Originally published in 1964, this is a critically acclaimed classic history of the military engagements of the Somme, which raged from July to November, 1916. It tells of bloody battles interspersed with trench actions of dreadful intensity. In addition to the key confrontations, Farrar-Hockley provides a detailed background to the Somme planning and why it failed with dreadful casualties. In its entirety, the conflict along the Somme scarred the minds of a whole generation, becoming recorded by historians as the graveyard of the "flower of British manhood."