Battle of The Somme Footage - 1916

With the sound of gunfire and explosions that some said could be heard in Westminster, the battle of the Somme began on July the 3rd, 1916. It shook the world with its bloody carnage and, in the end, its utter futility. The idea had been, so the generals said, to advance four thousand yards across the poppy field of Picardy on the first day, and so push the German Army out of its entrenched positions. It could then be pursued, in a rout, across undefended ground. And so the biggest army the British had ever sent into battle, every man a volunteer, began to advance along a fifteen mile front. The reality of it all proved a profound shock. Withering German machine gun fire cut down the advancing troops with such precision that thousands died in the first fifteen minutes of the battle. By nightfall at the end of the first day the British forces had made no substantial territorial gains. But the casualties had been horrific. Sixty thousand men had been killed or wounded in a matter of hours. Back in Britain, when the true picture of the battle began to emerge, there was much public protest, and a growing anti-war movement began to demonstrate and fight against the patriotic nationalism of the great majority. Far from wanting the war to end, this group were on the streets to get it prosecuted more effectively. On a political level, one direct result of the Somme campaign was a change in the leadership of the Coalition Government. The Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, told King George the fifth that he could no longer stand the persistent criticism of his leadership in the press. After much plotting and high-level skulduggery, David Lloyd George was appointed to succeed Asquith, and immediately announced a new style cabinet, including the young Winston Churchill, who would vigorously pursue the war effort. Back in the battlefields of Flanders, the horrors of the Somme were soon replaced by war stories from many other epic struggles, as the first world war dragged on for another two years. As many were to say later, it truly was a case of lions led by donkeys.