In the summer of 1916, in an effort to relieve French forces in the battle of Verdun, Douglas Haig, commander in chief of the British expeditionary force in France, convinced of the efficacy of a full frontal attack on entrenched enemy forces, developed a plan that relied heavily on an intense preliminary bombardment of enemy positions. As a result, British artillery dropped more than 1 million shells into the German lines, along a broad front on the Somme River, in an effort to destroy their trenches and cut the barbed wire protecting them.

On July 1, the British infantry began its advance only to discover that the Germans, secure in their 30-foot-deep dugouts, had been relatively untouched by the bombardment and their barbed wire remained uncut, rendering the infantry easy targets for German machine guns. The result was the most appalling single day in British military history: approximately 20,000 dead and 40,000 wounded.

The offensive continued for the next four months, introducing at one point one of the earliest examples of tank warfare, but for the most part the stalemate that the offensive was designed to break remained intact. At the formal conclusion of the offensive on November 19, 1916, the casualty figures for both sides amounted to more than 1 million men killed and wounded for what turned out to be a small patch of ground. Many British soldiers and civilians were reminded of the lines of Shakespeare's Hamlet, speaking of the deaths of thousands of soldiers who:

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

Which is not tomb enough and continent

To hide the slain.

Free term papers are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can use our professional writing services to buy a custom written research paper, term paper, or essay on Military Topics at affordable price. CustomTermPapers is the best solution for those who seek help in writing term papers, essays, and research papers related to Military Topics and other relevant topics.