The Western Front and the Somme 1916
The Industrialised Battlefield, 1914–18
By August 1914 the firepower of an industrial army made open-order assault almost impossible. Quick-firing artillery threw shells across miles of countryside; magazine-fed bolt-action rifles reached out 1,000 yards; and the machine gun could fire 500 rounds a minute. After the German advance was halted at the Marne, both sides dug in. From the North Sea to the Swiss border ran two parallel lines of trench system — with reserve trenches, dugouts, communication trenches and barbed-wire belts in between.
By the end of 1914 the Western Front had become a fortified line some 450 miles long. Quick-firing artillery, machine guns, magazine rifles and barbed wire gave the defender an overwhelming advantage; this is the technical reason the war ground into trench stalemate.
A New Composition of the Army
The pre-war British Expeditionary Force was a small professional army, the legacy of Cardwell and Haldane. It could not fight a continental war on its own. Lord Kitchener appealed for volunteers and within months hundreds of thousands had enlisted into the ‘New Armies’. From January 1916 the Military Service Act introduced compulsory conscription. By 1916 the army included specialised logistics corps, signal companies, tunnelling units, gas regiments, and from 1917 specialised tank battalions. The 1916–18 BEF looks much more like a modern army than its 1914 predecessor.
New Weapons on the Western Front
The technologies that would shape twentieth-century war all appeared, in working form, between 1914 and 1918. Chemical weapons (chlorine, phosgene and from 1917 mustard gas) inflicted casualties but rarely produced breakthroughs once gas-masks became standard. Aircraft began the war as scouts and ended it as bombers and fighters; the Royal Flying Corps merged with the Royal Naval Air Service in 1918 to form the Royal Air Force. Tanks — British secret weapon — first appeared on the Somme on 15 September 1916 (Flers-Courcelette) but were too few and unreliable to break the line; by Cambrai (November 1917) and Amiens (August 1918) they had matured into a battle-winning weapon.
Artillery remained the king of the Western Front. By 1916 a planned barrage could throw a million shells onto a small sector. The British army developed the creeping barrage, a moving curtain of shells that lifted in timed steps just ahead of the advancing infantry. When it worked — as on parts of 1 July 1916 and across the 1918 Hundred Days — it was lethal. When the timing slipped or the wire was uncut, infantry walked into machine-gun fire alone.
The Somme, 1 July–18 November 1916
The Somme was Britain’s first attempt at a continental-scale offensive. The plan, agreed with the French, was to break the German line on a 25-mile front north and south of the river Somme. After a seven-day artillery bombardment, on 1 July 1916 BEF infantry advanced over no man’s land. Hopes that the bombardment would have destroyed the German wire and dugouts proved badly misplaced — many German positions were intact, much of the wire was uncut, and the British timetable assumed troops would walk forward in lines. The result was the costliest day in British military history: roughly 57,470 casualties, of whom 19,240 were killed.
The Somme then ground on for over four months. Tactics evolved week by week: small-unit infiltration, better integration of infantry and artillery, the first use of tanks at Flers-Courcelette in September. By 18 November, when the offensive ended in mud and snow, the Allies had advanced perhaps 6–8 miles in places. Total Allied casualties exceeded 600,000; German casualties are estimated at 450,000–500,000. The Somme had killed huge numbers of soldiers without producing a strategic breakthrough — the textbook definition of a war of attrition.
The phrase ‘lions led by donkeys’ was popularised in Alan Clark’s 1961 book and the 1960s satirical revue ‘Oh! What a Lovely War’. Revisionist scholars from the 1990s onwards (Gary Sheffield, William Philpott, Dan Todman) argue this is a 1960s cultural verdict, not a 1916 one. They point to the BEF’s 1916–18 operational learning curve: the creeping barrage refined, tanks integrated, sound-ranging and counter-battery fire developed, infantry platoons reorganised around Lewis guns and bombers. By August 1918, BEF formations could break German lines as they did during the Hundred Days. The strongest answers present both views and judge between them rather than recycling the ‘donkeys’ line.
The Role of General Sir Douglas Haig
Haig is the figure on whom the wider Somme debate turns. Critical case: he ordered the bombardment that did not cut the wire; he allowed the assault to proceed on 1 July despite mounting evidence the bombardment had under-performed in places; he sustained the offensive for over four months at terrible cost. Defensive case: Haig was fighting a coalition war that required Britain to take pressure off Verdun, where the French were close to collapse; the Somme bled the German army even more than it bled the BEF; the operational lessons learned in 1916 were applied in the 1918 victories that ended the war.
No serious historian today defends the first day of the Somme. The disagreement is over whether Haig should be judged by 1 July 1916, by 18 November 1916, or by 11 November 1918. The fairest answer probably weighs all three; in any event, the question is one of evidence and emphasis, not heroes and villains.
Several causes combined. The seven-day bombardment dispersed shells along too wide a front, much of it shrapnel that did not destroy concrete dugouts or cut deep barbed-wire belts. Many shells were duds (British munitions quality was still poor in early 1916). The advance plan assumed troops would walk forward in evenly spaced lines, partly because most New Army battalions were inexperienced and could not yet manage small-unit fire-and-movement. When the bombardment lifted, German machine-gunners climbed out of intact dugouts and opened fire across uncut wire. Whole battalions were destroyed in minutes. The day’s casualties — around 57,470 — remain the costliest in British military history.
The Somme cost roughly 600,000 Allied and 450,000–500,000 German casualties. By 1918 the BEF had absorbed the lessons — refined creeping barrages, infiltration tactics, tanks, counter-battery fire — and broke the German line in the Hundred Days offensive (August–November 1918).