Haig now had no choice but to take charge of the attack in Joffre’s absence. He used both the ideas of himself and those of General Rawlinson. On Saturday 24th June the attack proceeded by an eight-day preliminary bombardment on the German lines. The expectation being that all forward German defences would be destroyed leaving the attacking British troops to just walk across no-mans land and take possession of the German front lines. Following this a creeping barrage would precede the advancing infantry to the German front line and onwards to the second and third trench lines. Once the taking of the German lines was complete the plan was for the British to break through to Camrai and Douai, therefore breaking the German lines in two.
However as usual the attack did not go as planned, the artillery bombardment failed to destroy neither the German front line barbed wire nor the heavily built concrete bunkers that had been cleverly constructed. Many charges did not go off and much of the British munitions proved to be ‘duds’.
The first attacking wave of the offensive went over the top from Gommecourt to the French left flank just south of Montauban. The attack was by no means a surprise as it was frequently discussed and served as merely an alert to the German army to the imminent attack. As a consequence of this lack of surprise and the lack of success of the bombardment the BEF made very little progress in the first few weeks at the beginning of the battle.
The French forces at the southern end of the line achieved more success, maybe because their advance bombardment was only sprung a few hours before the attack therefore maintaining the element of surprise. This was also helped by the fact that the Germans did not expect the French to attack, due to their heavy losses at Verdun.
For the most part the British troops were forced back into their trenches by the German machine gun fire. Many troops were killed or wounded the moment they stepped out of the front lines into no-mans land.
The first line of German trenches was not secured until 11th July, when on the same German troops were transferred from the battle of Verdun to the battle of the Somme; this doubled the number of men available for the defence.
Haig became convinced, much like the Germans, that the enemy was on the point of exhaustion and that a breakthrough was imminent, thus the offensive continued throughout the summer and into November. However the British maintained few victories. In early September the French Tenth Army joined the attack under Micheler on a 20-kilometre front to the south. Meanwhile the British attack was renewed in the northeast. On 15th September the Battle of Flers-Courcelette was engineered, it made use of tanks for the first time and deployed 15 divisions of men; even so it gained under a kilometre of ground.
In October Joffre urged Haig to continue the offensive as by now the French forces were on the offensive and gaining ground in Verdun. Joffre was concerned that Haig should keep up the Somme offensive as otherwise German manpower may be diverted back to Verdun to assist the German defence there. Therefore on 13th November a final effort was made by the BEF in the Battle of the Ancre where the field fortress of Beaumont Hamel was captured.
The British were finally progressing, but even this was bought to a halt when extremely bad weather caused the Somme offensive to end. The result had been an estimated 420,000 British casualties, a further 200,000 for the French and around 500,000 for the Germans and all for only 12 kilometres of land in Britain and Frances favour. Over 1 million lives were lost in this battle alone and all the Somme offensive was designed for was to divert German attention from the French at Verdun. Some believe this battle acted as a learning curve in the employment of artillery, which contributed to the victory in 1918. In my opinion it shows the severity and pointlessness of war. Hardly anything was achieved apart from the loss of thousands of lives.
