The table on the left gives some idea of the growth of the army in response to French calls for Britain to shoulder a proper share of the burden of the ground war in Europe. It should also be remembered that the Army was in demand in numerous other theatres too.

The original 4 Divisions of infantry plus one of cavalry deployed in front of Mons in August 1914 on a thinly-held 25 mile front grew to a peak density of some 59 Divisions holding a 90-mile front from Ypres all the way down to Cambrai during 1917.

The extension of the line south of the Somme early in 1918 - again at the insistence of the French - came at a time when the Divisions were depleted of manpower following the fighting of 1917 and it proved to be too much, as the German Army made great advances through the newly-occupied line in the Battle of St-Quentin in March 1918.

Altogether, 5,399,600 men served with the British forces on the Western Front. In addition to this, 3,576,400 served in other theatres. Click here to see how they were recruited.

Firepower increased in a number of ways. The number of automatic weapons (machine guns, both of the heavy Vickers type and the lighter Lewis) was greatly and regularly increased throughout the war. Initially at two heavy machine guns per battalion - incidentally the same ratio as the Germans - or 24 per Division, by the end of the war the Machine Gun Corps provided 64 guns per Division. In addition to this, each Division possessed 288 Lewis guns in the hands of the infantry.

The Machine Gun Corps was founded in October 1915, at which point the heavy machine-guns passed from infantry control to this specialist force. At the Armistice the MGC was 6,400 officers and 124,900 OR strong. More than 239,000 machine-guns were supplied to the British Army during the war.

In addition to this came rapid development and supply of bombs (hand-grenades) and other infantry devices; tanks; air-ground support, etc. The firepower of the British Army Division of 1918 can surely be considered to be at least ten times that of its equivalent of the early days.

The importance of the machine-gun units increased enormously during the war.

The early Tanks belonged to a branch of the machine-gunners too.

By October 1918, Britain was producing at a rate of almost 2.9 million shrapnel and 6.4 million high-explosive and gas shellsper month. The vast majority of this was destined for France and Flanders.

The British began to learn very early in the war that weight of artillery was a determining factor. Even the most strongly held and fortified trench positions could be destroyed and broken into if enough artillery concentrated on it to neutralise the defence.

The German Army was very much better equipped in artillery in the early days - in fact the paucity of artillery support caused a major political upset in Britain following setbacks at Neuve Chapelle, Second Ypres and Festubert in 1915. But as Britain stepped up its war economy, the rate of shell production and their use on the Western Front increased to incredible proportions.

The Royal Artillery grew from the 4,000 officers and 88,800 OR of August 1914 to 30,000 officers and 518,800 four years later. These men served 410 guns of all types in August 1914; at the Armistice the British had 6,406.

Approximately 58% of all BEF casualties incurred during the Great War were caused by artillery fire.

The table here shows how most German Divisions on the Western Front were put through the experience of facing the British Army, despite the fact that the BEF occupied at most a quarter of the total length of the Western Front.

The Western Front was where the enemy placed its main weight, standing largely on the defensive - with the exception of the offensive at Verdun, launched in February 1916 - until it enjoyed a temporary advantage in manpower early in 1918.

British offensives on the Somme in 1916 and at Arras and Ypres in 1917 were of such scale and ferocity that the German High Command was forced to commit most of its Divisions to the defence in these sectors.

Before the Somme, the Germans - rightly - considered that the main threat in the West came from the French. Up to then, British attacks, even the 'big push' at Loos, were relatively small affairs. From mid-1916 onwards, the growth of the BEF began to allow quite immense and sustained offensives against the German positions. After the Somme, the Germans always placed a greater density of troops in front of the British than any of the other Allies.