the 26th of June 1916. from the relative safety of the British trenches major Walter vignolas of the Grimsby Chums gratefully observed the British artillery pummeling the German positions to the north of the river some in Northeast France to the divisions of the British third and fourth armies under General Sir Henry rollinson which manned the trenches in the sector of the Western Front stretching from gomakor in the North to montavan the South the effectiveness of the big guns was a matter of life and death when the bombardment ended supported by five French divisions in the South they would be going over the top pounding through the pockmarked Wilderness of No Man's Land as fast as their 66 pounds of equipment would allow them as they clambered awkwardly from their trenches they would be praying that their artillery had accomplished its objectives that enough of the enemy's strong points had been smashed machine guns silenced and vast tracts of barbed wire uprooted to give them the unopposed advance they had been promised by their commanding officers the big push which would eventually come to be known as the battle of the Somme was now only five days distant for most of those waiting with mounting tension and excitement in the British trenches this would be the first taste of battle having enlisted during the euphoric surge of patriotism which at first swept the nation on the outbreak of War they would now be tested in one of the bloodiest and most controversial battles in the history of British military engagement many of them would not survive to take part in the passionate debate on the battle they were about to join their Journey to the front had begun with a horse tumult of adoring crowds ringing in their ears now the chair is displaced by the thunderous Roar of the bombardment they were anticipating a famous victory and to some commentators and historians the battle of the Somme would prove to be just that a victory gained by Noble self-sacrifice of committed idealists fighting for freedom and Justice which would swing the course of the first world war irreversibly towards an Allied Triumph a victory which would help to ensure a world that was safe for democracy and guarantee at least for the moment the Integrity of small Nations [Music] to others it would prove a senseless defeat a defeat which would transform these naive Patriots into the mud-spattered cannon fodder of incompetent generals struggling for the possession of attract of meaningless Wasteland history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world from the Battle of Trafalgar and the revolutionary era right through to the second world war if you are looking for your next military history fix then this is the service for you we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code War Stories at checkout thank you while the historical controversy still rages between these two viewpoints there is one facet of the conflict upon which all commentators are agreed for those who fought there the battle of the Somme was a nightmare a dreadful Carnage which produced over 600 000 casualties and burdened the survivors with sights and sand and smells which would haunt their waking and sleeping hours for the rest of their lives [Music] thank you the positions which the soldiers of the fourth Army were to attack had been held by the Germans since the failure of the great race to the sea in 1914 on the 4th of August of that year having declared war on Russia and then France the German High command attempted to put into practice the plan of Conquest conceived by General schwiefen their chief of general staff from 1892 to 1906. in defiance of Belgian neutrality the German forces swept across its borders meeting Little Resistance as the bulk of the Belgian Army retreated towards Antwerp the French and British were driven southwards as the German armies crashed through northern France Crossing Le Mans the German first Army under General von klook turned Eastward to join up with the second Army under fonbulo but found the troops of the Paris Garrison threatening its Left Flank as it turned right towards Paris to deal with this Menace a huge gap opened up between the two armies the Gap was spotted by The Observers of the Air Force on their reconnaissance missions and reported to the Allied Commanders into this breach the British expeditionary Force crept forward hesitantly at first but then with growing confidence found himself unable to protect the rear whilst Von buler was intensely worried about his regiments exposed right flank multker the supreme commander of the German armies ordered a general retreat to the hard-pressed Allied Forces now chasing the Harris to German Army's back across the mall it seemed that a miracle had occurred Allied commanders felt that the war was over they took wages on the number of weeks it would take them to enter the German Homeland but then as rapidly as it had begun the retreat was halted having crossed the river rain the exhausted German troops dug themselves into prepared positions and turned their machine guns toward the allies faced with such resistance enthusiasm for the Allied Advance rapidly petered out and the British and French forces also began to construct their own lines of trenches along a line from the river wires in the East to North Sea in the west and from North Sea to the borders of Switzerland the war of movement began to degenerate into the war of stalemate and attrition the German armies realized that their Kaiser's promise that they would be home before the leaves had fallen was a trifle