The First Day on the Somme

The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words - Guardianbr>br>''For some reason nothing seemed to happen to us at first; we strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine-gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl round and fall in all kinds of curious ways'' br>br>On 1 July 1916, a continous line of British soldiers climbed out from the trenches of the Somme into No Man''s Land and began to walk towards dug-in German troops armed with machine-guns. By the end of the day there were more than 60,000 British casualties - a third of them fatal.br>br>Martin Middlebrook''s now-classic account of the blackest day in the history of the British army draws on official sources from the time, and on the words of hundreds of survivors: normal men, many of them volunteers, who found themselves thrown into a scene of unparalleled tragedy and horror.>

Product details

• Authors: Martin Middlebrook
• Publisher: Penguin Books Uk
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.03.2016
• EAN: 9780141981604
• ISBN: 978-0-14-198160-4
• No. of pages: 384
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 198 mm x 28 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book; European History, HISTORY / Europe / General, HISTORY / World, c 1910 to c 1919, General and world history, Battles & campaigns, Land forces & warfare, c 1914 to c 1918 (World War One period), Battles and campaigns, Land forces and warfare, HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / World War I, HISTORY / Military / Land Forces