Forum Eerste Wereldoorlog

[Percy Toplis]

July 1st 1916 - a surgical catastrophe
H Ellis

On the morning of July 1st 1916, after five days of intense bombardment, the
British Fourth Army under General Sir Henry Rawlinson, with a ration strength of
519,324 men, supported by two divisions of the Third Army, under General Sir
Edward Allenby, advanced into what was to be known hereafter as the first day of
the Battle of the Somme. Within the first 60 minutes of that attack, those troops
sustained some 30,000 casualties, dead, dying and wounded, and that number
would be almost doubled by the end of the day.
This lecture, founded in memory of Sir Thomas and Lady Edith Dixon, tries to
convey to you how the Royal Army Medical Corps coped with the most enormous
casualties in wounded ever sustained by our armed forces in any one day of any
campaign before or since. Before considering the purely medical aspects of that
day, let me briefly describe the military background of the battle.

Lees verder op http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2448630/pdf/ulstermedj00076-0085.pdf
_________________
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.

[Leo van Bergen]

Dank hiervoor.
Leo