Waffle and deflections indeed. My point was to do with the competence of the men-in- charge at the start of the battle. In my view they made assumptions about the effectiveness of the shelling and the defences in the German trenches that were completely unjustified. By any measure that means that they were not very cunning, not very solicitous as to the wellbeing of their men and not very competent. You've spent quite a bit of time in this thread telling us how well led our boys were, and I'm giving you an example of how egregiously badly they were sometimes led, with catastrophic results. Catastrophic results, what's more, that were in no way a necessary factor in our winning the war. At least, I note, you didn't contradict me like Keith does with his leave-it-to-the-Historians guff. All the stuff about how it shortened the war, made the Germans weaker, etc., is hindsight. That clearly did not come into play at the start of the battle, when the only tactical thinking seemed to be, just walk over to their trenches, lads, and if you find anyone alive, well you know, just remember they don't like it up 'em...