If we had thought that ‘Spin’ is a creation of the late 20th century then an examination of the above pages would prove this assumption incorrect. Together they form a three page report on the Battle of the Somme from the pages of a popular journal The War Budget , October 19th 1916, making interesting reading some 93 years on. The whole tenant of the article can be summed up as ‘What the Germans had failed to achieve in 100 days at Verdun in comparison to what British had archived by the 8th October at The Somme’. Consequently the article makes exaggerated claims for any success and downplays any failures; for example reporting the capture of 3500 prisoners on the opening day of the Somme but failing to mention the loss of 58,000 British troops, one third of them killed. The Battle of the Somme would last for a further 41 days until the 18th November when exhaustion and the weather forced closure. British and French casualties amounted to over half a million with German casualties to match it.
The article was submitted to the Great War Archive Flickr Group on the behalf of Lady Moira Bannister, wife of Sir Roger Bannister. The Great War Archive Flickr Group has enabled members of the public to continue to share items originating from the First World War after the deadline for submission to the Oxford database passed in June 2008. The Flickr group now holds over 1500 items.
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