Although when the theory of this battle was put into action it did not go quite as planned. A large number of the shells that were dispatched were not detonated due to faulty or fuses one third of all the shells. This made the wire cutting particularly difficult and only in some places was passable. The aerial spotting was intended to locate the German artillery batteries and put them out of action, but this was only dependent on good weather. The weather was unpredictable at first but on the fourth and fifth days low cloud and mist prevented the aerial spotters making any progress. The bombardment had to be extended by two days in the hope of completing the plan, but this only resulted in the troops being kept in damp trenches until they were finally told they could ‘go over the top’.
The bombardment was a failure because the British troops did not realise that German troops had sheltered themselves in deep dugouts, which allowed most of them to survive the bombing launched. Although when the bombardment ceased this was a clear indication for the surviving German troops that an attack was about to commence signifying when they should emerge. The explosions of several huge mines under the German front line did not prevent their machine guns (which had not been destroyed by the shelling) to kill waves of the advancing British infantry. Once the German troops did emerge from their dugouts, too few guns and too big an area to shell led to the preliminary bombardment being largely ineffective. When British troops began advancing they walked forward as if they were on an exercise. This made it also easier for surviving Germans to shoot each row of soldiers down leading again to large numbers of deaths for the British Army.
The main objectives of this bombardment was to destroy the German barbed wire, trenches, machine gun posts and fortified villages as well as to kill, capture or force German soldiers to retreat. This battle barely destroyed any of those things and due to the German troops being well protected in their deep dugouts; the supposed unopposed Allied attack was opposed by many German soldiers. This battle lasted between July and November of 1916 – longer than had hoped. Its aim was to break the deadlock and allow British and French troops to gain a large amount of land in little time with small losses of men. The British captured very little ground; the maximum the troops moved was a total of 7 miles in 5 months over a 30-mile stretch. Although 7 miles was the largest advanced in some places they only moved 100 yards in others.
This war demonstrated General Haig’s main idea of a war of attrition. He believed that if the other side lost more men in the battle than it was a successful war. After 1916 Haig had conscription, which drew in more men for battle therefore more men to employ in his plan of attrition. The main way in which this battle was called either a success or failure was by the number of casualties both sides suffered. The British had casualties of 57,000 men on the first day of battle but also they had a total of 418,000 casualties through out the battle. The French did have less than the British numbers of casualties at 194,000 but the Germans had more casualties than both having 650,000 troops injured.
Haig’s critics did have a lot of ammunition with which to ruin his reputation from this war, as he did a lose a lot of men for only 7 miles of land gained. For the amount of land gained the losses was far too great I think. Haig would say and most historians would agree that this battle made the morale of the German troops grow very low, but I feel that it could not have done much for the esteem of the British troops who knew that Haig wanted to win this war by attrition.
The main consequence of this disastrous battle was the great losses of men suffered by both sides. I think what made this such a military tragedy was that the factor of the weather was not considered when they went to battle they should have made allowances for it before hand, they really should have considered all factors which might affect the war.
