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A hundred years ago today, the British Army, in a desperate bid to divert German forces from the bloodbath they were inflicting on the French at Verdun, finished up the largest artillery barrage in history and sent their troops "over the top" along the Somme River in France. They had fired some 2 million shells into the German trenches, thinking that they would collapse the bunkers where the enemy troops huddled underground and demolish the barbed wire that blocked passage into the German trenchline.

They were wrong. The German bunkers remained intact, and as the artillery barrage lightened up, the grey-clad Teutons came pouring out of their underground shelters and manned their machine guns. The advancing allied troops were cut down like summer grass before a mower. Sixty thousand British soldiers were killed, captured, or wounded that day. SIXTY THOUSAND. Approximately twenty-four thousand of those were killed outright. In one single day!

And the Battle of the Somme lasted until November. By the end of the battle, the Allies would suffer 623,000 casualties, with roughly 150,000 of those killed outright. The Germans and the other Central powers lost 465,000, with around 160,000 killed.

For what it's worth, the Allies won. They captured about eight miles of German trenches, in exchange for a generation of their youth. The Germans fell back and dug more trenches.

Was there ever a more stupid war?

I can't think of one, Indy. So sad...

I once read a book titled THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE MACHINE GUN. Many comments about how that weapon played such a factor in the British and other European empires taking such vast landscapes (Africa, Sudan, ect) when used against armies with no firepower equal to the Euros.
Then, they went after each other.
And they learned how small a difference in technology can cause nation to learn the difference between 'massacres' and 'wars.'
If the means and will to use it are close enough, you have war, a process of combat where tactics and strategy do matter.
But make the differences too divergent, and it become a simple case of slaughter.