over optimistic and even the more moderate British hopes of spending Christmas by their own firesides were now in jeopardy the whole of the Western Front now became solidified due to either natural barriers of fortifications in other sectors the area immediately to the north and south of the river Somme was one of the few points where a decisive operation could be mounted the big push would not arrive for another 18 months but the scene for the great battle had already been set [Music] wow while the nature of the war in France swung from the lightning movement of the summer to the dogged inertia of midwinter back in Britain the war had brought about one of the most remarkable social upheavals the nation had ever witnessed Lord Kitchener of Khartoum Secretary of State for war had called for an increment of 100 000 volunteers to supplement the forces of the regular army within a month over half a million had volunteered men jostled in queues sometimes miles long outside the recruiting offices for a chance to do their bid for Britain W.T Collier enlisted at the headquarters of the artist's rifles at Duke Street in Houston his decision had been passionate and spontaneous my bosom swelled and I clenched my fist I felt Restless excited eager to do something desperate for the cause of England and then the impulse came sending the blood tingling all over my body why not join the Army now throbbing with a new Vitality as I imagine a man might who has just plighted his truth to the girl he had loved at first sight recruiting became a cultural imperative politicians stamped the country inciting their listeners to orges of patriotic sentiment posters screamed out slogans such as women of Britain say go or most famous your country needs you amateur and professional razors sprang up goading their audiences towards the recruiting stations with a potent oratory of passion and guilt foreign it was one of the most influential of one of these self-appointed agents the Earl of Derby who riveted the populations of Liverpool business offices with the assurance that he had kitchen as personal guarantee that those who joined together served together it proved a stroke of propagandist Genius units of Pals sprang up everywhere workplaces football teams Villages and clubs joined up on Mass the seeds of patriotism broadcast by the recruiters had fallen on the rich soil of a nation's conscience and fertilized by our traditional belief in its own decency as Ciel Montague was to write of these volunteers after the war each of them quite seriously thought of himself as a molecule in the body of a nation that was really not just figuratively straining every nerve to discharge an obligation of Honor all the air was ringing with rousing reassurances Farms to be saved Belgium rited freedom and civilization rewind a sour soiled crooked world to be rid of bullies and Crooks and reclaimed for straightness decency good nature the ways of common men dealing with common men even though there were other factors in the rush to enlist these were the sentiments embraced by the vast majority of the three million men who would eventually volunteer to fight the frenzied response to the call for volunteers through the whole Supply structure of the Armed Forces into chaos this new Army had to be billeted fed trained and equipped uniforms were a luxury at first men were paid an allowance to continue to wear their civilian clothes rifles were also in short supply and other implements had to be substituted during their training which was largely limited to Drilling and root marching [Music] the site of these platoons of earnest young men tramping in unison along the roadways of Britain some in the now disheveled Sunday suits they are joined up in walking sticks slung menacingly across their shoulders would hardly have struck fear into the battled hardened hearts of the German troops holding the line of the song in the end the training and equipping of this great influx of fresh Warriors proved an intractable problem for Kitchener divisions which would eventually reach the Somme only received their full quota of equipment weeks before departure preparations for the front also suffered terribly from chronic lack of experienced officers and ncos this was a problem which permeated the whole volunteer army the vast majority of those charged with the leadership of the newly formed divisions were commissioned because they had attended one of England's Elite Public Schools the meeting of these two nations of Britain was one of the most dramatic social Encounters of the century it was a meeting which forged a bond of sympathy that would have profound consequences in the post-war world but for now the only thing they had in common was their inexperience despite this the morale of kitchener's army never seriously flagged the mutual support within the Pal's regiments was tremendous according to private George Morgan of the West Yorkshire regiment the companionship was marvelous absolutely marvelous everyone seemed to help one another it was lovely we were all Pals we were happy very happy together and they were such good people they were fine young men as the first substantial waves of volunteers reached the shores of France early in 1916 the plans for the big push were already underway the huge volume of men supplies and Munitions being pumped forward on trains over 40 carriages long meant innumerable delays in the winter months it also meant the real possibility of freezing to death there is nothing worse for an officer or man crossing to France for the first time or coming