*VIRTUAL TOUR - The Somme Offensive 1 Continued*

DEATH ON THE BATTLEFIELD 

After The Battle

Within the first hour of the assault, the German defences inflicted heavy casualties on the British attacking force, resulting in them being unable to reach their objectives for the first day in most parts of the Battlefront. The German defences at ground level had been smashed by the preparatory bombardment, although the favourable effect of the British Artillery shells on the barbed wire defences in front of the German Front-Line was varied. The British bombardment also caused disruption to the German supply routes and had disturbed the mental integrity of the German Troops subjected to the continuous noise and fear of death. Casualties in the German forward positions were severe enough in parts of the line for Senior Commanders to be concerned, but in the main, the protection afforded by their numerous large underground shelters in the forward and support lines helped to limit their casualties.

The German Trenches

As the British began their advance, the German Troops who had survived their caved-in bunkers and withstood the mentally difficult time of the bombardment, carried out their well-rehearsed drill of climbing out from the protection of their deep bunkers to man the smashed-in trenches, and most crucially, their strategically placed machine-gun positions. As a consequence, it had a devastating effect for most of the Men in the British Battalions, who were advancing through No-Man’s-Land towards them. Heavy casualties in so many sectors of the British attack, with scores of Men, wounded or killed by German gunfire before they could even cross No-Man's-Land, resulted in only a few small successful gains of ground North of the Albert-Bapaume road. South of the road, and on the right flank of the attack, the British achieved significant gains on the Front between Mametz and Maricourt, with Troops of the 18^th and 30^th Divisions successfully reaching their objectives by the end of the first day. The situation for almost all the Divisions attacking North of Mametz village turned into a day of disappointment and loss. Small parties did indeed reach some of their objectives beyond the German Front-Line, but the devastating loss of thousands of British Troops to injury, missing, and death within the first hour of the attack, limited the possibility of supporting and reinforcing these gains by the end of day one.

The 1^st July 1916 was a tragic day for the British Army; there were around 60,000 casualties by nightfall, over 19,000 of whom were fatalities. Although the German Regiments recorded relatively few casualties defending their line in the Northern part of the Battlefield, two of their Regiments in the Southern sector, where the British had successfully made a breakthrough, were destroyed, each of them losing several hundred Men, either wounded, killed, or taken prisoner. The disastrous first-day attacks did not shake Haig's belief that a series of similar assaults would lead to Germany's defeat. However, between the 2^nd July and the end of August, the British gained little more ground than they had done on the 1^st July, at the cost of 82,000 further casualties.

Tending The Wounded