It was in March, 1916, when suspense about Verdun was at its height,
that Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the group of British
Armies, and Sir Henry Rawlinson, who was to be his right-hand man
through the offensive as commander of the Fourth Army, went over the
ground opposite the British front on the Somme and laid the plans for
their attack, and Sir Henry received instructions to begin the elaborate
preparations for what was to become the greatest battle of all time. It
included, as the first step, the building of many miles of railway and
highway for the transport of the enormous requisite quantities of guns
and materials.

The Somme winds through rich alluvial lands at this point and around a
number of verdant islands in its leisurely course. Southward, along the
old front line, the land is more level, where the river makes its bend
in front of Péronne. Northward, generically, it rises into a region of
rolling country, with an irregularly marked ridge line which the Germans
held.

No part of the British front had been so quiet in the summer of 1915 as
the region of Picardy. From the hill where later I watched the attack of
July 1st, on one day in August of the previous year I had such a broad
view that if a shell were to explode anywhere along the front of five
miles it would have been visible to me, and I saw not a single burst of
smoke from high explosive or shrapnel. Apparently the Germans never
expected to undertake any offensive here. All their energy was devoted
to defensive preparations, without even an occasional attack over a few
hundred yards to keep in their hand. Tranquillity, which amounted to the
simulation of a truce, was the result. At different points you might see
Germans walking about in the open and the observer could stand exposed
within easy range of the guns without being sniped at by artillery, as