Richard Fitzpatrick reads how the battle of the Somme needs a more positive re-appraisal

IT IS the most quoted statistic in the annals of British military combat.

On July 1, 1916, the first day of the battle of the Somme, there were 57,470 casualties, of whom 19,240 were killed. According to Winston Churchill, who spent time as a soldier on the front line in 1916, it was “the greatest loss and slaughter sustained in a single day in the whole history of the British army”.

As British soldiers – many of them Irishmen – fled across no man’s land – a stretch of ground that varied from 150 to 800 yards in width – they were met by a hail of German machine-gun fire.