Battle of the Somme proved devastating stalemate

The battle of the Somme in northern France on July 1, 1916, caused one of the biggest defeats to the British Empire in its history.  

In World War I, it was trench warfare, where both the English and French were in trenches and so were the Germans along an 18-mile stretch of the Somme River. The forces were in a stalemate.   

The English general devised a plan where they would bombard the Germans with massive artillery barrages to wipe them out and then the English troops would go on the attack, assuming there would be hardly any resistance. The trouble, they soon found out, was that all the English troops were new to battle but the German troops were battle-hardened. 

After the bombardment, an English plane flew over the German positions and said it appeared all the Germans had been wiped out. What the English general didn’t know was that the Germans had constructed caves underground. As a result, the artillery barrage didn’t kill them. The English, thinking they had no opposition, advanced with 60,000 troops.  

The Germans came out of their caves, set up their machine guns and massacred the inexperienced English troops. The English had to bring up reinforcements but to no avail.  At the end of it, 20,000 English soldiers were killed and another 40,000 wounded. The Germans lost 8,000 killed, but they held their ground. 

The battle went on for four more months with no advance by either side. When it ended, over 1 million English, French and German soldiers had been killed, wounded or were missing. This had to be one of the biggest battles in the history of warfare. The battles of World War I continued, basically a stalemate until the United States entered the war in 1918, thus tipping the scales toward the ultimate victory. 

Roger Gregory is a Vietnam veteran and business owner in Priest River.