What would have needed to happen for The Somme Offensive to have achieved it's objectives? Obviously not telling the troops that they would only need to have to walk across no man's land while weighed down with 50 pounds of equipment is a start, so would better targetting of artillery instead of thinking you could just blast the place to pieces. But what else would have needed to been done so that the British could take Bapaume in the quickest possible time with the fewest possible casualties? What would have been the ramifications of such a successful offensive have been or was the whole idea behind so hopelessly wrong?