The assassination of ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand on the 28 th of June 1914 was the cause of World War I. This provided the Austro-Hungarian an excuse to launch a war which they thought would be ended by Christmas against the weaker Serbians. Soon the Austro-Hungarians had Germany, Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria behind them and Serbia were joined by Russia, France, Britain, Belgium, Romania and the US on their side. The US only entered in 1917 when a German U-Boat sunk a boat full of civilians. HOW THE WAR BEGAN

The War mostly took place on the Western Front, in northern France and parts of southern Belgium. On the Eastern Front, in much of what is now Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. WHERE DID IT MOSTLY TAKE PLACE?

The Battle of The Somme was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on either side of the River Somme in France which is where it got its name. The battle was one of the largest of World War I, in which more than 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed. The first day was a complete disaster for the British. 20,000 British troops were killed on the first day and nearly another 40,000 were taken prisoner or so badly wounded that they were unfit for service the next day. BATTLE OF THE SOMME

In the early weeks of the First World War (late in the summer of 1914), both German and French commanders anticipated a war that would involve a large amount of troop movement, as each side fought to gain or defend territory. The Germans initially swept through parts of Belgium and northeastern France, gaining territory along the way. During the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, the Germans were pushed back by Allied forces. They subsequently "dug in" to avoid losing any more ground. Unable to break through this line of defense, the Allies also began to dig protective trenches. THE BEGINNING OF TRENCHES

The machine gun, which so came to dominate and even to personify the battlefields of World War One, was a fairly primitive device when general war began in August Each weighed somewhere in the 30kg-60kg range. The 1914 machine gun, usually positioned on a flat tripod, would require a gun crew of four to six operators. In theory they could fire small-calibre rounds per minute. THE MACHINE GUN

THE END By Laura M