The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War - Hardcover

Sir Martin Gilbert was knighted in 1995 “for services to British history and international relations.” Among his many books are The First World War (0-8050-7617-4), The Second World War, (0-8050-7623-9) The Day the War Ended (1945) (0-8050-7527-5), and Churchill: A Life (0-8050-2396-8).

Prelude
 
'Chewing barbed wire'
 
In August 1914 the empires of Europe embarked on a war that each of them believed would be swift and victorious.
 
Austria-Hungary was confident it could crush Serbia within a few weeks, avenging the assassination that summer of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of Austria, killed in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist.
 
Germany, with territorial desires on the industrial region of north-west France, was confident it could reach Paris within a few months and dictate peace terms, as it had done in 1871 - and was to do again in 1940. German reservists leaving Berlin by train for their mobilization depots in August 1914 painted on their carriages the slogan 'On to Paris!'
 
'I hope we shall get to England,' one German soldier wrote to his landlord on October 20, as he set off for the front; but Adolf Hitler was to be disappointed, both then and in 1940.
 
France, hoping to regain the eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine that Germany had annexed in 1871, was confident it could counter-attack and defeat Germany by the end of the year: French soldiers leaving Paris by train were cheered by enthusiastic crowds willing them 'to Berlin!'
 
Great Britain was certain that its small professional army, fighting alongside the French - with whom it had signed an Entente Cordiale in 1904 - could drive the Germans from the soil of northern France by Christmas. Britain was also confident it could drive the Germans out of Belgium, all but a tiny corner of which the German Army had overrun on its drive towards Paris. On August 4 Britain declared war on Germany in response to its invasion of Belgium, to whom Britain was bound by one of its oldest treaties of alliance, signed in 1839, and never before put to the test.
 
Russia - the Empire of the Tsars - whose territory stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, believed it could help its French ally by pressing in on the German Empire from the East. It also saw itself as the champion of fellow Slavs: Poles under German rule in the eastern regions of Germany, Serbs threatened by Austria-Hungary, and the many Slav minorities in Austria-Hungary itself, Poles, Czechs, Slovenes, Slovaks, Serbs and Ruthenes among them.
 
The Germans were confident that, with the help of Austria- Hungary, with whom they had an alliance dating back a quarter of a century, they could force Russia out of the war and gain control of Russian Poland, with its capital, Warsaw, and its industrial city, Lodz. Germany also wanted to establish control over the Russian province of Courland, including the Baltic port city of Riga, and the land bordering on German East Prussia, including the cities of Vilna and Brest-Litovsk - integral parts of the Russian Empire for more than a hundred years.
 
The hopes of each combatant for rapid territorial gains and swift victories were illusions. By Christmas 1914, within six months of the start of the war, Germany and Austria-Hungary had both lost territory to Russia on the Eastern Front. On the Western Front, the triumphant German march on Paris had been halted at the Battle of the Marne in mid-September, and pushed back a week later at the Battle of the Aisne.
 
Following the Battle of the Aisne, the Germans attempted to break through to the English Channel. They were stopped by the end of October, at the first Battle of Ypres, a Belgian town that was to remain within the Allied lines for the rest of the war. Throughout November and December, when winter made fighting almost impossible, the contending armies in the West dug trenches and gun emplacements in a continuous line stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Then, protected by their trenches, they faced each other across the No-Man's Land that separated the trenches.
 
Briefly, at Christmas 1914, and again on New Year's Day, soldiers on both sides laid down their weapons, crossed into No-Man's Land, and fraternized. Some swapped beer or showed each other photographs of their families. Some played football. The higher commands on both sides ordered an end to this intimacy. A year later there were only minor truces.
 
 
Hardly had Britain declared war on Germany than the Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum - the victorious commander of the forces that had defeated the Mahdi of the Sudan sixteen years earlier - recognizing that war in Europe would require far more than the existing 160,000 men of the Regular Army, cast about for a means to raise volunteers on a substantial scale. His initial aim was an additional army of 100,000 men. Britain, which for the previous century had prided itself on the adequacy of its small, professional regular army, would have to accept that a nationwide effort was needed if the swift German military successes in Europe were to be checked and defeated.
 
At a meeting in the War Office on 19 August 1914, fifteen days after Britain had declared war on Germany, General Sir Henry Rawlinson - who was later to command the main British and Empire force on the Somme, the Fourth Army - suggested that men would be more willing to enlist if they knew they would serve with those whom they knew: friends, neighbours and workmates. Rawlinson asked a business acquaintance, Robert White, to raise a battalion of men who worked in the City of London. Within two hours of White opening a recruiting office, more than two hundred City workers enlisted. Six days later, the Stockbrokers' Battalion had 1,600 men.
 
When the Earl of Derby - the dominant political figure in Lancashire - heard of White's success he decided to form a battalion in Liverpool, opening a recruitment office there on August 28. By the end of the day 1,500 men had enlisted. It was Derby who first used the term a 'battalion of pals' to describe men who had been recruited locally.
 
On August 30, at St Swithun's Church, East Grinstead, the Reverend W. Youard gave a sermon calling on the young men of his parish to volunteer. Youard suggested that all local sports clubs close down so that men would not be tempted to stay behind. The creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived nearby, joined the campaign, telling the local men, 'If the cricketer had a straight eye, let him look along the barrel of a rifle. If a footballer had strength of limb, let him serve and march in the Weld of battle.' In response, Kitchener approved the creation of a Sportsman's Battalion. It included two England cricketers, Patsy Hendren and Andrew Sandham, and the Lightweight boxing champion of England, Jerry Delaney. The Sportsman's Battalion also included artists, authors, big-game hunters, clergymen and oarsmen.
 
A nationwide effort had begun. Kitchener encouraged towns and villages all over Britain to organize similar recruiting campaigns. Battalions were raised by local authorities, industrialists and committees of private citizens. A typical example was that of several army-age young men who had attended Winteringham Secondary School in Grimsby. They suggested to their former headmaster that he should form a battalion from his former pupils. By the end of October he had recruited more than a thousand former schoolboys into what they called the Grimsby Chums. Other schools, including five of Britain's leading public schools, quickly formed their own battalions. The four Pals battalions recruited in Hull were known as the Hull Commercials, the Hull Tradesmen, the Hull Sportsmen and the Hull T'Others.
 
In the two months following the outbreak of war, more than fifty cities and towns in Britain formed Pals battalions. Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumberland and Durham were the counties that raised the most. Larger cities formed several battalions: Manchester had fifteen; Hull had four; Liverpool,...