Attack on the Somme: Haig's Offensive 1916

The Battle of the Somme is fixed in the country's collective memory as a disaster—probably the bloodiest episode in the catalogue of futile offensives launched by the British on the Western Front. Over five months of desperate fighting in 1916 the British wrestled with the Germans for control of a narrow strip of innocuous French countryside. When the fighting petered out the British had barely pushed back the Germans from their original positions for a combined casualty figure of over a mi...