Today is the 110th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme...

The bloodiest battle fought in the First World War on the Western Front. From July 1-November 18, 1916, some three million British, French, and German soldiers would battle it out on a front just 23 miles wide. On the first day of the battle alone, the British would suffer some 57,000 casualties (19,000 of them killed in action) - the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. The Somme Offensive had been in the planning stages since the end of 1915 to be the "big push" that finally drove the Germans out of France and Belgium. By the summer of 1916, however, the hope was to draw away German soldiers who were in the process of grinding down French forces around the city of Verdun.

For four and a half months the battle raged, and by the end of it some 1.2 million men had been killed, wounded, or listed as captured/missing. The British and French had thrown everything they could at the Germans and advanced just 10 miles for their effots.