Firstly, I would like to thank my father, the late George Gale, who directed me as a boy to two books: Martin Middlebrook’s seminal The First Day on the Somme and Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory. These two works had an immediate and profound effect and have ever shaped my approach to military and cultural history.
Most of my sources are listed in the select bibliography and I have plundered first-hand accounts remorselessly. In some cases, though, I have delved deeper into personal history and both the Public Records Office and Forces War Records have been of invaluable help in supplying regimental war diaries.
I would like to express my particular gratitude to Harriet Dalrymple, great-niece of Jocelyn Buxton, who allowed me unparalleled and unrestricted access to his private papers and letters in the family archive at Oxenfoord. Her advice and hospitality were boundless, and helping her to identify the location, near the village of Ovillers, where her great-uncle was wounded on 1 July was one of the most fulfilling and moving experiences I have had on the Western Front.
David McDowell of the History Department of Fettes College in Edinburgh has also been of enormous help in identifying the movements of Fettesians who served and fell on 1 July, and his knowledge about the lost generation of the college is no less than encyclopedic.
Finally I must thank my long-suffering wife Susie, who has had to endure my Somme-mania for some years, and now has a comprehensive knowledge of the battlefield sufficient to compete with my own battlefield tours.