Original subtitles

An army was forming in Picardy

in the summertime of 1916.

It was an army such as had never been seen before.

The war was approaching its second anniversary.

The strength of Germany seemed to be unimpaired.

Britain's allies, Russia and France, had borne the brunt of the struggle

to wrest back from the Germans the advantages they had won in 1914.

At the end of 1915,

France had lost 1,961,687 men,

of whom over one million were killed or missing,

and now, at Verdun, they were fighting the most ferocious battle,

launched by the Germans so that France should bleed to death.

It was time for Britain to put forth her strength.

The army forming in Picardy expressed her resolve to do that.

From shattered Ypres in the north,

from the flatlands round Loos and La Bassee, from the Channel ports,

down the long roads of France,

division by division, month by month,

the British soldiers flowed forward,

like iron filings drawn towards a magnet - the Somme.

This was Britain's new army,

the army with which the war would be fought and won.

The old regulars had passed away in the dismal battles of 1915.

Many of the first Territorials had gone with them.

The men of 1916 had responded

to Lord Kitchener's famous appeal.

# We don't want to lose you But we think you ought to go

# For your king and your country

# Both need you so

# We shall want you and miss you

# But with all our might and main

# We shall cheer you Thank you

# Kiss you... # King and country were not just abstractions.

People believed in them. To join up was the thing to do.

Those who didn't were shirkers. Women handed them white feathers.

Anyway, all one's friends were going.

We saw that the Canadians were coming, the Australians were coming,

the South Africans were coming.

They were catching the first boat to England, before the war was over.

If you went to the pictures, there you saw crowds of young men, like I was then,

drilling in Hyde Park, or maybe crowding round the recruiting office,

or it might be, shall we say, a band playing Tipperary.

The whole thing was exciting

and even the pulpits, although they started rather shakily at first,

eventually they decided to come down on the side of the angels

and blessed our great mission.

Above all, this was the effort of the British middle class,

which had never considered that war was really its business.

Suddenly the fever touched them all.

No fear of privation, no obstacle, stood in their way.

We went to the recruiting office. None of us knew much about the Army.

And, when we told him our age...

the old recruiting sergeant looked very surprised and he said,

"Well, you look the type. You'd better walk round the park and come back and be 19 years of age."

So, we did.

Back we went in the afternoon

and signed the papers.

We were members of the British Army.

One idea - it began in Liverpool -

caught on at once - Pals Battalions, men of the same trade or profession,

from the same city or street,

men of the same class - they liked to be among the faces they knew.

Men of the North Eastern Railway Company formed a battalion.

A sportswoman, Mrs Cunliffe-Owen, telegraphed to Lord Kitchener...

Will you accept a complete battalion of upper and middle-class men,

able to shoot and ride, up to the age of 45?

The answer came back promptly. Lord Kitchener gratefully accepts complete battalion.

This was the 23rd Sportsmen's Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers.

When the Sheffield City Battalion first formed, their colonel said...

You're a crowd - a good-looking crowd, but a crowd.

It was, said an eyewitness, "an unusual crowd".

Their ages range from 19 to 35.

Standing there were many men whom no other conceivable circumstances would have brought into the Army -

£500-a-year businessmen, stockbrokers, engineers,

chemists, metallurgical experts, university and public school men,

medical students, journalists, schoolmasters, craftsmen, shop assistants, secretaries,

and all sorts of clerks.

By the end of 1914,

1,186,337 men had joined the Army.

By September 1915,

the figure was 2,257,521 men -

2.25 million volunteers.

BUGLE CALL

Fall in, A. Fall in, B. Fall in, every company.

Now they were in the Army, and they set about learning to be soldiers.

Our training was done in the local parks

and for rifles, we had broomsticks and whatnot.

We went down on the trams, from home,

met at nine o'clock,

went home for lunch, back again - practically the same as office hours.

So, our first part of the training - except as it included a lot of marching, which we weren't used to -

was more or less something after the style of office workers.

They were more than half civilians at this stage - a citizen army.

The manners of civil life clung upon them.

A man reprimanded for not saluting the adjutant protested, "Why? I hardly know him."

A handful of old soldiers and NCOs, survivors of Mons, South Africa and forgotten fields of glory,

put them through their paces.

Sergeant Snell did his bit...

Lower the right! Keep those sections afore!

Pick those knees up, throw those chests out. Haul those heads up. Stop talking. Keep those chins in.

Left, left, left, left, right, left! It's you I've got me glad eye on!

# At the halt on the left form platoon

# At the halt on the left form platoon

# If the odd numbers don't mark time to paces

# How the hell can the rest form platoon?

# If he moves in the ranks take his name

# If he moves in the ranks take his name

# You can hear the sergeant major calling

# If he moves in the ranks take his name. #

So far, we'd been individualists.

So far, we'd been mammy's pets or...something like that.

We had a will of our own

and it came rather hard, to start with,

to obey commands,

but gradually we knew how to form fours,

right wheel, left wheel, halt, and all the rest of it.

We became, in other words, a disciplined body of men.

They learned the rituals of another way of life.

They had all the eagerness in the world to impel their learning.

Fixing bayonets is one of the most wonderful things in the Army.

The story goes that the sergeant major was telling their troops how to fix bayonets

and he said, "When I says fix, you don't fix,

"but when I says bayonets, you whips them out and whops them on."

The new armies learned their trade, despite every kind of difficulty, without discouragement.

Not only uniforms were in short supply, but tents and huts and almost everything a soldier needs.

There were battalions dressed in uniforms of surplus postman's blue.

Through a bleak winter, they had little beyond their own hope and courage to keep them warm.

The old soldiers who taught them to drill taught them other things that were part of the Army's way of life.

As early as September 1914, people living near Aldershot

were astonished to hear a new song on the lips of soldiers marching along the roads.

# ..Have a banana

# Send out the brave Territorials

# They'll face danger with a smile (I don't think)

,# Send out the Chelsea Pensioners

# To keep old England free

# Send out me mother, me sister and me brother

# But for Gawd's sake don't send me. #

When the words of this song were printed in a letter to the Times, slightly amended for tender readers,

another correspondent wrote...

Your correspondent placed a weapon in the hands of the German press.

"Send out my mother, my sister and my brother, but for goodness' sake, don't send me."

Think how this will read, duly translated into German.

Impelled by the passionate will of a nation still barely acquainted

with the meaning of "total war",

the new armies drew towards readiness.

Some regular soldiers despised them. Sir Henry Wilson at GHQ, for one.

Under no circumstances can these mobs take the field for two years.

Then what is the use of them?

Kitchener's ridiculous, preposterous army of 25 corps is the laughing stock of every soldier in Europe.

It took the Germans 40 years of incessant work to make an army of 25 corps, with the aid of conscription.

It will take us to all eternity to do the same by voluntary effort.

Bearing the proud badges of their regiments,

serious, determined and a little apprehensive, the young soldiers took their departure.

In the mid-afternoon, the outside of the town of embarkation was reached.

The band recommenced playing and, at the attention and in excellent step,

they passed through the suburbs, the town centre and so towards the docks.

The people of that town did not acclaim them, nor stop about their business,

for it was late in the second year.

And so to France.

The swelling numbers of the British Army

proclaimed that an enterprise of great pith and moment was at hand.

100,000 men in August 1914.

350,000 by January 1915.

Just over one million by February 1916.

Still they came.

By June, 1.5 million.

The people of France noted their arrival.

On the pavements, as they marched by, women in deep black observed them with particular attention.

When the British Army attained the million mark, the Battle of Verdun was only nine days old.

By the end of March, Verdun was 40 days old and incomparably savage.

By the end of April, France had been bleeding to death for 70 days.

In June, new heights of ferocity were reached

and 100 days of Verdun had passed by.

The French people looked thoughtfully at the young British soldiers.

The French government looked to the new British commander-in-chief,

Sir Douglas Haig.

Haig told Joffre's liaison officer...

I pointed out that I am not under General Joffre's orders, but that would make no difference,

as my intention was to do my utmost to carry out General Joffre's wishes as if they WERE orders.

It had already been decided in 1915

that the Allies should shape their 1916 strategy as a joint effort,

a gigantic pressure from all fronts at once against the central powers.

There had never been any doubt that the British would take part in a massive offensive in 1916,

but now, week by week, month by month,

as Verdun dragged on,

the project assumed a new significance.

It was not so much now a matter of smashing Germany, but of saving France.

Haig's dilemma was acute.

At the end of March, he told Lord Kitchener...

I have not got an army in France, really,

but a collection of divisions untrained for the field.

The actual fighting Army will be evolved from them.

"For these reasons," says Haig, "I desire to postpone my attack as long as possible."

Haig was fighting for time.

Then, on May 24th, Joffre's liaison officer told him...

Owing to the great losses of the French at Verdun, which would soon reach 200,000,

General Joffre was of the opinion that the offensive cannot be delayed beyond the beginning of July.

Two days later, Joffre came to hammer the point home.

The French have supported for three months alone the whole weight of the German attack at Verdun.

If this went on, the French army would be ruined.

He, therefore, was of the opinion that the 1st of July was the latest date for the combined offensive.

