re: On this date precisely 100 years ago....

Think about this for a moment. On just the first day of the Battle of the Somme the British suffered roughly 80,000 casualties, mostly before lunch! And that was just day one of a battle that would rage for four and a half months. and this was in a war that had already been going on for over 2 years and would go on for another two years after this battle was over.

When this battle was over the British had lost just shy of 800,000 casualties, 250,000 of which died.

To put that in perspective, during the roughly 10 years of American involvement in the Vietnam War, we suffered a little over 300,000 casualties, 58,000 of which who were killed. And that was spread out over about 10 years. The British lost over twice the total casualties and over four times the death total over just four and a half months.