General Douglas Haig's Victory In The Battle Of The Somme

July 1st, 1916, artillery flew everywhere, machine guns rang in the distance, millions dead. 57,000 British, 8,000 French and Germans already dead in the first 24 hours. This is the Battle of the Somme, held on the River Somme in France. 1.2 million casualties. It started with British General Douglas Haig coming up with an idea of a “great push” through German lines. It was a trench warfare, massive artillery bombardments, thousand of soldiers going “over the top” into No Mans Land, and already many dead. Gains were minimal, but it turned the tide of the war to the Allies favor, the German force was weakened by fatality. Both the British and the Germans fought in the first day of this battle, many soldiers were last that day. The first day
He tells his story as a machine gunner in the front lines of the Germans, sounding almost sympathetic towards the British, and especially to his people. As it can be seen, the first day was devastating and millions died. There was no type of advancement at all, there was no gain in territory, that’s why no one indeed won this war on the first day. This one German may believe this, but there were many British people who claimed they had won the first day, and one of those people was John D. Irvine. In an English newspaper founded in 1900, he described his experience in the first day of the Battle of the Somme, “I witnessed the last phase of the bombardment, which preceded the advance. It was six o’clock (summer time) when we arrived there. The guns had been roaring furiously all through the night. Now they had, so to speak, gathered themselves together for one grand final effort before our British lions should be let loose on their prey…” (Irvine, “Special Account of the Fighting in Our New Offensive,” The Daily
George Coppard, a British soldier who fought in the entire First World War fought at the Battle of the Somme as a machine gunner lived to tell his tale in his book, “Immediately in front, and spreading left and right until hidden from view, was clear evidence that the attack had been brutally repulsed. Hundreds of dead, many of the 37th Brigade, were strung out like wreckage washed up to a high-water mark,” (Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai). Coppard talks of the devastation of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. It was terror, so many soldiers dead in No Mans Land. As a machine gunner, Coppard witnessed the first day of the war, and watched as Generals sent soldier after soldier “over the top.” He was mad, how could the Generals know that the British could possibly get through the barbed wire of the Germans? No one succeeded in gaining any land, this war was not won by either Germany nor Britain. In conclusion, the Battle of the Somme was a terrible battle where thousands of soldiers gave their lives. No one won the first day of the Battle of the Somme, only destruction and blood. The only to have won this battle, was