In the history books, The Battle of Somme is considered a turning point that eventually brought about the end of The Great War, the First World War. It came at a staggeringly high cost to both sides. In terms of casualties, it was the single bloodiest battle during the war, lasting over a period of 4 months. Overconfidence in the precursor artillery bombardment to lighten the German defenses before the main offensive, and poor execution of fires, ratcheted up the number of casualties the British would sustain before the Somme Offensive came to a conclusion several months later. This paper examines the pre battle preparations, the battle itself, and the aftermath of the battle, with a particular focus on the artillery’s role and effectiveness …show more content…
In an effort to alleviate the pressure off French forces struggling to hold on at Verdun, a battle plan that had been agreed upon months ago between Anglo-French forces in December 1915, was being formulated and finalized. (Krause et al. 2015) Given the condition of the French forces resisting the German advances at Verdun since late February 1916, the bulk of the operation was to be conducted for the first time in the war by British forces under the command of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, and General Henry Rawlinson, Commander of Fourth Army. The initial buildup of forces was to comprise 40 French divisions with 25 British divisions as support, however at the onset of the Battle of Somme, only 12 French divisions and 13 British divisions comprising roughly 720,000 men were able to commit to the battle. The German Empire in comparison had 10.5 divisions of roughly 315,000 men. (Krause et al. 2015) Although outnumbered 2 to 1, the Germans had the advantage of vastly reinforced defenses, having not fought any major battles in this area for …show more content…
This was in no means the climatic start of infantry rushing across no man’s land to seize their objectives, that particular action would occur 1 week later on July 1st. No, this was the precursor to that attack, when British artillery units up and down the line opened fire in an attempt to cut the wires that comprised the German defenses. This would theoretically allow the advancing infantry clear paths to cross and occupy previously held German positions. On June 25th, wire cutting continues along with some counter battery firing, although this is not a perfected art at the time, however, some explosions are reported by observers at enemy ammo dumps. The German artillery response is increasing by this day and 102 enemy batteries are observed firing. Infantry raiding parties sent out at night are filled with mixed news; some areas are lightly defended while others are filled with men on the alert. This continues on to the next day, and then bad weather in the form of heavy rain obscures the battlefield and the observation of friendly fires from the 27-28th. (Baker et al. 2018) 1.5 million artillery rounds had already been fired over the 4 day period leading up to the assault, however the mixed reports and obscure weather conditions left the British and French leadership worried that some areas were not ready to be traversed by ground forces, and so 2 more days were allocated to continue