Battle of verdun facts12/8/2022 They had been honing their defences and their war weapons since the trench line zig-zagged its way across France and Belgium in the autumn of 1914. The Germans, however, were deeply entrenched on the Somme. They wanted to see the Germans in disarray, to make a wild retreat.” “The British and French were always looking for the breakthrough, to fracture the enemy and drive them out. “The application of artillery was still rather simple in 1916: to bombard the enemy’s position, then send in the infantry and charge through after with the cavalry,” Burness says. #Battle of verdun facts professional“But these were not professional forces, or large conscript ones such as the German and French armies were – these were men from all walks of life who joined up in their communities.” Hundreds of men from communities large and small would join up together, give their units nicknames such as “Pals”, and die together, leaving their towns and villages devastated.īritain’s generals lacked confidence in the abilities of their men, which meant there was a distinct lack of imagination or innovation in the tactics employed. “At the start of 1916, the French called on the Brits to play a bigger role on the ground, which they agree to do at the Somme,” explains Peter Burness, a former senior historian at the Memorial. Britain’s “new army’’ – a volunteer force similar to the AIF – was required to step up. The massive German attack launched on the French fortress of Verdun on 21 February 1916 significantly reduced the French contribution to the Somme campaign, which was also being launched, in part, to divert the Germans’ attention from Verdun. The assault was originally planned as a joint French–British offensive which was part of a wider strategy of attacking Germany simultaneously on the Western and Eastern Fronts, with the aim of destroying Germany’s reserves of manpower. The offensive was eventually abandoned on 18 November with staggering troop losses and little ground gained. #Battle of verdun facts seriesToday marks the 105th anniversary of the start of the Somme offensive, a series of fierce and ultimately futile battles that consumed the British, Australian and Dominion forces for much of 1916. Within 24 hours, the British army would suffer almost 60,000 casualties, a third of whom were killed, and record the most costly day in its history. In the early morning of 1 July 1916, more than 100,000 British infantrymen were ordered from their trenches in the fields and woods north of the Somme River in France, to attack the opposing German line.
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