The Battle of the Somme - source related study

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Lee Hiorns                                                                27th March 2003

History Filework: The Battle of the Somme

  1. Uses sources 15.H, 15.I to explain why the British suffered such huge losses on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

From three sources I am trying to find out why the British suffered such a huge loss on the first day of ‘the battle of the Somme’. Sources 15.I and 15.J are both written by British soldiers, 15.H is written by a German soldier.

Source 15.H suggests a few reasons why the British suffered such a huge loss on the first day of the Somme. Firstly Germans had a lot of machine guns, which they could set up easily and was there main firepower. The average machine gun at that time could fire around 400 rounds a minute, so this could be very easy for the Germans to instantly kill and take out British men coming towards them. The British thought that they had killed all the Germans, but because the enemy trenches were deep and well dug out, the German soldiers were not visible. So, British soldiers just walked at a steady space and in an open space without any protection, so they were then shot down straight away. Also, the Germans let the British soldiers walk 100 yards before they shot them, I think this was because that way, they would make a more accurate shot. Another thing what the British very stupidly did, was to send rows of infantry out at once, so they lost a lot of men that way. Another bad and silly reason on the British side was that, Britain assumed too much about the Germans and underestimated them, this cost a lot of men’s lives.

Source 15.I was written by a British soldier. This source gives quite a lot of valid reasons for why there was such a loss on the first day of the battle of the Somme. There was a lot of dust and noise, which could have done serious damage to the eyes and ears and that would be one less man to fight. The noise will have come from all the firepower, like artillery, machine guns and shells. Soldiers would get very ill, by sheer lack, of sleep and would be so tired, they would collapse. To add to the tiredness, soldiers would become sleepy and drowsy, with drinking too much Rum (alcohol). Soldiers, for example Harden, just went across no mans land, oblivious that people were being killed around him. They may have affected mentally by everything, like with shell shock. Also, at the end of the source, it says, “they dared not stop”. This may mean that they were being made to fight on till the death or they mentally just couldn’t stop.

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A sergeant in the 1st Somerset regiment had written source 15.J, which suggests some reasons for the loss of so many on the first day of the Somme. From this source, it sort of says that the British didn’t really think about their tactics a lot and just went straight into it, and got knocked down one by one. Men were starting their work at 7am in the morning and being relieved to the reserve trenches. This was at 11pm, so that is 15 hours, so they are bound to be extremely tired and ill from that, also its not as ...

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