I said that, before fixing the date,

I would like to indicate the state of preparedness of the British Army on certain dates

and compare its condition.

I took 1st and 15th July and 1st and 15th August.

When I mentioned August the 15th, Joffre got very excited and shouted,

"The French army would cease to exist if we did nothing till then!"

Haig agreed to attack on July 1st,

accepting that his army would be unready.

The place would be the Somme, where the British and French armies met.

The date was fixed - July the 1st.

The preparations accelerated. There was 35 days to go.

The new steel helmets were issued... and dubiously received.

One million had been delivered in France by July.

We've all been served out with a new shrapnel helmet.

We look like so many Tweedle-dees.

The tin hats are about the limit in ugliness, like an inverted dish-cover or tin basin.

They're about as uncomfortable to wear as they can be.

For these newcomers in their new world across the water, it was time to learn the disciplines of wars.

As the hardships and novelties of its trade presented themselves,

the citizen army rearranged its thoughts.

These were unexpected situations, beyond their range of communication.

They devised new forms of words and set them to old tunes.

# Oh, what a life Oh, what a life

# Living in a trench

# Oh, what a life Oh, what a life

# Fighting for the French

# We haven't got a wife or a nice little wench

# We're all quite happy in an old French trench. #

Dear Auntie, this leaves me in the pink.

We are at present wading in blood up to our necks.

Send me fags and a life belt.

Satisfying jokes were devised along these lines.

Dear Mother, this war's a bugger. Sell the pig and buy me out. John.

Dear John, pig's gone. Soldier on!

Up. Pointing to the left.

Stretch.

And...up.

The care of the feet after marching,

or after long, continuous hours in the slime of the trenches, was obligatory,

an officer's task to attend to it.

Hygiene was a matter for serious observance, as far as possible.

He was carrying two full latrine buckets.

I said, "Hello, Evan. You've got a pretty bloody job."

He said, "Bloody job?! Bloody job, indeed?!

"The army of Artaxerxes was utterly destroyed for lack of sanitation!"

Rations claimed the attention of all ranks and inspired their muses.

# Oh, hell What bloody big lumps of beef

# Oh, hell What bloody big lumps of beef

# Oh, hell What bloody big lumps of beef

# Bloody big lumps, bloody big lumps Bloody big lumps. #

Fresh meat, generally, was for out of the line.

In the line, it came in tins, with vegetables mixed, the famous product of Maconochie.

# Oh, a little bit of everything

# Got in a tin one day

# Then they packed it up and sealed it in

# A most mysterious way

# Then some brassneck came and tasted it

# Upon my sen, says he

# We shall feed it to the soldiers

# And we'll call it M and V. #

And, all the time, training for the imminent battle continued.

The moment was approaching. There was much to do.

The British Army gained familiarity with the worst of its afflictions.

When you came out of the line, you were mentally tired, but also physically tired and hoping for rest,

but you often did not get much of a physical rest because you had to go on working parties to the front line,

on which, for the last mile, everything had to be carried by hand

and, somehow or other, you had to get up to the front, in silence and in darkness,

food and ammunition, drinking water, trench mortar ammunition...

duckboards, planks to make dugouts with, posts

and, worst of all, coils of barbed wire.

This was a manpower war.

The labour was unending, fatigue never absent.

It played havoc with training. It made nonsense of periods of rest.

It was rather appalling, to see some of these chaps laying down asleep

after they'd come out the line after four or five days, fatigued, beat to the world...

They hadn't been laying down three or four hours, scratching theirself,

when the sergeant would come and say, "I want you and you. Fall in outside."

# Nobody knows how tired we are

# Tired we are Tired we are

# Nobody knows how tired we are

# And nobody seems to care

# Nobody knows how tired we are

# Tired we are Tired we are

# Nobody knows how tired we are

# And nobody seems to care. #

Waiting, waiting, always bloody well waiting,

to go up to the line, to come out of the line,

for rations, for orders,

for a traffic block, hours old, to clear on the line of march.

An extraordinary thing, whenever you were really stuck, it was raining.

The soldiers waited.

The staff prepared the largest British Army ever yet seen, for the time of testing.

1.5 million men,

four separate armies, 18 army corps, 58 divisions.

The mere administration of such a host was a major enterprise.

Staff officers, like soldiers, had everything to learn.

One of them wrote... Nearly every one of the ramifications of civil life has its counterpart -

food supply, road and rail transport, law and order,

engineering, medical work, education, postal service, even agriculture -

and for a population bigger than any single unit of control, except London, in England.

Can you imagine what it is to feed, administer,

look after the medical and spiritual requirements of a million men?

Civilian experts were crammed into uniform and turned into staff officers. Eyebrows were raised.

Some regular army people were scandalised.

Haig welcomed the experts and remarked...

These critics fail to realise the size of this army

and the amount of work which an army requires of a civilian nature -

working the railways, the upkeep of the roads, the baking of bread

and a thousand other industries, go on in war, as well as in peace,

so with the whole nation at war,

our object should be to employ men on the same work in war as they are accustomed to do in peace.

To put soldiers with no experience of these matters into such positions,

merely because they are generals and colonels, must result in failure.

The 100th day of Verdun came and went. The assembly of the British Army was nearing completion.

Only three weeks to go now.

The Royal Flying Corps expanded to 27 squadrons.

In May, they began to win air superiority over the Germans.

Then their real work began -

spotting for the artillery with aerial photography and recognition.

There was no mistaking the difficulty of the task ahead.

Haig wrote... The enemy's position was of a very formidable character.

During nearly two years' preparation, he had spared no pains to render these defences impregnable.

The first and second lines each consisted of deep trenches,

well provided with bomb-proof shelters and communication trenches.

The front of each line was protected by wire entanglements,

many of them in belts 40 yards broad,

built of iron stakes interlaced with barbed wire, often almost as thick as a man's finger.

The numerous woods and villages in and between these systems of defence have been turned into fortresses.

In the early summer of 1916, the project didn't look impossible.

Swelling numbers and a sense of new power gave the Army confidence.

At last, British production of guns was approaching the Army's needs.

In July, there were 4,338 British guns in France, nearly a thousand of them heavies.

The munitions programmes were bearing fruit, and shells poured in.

Vast dumps appeared by the roadside and vanished again under camouflage.

The depot at Rouen alone handled 3,500 tons a day.

# I want to go home I want to go home

# For the bullets and bombs, how they whistle and roar

# I don't want to go in the trenches no more

# I want to go over the sea where the Alleyman can't get at me

# Oh, my, I don't want to die, I want to go home. #

Endless lines of lorries supplied the hungry front.

Over 400,000 horses and mules also pulled and carried for the Army.

Light railways pushed forward to the front line itself.

The variety of articles was astonishing, the quantity vast.

One base alone issued, in 1916...

11,000 compasses, 7,000 watches,

12,800 bicycles,

40,000 electric torches,

1.5 million waterproof sheets,

five million anti-gas helmets, 2.25 million bars of soap.

This was becoming a war of objects and machines - the material battle, the Germans called it.

The authority of the machines grew from day to day.

The personality of the individual human withered among the masses

and in servitude to the weapons of modern war.

These are our masters -

the slim, grim muzzles that irk in the pit,

that chafe for the rushing of wheels, for the teams plunging madly to bit,

as the gunners swing down to unkey, for the trail's half-circle right,

for breach-blocks clashing as one to a target viewed on the sight,

for the hour of the red battle harvest, the dream of the slave is for the gun.

June 24th - the 125th day of the Battle of Verdun.

One week to go.

We are the guns and ye serve us.

Dare ye grow weary,

steadfast at night-time and noon-time, or waking,

when dawn winds blow dreary over the fields

and the flats and the reeds of the barrier water, to wait on the hour of our choosing,

the minute decided for slaughter.

Swift the clock runs - yea, to the ultimate settlement.

Stand to your guns!

2, 400, charge 3!

Fire!

Our intense, ceaseless artillery bombardment of the German positions

began paving the way for the assault.

In the afternoon, I rode to a small crest to watch it.

At times, the village of Pozieres, two miles beyond our front trenches,

was being completely smothered in shells,

while, in their turn, Thiepval, Contalmaison and Fricourt were subjected to the hurricane.

The endless columns moved up along the roads and tracks of Picardy,

out of the world of everyday things,

out of the orbit of ordinary apprehension,

into a world riven by unspeakable sound.

General Rawlinson, the Fourth Army commander,

wrote in his diary...

What the results will be, no-one can foretell,

but I feel pretty confident of success,

though we shall only get it after heavy fighting.

We've done all we can

and the rest is in the hands of the good God.

# ..When other helpers fail

# And comforts flee

# Help of the helpless

# O, abide with me. #

The burdened infantry, each man bearing 66lb of assorted equipment, took up their final positions,

awaited the last violent spasm of the guns.

Across the evening,

homing birds cawed on high above them, and the preparation there,

and some people began settling down for the night

and more solicitors disposed themselves in groups

and stood about and rather tended to speak in undertones,

as though to not hasten or not disturb,

to not activate too soon the immense potential empoweredness

and talk about impending dooms.

It fair gets you in the guts.

Let them kip on now and take their rest.