WW1: Not So Quiet On The Western Front!

The struggle for Pozieres would become one of the most infamous campaigns of the Battle of the Somme: some 23000 Australians would become casualties over six weeks fighting on a front barely three miles wide. The total casualties were comparable to Gallipoli and the outcome would be controversial. What happened at Pozieres and why did it degenerate into one of the bloodiest battles of the war for Australia?

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There was no terrain on the Somme that soldiers feared more than woodland - a maze of broken stumps, fallen branches, and hidden barbed wire. In this episode we explore how and why the woods of the Somme became such a crucial part of the battle.

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Just two weeks after the catastrophe of 1 July 1916, the British Army launched another major assault on the Somme - this time with dramatically different results. Attacking before dawn after silently assembling thousands of men in No Man's Land, they overran much of the German second position, captured thousands of prisoners, and briefly created what many believed was the best opportunity for a decisive breakthrough on the Western Front since trench warfare had begun. Yet today, the Battle of Bazentin Ridge is largely overshadowed by the bloodshed that came before and after it. So what changed in those two weeks? Did the British Army learn its lessons with remarkable speed, or has Bazentin simply become remembered as one of the greatest missed opportunities of the entire Somme campaign?

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When people think of the Somme, they think of failure: men cut down in no man's land; shattered battalions; and catastrophic losses. Yet along much of the southern part of the battlefield, this is not what happened at all. Here, British troops broke into the German defences, captured villages and advanced further than anywhere else on 1 July. For a few brief hours, it even seemed that the offensive might achieve its planners' hopes. So why did this part of the battlefield look so different? If the attack was succeeding here, why is the first day of the Somme still remembered as such a disaster?

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What happens when an entire nation runs out of food?

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At 7.30am on the morning of 1st July 1916, whistles blew along a front stretching more than twenty miles. Tens of thousands of British soldiers climbed from their trenches and began walking towards the German lines. By nightfall nearly 20,000 of them would be dead. It remains the bloodiest day in British military history. But that catastrophe was not evenly spread across the battlefield. Some sectors were disasters.

Others achieved limited success. To understand what happened, we need to begin in the north, where the British offensive would suffer its greatest failures.

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- Guest: James Taub

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What turns a unit into an elite?

Is it rigorous selection, a hard-earned reputation, or simply being thrown into the fiercest fighting and surviving?

In today's episode, we search for the answer through the story of the Blue Devils of the Vosges. From the Chasseurs to the Corps Francs, we'll explore what the French considered to be their elite units of the First World War.

- Guest: James Taub

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For eight brutal months in 1915, every Allied plan at Gallipoli had failed. However, on the final night of the campaign, the Allies finally managed to pull off one perfectly executed operation and evacuate.

This is the story of how a disastrous campaign came to an end with an almost flawless final action.

The Caribou Trail — Steam:

 https://store.steampowered.com/app/3065030/The_Caribou_Trail/

The Gallipoli Association:

 https://www.gallipoli-association.org/

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In this week’s episode and in a long overdue collaboration between Not So Quite on the Western Front and WW2 Both Sides of the Wire, four of us sit down to explore what we feel are the battles that, for one reason or another, shaped the course of the 20th century.

Written by four historians, each bringing their own unique perspective, Inferno explores war on land, at sea, and in the air — from Mons in 1914 and the trenches of the Somme, to Stalingrad, Normandy, and the brutal final battles of the Pacific War.

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In August, the Allies prepared for their largest offensive yet on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

This was intended to be the decisive breakthrough that would break the deadlock and end the stalemate once and for all. The plan involved a new landing, a night march and a dash for the heights. But how did the campaign's most imaginative plan become its most bitter failure?

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