Many sources, including the British Official History, suggest that soldiers who attacked on 1 July 1916 carried a pack weighing over 66lbs (30kg).  Contemporary records, film and photographs show that this was not the case.

If the weight carried by the soldiers affected their progress across no man’s land the men of 36th Ulster Division would not have been able to rush the Schwaben Redoubt, and General Congreve’s XIII Corps, which achieved considerable success in the southern part of the line, would surely have been hampered as much as the soldiers in the unsuccessful attacks further north.