The last act of the Somme offensive took place in the Ancre sector from 13 to 19 November. The Germans retained Morval and Lesboeufs for a further ten days and the offensive stalled. Of 49 tanks available to support the infantry, only 36 reached their starting points, though these caused alarm among the German defenders.įlers and Courcelette fell but the advance on 15 September was limited to about 2,500 yards (2,286m) on a three-mile (4.8km) front. The Canadian Corps of Gough’s Reserve Army was to take Courcelette. Objectives for 15 September included the Fourth Army’s capture of the German defenses at Flers and the seizure of Gueudecourt, Lesboeufs and Morval. July 1, 1916.īy mid-September, the British were ready to assault the German third line of defenses with a new weapon, the tank. Men of the Royal Irish Rifles rest during the opening hours of the Battle of the Somme. The remainder of the battle was characterized by relentless British attacks and equally determined German counterattacks. The lack of a decisive breakthrough on the opening day resulted in attritional or ‘wearing out’ fighting during the following two months. The British did not achieve the quick breakthrough their military leadership had planned for and the Somme became a deadlocked battle of attrition. But there was no question of suspending the offensive with the French still heavily engaged at Verdun. The French Sixth Army had 1,590 casualties and the German 2nd Army had 10,000–12,000 losses. These limited gains cost 57,470 British casualties – of which 19,240 were killed – making the first day of the Somme the bloodiest in British military history. 1916.Īt Thiepval, the 36th (Ulster) Division seized the Schwaben Redoubt but was forced to withdraw because of lack of progress to its left and right.Įlsewhere some British infantry made it into German positions but were forced to withdraw in the face of determined resistance and a huge volume of German artillery fire. The only substantial British success was in the south where using more imaginative tactics and helped by the French artillery on their immediate right, the 18th and 30th Divisions took all their objectives and the 7th Division captured Mametz.īritish troops go “over the top” in a scene staged for a newsreel film on the battle. German machine-gunners emerged from their intact shelters and mowed down the oncoming British infantry. Some senior commanders, not convinced that the inexperienced soldiers of New Armies (newly recruited) could cope with sophisticated tactics, ordered the infantry to advance in long, close-formed lines. In most places, the artillery bombardment had failed to cut the German barbed wire or damage the defenders’ dugouts. On July 1, 1916, the first shots were fired in what would become one of the bloodiest engagements in human history, the 141-day Battle of the Somme. The mine left a crater 130 feet (40 m) across and 58 feet (18 m) deep. A 45,000-pound mine (20 ton) under the German front line positions at Hawthorn Redoubt is fired 10 minutes before the assault at Beaumont Hamel on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
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