Sebag-Montefiore - Somme into the breach

Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

---

SOMME

Into the Breach

UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

India | New Zealand | South Africa

Viking is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published 2016

Copyright Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, 2016

Maps copyright Jeff Edwards, 2016

Cover image: Still from Geoffrey Malins film The Battle of the Somme of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers in a sunken lane before the attack, 1 July 1916 (IWM FLM 1672)

Cover design: Estuary English

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-141-92927-9

For Aviva Burnstock, my wife, for Saul, Esther and Abraham, my children, and for Stephen Sebag-Montefiore, my late father, who so wanted this story to be told

Kings on the Catwalk: The Louis Vuitton and Mot-Hennessy Affair

Enigma: The Battle for the Code

Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man

ANZ see NZ ANZ

ATL see NZ ATL

AWM Australian War Memorial, Canberra

Churchill College Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge

Fourth or 4th Army Papers or Records The Fourth Army Records of Lord Rawlinson, in IWM Documents 20537

Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe Landesarchiv Baden-Wrttemberg: Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe

Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart Landesarchiv Baden-Wrttemberg: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart

IWM Imperial War Museum, London

Liddle Archive or Collection Liddle Collection, Leeds University Library

NAM see NZ NAM

NSW State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

NZ ANZ Archives New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand

NZ ATL Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand

NZ NAM National Army Museum, Waiouru, New Zealand

Personal file for Australian soldier personal file in National Archives of Australia, Canberra

Red Cross file for Australian soldiers Australian Red Cross Society: Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau files via AWM website

SLV State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

* * *

Because many of the accounts and other documents quoted in this book were not written for publication, words and punctuation necessary to make them easy to read or comprehensible have often been omitted by their authors. Alternatively the grammar is faulty. I have taken the liberty of correcting punctuation where this has occurred, but when I have added a word to help the sense, I have placed it in square brackets, and when I have omitted a word or phrase, or moved a word or phrase within the quotation, I have marked this action by inserting three dots. I have used round brackets inside a quotation if I am explaining the meaning of what is quoted.