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line being reduced to 33 kilometres, Haig expected his troops to break the first German trench system within three hours, and the second by the third day. Then the cavalry would gallop through the break and circle in behind the German lines. If this failed, the commanders simply wanted more Germans killed than their own men. At the very least they hoped to take pressure off the French at Verdun.
    The British massed the largest number of guns used in one offensive to date—over 1400—and opened fire on 25 June. On one day alone over 200,000 shells were fired. For seven days, the British bombarded the German lines. The explosions were so loud they could be heard in London, but many of the shells were duds and too many were filled with shrapnel balls, designed to explode in the air and kill troops. They did not damage the dugouts the Germans were sheltering in. Nor did they destroy the barbed wire as the commanders believed they would.
    At 7.30 a.m. on 1 July, British officers blew their whistles and bugles, and the soldiers climbed out of their trenches and formed long, evenly spaced lines, then marched forward. Just before they charged, the four platoons of Captain Wilfred Percy Nevill’s company each kicked a football to see who could get it furthest across no-man’s-land, in places 640 metres wide.
    The German troops hauled up their machine guns and mowed the enemy down; many British soldiers were hit as they left their trenches. The long front and the lack of reliable communication caused confusion. British troops reached several villages and some sections of the first German line. But the majority had been stopped. By the end of the day, there were 60,000 British casualties—20,000 had died, most within the first hour.
    TOO LITTLE GAINED
    Over the next two weeks, as the next phase was planned, the British launched 46 localised and uncoordinated attacks in which they gained 52 square kilometres of ground, but they still hadn’t broken through the first line. Then, on 14 July, after an intense artillery bombardment, 22,000 British soldiers took the Germans by surprise, sweeping through their first line and capturing 10 kilometres of their second line before they recovered. The day was a huge success; the troops had broken the lines, although fighting continued among the dense trees of Delville and High woods.
    The Somme offensive forced the Germans to end their assault against Verdun—where over 140,000 Germans and 180,000 French had been killed or wounded—and it was now the hot spot of the war. To prevent the British breaking through, the Germans began directing fresh troops to the Somme from quieter areas, like Armentières. Wanting to stop the Germans further thinning their trenches, Haig ordered that the raids continue.
    Several weeks earlier, Lieutenant General Godley had arrived from Egypt with the 4th and 5th Australian Divisions of II Anzac Corps. Now there were over 100,000 Australian and New Zealand troops at the Western Front. After a reshuffle of divisions, I Anzac Corps consisted of the 1st, 2nd and 4th Australian Divisions, while II Anzac Corps had the New Zealand Division and the 5th Division. The I Anzac Corps was moved down to Messines, 10 kilometres away, while the New Zealanders undertook the raids at Armentières. But the raids were failing, and a more threatening action was needed to hold the German troops in the area.
    Lieutenant General Sir Richard Haking, a British divisional commander stationed beside the 5th Australian Division, wanted to capture the part of the German front-line known as the Sugarloaf salient, near the occupied village of Fromelles on Aubers Ridge, 12 kilometres south of Armen-tières. The Sugarloaf, which was choked with machine guns and concrete bunkers, bulged into the British line in low-lying farmland overgrown with grass and weeds. Haking had already been involved in two attacks against Aubers Ridge, in May 1915 and June 1916. Both had