Reddit reviews The Somme

This is essentially what is described in The Somme (Prior/Wilson). There wasn't much of a "race to the (German) parapet" because so many units were destroyed even be fore they could reach No Man's Land.

Regarding pals battalions (or others) ordered to walk across No Man's Land, the authors have some good arguments about how little that mattered in practice, because losses were not much smaller by trying to run across the open at the enemy machine-guns than by walking. By not having enough artillery, and by "focusing" on a much too wide front and too deep area the attack was doomed before it started. The "Old Army" pre-war professionals didn't do much better than the pals units on average.