What I know (not from Blackadder) is that

1: "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."

Well Steve not wishing to point out the blatantly obvious but ever since Fritz marched into Luxembourg, Belgium and France - He knew what ourselves, the Belgians and the French opposing him were up to. Fritz knew that he was going to be attacked until he was forced to leave. And yes bombardments usually presaged attacks by infantry on positions protected by thick belts of barbed wire and deeply dug prepared defensive positions.

2: "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.

Oooh loads of indignant froth here Steve the whatever. I would imagine that having fired off the barrage that had been fired off the Generals who ordered the barrage, the gunners who actually fired the barrage and the waiting infantry men who had listened to the barrage would quite rightfully have believed that it had done its job. In some places it did in others it didn't.

By the way on the shell fuse thing - care to tell us all what they could have done about it? Was it the Commander in the Field's fault that the stuff delivered to him and his Army was of poor and dubious quality, or was that down to the designers, manufacturers and workers back in the UK who were as familiar with Quality Control as they were with the dark side of the moon? The problem was solved and solved fairly quickly when we went over to using French fuses.

Now then Steve like most plans some things work and other things don't. The Battle of the Somme as it turned out was fought in a number of phases, but as you seem totally hung up on the first day when the British suffered some 57,000 casualties shall we look at Phase One of the Battle of the Somme?

First Phase 1st - 17th July 1916
(A) Battle of Albert:
Anglo-French Offensive at the southern end of the offensive was largely a total success the French Sixth Army and the right wing of Rawlinson's Fourth British Army inflicted a considerable defeat on the German Second Army - care are to comment Steve?

The bit you wish to draw our attention to was the British attack to the North along the axis of the Albert-Bapaume Road and Gommecourt, here the German defenders had the advantage of high ground and reverse slopes. The British losses and loss rates of the 1st July were never repeated. The result of the attacks caused both British, French and more so German commanders into fighting piecemeal actions. I say more so the Germans Steve because the reserves that the Germans were throwing into the battle were the ones that had been rushed up from Verdun, who didn't know the ground.

Somme Map

Looking at that Map Steve who moved forward and who moved back?

3: "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."

In some places it was in others it wasn't - nowhere near as simplistic as you would appear to prefer it.

4: "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."

Tell me Steve what parts of the upshot of the Battle of the Somme do you disagree with? Do you deny any of it?

The German Army that went into the Battle of the Somme was far superior in terms of training and battle experience than the British troops that they faced. But the British Army learned on the Somme and at the end of the Battle the German Army had lost all those battle-hardened experienced troops and the Kitchener's brand new citizen Army, the very first that the British had ever raised knew it was superior to and had the beating of the German troops facing it.

According to Falkenhayn and Ludendorff Germany knew by the end of the Battles of the Somme and Verdun that Germany could not achieve victory over the combined British and French Armies on the Western Front.

The British, particularly Rawlinson learned what worked on the Somme in 1916 so strategically the battle was a success for the Allies, the lessons learned showed for the first time that the Allies were going to win the war (Up until then that premise had always been shadowed with a nagging doubt) and the application and development of those lessons was to shorten the war by at least a year.