Hidebound? My view of the Somme? My thoughts on the decisive battle? What are you blokes worried about?

All I did is said what happened. Not one word of what I said can you gainsay. All that lovely hindsight that you both indulge in cannot conceal the facts that we shelled (with a high proportion of shelves that didn't work) the German line for a week (thereby alerting the Germans to our next move), we totally underestimated their defences, then the generals gave the orders to walk to the German trenches thinking we'd snuffed 'em out when we hadn't. In my book that was useless, feckless, tactically idiotic and needless. Please don't tell me any more that the loss of life on that first, and on many subsequent, days was necessary to win the battle. I'm no general but I do know that you win battles a lot more easily if you refrain from uselessly sending tens of thousands of soldiers to their deaths in the first days.