The soldiers fought a battle like no other before them. Both sides fought from trenches and any gains were minimal - at best.

A young French soldier to his mother, Sept. 1914: "War is suffering beyond what can be imagined. Three days and three nights without being able to do anything but tremble and moan, and yet in spite of all, perfect service must be rendered. Above the roar of the shells drowns the whistling of the wind. Every instant, firing. Then one crouches in the mud, and despair takes possession of one's soul. When this torment came to an end I had such a nervous collapse that I wept without knowing why - late, useless tears."

The Somme offensive of 1916 was vital for the British military in order to protect the western front. On July 1 1916, 100,000 soldiers went over the topand commenced the attack on the German trenches. Loaded down with heavy packs they proceeded slowly against heavy machine gun fire. With 57,000 casualties, the British Army suffered its heaviest single day loss ever. The fighting continued for months and more soldiers joined in the attack. Millions of young men fought - while heavily shelled - along a relatively short frontline. As winter arrived the battlefield was rendered a boggy quagmire and the fighting came to a standstill. Hardly any land was won.

A british soldier after the Battle of The Somme: "War, where is the glamour of you, that we had been told was so splendid, and which we found to be so damned rotten and inhuman? It was unfit for rats to live in, let alone human beings, and even the rats were absent from this terrible Somme of shells and mud, mud and rain... By this time I didn't care two hoots who won the war and think I am safe in saying that was the opinion of many more who served in the ranks."

Passchendaele mark the place where British and Commonwealth troops the summer of 1917 fought the most important battle of the WW I . Passchendaele is also the largest British Military Cemetery on earth.... almost 12,000 men lie buried there.

Surveying this place an Australian reporter wrote: "The slopes were strewn with concrete pill-boxes. They were geared to a 100 meter wide strip of barbed wire entanglements and trenches, and formed the best built-out resistance line of the Germans. Supported in the rear by heavy field artillery and protected by the unaccessible swamp of Hanebeek and Steenbeek, the Germans thought it would be invulnerable. [Picture show Colin Firth at "Passchendaele" in the film A Month In The Country.]

Wilfred Owen: "I have suffered seventh hell. I have not been at the front. I have been in front of it. I held an advanced post, that is, a dug-out in the middle of No Man's Land. We had a march of 3 miles over shelled road, then nearly 3 along a flooded trench. After that we came to where the trenches had been blown flat out and had to go over the top. It was of course dark, too dark, and the ground was not mud, not sloppy mud, but an octopus of sucking clay, 3, 4, and 5 feet deep, relieved only by craters full of water. Men have been known to drown in them. Many stuck in the mud and only got on by leaving their waders, equipment, and in some cases their clothes. High explosives were dropping all around, and machine guns spluttered every few minutes. Those fifty hours were the agony of my happy life. I nearly broke down and let myself drown in the water that was now slowly rising over my knees."