On July 1, 1916, British and French forces launched the first attack on the German armies lined up along the Somme in what was to become the defining battle of World War I. To this day, July 1 is often remembered for being the bloodiest day in British military history. Indeed, the British suffered some 62,000 casualties in that one day of fighting alone. As gruesome as that statistic is, it's just one of the many dark legacies left by the Somme Offensive. Among the others can be found all the sundry inhumanities of modern trench warfare: infantry lined up opposite machine guns; trench conditions in which vermin and disease were rampant; no-man's-land scattered with dead and dying; vicious gas attacks; soldiers rattled with shell shock. And yet, Philpott reminds us, without having fought and won this crucial battle, the Allied forces might never have prevailed over the Germans.

Here, Philpott boldly and convincingly breaks with the predominant view among historians, most of whom regard the Battle of the Somme as the worst of military tragedies. Three Armies on the Somme is an attempt to finally set the record straight: Many of the histories and memoirs written about this important battle - including those of the statesmen Winston Churchill and Lloyd George, both of which Philpott powerfully rebuts - recount the missteps of the British command but fail to account for the fact that General Haig was witnessing the spontaneous evolution of warfare as he marched his troops to battle.