The Battle of the Somme was a grand-scale Allied offensive intended to relieve pressure of the German attack at Verdun. On July 1st, 1916, the British army led a massive attack on the German line at Beaumont Hamel that failed, with severe Allied casualties. This is the story of that failure.

In late June, we were stationed right on the front, at the northern flank of the French. We'd been sitting in the cold, mud-filled trenches for days, weeks maybe, deafened by a heavy bombardment of the Germans, less than two kilometres away. The bombardment was supposed to wipe out the Krauts' barbed wire barriers and gravely weaken their trenches, allowing the British to simply wade across no-man's-land to claim their trenches. But until the volley of artillery and air fire diminished, we could only sit in the trenches and rot.

It felt funny to be seeing the French soldiers in profile, since I was so used to fighting them head-on. But who was I to question the British generals? To paraphrase a famous poet, ours was not to reason why; ours was but to do and die. And die we did, on both sides of the putrid, festering quagmire that was no-man's-land. Myself, I'd only been fighting with the Allies for two weeks, and I'd killed a hundred and nine men. A hundred and nine! Before the war I hardly knew a hundred and nine people, and now I'd taken away that many lives. Did I feel remorse? Rarely. I was fighting the enemy after all, wasn't I? I was eradicating the world's injustice, in my own warped way I suppose. But there was little time for a man to sit and ponder. We were preparing for the Big Push, the one that conceivably could take us across the Somme River, take the pressure off the French at German-occupied Verdun, and give us ten or more miles of German territory. The British corps would spearhead the attack, under the command of the illustrious General Hampton. Hampton, appointed by the late Lord Kitchener, Britain's Minister of War, was a great soldier, clever, logical and a wise strategist. Several unsuccessful attempts had been made on his life by the Germans since his promotion to the rank of general in the spring; and rumours spread rampant in the trenches that the Krauts were plotting a new tactic: an inside man. The men were saying there was a German spy among us, and though the higher-ups fervently denied the rumours, every man was on his guard.

I was just finishing up a mechanical repair to the pivot Howitzer when I felt someone's presence behind me.

"Private!" barked Sergeant-Major Evans, his voice tinged with suspicion. "What are you doing?"

I wheeled quickly. "Sir! Fixing the fuze indicator on the low-register pivot gun, sir. I noticed it was malfunctioning this morning. Sir."

Evans' distrust vanished. He slapped me on the back. "Great initiative, man! You're a credit to the British army. Keep up the good work. We need to be at top efficiency for the attack, you know." He pulled out his pocket watch, its glass face cracked from the crusades he'd taken it through. "Thirty minutes to the attack."

"Yes sir. Thank you sir."

Evans walked away and I turned back to the howitzer with my screwdriver.

"You."

I spun and faced Private Freddy Smith. "Smith," I said levelly. "What do you want?"

Freddy narrowed his eyes at me. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing." I slammed shut the door of the howitzer's mechanics box and moved to pass him. "Excuse me."

Freddy did not move. "You are an ass."

I glared at him. Freddy Smith was my archnemesis. He was easily the most despicable man I had ever met. Smith was one of the men leading the vigilante spy-hunting movement, and was an incorrigible scandalmonger, feeling it his duty to spread nasty rumours all over the place. He was just as bad as gossiping old biddies in small towns. And for some reason Smith seemed to be especially fixated on me. I was actually contributing more than he was, the lazy degenerate, but somehow he believed I was less loyal to the Allies than he. "Freddy, what have you got against me?" I demanded, exasperated.

Colour rose in Freddy's cheeks through the gunpowder stains, grime and dried blood on his face. He hesitated momentarily. "You're fighting for the wrong side," he said at last.

I stared at him blankly. "What in God's name are you talking about?"

"It's not too late to change sides. You could start working for our side instead. It'll be an easy switch."

I couldn't believe what was happening. Here was Freddy Smith, telling me all these incriminating things, and at that moment General Hampton, the German spy's future victim himself, was striding into my peripheral vision, deep in conversation with Sergeant-Major Evans. "So it was you all along!" I said loudly. Hampton and Evans stopped walking and stared at us. "Freddy, you're the German spy!"

"What?" Freddy, bewildered, gaped at me. "No! Keep your voice down!"

"What's going on?" Evans was instantly standing between Smith and I.

"Sir, Freddy is the Kraut spy," I blurted out. "He's not Freddy Smith at all, his real name is Friedrich Schmidt. He's the German assassin who was going to kill General Hampton."

"Soldier!" Hampton joined us, agitated. "A spy, in my corps? It can't be true!"

"Are you absolutely certain?" Evans asked me. "These are very grave accusations you're making."

"He told me to switch sides and start working for his side instead!" I said quickly, my voice getting slightly shrill. "He infiltrated the army and now he's trying to turn soldiers against Great Britain. He. poisoned General Hampton's water canteen."

"How would you know?" stormed Freddy, then realized that he was only hurting himself by making these incriminating outbursts.

"Open your canteen, General," Evans said to Hampton, who immediately complied, glaring at Freddy.

Evans twisted off the cap, and sniffed at the canteen's contents. "I was a biochemist before the war started," he explained. He frowned. "I smell. something chemical. What the devil? Sir, this is not just water." He emptied out the clear liquid, which puddled on the ground, and peered at it. "There is hydrocyanic acid in this water. Highly toxic. General, someone was trying to kill you. Have you drunk any of this? When did you last refill your canteen?"

