The Battle of the Somme

The Heroism and Horror of War

Author Martin Gilbert

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Every July 1, while Canadians celebrate what they have, Newfoundlanders remember what they have lost: on 1 July 1916, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 733 of 801 men in the 1st Newfoundland Regiment were killed.

From their starting position in a British support trench, the Newfoundlanders had to cross some 230 metres of fire-swept ground before they reached their own front line. In less than a half-hour, it was all over. The Divisional Commander wrote of the Newfoundland effort: “It was a magnificent display of trained and disciplined valour, and its assault failed of success because dead men can advance no further.”

Well might the Germans refer to the Battle of the Somme as das Blutbad –…

$22.99

October 23, 2007

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Martin Gilbert, the author of more than seventy books, is Winston Churchill’s official biographer and a leading historian of the modern world. In 1995 he was knighted “for services to British history and international relations” and in 1999 he was awarded a Doctorate of Literature by the University of Oxford for the totality of his published work. As a three-year-old Briton he was sent to Canada in the summer of 1940, returning to Britain in May 1944, just in time for Hitler’s V bombs. He now divides his time between London, Ontario, and London, England.