Men and machines - the Battle of the Somme

Men and machines

By the time of the Somme offensive of 1916, the Great War had become shaped by artillery. Villages, woods and fields were reduced to drab wilderness by relentless shellfire and blighted by the squalid apparatus needed to support hordes of soldiers. No Man's Land became so featureless that it was easy to get lost and blunder into the enemy's lines.

The perfection of quick-firing guns that were able to deliver high-explosive shells with accuracy had made such a war possible. The harnessing of economies to the demands of total war since 1914 enabled the deployment of huge numbers of these guns. Munitions stocks were massive; the British army in France received 16 million shells in the second half of 1915. The war had become a clash between machines as much as between men.

In response, both sides – especially the Germans, who had somewhat fewer resources – dug for their lives. Trench systems grew ever more complex, with specific styles for front, main, reserve and communication trenches. The relatively open front trenches were usually occupied only just before attacks by trench-mortar units, which fired from the front trenches then scurried away before the enemy could retaliate. These trenches were vulnerable to capture by determined opponents, but they were equally difficult to hold on to. As the Germans were slowly forced back, they even fortified shell holes. They also dug deeper into the chalky rock, creating dugouts almost impervious to shellfire.

Ground could only be taken by men on foot. They faced seemingly impossible odds. Many were killed before an attack even began by shellfire from guns registered on (permanently aimed at) the front trenches. Both sides also fired poison gas shells when the wind was blowing in the right direction. Those who got over the top floundered, under the weight of their packs, through mud and shell craters towards elaborate barbed-wire obstructions that they often had to cut with inadequate tools while under machine-gun and artillery fire. Those who did manage to cross the 150-yard killing zone to the enemy's front trenches soon discovered that the enemy, too, had artillery trained on them. Success brought added peril: if the attacks on their flanks had failed, they would also be swept by rifle and machine-gun fire.

The big guns

Shellfire inflicted most of the casualties in the Great War. The greatest terror came when shells fell without warning. Ears rang so much that conversation remained impossible long after the barrage ceased. Even more terrifying were minenwerfers, huge drums containing 80 kg of high explosive that were fired from German trench mortars on a brief, ponderous, silent and deadly parabolic path.

It is said that 1400 shells were fired for every man killed by artillery. Although huge numbers of shells were fired, many attacks were successful. The gradual development of more flexible tactics helped. Instead of advancing in a line, men began moving up in small strung-out groups (called artillery formation). Fewer could now be killed by any one shell. And as autumn rains set in and battlefields became quagmires, most shells buried themselves in the mud before exploding with little effect. It helped too that pressure on factories saw them turn out many dud shells – up to 30% of those the British fired in 1916 failed to explode.

Infantrymen's greatest protection was the ability of their artillery to keep the enemy's heads down for the crucial period they were in the open. This was achieved by new methods for co-ordinating the fire of hundreds of guns. Most lethal was the creeping barrage, first used in the Balkan War of 1912–13 and rediscovered in 1916 when even massive stationary barrages proved ineffective. It depended on large numbers of well-calibrated guns, huge quantities of ammunition, accurate maps and watches and modest goals, and all these conditions existed on the Somme.