This weekend of course saw the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, a day which lives in infamy as a disaster for the British armed forces.
The battle plan formed by Generals like
Douglas Haig involved an initial artillery barrage of the enemy line. Following this, British troops were made to walk towards enemy fortifications across No Mans Land, only to find themselves exposed to German machine gun fire.
The real controversy is the first such wave of men who were sent over were almost completely wiped out. And yet commanders kept to the battle plan, and sent over wave after wave, in the hope the tactic
(which remained largely on the element of surprise [which was lost] and the effectiveness of the previour artillery barrage [which hadn't worked and had now stopped]) would eventually work. Over the period of one day 20,000 British troops lost their lives.
So what was the reaction of British commanders? Well send over more men of course in the hope it’d work this time. What were Generals like Haig hoping for? The enemy to eventually run out of ammunition?
An article on from
the BBC this week suggests perhaps history has been unfair to Douglas Haig, but the Crow passionately believes as overall commander, it’s Haig and men like him who should be remembered in infamy for the way they frittered away the lives under their command. The military is all about obedience to senior officers, but it also should contain a duty of care from senior officers towards those under their command.
As his troops in the squalid conditions of the front line trenches went “over the top” to face certain death that day, Haig was stationed in a luxury Chateau miles from the trenches.
The Crow can almost imagine his diary entry that day …
------------------------------------------------------------------------1st July 1916An absolute disaster of a day! One’s staff tried to pass off an 1899 vintage to us as an 1889 one. Shocking. Of course we had the man responsible court martialed and shot as a traitor to the crown.Things haven’t been going so well on the Somme either. We spent months drawing up the perfect battle plan and have been let down by the lower ranks again. Why can’t they just stick to the plan, walk over No Mans Land avoiding the machine gun fire, skip over the barbed wire, storm the trenches by catching Jerry with his pants down and win this war. They just aren’t trying hard enough. Am seriously thinking of having all the survivors shot for cowardice, but am told it would be unsporting.Still the day wasn’t a total waste, one’s new man has found an excellent brandy to finish off on this evening. Superb.------------------------------------------------------------------------The Crow thinks there is an extreme danger when the people running any war live in luxury and ignorance of those fighting a war. Back in 2003, Cherie Blair admitted in an interview about how hard it was to for oldest son Euan to leave home for University in Bristol (to a luxury flat which was controversially bought). Meanwhile husband Tony was sending out soldiers Euans age to the Iraq front line. Oh the irony!
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