The Battle of the Somme: Key Factual Material

The Somme was one of the key battles of the war. The date of the war actually started on July 1st 1916. British preliminary forces bombarded seven days earlier with a British 9.2 gun on the June 24th 1916. The bombardment went on for a week prior to the attack itself, with a total of 1500 guns firing more then 1 million rounds. They were hoping the surprise bombardment would destroy the German's barbed wire in front of the trenches. With the wire gone the British troops could have got easy access to the enemy's territory and take over from there. However, this did not go to the plan the…