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.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 11 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

This, after all, is going to be the great victorious push and perhaps Third Army want to get their name on that particular battle on it.

But the result is an attack

to try and pinch out what we sometimes call the Gomkor Salient, which is a bit of line that kind of juts out around the village of Gomkor, as you rightly said, attacked by the 46th North Midland Division to the north and the 56th First First Londons to the south, both of whom are territorial force divisions, and they are going to

Make an attack after, as you say, all element of surprise has been lost.

The German garrison in the area has been well and truly alive to the idea that there's some action going on on their front.

And unfortunately, we're going to see the same problem here that we see elsewhere in that it's really the lack of surprise, which is inevitable in 1916, by the way.

There is really no other way of doing that.

followed by troops going over the top, getting caught up short of barbed wire.

One of the two divisions does slightly better, but without that kind of supporting element, it's really heavy machine guns and German counter-battery and artillery fire, which is going to really heavily, heavily damage those two attacking divisions.

I think at least one of the divisional commanders gets replaced at the end of that day spent.

But both 46th and 56th Divisions are going to suffer really badly as a result of this, and I think actually come in for some undue criticism because the task they were given was never going to be an easy or potentially even achievable one.

In fact, what Comcor really does is it doesn't pin down any troops,

The German defenders there probably pinned down twice as many men as they have themselves.

So it's just heavy loss of life for very little gain, doesn't achieve any surprise, doesn't shift any German reserves elsewhere, and just adds even more to a very, very bloody first aid death toll.

Yeah, and unfortunately, as we move even slightly further south, we're going to see that problem again and again.

And one of the more tragic and I think best known episodes really comes in the shape of the actions in around 31st Division, largely Powell's based division, not exclusively, but largely Powell's based divisions from the north and northwest of England.

The Grimsby's, the Accrington's and the Sheffield Pals, these kind of guys that really we think of most commonly when we talk about the 1st of July.

They're going to be going over the top towards the village of Serre.

Again, another tricky location to attack.

The same spot you can go to today, it was originally four individual copses, is quite often seen as the...

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