Dan Hill

speaker

2,064 appearances 11 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 7 Sep

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

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 11 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 5.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

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

And we see that all up and down the Somme region.

We see sighting of machine guns in very scientific ways.

We see people, engineers coming up and figuring out exactly where the right angles of approach are.

We see very elaborate barbed wire systems laid out.

We see deep trenches, well constructed, well riveted.

We see multiple lines, sometimes up to seven or even eight lines deep in certain areas of the Somme.

Very, very difficult to assault.

And this whole 1914 onwards time is really, it's the opportunity for the Germans to develop that defensive doctrine, develop that style and develop those physical defenses in the Somme region.

As a result, the lads that are going to be attacking here on the morning of the 1st of July are going to have a very, very tough nut to crack.

Now, I think, Spence, before we go into that, and of course talk about the lads who are going to be doing the attacking, I think we need to kind of break down our own little sense of scale here.

Because of that 25-mile front, about two-thirds of it is going to be British held, and that's going to be our focus for the series.

But also within that, we probably need to chop that up as well, because there are really two sides, two sides to a particular coin on the 1st of July 1916.

roughly broken down by the northern part and the southern part.

Conveniently for us, and for anyone watching this as well as listening, there is a dead straight road that runs straight through the heart of the battlefield, and that can serve as a dividing line between the north and the south.

It's an old Roman road, and it runs from the town of Albert, which is British-held on one side, and it runs roughly northeast towards the town of Bapolm, which is in the German-held sector, and it's about eight or nine miles distant.

Now, the overall objective is going to be to try and capture that town, chew up German supplies and logistics, draw away more troops from Verdun, continue the fight, but also possibly make a breakthrough along the lines, see how the battle goes in that regard.

And our focus, Spencer, is going to be in the northern sector.

This is going to be where we're looking, but we also need to look at the troops who are going to be in that sector because we get a bit of a mix here, don't we?

Yeah, there's a really good point you've made there.

And I think we've previously touched on this on a much lower, more tactical level before, the idea of, you know, as simple as following a company across a set of trenches.

Showing 1821–1840 of 2,064 · page 92 of 104