The Battle of the Somme
It was named the most deadly and effective battle of modern artillery and of machine gun. Artillery was the weapon that claimed the most lives in WW1. Almost 50% of all the wounds suffered by soldiers was caused by shell fragments or shrapnel-balls. Wounds caused by fragments and shrapnel balls were always more gruesome and often more deadly than a bullet shot. Most of the time artillery shells were packed with meatal nails, so when the shell would explode then all the nails would fire out red hot at the soldiers. Another weapon that was used a lot was the machine gun, since it was a rapid fire gun.
In 1916 the German army vegan pressing the French troops hard at Verdun. The British commander chief, Douglas Haig, decided to go on the offensive and smash through the German lines in what came to be known as the battle of Somme. Haig was slow to know the new demands of trench warfare and because of this allied lives were lost because of badly planed attacks. But as time went on he adjusted to it. For five days straight the British and the French bombed the Germans with about 1.5 million rounds of ammunition. Haig wished that by doing this it would break the barbed wire and wipe out the German front lines. But in the end his plan failed as the barbed wire stayed how it was before and the damage to the German trench was very minimum. Once the firing stopped the Germans know that the British were going to attack so they were ready. Haig had overestimated the artillery barrage. This miscalculation had a very deadly and bloody ending. Hundreds of German troops were waiting with their machine guns ready to fire are the British. They all got wiped out. Even if Haig had failed he insisted that the Somme campaign to go on. After three months of fighting the French and the English lost more than 600 000 soldiers.
Canadian troops fought battle after battle in the Somme campaign, including Flers-Courcelette, the sugar factory, Pozieres ridge, Fabeck Graben and the Regina trench. They gained most of their objectives but about 24 000 men died. But after it was all over the British had only advanced about less than a dozen kilometers and the stalemate continued.
All in all Somme was a failure and a success at the same time. It was a failure because so many lives were taken away, but on the other hand it was a success because in the end they did still advance about a dozen kilometres.