By all the glories of the day
And the cool evening's benison:
By the last sunset touch that lay
Upon the hills when day was done:
By beauty lavishly outpoured,
And blessings carelessly received,
By all the days that i have lived,
Make me a soldier, Lord.

By all of all men's hopes and fears
And all the wonders poets sing, the laughter
Of uncoloured years,
And every sad and lovely thing:
By the romantic ages stored
With high endeavor that was his,
By all his mad catastrophes
Make me a man, O Lord.

I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of Thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say good-bye to all of this:
By all delights that i shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord.

The bad weather, which in the last moment produced a two day delay in the launch of the Somme Offensive from 29th June to 1st July, created both a catastrophe and a noteworthy and optimistic coincidence for the Ulsterman. The catastrophe ocurred at Martinsart where, because of the delay, the 13th Royal irish Rifles were preparing to replace the 11th Battalion in the lines. As the last platoon of C Company was forming up the men were struck by a single shell which killed fourteen and wounded a further forty, of whom seven subsequently died of their wounds. The scene was one of almost unimaginable horror. Among the wounded were the battalion's second in command and the adjutant. Among the dead were a Company Sergeant Major and the Regimental Sergeant Major. Nevertheless the 1st of July was also the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 which saw the victory of Willam of Orange. This was indeed a fine omen.
The British Artillery had been hammering away at the German defences for seven days. Lloyd george the Prime Minister had promised that, for this battle the army should have guns standing wheel to wheel, and by the time the bomardment started up, his promise was almost fulfilled. There was a gun, howitzer or mortar for every seventeen yards of the enemy front line to be attacked, compared with the previous best effort at Loos, there were twice as many guns and six times as many shells. More shells were destined to be fired in one week than in the first twelve months of the war. All through the first three weeks in June fresh batteries came up at night into carefully prepared positions. After they had settled in, they registered their targets, helped by their own officers observing from the front line trench, or by the Royal Flying Corps observers in balloons or aeroplanes. Once satisfied that this had been done properly, the batteries lapsed into silence and waited.

The bombardment opened on the 24th of June, for the Infantry attack was still planned for the 29th, and the gunners settled down to a daily routine. Each morning they fired a concentrated barrage for eighty minutes, using every available gun. This was to be cut to sixty-five minutes on the morning of the attack so that the Infantry could ' go over ' with the Germans still expecting another fifteen minutes barrage. For the remainder of the day a continuous , but steadier barrage was fired. At night half the guns rested but the barrage was supplemented by heavy machine-guns, which put down specially harrassing fire on the enemy's rear hoping to cut off the garrisons in the trenches from supplies and relief.
Despite the extent of the bombardment, there were some imperfections and deficiences. The task of cutting the barbed wire had been given to the 18-pounders but nearly all of the ammunition they were useing was shrapnel shells. These shells had a small charge which exploded the shell in the air, scattering hundreds of steal balls onto the ground below. If the fuse was set a fraction of a second too early, the shrapnel balls missed the wires; if too late, the shells exploded harmlessly in the ground. In most cases when the shrapnel did hit the wire it caused the wire to tangle up even more without completely destroying it. It required a a very high level of skill by artillery officers to cut the wire with shrapnel, but it could be done. Another draw back was the shortage of both heavy guns and ammunition, vital for the destruction of the enemy deep dug-outs. There were only thirty-four artillery pieces on an 18 mile front above 9.2-in calibre and half of these had been loaned by the French. The final disappointment was the mass production of shells, and especially of their delicate fuses had led to a lowering of the quality and many shells failed to explode. One estimate put the proporation of duds as high as one third. This may have been an exaggeration, but a soldier captured during a raid by the Germans towards the end of the bombardment described his journey back towards the rear of the enemy lines: " I was told to leave the gug-out and run after the German in front of me whilst another followed behind. I was running for a long time and climbing over huge shells that had not exploded, i must have seen hundreds of them. Duds " ( Pte F. McLaughlin, 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers )

The British were amazed when they found out just how deep the German dug-outs were . They were also brilliantly constructed and many survived the bombardment.