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Battle of the somme
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The Battle of the Somme was a plan of attack on the German line in 1916 to relieve the French in Verdun, but it didn’t go to plan. The original plan was to bombard the Germans with artillery for a week to weaken them and destroy barbed wire, then send men over the top to finish them off. This plan was devised by by General sir Douglas Haig but was rushed because French commander Joseph Joffre needed relief from Verdun. Also helping with the plan was sir Henry Rawlinson who had some different views to his associate(Haig). The plan incorporated the use of cavalry to break the German line easier but this was dismissed by Rawlinson as a precaution. The bombardment began a week prior to the 1st July with 1.7 million shells being fired. When it finished on the 1st July Haig sent his army over the top to finish off the Germans and win the war. Haig was so convinced of his plan that he told his men to walk across No Man’s Land, what a bad mistake that was. What Haig didn’t know was that the Germans had dug deep down into the earth that they were barely effected by the shells. A third of the shells hadn’t gone off due to bad manufacturing and this was just one of the problems.
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