For Britain, in the beginning, it was like plunging into a black hole of uncertain depth and dimension.
How long would the war last? Where would it be fought? How many men were needed? How would they be supplied?
The answers to these questions remained elusive in 1916 even as the toll of British war dead climbed and major decisions loomed.
While the First World War would eventually involve thirty nations, with military operations across Europe, in Africa and in the Middle East, the crisis point in 1916 lay in France, a nation in grave peril.
The French army had suffered 650,000 casualties — dead and wounded — after seventeen months of fighting and its morale was then nearing collapse.
Germany’s forward troops were within a five-day march to Paris and the very survival of the French nation was at stake.
If France fell, Germany’s expansionist capabilities would rise dramatically, jeopardizing Britain’s status as a global power.
A major assault against entrenched German positions in France was needed and France pressed Britain to commit to a joint offensive; but, at the time, Britain’s stocks of war materials were limited and outdated, and the ranks of her army were thin.
After an initial surge in volunteer enlistments during the first year of the war, by 1916, the numbers of British men stepping forward to serve could not keep pace with mounting British losses.
Many more men were needed.
So, the British government enacted compulsory conscription for the first time in its history, but the draft triggered large-scale protest demonstrations; and after six months, thirty percent of those who had been called up for military service had failed to appear.
But the necessity of defending France was clear, so plans were made for a large-scale British offensive along both sides of the Somme River, in northern France, that would commence on July 1, 1916.
The Somme offensive would be a massive undertaking, requiring hundreds of thousands of men and mountains of war materials.
Such an effort would touch every corner of Britain.
So, to garner public support, the War Office hired two filmmakers to prepare newsreels that would play in theaters, authorizing their entry into areas off-limits to news reporters.
These would show the public the British military’s extensive preparations for the Somme offensive and the initial days of the army’s assault on German lines.
‘If the British people could see what is required in war and the brave cheerfulness of British troops fighting on their behalf,’ the officials claimed, ‘they would surely rally to their cause.’
The filmmakers were dispatched to France in the last week of June, as battle preparations were well underway, returning to London two weeks later with astonishing footage; and War Department officials were thrilled with what they saw.
They scrapped the newsreel idea and directed the filmmakers to prepare a feature-length documentary using selected portions of the footage.
The film would be war propaganda, to be sure, but grounded in reality.
[You can see the film, entitled ‘Battle of the Somme,’ here.]
The film begins in the rear of the British lines, with scenes of horse-drawn wagons carrying supplies, men stockpiling munitions, and artillery batteries conducting bombardments intended to ‘soften up’ distant German positions.
Columns of British troops march along the road and file into the trenches, and a brief staged reenactment shows them climbing out in the ‘over-the-top’ assault on the first day of battle.
The film shows stretcher bearers recovering wounded British troops and images of German prisoners and captured German equipment; and it concludes with scenes of a devastated French village.
A British soldier carries his wounded comrade to a ‘dressing station’ for the initial treatment of battle wounds. A title card used in the film says the wounded soldier died thirty minutes after this filming.Images of gore and brutality were filmed, but omitted, giving the film viewer the perspective of one in the rear of British lines who watches men go forward into battle and then return later, after the fight.
And throughout most of the film, the British troops are shown in high spirits, marching in tidy formations gaily while smiling and twirling their caps in the air.
Scenes of men at rest exude the camaraderie that comes from the sharing of meals, cigarettes, and jokes in close quarters.
Images of death or exhaustion are fleeting, and throughout, the British army is depicted as having the advantage.
The film opened in British theaters in August 1916 to tremendous acclaim as the fight continued to rage two hundred miles away.
More than twenty million people would see the Battle of the Somme during its first six weeks.
Many had never been to a film theater before.
Many of those who saw the pictures at the private view at the Scala Theatre to-day found them almost unbearable. Yet this is what war means, and it is right that our people should be made to feel the horror of it and realise that it is not merely a lively game that goes on in newspapers.
What makes it possible for the armchair sightseer to go on watching is a simple thing. It is the realisation that what we have all read about the cheerfulness of the British soldier is true. They are cheerful in the worst of the hell with the everyday resignation of the workman busy at his job.
— The Manchester Observer and Guardian, August 11, 1916
But the film is not truthful.
While it is considered an accurate record of what it shows, its intentional omissions create a gross distortion.
On the first day of battle, while the War Department’s cameramen were present on the front lines and filming, the British army suffered 57,420 casualties; but there is no hint of that in this film.
Of these, 19,240 were fatalities; and for this sacrifice, the British army gained only three square miles of French soil.
July 1, 1916, would become the costliest day in British military history, but scenes depicting this staggering loss were left on the cutting room floor.
The War Department wanted a public morale booster, so, despite having photographed a near futile effort, that is what the filmmakers produced.
Following upon the discussion as to the desirability of public expression on the Somme battle film, the War Office announces that the film was shown to the King and Queen at Windsor Castle Saturday.
The King afterward expressed to the officials responsible for its presentation, his approval of the pictures. The Queen also expressed keen appreciation.
— New York Times, September 5, 1916.
The people saw a film of half-truths.
The whole truth was unbearable.
The British army would continue its fight along the Somme River for nearly five months and suffer a total of 420,000 casualties; and towns and villages across the British Empire would lose an entire generation of young men.
For this sacrifice, Britain gained a strip of land six miles deep and twenty miles wide.
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