Battle of the Somme by Eddie McCall (Cooden Beach Hotel)

Both the Battle of Jutland and the Battle of the Somme took place one hundred years ago this summer. Peter Pyemont was due to speak to us about Jutland but, unfortunately, was indisposed. Rotarian Eddie McCall instead took to the platform and gave us an excellent summary of the Battle of the Somme where his grandfather had fought.

 The French and British had committed themselves to an offensive on the Somme in December 1915 to push back the Germans and prevent them from reaching the channel ports. The Allies agreed upon a strategy of combined offensives against the Central Powers in 1916, by the French, Russian, British and Italian armies, with the Somme offensive as the Franco-British contribution. General Haig, the commander in Chief, briefed Sir Henry Rawlinson, the Field Commander, with the objectives but not the nuts and bolts. His approach to an attack on the Somme was more cautious than Haig’s but he could only acquiesce with his Chief’s advice.

The first day on the Somme, in Northern France, was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army and one of the most infamous days of World War One. On 1 July 1916, the British forces suffered 57,470 casualties, 19,240 of which died. They gained just three square miles of territory.

British and German troops faced each other's trenches only separated by a few hundred yards of “no-man’s land”. The British force consisted of soldiers from Britain and Ireland, as well as troops from Newfoundland, South Africa and India. The British generals staged a massive artillery bombardment and sent 100,000 men over the top to take the German trenches. They were confident of victory.

The Germans were considerably better prepared with numbers, equipment and defences on higher land and the British soldiers were unable to break through the German defences and were mown down in their thousands by machine gun and artillery fire. This day set a bloody precedent: the Somme campaign, with many more battles along the front, wore on for five months until the winter snows in November and, in all, more than a million soldiers from the British, German and French armies were wounded or killed. This number exceeds the total of deaths in all other world-wide conflicts.

Thank you, Eddie, for filling a gap at short notice so well.