The First World War
Discussion
Over the last few years I've occasionally been taking pictures at the military cemetery on the site of the former Royal Victoria Hospital near Southampton. The gravestones there tend to reflect the deaths of those who were brought back for treatment and died later. No antibiotics of course. I was struck by how many nationalities were represented, all mixed together in death.
Seeing the dates on the gravestones I formed the idea that I might set up a website specifically to publish one picture a day, 100 years later to the day, of various grave inscriptions.
And then I realised that there were too many.
Seeing the dates on the gravestones I formed the idea that I might set up a website specifically to publish one picture a day, 100 years later to the day, of various grave inscriptions.
And then I realised that there were too many.
IanMorewood said:
Well used artillery was devastating, I have a GG who served with the RGA in France from 1915-17, a few big shells in the right place and the days work was done. (Apart from emptying the ballast tub, moving the gun and the digging into a new position and refilling the ballast).
My father, ex RA in WWII, reckoned that an advantage for the defenders in trench warfare was that HE lost a lot of its effectiveness. A direct hit on a trench was required for any useful return if the ground was soft or boggy. There were other methods that could have been used but most required some form of back-up.He was critical of the suggestion in some of the pre-battle bombardments that artillery could be effective in removing or negating the effectiveness of barbed wire.
If there was a specific target - a building, a concentration of people/equipment or a railway then artillery came into its own. He had a photograph, now gone, of a large field gun being fired by his battery and a bush/small tree in front of the gun being flattened, this from the middle of WWII, so maybe the 5.5. There were suggestions of him going out to Malta but the defeat of Germany in North Africa meant he was retained in anti-aircraft.
They fired at a semi derelict building, hit it and it was totaled. Just a hole left.
Eric Mc said:
What went so wrong for the French on this day?
Did they not know what they were up against?
Sadly, part of the arms race which led to the First World War included the assumption that armies would be that much larger than previously and casualties in proportion to that were be acceptable. Naturally each side assumed that it would be the other which would be taking the casualties. They did not comprehend the power of exponentially more deadly weapons, or the social effect of casualties on that scale. It is certainly possible to admire the way in which the British Army adapted during WW1 and was key to winning the war in 1918. Haig was instrumental in that, and he certainly did keep fighting, but did he need to lose so many men. I personally don't think so. It is not to belittle the courage and sacrifice of those who served in WW1 to say that their leaders could have found solutions which did not involve massive slaughter. Did they not know what they were up against?
I am not saying that Germany should not have been stopped. I am saying that it should have been stopped without the loss of the best of a generation. Many of the losses were incurred in entirely needless and unproductive attacks. To say that such losses were acceptable is, to me, an acceptance that they would be acceptable now. It is also to fail to understand that those losses are what broke the British Empire.
Edited by cardigankid on Friday 5th September 21:35
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