THE LONG ROAD TO THE SOMME

<p>7.29 a.m. 1<sup>st</sup> July 1916. North of the River Somme the young men of two armies wait to go 'over the top'.</p><p>For Britain it was the costliest day in its Army's history - 58000 dead wounded and missing. For France it was a relative stroll as they took every objective within a few hours.</p><p>In two volumes <em>The Long Road to the Somme</em> seeks to explore understand and possibly explain such dramatically different outcomes. </p><p>It looks at previous wars - the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1 the Second Boer War the Russo-Japanese War 1904-5 and the First Balkan War 1912-3 - to see what lessons were learnt and what was ignored.</p><p>It looks at politics and society at education and training at strategies and tactics at how the public were conditioned to accept war as inevitable - and at the prescient men who unlike the military commanders accurately forecast the way in which The Great War would be fought.</p><p><em>Volume I - Episodes</em> - covers the period from 1870 to December 1915.</p><p><em>Volume II - Planning the Big Push</em> - explores the development of the Somme plan the impact of Verdun and the great differences in tactics employed by the two Armies on 1<sup>st</sup> July.</p><p><br></p>