The Somme: 57,000 Casualties on the FIRST MORNING 💥 #shorts #history #battles #thesomme #worldwar1

July 1st, 1916. In six hours, the British Army suffered more casualties than any army in a single day — before or since.

British commanders had spent seven days bombarding German lines. A million and a half shells. They were so confident, officers told their men to walk — don't run — across No Man's Land. The Germans would already be dead.

At 7:28 AM, ten mines packed with sixty tons of explosives detonated under the German lines. The ground shook in London. Two minutes later, 100,000 British soldiers climbed out of their trenches and walked forward. But the Germans weren't dead. They had sheltered 30 feet underground in reinforced bunkers. The moment the shelling stopped, they ran to their machine guns. They had been waiting.

The Maxim guns opened fire at a rate of 600 rounds per minute. Entire battalions were cut down before they crossed the first hundred yards. The Newfoundland Regiment lost 90% of its men in under 30 minutes. Some units were wiped out so completely, no one was left to report what had happened. By nightfall, the British had advanced less than two miles on the entire front — at a cost of 57,470 casualties. Killed, wounded, or missing — in a single morning.

The Battle of the Somme would grind on for another 141 days. By November, the Allied forces had advanced just seven miles. Total casualties on both sides exceeded one million. That first morning was not a mistake that was corrected. It was the opening line of the longest sentence of the war.

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