SOMME ANNIVERSARY

The First of July, 2026 marked the 110^th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in the history of mankind and to this day, the heaviest losses ever incurred by the British Army in a single day.

Over 19,000 British soldiers were killed and almost 58,000 wounded in the three hours following the shrill whistle to go “over the top.” Corpses piled high along an eighteen mile front of eviscerated dirt. An unrepentant Field Marshall Haig concluded these losses were “not severe, considering the length of the front being attacked.”

The Battle of the Somme would rage on for over four months from that fateful day, causing the deaths of one million men, friend and foe. That it petered out into a stalemate somehow makes the losses even more poignant, the whole exercise more pointless and futile.

Torrential rainfall delayed the start of the attack by 48 hours. British High Command ordered a four-day bombardment during which an estimated 1.75 million artillery shells were fired at the German lines. Many of these shells were of a new type, designed to break up the barbed wire defences which always hampered any infantry advance. Unfortunately, many of these shells were duds, fitted with nose cone fuses which failed to explode on impact. The whiff of a fast buck proving too strong for our American suppliers. The result was the barbed wire remained largely intact. In fact it exacerbated the catastrophe as the advancing Tommies converged on what holes there were in the barbed wire, concentrating into an even easier target for German machine gunners.

The Battalion diary of the “Faughs”, the First Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, records that they advanced into the forward attack trench at 10.30 am on July 1^st. They were literally next to go “over the top.” My grandfather, Private Andy Symington, was among them, doubtless looking nervously at his platoon commander as he awaited the whistle. At 10.35 am, he had the first of several lucky escapes when the battalion received orders to call off the advance. They emerged relatively unscathed with only nineteen men killed. It was merely a temporary reprieve: their day of sacrifice would arrive soon enough…