Dan Hill

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2,255 appearances 12 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 5d ago

Dan Hill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 5.

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WW1: Not So Quiet On The Western Front! · Episode 135: The Somme’s Northern Disaster · 6 Jul 2026 podcast

So despite the fact in the northern sector alone we've got regular army troops in the shape of 4th Division, we've got experienced regular army troops in the shape of 29th Division, we've got territorial troops in the North Midlands and two London Divisions, and we've got a number of new army troops.

All of those are going to react in different ways, they've got different capabilities, different abilities to fight.

What you effectively are saying on the 1st of July is we have to move at the pace and to the abilities of our least effective divisions.

So you go as fast as your slowest guy.

That's really what the line is here.

That way you can at least guarantee that, okay, you might not be able to do anything particularly impressive.

You might not be able to undertake very sophisticated maneuvers, but everybody's going at the same time.

You're going to hit the enemy position in a concerted line.

That could be useful.

provided you can nullify the enemy defences beforehand.

And this is the big question of the Somme, because Spence, the idea that they come up with and really put in potentially all of their eggs in one basket is the British Army High Command says, artillery is going to do that job for us.

Yeah, there's absolutely a mismatch here.

There's the expectation and the hope of what the artillery can achieve.

There's the reality of what it can actually do.

And, of course, you also have the evolving enemy at the same time.

So not only are we finding, or will be found out, I should say, on the morning of the 1st of July, that artillery and the type of fuse used at the time

is not particularly good at cutting, for example, barbed wire and making breaches in barbed wire to allow infantry to attack through.

But even the heavier shells are not really doing the sustained damage underground into those heavy German bunkers, which are really well reinforced, that that's anticipated to do.

And the diluting effect just multiplies that problem as far as British high command are concerned, albeit this is very difficult to understand at the moment.

And it's only really truly going to be understood about...

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