Many British shells had also been poorly manufactured and turned out to be duds others lacked the fuses necessary to explode on contact with the barbed wire strung across no man’s land between the opposing sides.Ī Canadian heavy howitzer during the Battle of Somme, France. Unscathed to face the oncoming attackers. The Germans simply hid in their deep and reinforced dugouts until the barrage ended, emerging largely The Somme offensive opened with a massive artillery bombardment, which lasted five days and did little to knock out enemy troops and artillery guns. It was hoped the assault on a 25 km section of theįront would not only break the stalemate, but relieve pressure on beleaguered French forces defending against the long-running German assault further south, at Verdun. 1 July 1916Īfter two years of stalemate in the vast trench works held by the Allied and German armies on the Western Front, the British launched a massive offensive in the Somme River valley in northern France.
Canadian soldiers returning from the Battle of the Somme in France, November 1916.
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