Battle Of The Somme

1 Pages 342 Words

Brandon Hampton
The battle of the Somme was a war enabled by mass industrialization. Communication and logistic problems were prevalent because of the inhumanly large scale of the battle. Countless deaths and unknown amounts of suffering occurred because of general staff miscalculations.
Keegan is able to explain that the battle of the Somme simply came down to the potentially deadly British artillery versus the German machine gunners that sought shelter in their underground bunkers. Keegan explains that Kitchener’s army recruits were still a little green and relied upon artillery bombardments to win the battle. The one ton shells, capable of blowing craters in the earth ten meters deep, fired by the British artillery was not enough to completely obliterate all of the German machine gunners. This failure of the British artillery’s effectiveness caused the death of many British infantrymen. When the artillery barrages stopped, the remnants of the German machine gunners returned to the surface to unleash hell.
Keegan analyzes the not just the battle, but the pre-battle and post-battle as well. Keegan’s analysis gives an almost a surreal image of the pain, disorientation, vision, and behavior of the soldiers and their commanding officers. Keegan explains why the combatants were there, the battle plan used, and the cool blood and guts type of stuff. Keegan elaborates on why the war happened the way that it had. The fulcrum of the war was the type of weaponry used by each side and the application of those weapons.
I have noticed that Keegan strives to answer the question “What wills men to battle?” He wants to emphasize not just the motive of each side to go to war, but he also wants you as a reader to draw your own conclusions about the personal motives of men to go to battle. All of the details given by Keegan are fuel for your brain to answer all of the rhetorical questions asked by him and the questions that ...