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How a Terrible Battle helped to Change Europe
Ninety years ago on a sunny morning in Northern France, something happened that changed Britain and Europe forever. At half past seven on the morning of July 1, 1916, whistles blew and thousands of British soldiers
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their positions to attack their German enemies.
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the end of the day, 20, 000 of them were dead, and another 30,000 wounded or missing. The Battle of the Somme,
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it is called, lasted for six months. When it ended, 125,000 British soldiers were dead. They had gained five kilometers of ground.
This was one of a series of great battles during the WWⅠ. The
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on the Somme was staged to relieve pressure on the French, who were
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in a great battle of their own at a place called Verdun. By the time the battle ended, over a million French and German troops had been killed.
About 17 million people were killed in WWⅠ. There have been wars with greater numbers of dead. But there has never been one
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most of the dead were concentrated in such a small area. On the Somme battlefield, two men died for every meter of space.
Local farmers working in the land still
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the bodies of those who died in that battle. The dead of all nations were buried in a series of giant graveyards
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the line of the border between France and Belgium. Relatives and descendants (后代) of those who died still
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these graveyards today.
It took a second great conflict before Europe was to
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against war itself. Twenty-eight years after the Somme battle, a liberating army of British. American and Canadian troops took
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France from another German invasion. More than 500,000 people were killed. New graveyards were built.
Two great conflicts across two generations helped to change the European
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about war. Germany, once the most warlike country in Europe, is now probably more in favor of peace than any other. One major
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of war in Europe was rivalry (竞争) between France and Germany. The European Union was specifically formed to
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that rivalry.
The last British veteran (老兵) of the Somme battle died in 2005, aged 108. And the WWⅠ is passing out of
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and into history. But for anyone who wants to understand how Europeans think, it is still important to know a little about the terrible events of July 1, 1916.