Battle of the Somme

[johnxjsc1985]

its hard to get a sense of it but these lads willingly went to defend the homeland. I honesty do not know if I would have the courage to leave the trench but then the consequences of refusing were not great either.

[Vocal Minority]

andymc said:

Have historians analysed it and came up with any conclusions? Was it a colossal blunder by the generals? Haig in particular has been castigated.

Blackadder so true to the truth it could have been a ducumentary

At great and massive length.

Haig's reputation is largely a hatchet job generated by David Lloyd George's memoirs (I am really not a fan of DLG so I will admit some bias there).

Since John Terraine wrote 'The Educated Soldier' in the mid 60s there has been a strain of revisionist history around Haig in particular.

Haig did no better or worse than other generals - and programs like Blackadder cemented the Lions led by Donkeys mentality in a new generation, which I personally don't believe is entirely fair. A wonderfully human story, but really does sub-due the very keen debate going on around the merits of the command in the war,

The fact that everyone was total strangers to the concept of modern warfare at the time showed in horrific casualties on all sides - this has been mentioned on the thread before,

There really is an enormous amount of reading to do on it,

The modern authorities are Gary Sheffield and John Bourne.

[Derek Smith]

J4CKO said:

Amazing how it took a comedy programme to bring it home, the Juxtaposition of comedy and horror really worked, a landmark moment in television that involved no vanity, a rare moment and part of why Blackadder is so treasured, you got to know those characters, then see them cut down and then the poppies regrow over their bodies, massively powerful, more than any documentary, what a legacy for those actors and writers, still pales next to those they were portraying.

I think it was because of the fact that we could relate to Blackadder. Through the previous series we'd seen him as an ordinary many in extraordinary circumstances, trying to do his best, at least some of the time.

The theme of the final series was more modern and more serious. Although there were the same characters, there was more cruelty, more comment.

It was us in the trenches trying to make out we were mad, up against a boss totally disconnected from the consequences of his actions. And then there was the inevitability of the final scene. We all knew it was coming but when it did it still shocked us.

The attitude of the characters going over the top is what we assume ordinary people had when the battle started. We also knew of the carnage.

19,000. It is an horrific figure. Then there were the casualties, around 60,000. So around 80,000 adult males (mostly). These are men from around 17 to 40 and a bit.

Total UK casualties for the Somme campaign was 350,000, all allied 625,000, German 450000.

You can't take it all in, for which we should be thankful.

[Vocal Minority]

Sorry to be pedantic, but it was 60,000 casualties of which 20,000 dead.

Still staggering. Hard to get your head around

[Derek Smith]

Vocal Minority said:

At great and massive length.

Haig's reputation is largely a hatchet job generated by David Lloyd George's memoirs (I am really not a fan of DLG so I will admit some bias there).

Since John Terraine wrote 'The Educated Soldier' in the mid 60s there has been a strain of revisionist history around Haig in particular.

Haig did no better or worse than other generals - and programs like Blackadder cemented the Lions led by Donkeys mentality in a new generation, which I personally don't believe is entirely fair. A wonderfully human story, but really does sub-due the very keen debate going on around the merits of the command in the war,

The fact that everyone was total strangers to the concept of modern warfare at the time showed in horrific casualties on all sides - this has been mentioned on the thread before,

There really is an enormous amount of reading to do on it,

The modern authorities are Gary Sheffield and John Bourne.

The problem with history is that as soon as one book is published, another author starts his book to destroy the conclusions.

There was a review of five books on WWI in The Times in early 2014. Four were by acknowledged experts with letters after their name. The last was by a TV presenter, but was well reviewed, with mention of its references. The thing was that on some fundamentals, the books disagreed with one-another. Haig's responsibility cannot be defined nowadays, at least by historians. However, he was in charge at the time of the worst defeat the British Army {not to mention its allies) suffered. Something went wrong.

It was not as if the warfare was new. This was the middle of 1916 and there had been sufficient battles to show the error in the way the battle was conducted. Previous errors that were obvious were repeated.

Hatchet job or no, the tactics were at fault.

The term lions led by donkeys is a classic and no wonder it took on a life of its own. But something went wrong at the battle, with the UK and its allies losing nearly half as many casualties at Germany. It was not the fault of the soldiers.

[Jasandjules]

PH5121 said:

My great grandad is one of those who died at the Somme and has no known grave.

I would like to visit the battlefields and take my two sons so they learn the sacrifices of previous generations.

It is very, very moving indeed. Go to Ypres, Flanders and so on. You can visit the graves and the museums. And you can, at the risk of sounding very odd indeed, "feel" the history there..

[anonymous-user]

don4l said:

Kermit power said:

grumbledoak said:

We will remember them.

I think the end of Black Adder IV is the saddest, most moving portrayal of warfare I've ever seen in either fiction or documentary. It really brings home the fact that those who died weren't just soldiers. They were also normal blokes, just trying to get through it all and have the occasional laugh with their mates in spite of the adversity. All the more shocking, I think, because right to the very last second of the programme, we were sat there waiting to see what comic turn would keep them out of harm's way.