back off leave to take part in some important fight than his Railway Journey to the front wrote Captain r s cobon of the king's Royal rifles following a series of failed offenses by the French at Artois and champagne and the British should lose the commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces General jaft demanded a fresh joint offensive for the following year the song quickly became the obvious focus of attention the initial plan envisaged that 40 French divisions would attack from the south with 25 British divisions advancing in the North however this reckoned without the German assault of Verda 21st of February 1916 the bombardment of the Fortress of Verdan began lying at the head of a Salient which the French line would have been better off without Verda was nevertheless a symbol of French national pride it also became a major political symbol if Adam fell so too with the French government under Brion The Fortress was to be defended at all costs by the end of June when fighting died down 78 French divisions had been committed to Verdun General Pata charged with its defense and later to become French commander-in-chief vowed they shall not pass they did not pass but only at the cost of 315 000 casualties and the near Mutiny of the French army as the appetite of Verda for fresh corpses grew more ravenous so the number of French divisions available for the big push diminished ironically this also increased the pressure from jefron Hague the British commander-in-chief to bring the date of the offensive forward politically committed to the defense of the Fortress jafra felt that only a major offensive on another front would distract the Germans from their attack by May the total scale of the offensive had been substantially reduced it was now agreed that on July 1st approximately 12 British divisions would attack from the north five French divisions from the south The Trenches which the fourth Army occupied were typical of the British trench systems of the first World War there were three or four lines of trenches from 100 to 400 yards apart these lines were roughly parallel to each other no trench ran straight for more than a few yards which stopped the enemy from firing along its total length if one section were captured trench had a parapet in front facing out onto the barbed wire which guarded its approach far Bay is alternated with solid earth traverses the fire trenches were 6 to 12 feet wide at the top narrowing to roughly three feet wide at the bottom communication trenches linked the lines together and a wider approach trench allowed supplies and equipment to be brought forward after Nightfall The Trenches required constant maintenance to prevent erosion pit props Railway sleepers sandbags and Brushwood were some of the materials used to shore up their sides according to private Archies surf lead of the 13th Battalion East Yorkshire regiment other materials might also be used the top step of our particular stinkhole consisted of a kind of soft bagging which when wet with rain exuded a red fluid which trickled down the steps we found it better to ignore it conjectures are not pleasant when you come across more than one boss or buried in sandbagging and forming part of the trench side compared to the German trenches the British were very crude affairs this was a conscious tactic according to the field service pocketbook the choice of a defensive position and its preparation must be made with a view to economizing the power expended on defense in order that the power of offense may be increased nevertheless until mid-1916 the psalm had not really experienced the full horror of trench warfare when the bombardment opened on the 24th of June this was about to change [Music] thank you foreign over the next seven days the German positions cowering in their dugouts were exposed to the earth-shattering impact of more than a million and a half shells falling around them [Music] the British Field Artillery was made up of 18 pound guns generally devoted to wire cutting [Music] and 4.5 inch howitzers mainly deployed in trenched demolition foreign the medium artillery consisting of 4.7 inch 6 inch and 60 pound guns was targeted on Supply dumps approach roads and rail heads the heavy howitzers ranging from 6 to 12 and 15 inch caliber were used on fortified targets such as the German's own gun emplacements further forward the Infantry used trench mortars to send two three and four inch shells into the enemy trenches yeah from the 26th of June onwards the British began to mix gas projectiles with a high explosive and shrapnel-filled shells chlorine gas was one of the most terrifying weapons of the first World War Lance Sergeant Alma cotton described its effects as splitting headache terrific thirst though to drink water is instant death a knife edge pain in the lungs and a coughing up of greenish froth off the stomach and the lungs ending finally in insensibility and death the color of the skin from White turns a greenish black and yellow the tongue protrudes and the eyes assume a glassy stair it is a Finnish death to die [Music] gas was in short supply and used only intermittently in the bombardment most of it being saved for the morning before the offensive the tactics of the coming battle were simple in the extreme the memorandum training of Divisions for offensive action dated 8th of May 1916 was under no Illusions about the abilities of the volunteer army officers and troops generally do not possess the military knowledge arising from a long and high state of training which enables them to act promptly