🎧 The First Day of The Somme
Archive of Dan Snow's History Hit 🎧
•
46m
Dan Explains the first day of The Somme which remains the bloodiest day in the history of the British army; a symbol of the senseless carnage of the First World War. At 7:30 a.m. on July 1 1916, the British soldiers climbed out of their trenches and advanced towards the German lines. They were met with a bombardment of machine gun fire, artillery barrages, and a hail of bullets from the well-entrenched German troops. It was a bloodbath.
It wasn't supposed to happen like that- beforehand, the British had spent several days bombarding the German lines, believing they would destroy their enemy trenches and barbed wire defences, making the British advance straightforward and almost painless. They didn't know just how well-fortified the Germans were in their deep dugouts. When the bombardment stopped, the Germans manned their defences, waiting for the British to walk right into their line of fire.
In chilling detail, Dan retells the astonishing story of that fateful first day of The Somme- determining what really happened in the days leading up to it and what the men endured when they went 'over the top', using the diaries of the men who were there.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited and sound designed by Dougal Patmore.
Up Next in Archive of Dan Snow's History Hit 🎧
-
🎧 Lion Man: The First Myth?
Discovered in a German cave, days before the Second World War broke out, the Lion Man statue remained an enigma for decades. A figurine that represents a hybrid creature with the body of a human and the head of a lion, the statue is made from mammoth ivory and is estimated to be over 40,000 years...
-
🎧 Medieval Comedy: Minstrels
Every historian dreams of hitting gold in the archives. Matt Lewis’s guest Dr. James Wade of Girton College, Cambridge has done just that.
James has uncovered a manuscript by cleric and tutor Richard Heege, which reports the routines of a medieval minstrel. It reads like a mixture of stand-up sc...
-
🎧 Persia and the Bible
As the Babylonian Empire fell into decline, and it's power faded, the Persian Empire stepped in to fill the void that was left - but how did this event directly effect the narrative of the Old Testament, and what other sources are available to learn more about this period? As Babylon's infrastruc...
