On 4 July 1918, American and Australian troops captured the village of Hamel and the ridge overlooking it. It was not a big battle: the equivalent of one Australian division and one battalion of newly arrived Americans were the only infantry involved. Although Hamel is not a famous named battle it is noteworthy for an increased level of sophistication . At Hamel machines went a long way towards relieving the infantry of the obligation to fight its way forward. After the battle, Haig's Headquarters promulgated its lessons for other commanders. Among the senior officers who visited Monash's Headquarters was Brigadier-General Bernard Montgomery. The military thinker and former Tank Corps officer, Major-General J.F.C. Fuller, thought Hamel more important in making the reputation of the Tank Corps than the battle of Cambrai.

A history of the British Army’s experience at the Battle of the Somme in France during World War I. After an immense but useless bombardment, at 7:30 AM on July 1, 1916, the British Army went over the top and attacked the German trenches. It was the first day of the battle of the Somme, and on that day, the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, two for every yard of their front. With more than fifty times the daily losses at El Alamein and fifteen times the British casualties on D-day, July 1, 1916, was the blackest day in the history of the British Army. But, more than that, as Lloyd George recognized, it was a watershed in the history of the First World War. The Army that attacked on that day was the volunteer Army that had answered Kitchener’s call. It had gone into action confident of a decisive victory. But by sunset on the first day on the Somme, no one could any longer think of a war that might be won. Martin Middlebrook’s research has covered not just official and regimental histories and tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality that it was for front-line soldiers. Praise for The First Day on the Somme “The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words.” —The Guardian (UK)

From one of our most distinguished historians, an authoritative and vivid account of the devastating World War I battle that claimed more than 300,000 lives At 7:30 am on July 1, 1916, the first Allied soldiers climbed out of their trenches along the Somme River in France and charged out into no-man's-land toward the barbed wire and machine guns at the German front lines. By the end of this first day of the Allied attack, the British army alone would lose 20,000 men; in the coming months, the fifteen-mile-long territory along the river would erupt into the epicenter of the Great War. The Somme would mark a turning point in both the war and military history, as soldiers saw the first appearance of tanks on the battlefield, the emergence of the air war as a devastating and decisive factor in battle, and more than one million casualties (among them a young Adolf Hitler, who took a fragment in the leg). In just 138 days, 310,000 men died. In this vivid, deeply researched account of one history's most destructive battles, historian Martin Gilbert tracks the Battle of the Somme through the experiences of footsoldiers (known to the British as the PBI, for Poor Bloody Infantry), generals, and everyone in between. Interwoven with photographs, journal entries, original maps, and documents from every stage and level of planning, The Somme is the most authoritative and affecting account of this bloody turning point in the Great War.

Rescuing from history the heroes on the front line whose bravery has been overlooked, and giving voice to their bereaved relatives at home, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the Battle of the Somme in all its glory and misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle when seen through the eyes of those who lived it.

"Raised by the Mayor of Kensington, the 22nd Royal Fusiliers (the Kensington Battalion) were a strange mixture of social classes (bankers and stevedores, writers and laborers) with a strong sprinkling of irreverent colonials thrown in. Such a disparate group needed a strong leader and, luckily, in Randle Barnett Barker, they found one, first as their trainer and then as the commanding officer ... [The Kensington Battalion] suffered severely in the battles of 1917 and, starved of reinforcements, were disbanded in 1918 ... The author has ... drawn on a wealth of first hand material (diaries, letters and official documents) as well as interviews from the 1980s to produce a ... record of service and sacrifice of the Kensington Battalion"--Jacket.

The Great War opened with a major reversal for the BEF followed by a daring and epic withdrawal. This book describes these dramatic events.