The Somme - From Defeat To Victory

Based on real accounts, "The Somme - From Defeat To Victory" follows a group of friends from the north of England, mates from the local church, who joined up together to fight for king and country. Walter Fiddes was a shop assistant, Stephen Sharples a builder, and Thomas Mellor a travelling salesman. They would fight – and die – side by side on 1 July 1916, just three of the 20,000 who fell on the first day of the Somme. It was the bloodiest day in British military history.

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2nd from left: Corporal Stephen Sharples (Peter Barich) and {right} Lance Corporal Thomas Mellor (Chirs Hannon from the 2nd Salford Pals in their assembly trench, a few hours before they were killed.

Courtesy of Tim Hetherington/BBC (2006)

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The “Stammler” (German for stammerer) (John Shortwell) was a simple farm boy who, due to his shooting skills, had the task to pick out the officers amongst the British Troops.

Courtesy of Tim Hetherington/BBC (2006)

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Corporal Stephen Sharples (Peter Barich) and his men seek cover in a shell hole.

Courtesy of Tim Hetherington/BBC (2006)

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Corporal Friedrich Hinkel (Steffan Boje) of Reserve Infantry Regiment 99.

Courtesy of Tim Hetherington/BBC (2006)

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Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Morland (Eric Carte) followed the battle from an observation post in a tree.

Courtesy of Tim Hetherington/BBC (2006)

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Stretcher-bearers of the Salford Pals in No Man’s Land, during the doomed attack on Thiepval in July 1916.

Courtesy of Tim Hetherington/BBC (2006)

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General Baron Franz von Soden (Rudiger Kuhlbrodt) inspects the German front trenches.

Courtesy of Tim Hetherington/BBC (2006)

But there was much more to the Somme than senseless slaughter. This program challenges the traditional view of the battle as a disaster and reveals how it was the Somme that taught the British Army how to fight a modern war. The film shows how men like Lt. Colonel Frank Maxwell and Private Frederick Edwards would help turn initial defeat into ultimate victory.

Two months after the failure of 1 July, Maxwell, a maverick battalion commander, led a daring raid on the German positions where Mellor, Fiddes, and Sharples had been killed.

The fighting was savage, but with the help of innovative tactics – such as the ‘creeping barrage’ and one of the first ever tanks – Maxwell, Edwards and company eventually defeated their German enemy. Private Edwards, who couldn’t read or write, won the Victoria Cross for his heroics and Lt. Colonel Maxwell was promoted to command a brigade.

The Somme mixes realistic drama based on historically- sourced actual events, archive and documentary footage and CGI to bring the extraordinary events of the Somme to life for a modern audience. It has been made with the advice of some of the world’s top military historians. The result is a film that is both deeply moving and offers a radical new perspective on the Somme, putting the terrible events of 1 July into their proper historical context.

Distributed by BBC Worldwide.