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The First Day on the Somme - Martin Middlebrook
Publication Year : 1971
Language : English
After an immense but useless bombardment, at 7.30 am. On 1 July 1916 the British Army went over the top and attacked the German trenches. It was the first day of the battle of the Somme, and on that day the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, two for every yard of their front. With more than fifty times the daily losses at El Alamein and fifteen times the British casualties on D-day, 1 July 1916 was the blackest day in the history of the British Army. But, more than that, it was a watershed in the history of the First World War. The Army that attacked on that day was the volunteer Army that had answered Kitchener's call. It had gone into action confident of a decisive victory. But by sunset on the first day on the Somme, no one could any longer think of a war that might be won. After that it was a struggle that had simply to be endured.
Martin Middlebrook's research has covered not just official and regimental histories and tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality of an new kind of war for front-line soldiers.
The author
On a visit to France and Belgium in 1967 Martin Middlebrook was so impressed by the military cemeteries on the 1914–18 battlefields that he decided to write a book describing just one day in that war through the eyes of the ordinary men who took part. The book, The First Day on the Somme, was published by Allen Lane in 1971 and received international acclaim. Martin Middlebrook has since written other books that deal with important turning-points in the two world wars; these are The Kaiser’s Battle, Convoy, The Peenemünde Raid, The Battle ofHamburg, Battleship (with Patrick Mahoney), The Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission, The Nuremberg Raid, The Bomber Command Diaries (with Chris Everitt), The Berlin Raids, The Somme Battlefields (with Mary Middlebrook), Arnhem 1944. He has also written two books about the 1982 Falklands War, Task Force: The Falklands War, 1982 and The Fight for the ‘Malvinas’. Other titles by Martin Middlebrook include Your Country Needs You and The North Midland Territorials Go to War. Many of his books have been published in the United States and Germany, and three of them in Japan, the former Yugoslavia and Poland.
Martin Middlebrook is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Each summer he takes parties of visitors on conducted tours of the First World War battlefields and to Normandy and Arnhem. |
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