on sound lines in unexpected situations the big push was to be based on the assumptions of this memorandum that while a single line of men has usually failed two lines have generally failed but sometimes succeeded three lines have generally succeeded but sometimes failed and four or more lines generally succeeded the lack of training and experience was to be compensated for by sheer weight of numbers the attackers would be organized into four successive lines of men no more than 100 yards apart they would leave their trenches and Advance along a front of about 15 miles for a distance which ranged from just over a mile to two miles depending on the disposition of the German lines the advance would be protected by a creeping barrage of artillery fire behind which the Infantry were expected to advance relatively unmolested The Barrage would pound the first line of the enemy defenses for as long as it took for the Infantry to reach it it would then move forward to the next predetermined line and shell this for the same period barrage would continue forward in this manner followed by the Infantry until the attack objectives had been achieved the Infantry on the sum were led to believe that between the damage already inflicted by the bombardment and the covering fire of the barrage their journey across No Man's Land would be little more than a stroll in the country on the eve of battle some were beginning to have serious doubts but most were looking forward to the coming test of their manhood Tommy Atkins was finally going into battle [Music] wait outside but it's special train for Atkins when they troopers on the side when the troop ships on the tired my boys the truth sets on the side it's better to rain for Atkins when the troopers on the side [Music] [Music] but it's a Thin Red Line of Heroes when the drums begin to roll when the drums begin to roll me boys the drums begin to roll it's a theoretical line of Heroes with the drums begin to roll well we have no spin radio so we are no Black Arts too we're just single men in parrots most remarkable like you and if sometimes our conduct isn't all your fancy tastes well single men in Dramatics don't know it's a plastic wallet I mean this and tell me that and saw before the eyes but it's please walk in front sir when there's Trouble In The Wind when there's trouble in the winter boys they travel in the wind it placed a walk in France with a traveling [Music] on the 1st of July Dawn came accompanied by a slight drizzle which quickly cleared to a bright sunny morning the men ate a last meal for the fortunate this came warm from the rear positions at 6 25 the artillery flung a final colossal Roar of bombardment toward the German lines Corporal Bill Mund of the isari regiment waited with mounting tension how the time dragged on would it never come at last one minute ago get ready now for it either Death Or Glory or perhaps a nice wound good enough to get us across the water to blighty [Music] finally the bombardment ceased the whistles of the officers shrieked out along the front and the battle of the psalm began almost immediately German barrage fire rained down with devastating accuracy on the British forward positions as our infantry Advanced down came a perfect wall of explosive along the front benches of my Brigade on the 93rd it was the most frightful artillery display that I had seen each line disappeared in the thick cloud of dust and smoke which rapidly blotted out the whole area I saw a few groups of men through gaps in the smoke cloud but I knew that no troops could hope to get through such a fire the whole Brigade was wiped out as a fighting unit [Music] this was the experience of Brigadier h.s Rhys whose whose Brigade of north of England Pals attempted to advance ser for those who survived the barrage the machine gun fire was waiting a sergeant of the third tyneside Irish described how I could see a way to my left and right long lines of men then I heard the Pata patter of machine guns in the distance by the time I'd gone another 10 yards there seemed to be only a few men left around me by the time I had gone 20 yards I seemed to be on my own then I was hit myself up and down the line of Advance most of the British infantry came under heavy fire within seconds of leaving their trenches for those who managed to win through to the Enemy Lines there was often the Heartbreak of attempting to find gaps in the German wire where none existed all along the front it was almost universally the same story of Mayhem and Carnage the only sector of progress was south of La buazel where divisions fighting beside the French and the French themselves made significant advances 21st and 34th captured long sections of German trenches while the 7th 18th and 30th divisions made serious inroads into their first day objectives by 9 am due to shock exhaustion counter-attack and German reinforcement the vast majority of the British infantry had lost touch with their barrage protection it had moved ahead to rain down shells on objectives which were not only unachievable but also unreachable many battalions having lost touch with their own barrage were now cut off by the German barrage from receiving supplies and reinforcements from behind the protection of their own lines the enemy could pinpoint these stranded British remnants and attack them with mortar grenades and shells oh moving forward or to the rear meant exposing themselves once again to machine gun fire neither could they easily call on covering far from their own artillery though they had been issued with a miscellaneous collection