Slaughter by timetable
The plan (1)
The lie of the land
The centre of the battlefield was the Roman road that ran from Albert to Bapaume, north of the River Somme. The German defences were organised in three lines, the first two being complete while the third was still being constructed. The Germans had built their defences on high ground, which gave them a good view of any attackers.
The German first line was 500 to 1,000 metres away (that's between five and 10 football pitches in length) – across No Man's Land (the space between the British and German lines) – and their second line of defence was 1.5 to 3 miles behind the first. In some places, No Man's Land was much narrower – the length of a couple of football pitches.
Break through and end the war…
The British plan was to batter the German defences with sustained heavy
artillery fire
Imperial War Museum (Q8629)
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The British Plan was to break through all three of the German lines, and then send their cavalry through the gap. These mounted units would then attack German positions behind the lines, causing confusion and forcing the Germans to pull back to new defences many miles behind the present front line. If the British Army moved fast enough, it could sweep northwards, outflank the Germans, and even end the war.
To break the German defences, a massive artillery bombardment would be used. The plan was that, at Zero Hour when the officers blew their whistles, the infantry would cross No Man's Land behind a creeping artillery barrage, which was timetabled to move just ahead of the advancing troops. During the course of the day, they would take the three lines of German defences.
Why did Rawlinson's plan go so wrong? The massacre of young British soldiers on the First Day on the Somme was a direct result of bad battlefield tactics. To understand why, you have to break down the battle into three phases: artillery bombardment, infantry attack and cavalry charge.
Artillery bombardment
Keeping up morale: The Black Watch is issued rum after the capture
of Longueval on 14 July 1916
Imperial War Museum (Q4008)
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Rawlinson chose to bombard the German defences with artillery for a week. The purpose was to kill German soldiers in the front trenches, destroy their dugouts and cut their barbed wire defences. To do this, Rawlinson used different types of guns, mainly field guns firing 18-pound scrapnel shells and the heavier howitzers firing 6.8 and 9.2 inch high explosive shells.
The shrapnel shells were full of metal balls, which were meant to cut through barbed wire, while the large shells had high explosive to blast trenches to pieces and destroy dugouts. In the event, the artillery barrage fired 150,000 shells every day and 50,000 every night for seven days. The British fired about 1.5 million artillery rounds compared to less than 10,000 at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. In that one week, more British guns were fired than in the whole of the preceding 18 months.
For the Germans, this was extremely uncomfortable, because of the noise and vibration of the shells exploding. However, most of soldiers survived, their dugouts were unharmed and their trenches – and, most crucially, their barbed wire – remained intact.