What planet?

Well.

What I know (not from Blackadder) is that the German lines were bombarded by us for a week before that infamous first day. Fritz knew exactly what we were up to, though, didn't he. We thought we'd snuffed 'em, didn't we, but they were a damn sight better defended than we thought, weren't they. They were lying low, not lying dead, weren't they. And it didn't help that lots of our shells were duff and never went off, did it. So when the order came to walk towards their trenches we thought it would be be a walkover, didn't we, but it wasn't, was it, and we bagged 60000 casualties in next to no time, didn't we. As for the upshot of the Somme that you so enthusiastically regaled me with, well here's how I see it. We gained five miles in over four months at the cost of a million and a quarter casualties all round, and we still had two more bitter years of war to go. Hardly a cunning tactical plan, was it, and what a waste of life. Sorry for not being an historian. Or, as Keith sometimes likes to put it, a Historian.