of signaling devices including Flags discs and carrier pigeons none of these proved adequate in the tumult battle the only Communications which proved Reliant comprehensive and fast enough to be effective were those carried by the regimental Runners who risked their lives scampering heroically back to their line through the deadly hail of no man's land even after the slaughter of the first wave of attack commanders were still sending battalions forward the Newfoundland regiment was ordered to advance towards why Ravine at Beaumont Hamill although the enniskillen regiment had already suffered 568 casualties there the newfoundlanders Lost 710 including all their offices when each regiment was only putting between 700 and 800 men in the field at any one time such losses were staggering officers have been instructed to lead their men forward no matter what the cost that 60 percent of them fell in combat over all divisions on July 1st is Testament to the fact that they took this order quite literally the day dragged on the Carnage of the first few hours was repeated on a smaller scale throughout most of the field of battle [Music] by Nightfall The Psalm had claimed 60 000 British casualties the highest number ever to fall in a single day nowhere had the attack approached the German second line the main British objective for the first day of battle [Music] the cost of this failure in human terms had been staggering twenty thousand human beings had died when Corporal Joe Hoyles of the 13th Battalion rifle Brigade approached the enemy positions seven days later he found that the German front line was covered with bodies it was seven and eight deep they'd all gone black a smell these people have been laying here since first of July acting Corporal rupo Weber of the same regiment was transfixed by what he witnessed as far as you could see there were all these bodies lying out there literally thousands of them somewhere without legs someone legs without bodies arms without bodies terrible side for those assigned to burial detail the task proved traumatic in the extreme the dead was stretched out on one side one on top of each other six foot high I thought at the time I should never get the peculiar disgusting smell of the vapor of warm human blood heated by the Sun out of my nostrils I would rather have smelled gas a hundred times or others it was the sight of those who still lived which was unbearable it was the wounded that made the place such a hell I did not mind the dead I could do nothing for them but one also felt incapable of doing much for the wounded [Music] the night of July the first the British troops were forced to endure the Eerie demonic choir of those comrades screams babblings cries and moans echoing Across The Killing Fields of no man's land the effect on the nerves of the Infantry was excruciating Lieutenant hornshaw of the West Yorkshire regiment likened the noise to the sound of enormous wet fingers screeching across an enormous pane of glass there were stretcher parties Who braved The Perils of the German machine guns to rescue some of the wounded but as Captain hertham the rifle Brigade agonizing the inquired what was the use of a handful of stretcher bearers to deal with literally thousands of wounded even those who point to the advances on the south of the Battlefront as evidence that the first day of battle was not a complete military disaster cannot avoid the catalog of tactical and strategic criticisms laid against Hague and the rest of the British High command there was no intelligence that the German dugouts were so deep there are strong points so well fortified and so many gun emplacements masked much of the British ammunition was made up of Duds which failed to explode or exploded in the breaches of the guns prematurely German personnel and positions withstood the bombardment relatively intact approximately one million of the shells fired during the bombardment were 18 pound shrapnel which could do little damage to Earthworks or barbed wire the British Gunners were very inexperienced and poorly trained this led to inaccuracy not just during the bombardment but in The Barrage which was meant to protect the Infantry instead of advancing close behind their barrage the Infantry had to stand off for fear of being hit by shells dropping short so the German Defenders were given the opportunity to reorganize before the attacking wave of the British was upon them thank you the failure to inflict sufficient damage on the barbed wire was known by the Infantry before battle commenced but no intelligence about this was sought at command level so orders from high command constantly assumed major gaps in the German wire the battle plan was crude in the extreme no attempt was made to disguise the imminent offensive and there was no element of surprise when the attack finally came at first it seemed that few lessons had been learned from the debacle of July the 1st solid lines of infantry continued to sacrifice themselves to German machine guns further military gains were minor and expensive however on the 14th of July Rollins and won permission from Hague to attempt a surprise offensive upwards of twenty thousand men attacked the sleeping German positions at 3 25 am after only five minutes of bombardment five miles of the German second line were eventually overrun foreign visions of Cavalry then struggled through the pockmarked battlefield to form up in the open ground beyond the British advance Lance is glistening in the sun Penance bravely waving they gathered momentum as they advance then breaking