The Battle of the Somme

The Western Front, 1916

But all that my mind sees
Is a quaking bog in a mist — stark, snapped trees,
And the dark Somme flowing.

Vance Palmer (1885–1959), 'The farmer remembers the Somme'

It was a truly nightmarish world that greeted the New Zealand Division when it joined the Battle of the Somme in mid-September 1916. The division was part of the second big push of the offensive, designed to crack the German lines once and for all. When it was withdrawn from the line a month later, the decisive breakthrough had still not occurred.

Fifteen thousand members of the division went into action. Nearly 6000 were wounded and 2000 lost their lives. Over half the New Zealand Somme dead have no known grave. They are commemorated on the New Zealand Memorial to the Missing in Caterpillar Valley Cemetery near Longueval. One returned home to New Zealand in November 2004; his remains lie in the tomb of the Unknown Warrior outside New Zealand's National War Memorial.

The battle was a pivotal event that laid the basis for the allied victory in the First World War. But nine decades on, the numbers still have the power to shock. At the end of the four and a half months of fighting, perhaps as many as 1.2 million men had been killed or wounded. There were about 8500 casualties for each of the 141 days of conflict. But not all days were alike; some were worse than others. The opening day of the offensive on 1 July 1916 was the worst ever disaster in British military history: 20,000 men dead and another 40,000 wounded. By the end of the campaign on 18 November 1916, the Allies had advanced, at most, 12 kilometres into German-held territory; that was about the distance a fit young soldier could run in an hour.