as this much of it was much smaller and also in 1916 a lot of the shells were duds so about 30% re savittun presented bombardment had a lot of bark but the fight wasn't quite what was advertised to be. the british lead a lot of track before the battle to bring as much stuff up as possible and here you see the dump where soldiers are unloading things from the train and then the shells would be taken in the end of bombardment 1,500,000 shells were fired before the infantry actually attacked. here ratio the british soldiers going to the front. as i mentioned they were mostly volunteers and they were quite enthusiastic about the war at this point. in the recruitment drive, kitchner came up with this idea of the battalion so a lot of the deal was he would join up with your pals so a lot of friends joined from the same villages and towns and units were built even not professional courses like clerks or there was an artist by telling and for example and so friends joined up together. perhaps one of the reasons they were enthusiastic is a lot of them were told that it would be a sort of cakewalk.