into a charge they thundered toward the German machine guns the slaughter which followed signaled the pathetic end of the Cavalry Charges a tactic in Modern Warfare in mid-september the Psalms saw the introduction of a weapon which would eventually replace the Cavalry and revolutionize the face of battle the tank at the Battle of Fleur crusolete in 1916 49 of these 28-ton mechanical monsters lumbered towards their first offensive at a top speed of just over three and a half miles an hour with a crew of eight squashed into the stifling heat of its armor-plated interior the tank was designed to cross a 10-foot wide trench and take out a machine gun post with six pounder guns or engage personnel with Vickers and Hodgkin's machine guns on their first outing on the Psalm 17 of their tanks failed to reach the line of battle and another 14 broke down or stalled in the mud once the battle commenced nine tanks survived to clear a path for their infantry but the psychological impact of the tanks on the German Defenders was out of all proportion to their numbers by late September the Germans had been pushed back over three miles weather conditions had become atrocious according to the official history little could be seen from the air through the rain and Mist so it was impossible to locate with any accuracy the new German trenches and shellhull positions bursts of high explosive were smothered in the Ooze the ground was so deep in mud that to move one 18 pounder 10 or 12 horses were often needed the adverse weather was also affecting the work of the Allied Air Force an increasingly important support for the Infantry as the campaign on the Somme were on the tasks assigned to the Royal flying Corps were wide-ranging and included counter battery spotting the destruction of enemy Observer balloons photographic reconnaissance of the battlefield and the movement of supplies and reserves immediately Beyond RFC used dh2 fighter aircraft on offensive patrols which engage the German aircraft and cleared the air ahead of any infantry attack this allowed the aircraft in the British rear to observe the battlefield and support the troops on the ground by strafing and bombing the enemy the cost of this belligerent approach was immense the RFC lost 782 aircraft over the Somme while destroying 164 German planes and forcing down another 205 this apparent disaster was later defended by its commanders who pointed out that the rfc's successes should be measured by its work for the Army not by its toll of enemy aircraft the reason for the low German casualty rate was a result of hanging back beyond the line of battle and only rising to fight when they felt that the odds were in their favor this gave the Allies complete aerial dominance over the battlefield throughout the offensive the Deluge over the sun continued into October seemed that the big push was squelching ignominiously to a halt but still the commanders ordered men forward in conditions which even the official history could not condone the Infantry sometimes wet to the skin and almost exhausted before zero R were often condemned to struggle painfully forward through the mud under heavy fire against objectives which were vaguely defined and difficult to recognize thank you many of the troops now plowing through the mud were beginning to question the wisdom of their leaders with their growing knowledge of strategy and tactics came the realization that the extent of annihilation on July the 1st might well have been avoided their tendency towards cynicism was fed by newspaper accounts which led them to question if the battle in which they were engaged was the same one being reported by the Press on July the 3rd the times quoted Hague is saying that the first day of the battle had brought substantial progress we got our first thrust well home and there is every reason to be sanguine about the result according to the writer Ciel Montague those who had lived through the massacre read the stuff open-mouthed no amount of cynicism at the front could match the gall of some of those who wrote about the war from the comfort of their clubs in London even after the battle of the Somme Lord northcliffe owner of the times could write about conditions in the trenches the open air life the regular and plenteous feeding the exercise and the freedom from carem responsibility keep the soldiers extremely fit and content the volunteer army had been poorly trained roughly billeted haphazardly equipped and subject to the squalor of the trenches they had borne all of this for the most part with a patient faith in their commanders their government and the institutions of the nation for which they fought now the fabric of their belief system was being rent asunder some of those who were joined up from a sense of decency and fair play like private Hubbard of the London Scottish were now instructed to abandon these values we add strict orders not to take prisoners no matter if wounded my first job when I had finished cutting some of the wire away was to empty my magazine on three Germans which came out of their deep dugouts bleeding badly put them out of their misery they cried for mercy die of my orders private latest Sergeant Hubbard could never forget the incident it was believed to be a major reason for his suicide some years after the war was over while such orders were not common indeed sometimes it seemed success was counted by the number of prisoners taken neither was Private Hubbards a singular experience idealism may not have perished on the sum but it was certainly grievously wounded the horrors which