Objective
Like the earlier offensives of 1 July (Battle of Albert) and 14 July (Battle of Bazentin Ridge), Haig had hoped to achieve a breakthrough of the German defences, enabling a return to mobile warfare with cavalry units pouring through a hole punched in the line by a successful swift and decisive infantry strike. Though the British, Canadian and New Zealand forces did make significant gains on the first day and in the week that followed, a breakthrough did not develop and the Somme front reverted to an attrition struggle, which, with the onset of wet weather, created dreadful conditions in which the infantry had to live and fight.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Flers-Courcelette
Famous quotes containing the word objective:
“I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective equality of my talent and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
“So, my sweetheart back home writes to me and wants to know what this gal in Bombay’s got that she hasn’t got. So I just write back to her and says, “Nothin’, honey. Only she’s got it here.””
—Alvah Bessie, Ranald MacDougall, and Lester Cole. Raoul Walsh. Sergeant Tracey, Objective Burma, to a buddy (1945)