By Dr David Jordan

100 years after the conclusion of the Battle of the Somme, there is still a tendency – a quite understandable one – within the wider public discourse on the First World War to concentrate upon the first day of the Battle, on 1 July 1916 because of its appalling casualties, and to overlook the fact it was part of a broader campaign which concluded on 18 November 1916, with the ending of the Battle of the Ancre. The long casualty lists dominate our perspective, and when historians look at the wider swathe of the Somme campaign, they tend to focus upon aspects such as strategy and tactics and innovations such as the first use of the tank at Flers in September. Yet there were other innovative uses of weapons seen on a large scale during the Somme campaign, notably in the use of British air power…