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==Strategy==
[[File: Somme 2.jpg|thumbnail|300px|left|left|German Soldier at the Somme]]
General Sir Douglas Haig assumed command of the British army in early 1916. He wanted to launch the offensive nearer the English Channel to be closer to the British supply lines. However, the French pressured the British to have the offensive in the Somme region. When the Verdun offensive started the Somme area saw the withdrawal of many German units. The Germans had little reserves in the area and it seemed that the Somme was the perfect location.<ref>Keegan, J.<i>The First World War </i>.(London: Random House, 1998), p. 12</ref>
==Battles Tactics of the Somme==
[[File: British Mark I male tank Somme 25 September 1916.jpg|left|thumbnail|300px|British tank at the Somme]]
The British committed hundreds of thousands of men to the fighting. The British troops on the Somme was a mixture of the surviving members of the old regular army, the Territorial Force and Kitchener's Army, comprised of volunteers including the ‘Pals Battalions’, that had been recruited from the same towns and villages. <ref> Middlebrook, M. <i>The First Day on the Somme. </i>. (London, Penguin, 1971</ref>
Many of their reserves were transferred to the area. They stationed thousands of artillery pieces in the region. These were expected to play a crucial role in the coming offensive. It was believed that a concentrated artillery barrage could either force the German defenders to flee or else to destroy their defences. Crucially the British had not mastered the tactic of the creeping barrage. This tactic would have allowed the infantry to advance under the cover of shelling. The British failure to do so meant that when the artillery barrage ended that the Germans who survived the artillery onslaught could mow down the advancing soldiers with machine guns.
==The Battles of the Somme==
[[File: Somme three.jpg|thumbnail|300px|left|British troops at the Somme]]
The first day of the Somme offensive started after the five-day barrage had ended. For five days the British had blasted the German lines. Hundreds of thousands of shells landed on the German trenches. The British believed that they had obliterated the German defences.<ref> Keegan, p. 134</ref> On the first of July the British and the French ‘went over the top’, that is they left their trenches and entered into no man's land. The British were ordered to advance at a walking pace. However, some officers on the ground ordered their men to rush across no man's land.
