Battle of the Somme (1918)

During the First World War the Somme offensive, which had begun in France on 1 July 1916, was not going well. The Canadian Corps arrived on the Somme in early September and won a limited, although well-publicized, victory at Courcelette on 15 September, but the fighting that followed was of a grinding nature: each side attacked and counter-attacked over the same ruined landscape. The complete lack of success there led to an appalling slaughter, with the Canadian Corps suffering some 24,000 casualties. However, no Allied unit suffered more heavily than the Newfoundland Regiment.