The Battle of the Somme: Blood and Mud

It's been 100 years since the Battle of theSomme. It started on July1, 1916 and ground on forfour and half months. The casualties were staggering; the gains negligible. Wave after wave of Allied troopswere sacrificed in a series ofbattles described asflawed in planning and executionfrom the outset. "The Battle of the Somme: Blood and Mud" relives those events of 100 years agothrough chillingstories told bythe men who were there. It first aired in 1966 onthe 50th anniversary of the battle, andwas produced and presented by CBC reporter and documentary makerJ. Frank Willis.

In 1916, Newfoundland was not yet part of Canada. Men who wanted to fight in the war overseas did so under theBritish flag. Canadian forces only took part some months later but the Newfoundlanders were there from Day One.Their job(along with the rest of the88thBrigade) was to seize control of the German trenches near the northern French village of BeaumontHamel.The battlegroundwasa 34-kilometre ribbon of land near the River Somme.Allied trenches stretched along one side, Germans along the other. In between wasNo Man's Land.

The entire venture on July 1was adevastating failure.Allied troops had been ordered toadvanceon foot down an open, sloping field right into theGerman line. The troopshad nocover to protect them and weremet with a barrage of machine gun fire from the German side. Most were killed or wounded in the first ten minutes. A second wave of troops went out and met the same fate. The Newfoundland Regiment followed.Most were killed before they reached No Man's Land.In a single morning, almost 20,000 British troops died, and another 37,000 were wounded. The Newfoundland Regiment had been almost wiped out.

That was just Day One of the Battle of the Somme. The Allied soldiers showed dedication in the face of unbearable conditions,poor planning, tacticalmiscalculations, and inferior weapons. Each small advance on the battlefield was paid with scores of human lives,butBritish generalsrefusedto change tactics.

It's no wonder thebattle was called "the meat grinder known as the Somme."When the Somme offensive was halted in November 1916, more than one million Commonwealth, French and German soldiers had been wounded, captured or killed. The war ground on for another two years before finally ending in November 1918.

It's now been 100 years since those terrible months in France. There will be commemorative events in Canada and also in France.An expanded interactive exhibit at Halifax's Citadel Hill invites visitors to step down into Canada's First World War history.A series of trenches have been set up on the hill that represents what Canadian trenches would have looked like on the Western Front in 1916, on the eve of the Battle of the Somme.