The Battle of the Somme remains one of the most controversial battles in history. Over the course of four and a half months hundreds of thousands of men died for the sake of just a few miles of ground. The British were determined to break the back of the German Army but the Germans fought them every step of the way in a dreadful war of attrition. By the end of the battle the entire area was a landscape of endless corpses.

Recriminations for this seemingly-pointless waste of human life have abounded ever since. Many blame the British commanders, Haig, Rawlinson and Gough - the 'donkeys' who sent wave after wave of soldiers to their futile deaths. Others claim that the battle was part of a necessary and inevitable learning curve which eventually led to the Allies winning the war. In this book, Peter Hart takes a fresh approach. By concentrating on the experiences of ordinary soldiers, he exposes the true nature of the battle as seen by those on the ground: neither a piece of clinical strategy nor a charnel house for the helpless, but a battle fought by brave and often ruthless men in an attempt to create order out of the bloody chaos of war.

Many of the oral records, diaries, letters and memoirs in this book have never previously been published. As the oral historian at the Imperial War Museum, Peter Hart has had unprecedented access to material never before seen or heard. He uses this vast wealth of original research to describe the entire course of the battle, from the terrifying and momentous first day in July to the muddy, putrid wasteland of November 1916. The result is an unparalleled description of the First World War's iconic battle in its entirety.