Today is the 100th Anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of the Somme in World War I. If you check the news out of Europe, you’ll see that they’re commemorating it with re-enactments, speeches, and pageantry.
Somme was the British chance to start making waves in the Great War. Seen from another perspective, it was France’s way of saying "we’re bleeding ourselves white here against the Germans, not giving a shit about our common soldiers, how’s about it time that you butchered a few hundred thousand of your men as well?".
So the British came up with the idea of attacking the Germans at Somme, the thought being that it would be the great push to end the war.