of the Albert–Bapaume road on the first day, although he was unconvinced that the extra depth of the final objective led to the British artillery unduly to dilute the density of bombardment of the first position. Harris also criticised the breadth of the attack and laid blame on Rawlinson and his chief of staff as well; Harris called this the main reason for the dissipation of British artillery over too great an area. The French had attacked cautiously, behind a wall of heavy artillery-fire and achieved their objectives with minimal casualties; Harris wrote that Haig could easily have adopted a similar approach. By 2 July, seven German divisions were en route to the Somme front and another seven by 9 July; Falkenhayn had suspended the Verdun offensive on 12 July and abandoned his plan to use the Sixth Army for a counter-offensive at Arras once the British attacks on the Somme had been destroyed. Haig urged that the British attacks on Trônes Wood, Mametz Wood and Contalmaison be hurried but the Fourth Army headquarters delegated responsibility to the corps, which attacked piecemeal, using little of the Fourth Army artillery strength. Narrow-front attacks invited counter-attack but German efforts proved as ineffective and costly as many of the British attacks. The British lost another but Harris wrote that hurried, poorly co-ordinated attacks were not necessarily wrong. Delay would have benefited the German defenders more than the attackers and the main fault of the British was to take until 4 July to attack again, which failed to exploit all of the German disorganisation caused by the attack of 1 July. The Franco-British had gained the initiative by mid-July, although joint operations on the Somme proved extremely difficult to organise. British attacks south of the Albert–Bapaume road from 2 to 13 July, denied the Germans time to reorganise and forced them into piecemeal reactions, the German infantry finding themselves in a "meat grinder". Reaching positions suitable for an attack on Bazentin Ridge, was a substantial success for the Fourth Army. Casualties The French suffered casualties on 1 July, the British were suffered from 2 to 13 July. German casualties on 1 July were men and from 1 to 10 July another Fayolle recorded that had been taken by the British–French armies. The British 7th Division suffered from 1 to 5 July. The 12th Division had from 1 to 8 July. By the time of