Advances in gun and artillery design, including improved rifling and metallurgy, increased the rate of fire and accuracy, both on land and at sea. Once the artillery firing had stopped, the British had all but signaled that the infantry was on its way.Technological advances during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries enabled the production of weapons that were more powerful, reliable, accurate and deadly than ever before. That it did not was more a comment on the fact that the Germans had dug in more deeply than British intelligence had bargained for and was less susceptible to artillery fire. However, the Somme attack was not just about antiquated tactics as the battle witnessed the use of the rolling artillery barrage that should have helped the Allied troops as they advanced. With 20,000 Allied soldiers killed on Day One and 40,000 injured, some historians have claimed that Haig should have learned from these statistics and adjusted his tactics. Haig has been criticised by some for his belief in the simple advance of infantry troops on enemy lines. When the battle had ended, they had gained ten miles of land. The Somme led to the loss of 600,000 men on the Allies side 400,000 were British or Commonwealth troops. Haig’s plan was to launch an attack on the Germans that would require them to remove some of their troops from the Verdun battlefield thus relieving the French in Verdun. The French had been asking for some form of military assistance from the British to help them in their battle with the Germans at Verdun. In 1916, Haig put his belief in one final mighty push against the Germans to be executed in the Somme region of France. He was very much steeped in the ways that he knew – conventional tactics. Haig had little time for new military ideas. In December 1915, Haig succeeded Sir John French as commander-in-chief of the British Army in the Western Front.
He and his men fought at the Battle of Mons and the first Battle of Ypres. In August 1914, when the war started, Haig was the general commanding the First Army Corps.
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