The main thing I can't get my head round is the sheer scale of it. My grandfather's earliest memory is of their village priest collapsing in his pulpit as he tried to read the list of the men from the village who had been killed, and realised that it contained the name of every single man of military age in the whole village. They'd joined up together, trained together, marched off to war together, gone over the top together and all died together on the same day.

Of course, the loss is no less for the families of those who've died in Afghanistan & Iraq more recently, but part of me will always be relieved to see their individual deaths announced on the evening news, because as long as an individual solider's death is nationally newsworthy, I know there's still hope for our humanity.

That series of blackadder was based on "Journey's End".

I went to see this in Woking Theatre a few years ago. It started out as pure comedy. By the middle it had sobered up considerably.By the end there were no laughs.

The final scene, where they all go over the top, knowing that they would all be killed was harrowing.

When the curtain came down there was absolute silence in the theatre.

I wondered how on Earth the cast could take a curtain call.

The answer came when the curtain went up. The cast were all stood stock still with their faces whitened up so they looked, well, dead.

The theatre was absolutely silent until a sniffle was heard from the middle of the auditorium. Then another... Within a few seconds, the whole audience were sobbing out loud.

That sounds brilliant. I would like to see that.

I read about the soldiers in WW1 uniforms in towns and cities across the UK today, quietly handing out the names of those lost on little cards.

[Langweilig]

Seventeen years ago, I worked as a historical researcher and I was given the opportunity to go on a battlefield tour of Flanders. One of the places I visited was Hill 62, Sanctuary Wood at Kemmel Hill in Belgium. There's a café there and close to it, a trench system. After I left the café, I went towards the trenches. No joking, what I saw just stopped me in my tracks. I remember thinking, "Dear God. Is this really what it was all about? How could any human being live in that filth?"

Yet with all I was overcome by a strange compulsion to step down into the waterlogged trench complete with authentic Flanders mud. I found out later that my grandfather had served as Lance Corporal with the 36th Ulster Division Cyclist Corps and then the 10th batt. Royal Irish Fusiliers and also my great-grandfather who served with the Winnipeg Fusiliers (enlisted at the age of 40) had served in Sanctuary Wood.

I think anyone who has visited the Somme will find that there will always be something that will affect them.

Edited by Langweilig on Friday 1st July 22:37

[Johnnytheboy]

Derek Smith said:

It was not as if the warfare was new. This was the middle of 1916 and there had been sufficient battles to show the error in the way the battle was conducted. Previous errors that were obvious were repeated.

Hatchet job or no, the tactics were at fault.

IIRC there was a lot of talk in early WW1 about the "shell gap", and I imagine that a lot of armchair generals thought previous offences had failed due to inadequate artillery support. The Somme could not be accused of this, and many/most high ranking officers thought the old attack model would work with overwhelming artillery support.

As above, until something has proved not to work the first time, no one knows it's not going to.

[Jasandjules]

Johnnytheboy said:

IIRC there was a lot of talk in early WW1 about the "shell gap", and I imagine that a lot of armchair generals thought previous offences had failed due to inadequate artillery support. The Somme could not be accused of this, and many/most high ranking officers thought the old attack model would work with overwhelming artillery support.

As above, until something has proved not to work the first time, no one knows it's not going to.

Actually, one of the problems was that the jolly old Ruperts in charge had a set pattern of fire - that meant that when the Brits were 2-3 mins behind Schedule, the Germans had time to man the guns.

The French however had flexible fire which also was why they were able to advance.

[Langweilig]

Well, of all the things to stumble upon on You Tube!

Motorhead -1916.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYSnE9nlLO8

[AJS-]

Truly astonishing.

When I was about 8 years old we went to the war memorial in our village and drew sketches, probably to mark the anniversary of the battle.

For some reason I zoomed in on the names and read them. It sounded like the class register, full of local names. At least half of the children in my class shared a surname with someone listed.

It really drove home to me what an utterly senseless slaughter it was. Then still in living memory, people like me, and the daft lad from the farm up the road, and the policeman's son, and the kid with big ears would have been shot dead in a war that I still don't really understand 30 years later.

The survivors would have enjoyed the "victory" knowing that they will never see their friends, brothers, cousins and class mates again.

It's something that stayed with me, and in the weird way memory works sometimes seems like yest, even when last week seems a lifetime away.

[DMN]

Derek Smith said:

It was not the fault of the soldiers.

It was not the fault of the Officers either. As I've already said in this thread, you cannot go from colonial police force to a continental army over night.

Jasandjules said:

The French however had flexible fire which also was why they were able to advance.

That is also unfair. The French had a large conscripted army with recent experience of continental warfare.

