Dan Hill

speaker

2,263 appearances 13 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 2d 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 — 13 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

The enemy to their front has got no pressure on them.

And Sandys finds his lads of the middle section exactly that problem.

In fact, he even reports this to his brigadier the night before the offensive and says, look, we've got no chance of success here.

The area north of the road around Auvilliers is going to be really difficult for us to attack.

And the brigadier says, well, yeah, I know, but you've still got to go.

And I think summing up maybe all of the tragedy that's seen on the 1st of July that day is the fact that the legacy goes way beyond that date.

Because when the Middlesex do go over at 7.30 that morning, Edwin Sandys is going to lead his men.

And he's going to get hit, I believe, in both legs very early on in the attack.

I think in both knees.

And he's basically left on the battlefield.

A commander who's looked after his troops right the way through the war up until this point.

And he's forced to watch on as his battalion gets cut to pieces in no man's land.

And he can do absolutely nothing about it.

Eventually, he's taken off the battlefield and he joins the 60,000 Allied casualties of that day in total, including the dead, who are going to flood things like the casualty evacuation chain and exponentially make the entire process worse.

He makes his way back to the UK and he's still recovering from the wounds of the 1st of July in September when he makes his way to the Imperial Hotel in London, from which he writes an extremely powerful letter, one to one of his surviving captains of that day of the 1st of July.

And he quite simply says, I haven't had a moment's peace since the 1st of July 1916.

I should have died in the battlefield with my men.

He then concludes by saying, by the time you read this letter, I'll be dead.

I've come to London today to end my life.

And he actually takes his pistol out, his service revolver, and he shoots himself in the head.

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