Restitution Road

"The men of the 11th Battalion, Cheshire regiment had lived through hell in the previous 24 hours. The whistle had sounded at 7.30am and the soldiers had climbed out of the trenches that had been their homes for weeks, and then walked slowly across the fields towards the enemy positions. All had been scared, but most had been confident that the German numbers had been severely depleted by the days of bombardment from the Allied artillery, and that they were now merely mopping up the remains of the enemy force. The British officers, in consultation with their Allied compatriots, were confident that 60% to 80% of the German troops would have been rendered ineffective by the shelling and this had been relayed to the men of the 11th battalion as well as the dozens of other battalions across this part of the western front.
The machine gun fire had not commenced straight away and survivors would look back and wonder if this had been due to the Germans waiting for the British to walk closer or just that they hadn’t been able to believe their enemies were presenting such an easy target. Of the 12,000 tons of artillery fired at the German entrenchments over the past days, two thirds of it was shrapnel and only 900 tons of it was capable of penetrating the bunkers. Less than 4% of the German military force had been killed by the bombardment, and the rest were sat waiting for the enemy to advance. When the gunfire did start, however, it was deafening and lethal. Bodies had fallen in such numbers the ground was stained red with blood in less than a minute. Soldiers had to climb over the dying bodies of friends and brothers to continue their advance, before being hit in the back as they tried to return to their trenches, human nature winning out over military discipline. The stench of death was already hanging over the fields of The Somme by half past 9, and the British army kept advancing until a little after 4pm.
Those that survived to return to England would later learn that 54,470 casualties had been suffered by the British army on the 1st July 1916 including a stunning 19,240 men killed that day. By far the bloodiest day in the history of the British army."