The British Army, prior to the first world war was relatively small. We had never had an army the size of the French or German forces. The Royal Navy meant we could pick and choose where to fight. The casualties during the Battle of Waterloo on all sides, one days worth of action, are the same as our losses on the first day of the Somme. 60,000. Its our blessing, and also our curse that we'd never lost so many before.

Have no doubt that the victories the British Army won in 1918 are some of the finest examples of leadership and soldiering this country has ever seen. Sadly the Lions led by Lambs myth means they've never been truely recognised as such.

Edited by DMN on Saturday 2nd July 00:01

[vonuber]

eatcustard said:

Also remember the British officers could not change tactics like the German counterparts without asking permission from high up. So large chunks of the offensive stuttered because they were not allowed to attack a different "softer" point.

This was never really solved until post WW2 either. part of the superiority the Wehrmacht had in 1940 was the setting of goals, with each officer trusted to use his own judgement to achieve it. Each soldier was trained to think a rank or two above, thus when casualties came the men still knew how to adapt.

However in WW1, certainly by 1917 the British Army was formidable and probably the best in the field. It sadly took a lot of lives to learn how to fight this new style of warfare, but by the end they were the best. It wasn't just tactics either, but munitions, weapons, logistics - the whole shebang.

[drivin_me_nuts]

Could someone tell me please, how did those at home take the news of the enormous losses?

[405dogvan]

drivin_me_nuts said:

Could someone tell me please, how did those at home take the news of the enormous losses?

They most likely wouldn't have known - at least not anything like immediately and not beyond gossip and guesswork around official propaganda

I recently read this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Post-Final-First-Sol...

It's fascinating because it covers the soldiers lives before, during and after WW1 - it also talks about what people at home would likely have known via the letters etc. etc.

AND

If anyone would like it, I'll happily pass-it-on - drop a PM if that works here?

[Mothersruin]

Johnnytheboy said:

Derek Smith said:

It was not as if the warfare was new. This was the middle of 1916 and there had been sufficient battles to show the error in the way the battle was conducted. Previous errors that were obvious were repeated.

Hatchet job or no, the tactics were at fault.

IIRC there was a lot of talk in early WW1 about the "shell gap", and I imagine that a lot of armchair generals thought previous offences had failed due to inadequate artillery support. The Somme could not be accused of this, and many/most high ranking officers thought the old attack model would work with overwhelming artillery support.

As above, until something has proved not to work the first time, no one knows it's not going to.

..and this was a massive issue - WWI was a clash of ideals, technology and dogma. It was in No Mans Land (pun intended).

[Kermit power]

drivin_me_nuts said:

Could someone tell me please, how did those at home take the news of the enormous losses?

As I mentioned earlier, my Grandfather's earliest memory was of their village priest collapsing as he tried to read out the names of the dead from their village, and realised that it contained the names of every single man who'd left the village, all killed on the same day in the same place.

It wasn't just the scale of the deaths that must've hit - more than twice as many British troops died on the first day of the Somme alone as have died in all conflicts in the 71 years since the end of WW2! - but also, thanks to the Pals' Regiments, that regular hammer blow which fell all too often of a village, factory, sports team losing all their boys at once.

At the same time, there were places who must've felt comparatively lucky. I've often looked at the small honour roll on the wall of the Epsom sorting office when collecting parcels - it shows all the employees who went to war, rather than just the dead - and been somewhat surprised that of the 63 on the list, only 4 lost their lives.

[Rob-hmk61]

I was very moved by the young actors in towns and cities across the UK in WW1 uniforms handing out card with names of the dead. To see them simply mixing with shoppers and commuters really did bring tears to my eyes. I'm not a lover of the Mail but they covered it very well here -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3669617/Si...

[Eric Mc]

J4CKO said:

Amazing how it took a comedy programme to bring it home, the Juxtaposition of comedy and horror really worked, a landmark moment in television that involved no vanity, a rare moment and part of why Blackadder is so treasured, you got to know those characters, then see them cut down and then the poppies regrow over their bodies, massively powerful, more than any documentary, what a legacy for those actors and writers, still pales next to those they were portraying.

Each generation uses different cultural references to "understand" World War 1. For those in their late 30s or 40s today, it might well be the "Blackadder Goes Forth" TV series. For my generation, which is a bit older, it might be the stage musical and/or film "Oh! What a Lovely War". For earlier generations it would be plays like "Journey's End" or the War Poets.

The important thing to remember is these are NOT documenatries. They are interpretations using dramatic techniques - some by those who actually experienced what they are writing about but mostly by those who didn't.

I am wary of relying on drama (in whatever form) as a means of finding things out. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed or been moved by such drama (I actually took part in a production of "Oh! What a Lovely War") - but I am aware of the limitations of such devices and the biases that can creep in. "Oh! What a Lovely War" was written (if you can call it that) by Joan Littlewood, who was a Communist at one stage and firmly believed in class warfare and the class struggle.

I prefer to read personal anecdotes of those who were there or books written by respected historians.