First Day of the Somme The Complete Account of Britain's Worst-Ever Military Disaster Synopsis
It took several million bullets and roughly an hour to effectively destroy General Sir Douglas Haig's grand plans for the first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916. By day's end, 19,240 British soldiers were dead, crumpled khaki bundles scattered across pasture studded with the scarlet of poppies and smouldering shell holes. A further 35,493 were wounded. This single sunny day remains Britain's worst-ever military disaster. Responsible were hundreds of German machine guns and scores of artillery batteries that had waited silently to deal death to the long-anticipated attack. Reviewing the day's events fully from, for the first time, both the British and German perspectives, Andrew Macdonald explains how and why this was a disaster waiting to happen. While laying the blame for the butchery squarely on widespread British command failure, he also shows that the outcome was a triumph of German discipline, planning and tactics, with German commanders mostly outclassing their opposite numbers.
New Zealand-born Andrew Macdonald is a London-based author and military historian. His area of specialist interest is the First World War and, in particular, the role of New Zealand and other Dominion troops on the Western Front and at Gallipoli. Prior to becoming a historian he worked as a newswire journalist for Reuters in London and before that for the New Zealand Press Association. His career has taken him across Europe to the Middle East around Australia and New Zealand and on occasion to Far East Asia.