the Frontline troops had endured were being sanitized by the press for an Ever credulous public but the enormous immersion generated by the conflict had to find a voice somewhere it discovered it in the songs and poems which emerged From The Trenches of the psalm to Menace the hallowed defenses of the establishment the spearhead of this attack came from the pans of poets such as Robert Graves Siegfried Sassoon Wilfred Owen and others later to become known as the war poets having enlisted with as much idealism as their comrades poems like the general echoed the growing sense of bitterness and disillusionment which now began to gnaw at them he's a Cheerio card granted Harry to Jack as they slogged up to Aris with rifle and pack but he did for them both with his plan of attack the wounded soldier was not comfortably ensconced in a French hospital dreaming of his sweetheart and a swift return to duty he stirred shifting his body then the pain leapt like a prowling beast and gripped and tore his groping dreams with grinding Claws and fangs foreign but the message of these poets was not just contained in their merciless descriptiveness they celebrated life in the midst of death the voice of nature struggling through the Thunder of battle and reasserted the sacredness of the individual against the wholesale degradation of anonymous mechanical Warfare Gethsemane by Rudyard Kipling granted the victim of warfare a holy christ-like quality The Gardener Gethsemane it held the pretty Lass but all the times he talked to me prayed my cup might pass the officer sat on the chair the mainly on the grass and all the time we halted there I prayed my cup might pass didn't pass didn't pass it didn't pass from me I drank it when we met the gas Beyond Gethsemane the Ultimate Enemy of these poets and those they spoke for inevitably became not the German enemy but the war itself but still the war dragged on while Hager decided by mid-october that the German lines on the psalm would now not be pierced before spring he was pressurized by jaffre to keep the offensive going a final assault was planned but the Quagmire conditions underfoot saw its continual postponement but on the 9th of November the weather suddenly cleared and severe frosts began to solidify the quivering mud four days later the attack began and hour and a half before Dawn each morning since the beginning of the month the German Frontline trenches had been subject to an hour's heavy barrage however the shells falling around them on the 13th were the Prelude to the advance of seven divisions under General sirbert goth foreign along a line centering on Beaumont Hamel 44 000 mostly battle hardened British infantrymen thrust themselves toward the German position the troops which now swept across No Man's Land were not the naive amateurs of July the first once through the barbed wire they made maximum use of what cover the terrain had to offer avoiding strongholds and attacking vulnerable positions in small groups while the Fortified town of ser remained in German hands everywhere else advances were spectacular Beaumont Hamill considered vulnerable to the British assault was taken by the 51st division the 63rd division took bokod Village and pressed further into german-held territory by November the 18th the battle of the Somme was over the Allies had Advanced up to six miles had been bought by over one hundred thousand casualties the British suffered 450 000 casualties all told in the second world war the total of British losses on all fronts would not exceed 350 000. whatever its strategic value in human terms the psalm had been a military disaster those who joined together had indeed fought together and died together remote districts of Scotland Welsh mining towns and Industrial Midlands Villages found a whole generation of young men wiped out at a stroke the survivors would bring back Tales of incompetence and horror which would alter the thinking of the British public forever the memory of what they had witnessed could only grow more Vivid with time having fought in this most harrowing of battles they felt charged with the responsibility somehow to communicate the pathetic murderous indignity of the psalm to their fellow countrymen and to Future Generations [Music] foreign do you remember the dark months you held the sector at mammoths the nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets do you remember the rats in the stench of corpses rotting in front of the front line Trench and Dawn coming dirty white and chilled with a hopeless rain do you ever stop and ask is it all going to happen again do you remember that hour of din before attack and the anger the blind compassion that seized and shook them as you appeared at the doomed and Haggard faces of your men do you remember the stretcher cases lurching back with dying eyes and lolling heads those Ashen gray masks of the lads who once were kind and keen and gay have you forgotten yet look up and swear by the green of spring that you'll never forget

Channel: War Stories

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Keywords: battle chronicles, battle evaluations, battle strategies, battlefield stories, combat history, combat statistics, documentary series, historical revelations, historical study of wars, historical warfare, human conflicts, military advancements, military campaigns, military casualties, trench warfare history, war analysis, war atrocities, war diaries, war lessons learned, wartime chronicles

Id: Z2deZ3a4ybc

Length: 60min 19sec (3619 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023