Somme - Deadly WWI Battle

Fighting in France, during World War I, intensified during the Battle of the Somme. This war-movie clip, from the British National Archives, was shot on location at the Western Front in 1916.

The film was privately produced and, according to the National Archives, "proved more popular than the official films that the War Office had made during the war despite being shockingly graphic. Audiences, well aware of the real conditions in the trenches, seemed to prefer a film that didn't try to pretend that war was easy or fun."

This is a clip from the eighty-minute documentary. It features a wounded soldier who is carried through one of the trenches.