"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse)
07/01/2015 at 15:11 • Filed to: World War 1, Battle of the Somme
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"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse)
07/01/2015 at 15:11 • Filed to: World War 1, Battle of the Somme | 2
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Ninety nine years ago this morning the First Battle of the Somme (there were others) kicked off when the British and French armies tried to break the stalemate of trench warfare by advancing on the German positions between the towns of Albert and Bapaume in northern France.
By nightfall the British forces had lost 19,240 dead and nearly 40,000 injured. By the end of 1916 the allied forces had advanced 10km at a cost of 95,000 British, 51,000 French and 164,000 German dead.
The battle has been controversial ever since with the current revisionist thinking being that as German losses had been so large they were unable thereafter to regain the initiative leading to their inevitable surrender.
CB
> Cé hé sin
07/01/2015 at 15:16 |
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Don’t forget that the Newfoundlanders were there, too!
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Cé hé sin
> CB
07/01/2015 at 15:19 |
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Them as well. It was an equal opportunities war.
laterite
> Cé hé sin
07/01/2015 at 16:56 |
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A good opportunity here to plug Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast project, in which he recently concluded a 5-part series on WWI...hours and hours of engaging and educational listening, all for free!
http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-histo…
gmporschenut also a fan of hondas
> Cé hé sin
07/01/2015 at 23:46 |
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The last dew years I’ve been on a WW1 binge The eleventh hour eleventh day, The guns of August, The sleepwalkers, Is war now Impossible? and the Dan Carlin podcasts. IT just boggles the mind trying to take in the numbers and scale of the destruction for a comparative small area France/German/Belgium border.
I’ll never forget my history teacher “ the British lost 200,000 casualties in the second battle of YPres that’s the same as the population of this city!”
Hell