On the 1st of July 1916, the Battle of the Somme began. After a week of artillery bombardment, Britain’s military leaders were confident that German defences had been destroyed. At 7.30 on the morning of the attack, 100,000 allied troops were sent over the top, only to face one of the deadliest weapons on the battlefield - the machine gun. “We pulled out our machine guns and rushed them up to the trenches. The British were coming… but slowly. They came on at a steady pace as if expecting to find nothing alive in our front trenches.” With each machine gun firing more than 500 rounds a minute, German defences stopped all but a handful of British troops from reaching their targets. Machine guns claimed nearly 58,000 British casualties on the first day alone, and over 5000 of these were Scottish soldiers. The use of machine guns led to thousands more deaths, and gradually forced military leaders to try new tactics and new technology to gain ground.
Description
The widespread use of machine guns during WW1 changed the nature of warfare. Battles, such as the Somme, saw huge death tolls due to machine gun fire.
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