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For the British, the attack on 1 July proved to be the worst day in the nation’s military history in terms of casualties sustained.

In this opening phase, the French and British assault broke into and gradually moved beyond the first of the German defensive systems. Opening phase: the Battle of Albert, 1 – 13 July 1916 The map shows the arrangement of the British Divisions deployed for the opening attack. The British Fourth Army faced three formidable German defensive systems of trenches, dugouts, underground shelters and deep barbed wire defences (green). Part of a map contained in the British Official History. The map shows the position of the front line just before the start of the offensive. The Somme offensive was begun by the British Fourth Army (red) and the French Sixth Army (blue), attacking the German Second Army (green). The artillery bombardment before the infantry attack British infantry on the Vaux-sur-Somme road, 1916. The logistical preparations necessary before the offensive The tactical planning for the start of the offensive The political and strategic background to the offensive The Somme is also the source of more mythology and mis-interpretation of the Great War than any other action in which Britain participated with the possible exception of the campaign at Gallipoli. The British army in France is now approaching its maximum strength in numbers but is still developing in terms of tactics, technology, command and control. 15 September 1916 saw the first-ever use of tanks in the step known as the Battle of Flers-Courcelette. For all armies on the Western Front it was becoming what the Germans would call “materialschlacht”: a war not of morale, will or even manpower, but of sheer industrial material might. Huge British losses on the first day and a series of fiercely-contested steps that became attritional in nature. A Franco-British offensive that was undertaken after Allied strategic conferences in late 1915, but which changed its nature due to the German attack against the French in the epic Battle of Verdun, which lasted from late February to November.