Battle of the Somme 100 years on

"Somme," wrote a Prussian veteran afterwards. "The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word." The first day remains, by some measure, the worst in the history of the British Army: An almost unbelievable 19,200 men were killed.…

In the five months that followed, 400,000 British and Allied troops, and a similar number of Germans, lost their lives, without any noticeable gain or loss of territory.…