General Hampton looked dazed. "Refill? I. no, I didn't do it myself." All of a sudden he bolted upright and pointed at Freddy. "You! You refilled my canteen for me!"

"That's right, I saw you pouring in the water!" I said, turning to Freddy.

"That doesn't mean I poisoned it!" shouted Freddy.

"Do you expect us to believe that, Smith?" snarled Sergeant Evans. "Or should I call you 'Schmidt'?"

"No!" cried Freedy, backing away fearfully. "I can explain-"

General Hampton grabbed him. "Spy! Rat!" he said hoarsely. "Lieutenant," motioning to an officer, "get him out of my sight! This traitor will die before a firing squad!"

"General, listen to me, please! I didn't do it!" screamed Freddy, as the lieutenant dragged him away.

"General!" called a soldier envoy who'd just come up from the back trenches. He waved a dirty scrap of paper. "Message from the Canadians! From a party of trench raiders."

The trench raiding parties were groups of Allied soldiers dispatched to sneak into the Germans' trenches and assess the damage done by the bombardment. About a dozen of the braver Canadian troops had volunteered for this highly perilous task. Only three or so of these had actually managed to obtain information. The rest never made it back alive.

General Hampton went to the envoy and took the message. They held a whispered conference. Hampton kept vehemently shaking his head at the soldier's earnest statements. Finally Hampton came back to Evans and I. "The Canadian trench raiders are saying that the bombardment is not working," he reported. "The Canadians are saying the Germans are very much alive. The trenches and the barbed wire are entirely intact."

"It can't be true!" Evans' face was grim. "If they're telling the truth, all those shells - they'll have been wasted! The bombardment, the time we've been sitting down here - all for nothing."

"If it is." began General Hampton, frowning.

"It's probably just an exception to the real damage," I interrupted eagerly. Hampton and Evans stared at me. "Oh- I'm sorry, I do beg your pardon, sir, but I feel quite certain that the bombardment has achieved its objective. The German guns have been silent for days - why else than because they've been destroyed? And, everyone's already standing by to attack at seven hundred thirty hours. We can't back down or postpone again, we're already two days behind schedule. The Canadians must be exaggerating. You know - it's their first war as a real country, and all. They're likely just excited to be part of the effort."

"I think he's right," Evans said to General Hampton. "We'd be best staying on schedule, General."

"What a soldier this boy is! He caught the spy, he motivates his superiors, and he's wise in war." General Hampton proudly laid his scarred, powder-smudged hand on my shoulder. "And I owe my life to you."

"Thank you sir," I murmured. In the distance I heard a shouted command: "Fire!" and then the sound of ten rifles discharging simultaneously into the torso of one suspected traitor. I allowed myself a moment to indulge in a sort of errant satisfaction. Then I looked up at the sky. "Say, does it sound a bit quieter out here? I don't hear the bomber planes any more. It sounds as if they've ceased fire."

"So it does." Evans glanced at his pocket watch and started. "Great heavens! General, there's just five minutes to the attack!"

"Men, in position!" shouted General Hampton. "This could give us ten miles of the Somme!"

"General, you're unarmed!" I said to him, astonished. He looked round, perplexed.

"My Enfield. I thought I had it with me."

"Take mine," I offered. "I've another right here."

"Young man, you are a noble soldier," Hampton said, gratefully accepting my Enfield rifle. We moved off to our respective positions - but I doubled back and hung about behind the artillery line, keeping my distance from the low-register pivot howitzer.

The whistles blew.

"Over the top, men!" Hampton ordered, and a sea of thousands of red uniforms poured over the trench wall onto no-man's-land, towards certain victory.

But it was not to be so. The instant they clambered over the top, the British soldiers were mowed down by German artillery fire. Their guns were undamaged by the bombardment and they were expecting the attack, thanks to their spy's inside information. To make matters worse for the Allies, the low-register pivot gun that I had "fixed" earlier suddenly tipped over on autofire and began shooting every British soldiers in range. Red tunics turned dark crimson and blood and bodies filled the trenches. The Allied army transformed, in a matter of minutes, into a corps of corpses.

And in the midst of this bloody bedlam I ripped open my scarlet jacket to reveal the grey uniform I wore underneath. Showing my true colours! As I was struck by the irony of this suddenly appropriate aphorism, I laughed, one single short whoop ringing out over this mayhem like the war-cry it symbolized.

I ran past the artillery line, splashing in the puddle of hydrocyanic acid that I had secretly poured into Hampton's water canteen, and planted myself before General Hampton, grinning crazily, like the madman I was.

"Auf Wiedersehen, General Hampton," I yelled over the din of the battle, and mockingly saluted him.

His eyes widened. "You-!" he choked out, then raised his- my- rifle, aimed between my eyes, and blew out the entire right side of his head from the massive amount of gunpowder with which I had earlier plugged the chamber of the gun. His semi-decapitated body fell to its knees and flopped forward at my feet, spilling blood on my boots. I bolted, laughing, screaming wildly with the rush I always got after a successful mission. I leaped over the trenches and cleared the barbed wire fences, and sprinted across no-man's-land, using the redcoated bodies piled on the battlefield as stepping-stones.

God, I love being a spy.