Understanding WW1 and its battles is difficult after 90 years and some historians are now working to set the record straight over many things. Check out your library for books like 'Forgotten Victory' by Gary Sheffield and 'Mud, Blood and Poppycock' by Gordon Corrigan. They certainly made me look at the war in a different way - for example
* The worst day in the history of the British Army was not July 1st but in February 1942 when General Perceval surrendered over 80,000 soldiers to an inferior Japanese force at Singapore after a short disastrous campaign. Of those in captivity over 1/4 died and the rest suffered from disease, brutality and neglect until 1945.
* In WW1 Austria, Germany, France and Russia all lost more men dead and wounded than the British Empire.
* Why were casualties so high? The main part of the German Army was on the Western Front occupying Belgium and large parts of France. They had to be attacked and pushed out. As the French army weakened the burden of this effort fell increasingly on the British from 1916 onwards. Unlike WW2 when we fought only a small part of the German Army (in no way belittling the efforts of our soldiers then), in WW1 the British faced the full weight of the enemy. For example, taking a Division as 10,000 men for convenience to work out numbers, in July 1944 in Normandy the British faced 11 German Divisions. From July to November 1916 they engaged over 95 German Divisions, some of them more than once. From April to November 1917 this rose to 131 engaged.
Sadly when such large numbers of brave, determined and well armed men fight there are going to be alot of casualties. As one French officer said 'no matter what you do you lose alot of men'. And both sides fought very hard indeed. On the Somme for every British gain ther was an immediate and furious German counterattack. For every instance of British soldiers charging into machine gun and artillery fire the Germans followed suit soon after. This went on for 6 months; one German officer called the Somme 'the graveyard of the German Army'.
* We won the war. The final '100 days' in 1918 is regarded as the greatest feat of arms in British military history. This was achieved by learning and applying the hard won lessons of the previous campaigns. We stopped Germany from dominating europe, kept their fleet from the Channel Ports and protected our trade and colonies.
* We should be very proud of the professionalism, bravery and dedication of our WW1 army - the French, Russians and Germans all mutinied; the British carried on without faltering to the final victory.
* And futility? The efforts of the Allied Armies gave the politicians the chance to transform europe after the Armistice and they blew it completely. It was their failure to secure a proper peace and prevent the rise of Fascism and Communism that rendered the War futile; they bear complete responsibility for wasting the monumental sacrifices that were made.