General Douglas Haig

There are usualy two sides to every story

"The men are in splendid spirits. Several have said that they have never before been so instructed and informed of the nature of the operation before them. The wire has never been so well cut, nor the artillery preparations so thorough,"				In many places the wire was not cut. The artillery had failed. Thousands of lives would be lost because the men could not break through the barbed wire and had no cutters with them. In other places the Germans concentrated all their firepower on where the wire was cut, knowing the British must come that way.
General Douglas Haig, 1st July 1916