Battle of the Somme | The Great War | Instruments of Death (Part 1)

For anyone travelling through these peaceful French towns and villages and looking out over these beautiful fields it’s almost impossible to imagine what happened here in 1916. The Somme, the very name epitomises the waste, futility, and the horror of The Great War. It was here on a battlefront stretching almost 16 miles that a floored battleplan of a great summer offensive, doomed a generation of young men. The figures beggar belief, 20,000 men killed on the first day alone. To make matters even worse, the same tactics that destroyed Kitchener’s Army were repeated time and again. In this documentary we see and hear about the weapons that caused such carnage here on the Somme and throughout World War I. We’ll also hear about the grim realities of life and war in the trenches, and about the efforts of the medical core, who tried to deal with the awful wounds inflicted by the weapons of The Great War. 00:00 – Introduction 03:54 – Lee–Enfield – Bolt-Action Magazine-Fed Repeating Rifle 08:32 – The Western Front – Trench Warfare Conditions 14:37 – Trench Raids – Improvised Close Quarter Weaponry 17:45 – Testing the Bayonet, Club, and Knife 20:18 – Somme Valley – British and French Offensive 23:36 – Kitchener’s Army – Lions Led by Donkeys 25:03 – The Slow Advance to German Lines 27:20 – Lochnagar Crater – Scars of War 29:03 – No Mans Land – Allied Forces vs Maschinengewehr 08 31:11 – Vickers Heavy Machine Gun 35:39 – Royal Newfoundland Regiment Assault 37:11 – Medical Treatment of the Wounded Watch part 2 of the documentary here – Subscribe to Element 18 –