1st July 1916 was the day Britain and her Allies commenced a major attack across a twenty five mile sector of the Western Front. The attack took place to the north of the River Somme in rural France. Little villages are dotted around the area together with the town of Albert. It was to be the battle that for various people, characterized the horrors of the trench warfare of The First World War.

The Battle of the Somme lasted roughly four months with precious little gain for the Allies. The casualties sustained by each side were horrific; the British Army sustained 420,000 killed and wounded, the French 200,000 and the German Army approximately half a million.

The German soldiers were well dug in and strategically held the high ground thus it was clear a huge effort would be considered necessary to make inroads into German lines. The plan was to lay down an artillery barrage for seven days leading up to the offensive. Furthermore, several mines were laid beneath the German lines. It was assumed that the mines and artillery would create such damage, the Allies would just simply need to advance through no mans land and take the trenches. Unfortunately, this was not the way things worked out.

For seven days just before the assault, a devastating barrage was laid down by the Alllies firing nearly 2 million shells. Having said that, the German trenches were dug deep into the earth providing them with relative safety from the barrage. The mines did inflict deaths and injuries as intended but generally, the Germans had time to gear up their defences when the artillery ceased and the Allies went over the top.

All along the line, the story was the same. Courageous men went over the top and were mown down before getting anywhere near their objectives. At Beaumont Hamel, only 68 of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment, finished the day unscathed out of around 800 men. At La Boisselle, the Tyneside Irish was pretty much destroyed as it made an effort to move forward more than 1 mile across open ground in full sight of German machine guns.

Of course, there were some achievements. The French Army had made advances in the north and south of the lines. The 36th Ulster advanced on and took the Schwaben Redoubt consequently becoming certainly one of the few to reach their objective. Regrettably, running out of ammunition, German counter attacks made the Ulstermen to withdraw later that night.

The 1st day of the Somme had cost the British over 54,000 casualties, 21,000 of those being killed. Now, the site of the Schwaben Redoubt is marked by the Ulster Tower and nearby at Thiepval, the Memorial to the Missing commemorates the names of around 70,000 men who fought at the Battle of the Somme.