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Stefan Westmann, a German medical officer, endured the long British artillery bombardment that began the Battle of the Somme. Stefan Westmann was from Berlin. In 1914, he was a medical student at Freiburg University.

Muirhead Bone was a well-established draughtsman and etcher when he became the first official war artist in July 1916. This was intended as a one-off appointment to provide further illustrations of the Battle of the Somme for publications like the War Pictorial.

These newly revealed eye-witness accounts of the Battle of the Somme explore the thoughts, feelings and experiences of the men who went over the top on 1 July 1916. The documents record the testimonies of 500 British veterans of one of the First World War's key and most costly battles, the majority of which have never been seen before.

Wilfred 'Billie' Nevill led his men forward on the first day of the Battle of the Somme by kicking two footballs ahead of them as they attacked.

The formation of Britain's mass army in 1914 drew men from all professions into the ranks. Artists and illustrators were no exception and enlisted with the same patriotic zeal, spirit of adventure and sense duty as their fellow countrymen.  

Geoffrey Malins helped to create an enduring record of the Battle of the Somme for future generations using the new medium of film. Malins was a portrait photographer before he joined the Clarendon Film Company’s studios in London in 1910. He soon became chief cameraman. On the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, he left and became a freelance war correspondent in Belgium and France filming newsreels.

Tens of thousands of soldiers went 'over the top' at 7.30am on 1 July 1916 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Nearly 20,000 British soldiers died that day, which looms large in the collective national memory of the First World War. Cameramen Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell were there to record footage that became the cinematic sensation, Battle of the Somme.

The final phase of the Somme offensive began on 13 November 1916. The objective was to seize the Le Transloy Ridge. Field Marshal Douglas Haig's forces had attempted to seize this high ground during the previous month but they had been held back by heavy rain that transformed the devastated landscape of the Somme battlefield into one huge swamp.

This famous image is a still taken from a sequence of footage in the 1916 documentary film, The Battle of the Somme. This iconic sequence lasts for around six seconds and shows a soldier carrying a wounded comrade on his back as he walks along a trench towards the camera. IWM has received almost one hundred different names for the soldier carrying his dying comrade.

The Battle of the Somme saw the first major action of Britain's New Army – the volunteers who had responded to Lord Kitchener's 1914 call for recruits. It was also the first Western Front offensive in which the British Army would take the leading role, rather than acting in support of its French ally. 

The Battle of the Somme was the first campaign launched by Sir Douglas Haig after he took over command of the British Army on the Western Front. His leadership during the battle made him one of the most controversial figures of the war and has been intensely disputed ever since.

The Battle of the Somme began on the 1st of July 1916. The British army took over 57,000 casualties on the first day alone making it the bloodiest day in British military history. But who really won the Battle of the Somme? To find out we have to look at the Somme beyond the first day.

The Battle of the Somme (1 July - 18 November 1916) was one of the most bitterly contested and costly battles of the First World War, lasting nearly five months. The offensive began on 1 July 1916 after a week-long artillery bombardment of the German lines.

The first day of the Battle of the Somme has a prominent place in British history and popular memory and has come to represent the loss and apparent futility of the First World War. But what actually happened on 1 July 1916?

Soldiers from the Empire and Commonwealth made a significant contribution to the Somme offensive. On 1 July 1916 a battalion from Newfoundland, attacked with the 29th Division, while the 1st Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment included a contingent from the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps.