At the end of this week, on Friday, we shall be marking the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. That first day, July 1 1916, was the bloodiest in the history of the British Army, which sustained some 60,000 casualties in a single day. While it may be true that the Somme was not a victory for the Germans, and may even have been a morale-destroying defeat, all that is now forgotten. What we remember is the slaughter, and the myth that the British soldiers were lions led by donkeys.