Changes

==Background==

Since 1914, the war on both the eastern and the western front had become a war of attrition. Both sides had established a series of defensive lines, involving thousands of miles of trenches and they regularly attacked and counter-attacked each other for little or no strategic or tactical advantage.<ref> Gilbert, M. <i>The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War. </i> (Henry Holt and Company, 2006), p. 56</ref> The western military and the governments were eager to end the war or at least to be seen as delivering a victory. There were concerns that the public would not tolerate a war indefinitely.

==Battles Tactics of 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.