1916 July 1st.

The first day on the Somme, 1 July 1916, was the opening day of the Battle of Albert (1–13 July 1916). Nine corps of the FrenchSixth Army, as well as the BritishFourth and Third armies, attacked the German Second Army of General Fritz von Below, from Foucaucourt on the south bank to Serre, north of the Ancre and at Gommecourt 2 miles (3.2 km) beyond. The objective of the attack was to capture the German first and second positions from Serre south to the Albert–Bapaume road and the first position from the road south to Foucaucourt.

The German defence south of the road mostly collapsed and the French had "complete success" on both banks of the Somme, as did the British from Maricourt on the army boundary, where XIII Corps took Montauban and reached all its objectives and XV Corps captured Mametz and isolated Fricourt. The III Corps attack on both sides of the Albert–Bapaume road was a disaster, making only a short advance south of La Boisselle, with a huge number of casualties. Further north the X Corps attack captured the Leipzig Redoubt, failed opposite Thiepval and had a great but temporary success on the left, where the German front line was overrun and Schwaben and Stuff redoubts captured.

German counter-attacks during the afternoon recaptured most of the lost ground north of the Albert–Bapaume road and fresh attacks against Thiepval were defeated, also with great loss to the British. On the north bank of the Ancre the attack of VIII Corps was another failure, with large numbers of British troops being shot down in no man's land. The VII Corps diversion at Gommecourt was also costly, with only a partial and temporary advance south of the village. The German defeats from Foucaucourt to the Albert–Bapaume road, left the German defence on the south bank incapable of resisting another attack and a substantial German retreat began, from the Flaucourt plateau to the west bank of the Somme close to Péronne, while on the north bank Fricourt was abandoned.

Several truces were negotiated to recover wounded from no man's land on the British front, where the Fourth Army had lost 57,470 casualties, of which 19,240 men were killed. The French had 1,590 casualties and the German 2nd Army lost 10,000–12,000 casualties. Orders were issued to the Anglo-French armies to continue the offensive on 2 July and a German counter-attack on the north bank of the Somme by the 12th Division, intended for the night of 1/2 July, took until dawn on 2 July to begin. Since 1 July 1916 the cost of the battle and the "meagre gains" have been a source of grief and controversy in Britain; in German and French writing the first day of the Battle of the Somme has been little more than a footnote to the mass losses of 1914–1915 and the Battle of Verdun.