World War I | The Somme 1916 | Full Documentary

July 1st 1916 was the British Army’s blackest day. At 7.30am on that hot summer’s morning the ‘pals’ and ‘chums’ battalions of Kitchener’s Army went into battle for the first time; by the end of the day, 60,000 had become casualties, one third of whom had been killed. British High Command’s strategy for the battle had gone horribly wrong. A massive five day bombardment had not destroyed the deep German trenches or cut the long belts of barbed wire; The superb German defensive positions were all on ground higher than the British lines; men wearing full pack were ordered to attack uphill and walk, not charge, towards their objectives. All of which left the German machine gunners with easy targets who were mown down in their thousands. The same failed tactics were used time and again over the following four months, until the snows came to call a halt to the killing. In return for roughly six miles of worthless, pitted landscape, 420,000 British troops had been killed or wounded. Line Of Fire Series: New perspectives on history’s great battles About The Series Even at this great distance, the stories behind the battles that shaped the history of the world continue to captivate people everywhere. It is not difficult to see why. The sheer scale of the fighting on military history’s great battlefields boggles the imagination and tales of courage on those same bloody fields make the heart beat a little faster. To think of the fate of nations being decided by a single stroke of military genius or by sheer ineptitude or by the vagaries of fortune tingles the spine…to imagine ourselves faced with the same dangers as those confronted by soldiers throughout the years makes the blood run cold. All of these things go some way to explaining why military history holds such an enduring place in the popular imagination – and the time has come to tell the stories of these great episodes from the past in a completely new way. Licensed Through Mercury Studios #warDocumentaries #Fulldocumentary ► Subscribe to get all the latest content https://bit.ly/3p4PcTX ► Connect with us online and our socials: Website: www.4digitalmedia.com Facebook:   / thewarchannel   Twitter:   / thewarchanneltv   #thewarchannel #ww1 #somme #ww1documentary