Dear friends,

When our friends from Adentan visited us in September, we made a visit to Ypres. The In Flanders Fields Museum highlighted for us different aspects of World War One, from the social history of the events leading up to the conflict to the appalling conditions endured by soldiers of the western front.  That evening, we were deeply moved by the wreath laying ceremony at the Menin Gate. As the Fire Brigade’s rendering of the last post echoed around the monument, onlookers listened respectfully and those laying the wreaths, young and old, carried out their duties with care and dignity.

2016 commemorates the 100^th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was commanded by Field Marshall Douglas Haig. Haig, along with other leading generals of the time, believed that the German Army would be overstretched by a new offensive, since they were already engaged with the French Army in the Battle of Verdun in NE France. As a result the French could not commit many divisions of their army to the Somme and so, even before the battle began, the expectation of success by Haig and his colleagues was lessened.

The battle was preceded by eight days of artillery bombardment of the German lines. Huge numbers of British shells were fired, but many of them were dud, badly constructed and ineffective. The German trenches, built in three successive lines, were dug deep and well-fortified. As a result, the German lines remained intact and so, when the British and French armies advanced on July 1^st, the German army was not weakened as had been hoped. While the French army saw some success on the first day of the conflict for the BEF it was a catastrophe. When the men went over the top, they failed to break through the German barbed wire, thus allowing the Germans to use their machine guns to deadly effect. The British troops’ problems were compounded by the fact they had expected to meet little resistance in no man’s land and were heavy-laden with supplies.

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