The Somme Redux

After Friday's post in which I wrote less than flattering things about the British commander, Sir Douglas Haig, and his role in the Somme offensive, I heard from a friend, a retired Marine officer and amateur historian, who took me to task. The Somme, he argued, was a significant learning experience for the allies, in particular for Douglas Haig, and led to major changes in tactics that ultimately bought about the allied victory in 1918. He thought I was entirely too hard on Haig, whose development as a commander and increased understanding of the demands of modern warfare proved that he was the hero and not the villain of the allied cause in World War I.

My friend was more than surprised when I agreed with him, at least in essentials. But my earlier post was not about Haig's overall role as allied commander, but his role as commander during the Somme offensive. I agree that he and other allied commanders learned much from the Somme, but why did it take them so long, and at such a horrendous cost in lives, to learn their lessons?

The realities of modern warfare, particularly the effectiveness of machine guns on slow-moving, heavily burdened infantry moving forward in ranks, should have been evident after the first ten minutes of the offensive. It was certainly evident to the German soldiers who manned the machine guns. Afterwards, one German soldier described the scene as he and his comrades climbed out of their underground dugouts and turned their attention and their guns to the oncoming British troops:

"...the shout of the sentry, ‘They are coming,’ … Helmet, belt and rifle and up the steps … there they come, the khaki-yellows, they are not twenty metres in front of our trench. They advance slowly, fully equipped … machine-gun fire tears holes in their ranks.” 

British Troops Advance into German fire

It was evident as well to the British troops as they faced the withering fire of the German guns. One private, a fortunate survivor of that first day, recalled the events:

“We strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl around and fall in all kinds of curious ways as they were hit.”

Additionally, Haig and his commanders should have realized rather quickly that the week-long artillery bombardment -- an estimated 1.7 million shells, including many duds -- had failed to destroy the German underground bunkers and dugouts, a failure directly responsible for the deaths of ten of thousands of his men. Not only did the bombardment fail to kill many Germans, it also didn't accomplish another of its prime objectives: the destruction of the enemy's barbed wire defenses. Another survivor, a corporal of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, described what he experienced:

“[The artillery barrage] hadn’t made any impact on those barbed-wire entanglements. The result was we never got anywhere near the Germans. Never got anywhere near them. Our lads was mown down. They were just simply slaughtered.” 

British Artillery at the Somme

As I mentioned in Friday's post, it was the worst day in British military history with 20,000 dead and 40,000 wounded. As it continued for months the Somme became a kind of British Verdun, a tragic meat grinder that resulted in very little gain. Haig was certain it would lead to a major breakthrough. Instead it became nothing more than a war of attrition. One of the reasons for these failures by the allied command structure was the simple fact that senior commanders rarely visited the trenches especially during major offensive operations. Because they hadn't observed first-hand the results of their plans and decisions, they saw no reason to alter them.

Tank and infantrymen at the Somme

Haig should also have recognized sooner and taken advantage of the effectiveness of the allies' newest weapon, the tank, but he was unable to discard the traditional infantry tactics that had been made obsolete by the technology of rapid-firing weapons. The tank was used to great effect in one of the least costly victories of the Somme offensive, but Haig seemed unimpressed by what he called a "desperate innovation."

The allied command also tried to hide the devastating carnage from the British people behind headlines celebrating a "Great Day on the Somme." But once the hospitals began to fill up with the wounded and the names of the dead were published, the people were horrified.

As I told my friend, good commanders learn from their failures, and so I suppose we can grant that Haig ultimately learned from the mistakes of the Somme. But great commanders anticipate what they may face before they send their troops into battle. They realize the likelihood of Murphy's Law appearing when one least expects it, and they plan accordingly. There's little evidence that Haig was that sort of commander.

The Somme: A Sad Anniversary

I've long been interested in World War One, the global conflict that did much to create the confusing and troubled world we face today. As a part-time student of the war and by no means an expert, I'd like to share a few thoughts on the anniversary of one of this war's major battles.

Today, July 1, is the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, an allied offensive that began on this date in 1916 and continued for almost five months until November 18. 

Going "over the top" at the Somme

The Somme is one of those tragic events in human history that should never have happened. Planned and executed by the French and British, it achieved virtually nothing except the deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Indeed, on just that first day of July a hundred years ago, the British suffered 58,000 casualties, including 20,000 deaths. This was and remains a one-day record in British warfare. 

French Chief of Staff Joffre

The battle plan was originally conceived by French Chief of Staff Joffre, a man beloved by his countryman who referred to him as "Papa Joffre". But Joffre was also a man of questionable strategic decisions. His pre-war Plan 17 for the invasion of Germany neglected to anticipate that the Germans would attack first, and would do so by invading France via neutral Belgium. As a result, the French were caught off-guard and were ill-equipped to offer an effective defense. Making things even worse, before the war Joffre had been responsible for ridding the French army of officers possessed of a defensive mindset. He was also ill-prepared for the German offensive at Verdun in early 1916, the longest battle of the war. Verdun also generated nearly a million casualties -- half of these were deaths -- giving the world a foretaste of what was to come later that year at the Somme.

Sir Douglas Haig

The Somme battle plan conceived by Joffre was accepted by the British commander Sir Douglas Haig. The date of the offensive was moved up from August 1 to July 1 to draw off German forces from Verdun. This change also shifted the alignment of forces, turning what was originally conceived as a mostly French offensive into a largely British one. 

Haig ultimately took over the planning for the offensive which was preceded by a week of massive artillery bombardment of German positions. This not only eliminated the possibility of surprise, but also failed to achieve its objective of destroying the German fortifications. Once the artillery stopped, the Germans left their well-fortified underground bunkers, set up their machine guns, and began their slaughter of the attacking British infantry.

Haig, a leader of great inflexibility and stubbornness, continued the offensive along a 20-mile front in fits and starts until he eventually called it off on November 18. At the cost of well over one-million allied and German casualties, the Somme offensive resulted in the allies gaining less than eight miles.

Today is not a day to celebrate, but rather a day to mourn the loss of the youth of so many nations who perished during this war. These young men, needlessly sacrificed on a host of altars dedicated to greed, pride, stupidity, ideology, and blind nationalism, fought courageously while trusting that their military and political leadership would not abandon them. Sadly, too many of these leaders, on both sides, viewed the war quite simply as a war of attrition which would be won by the army that suffered fewer losses than its enemy. The result was carnage on a scale never before experienced.

I've included a remarkable 11-minute video that tries to describe what the Somme was like for the troops who fought there.

The War to End All War

Frank Buckles

This year we celebrate, if I may be pardoned for using that word, the centennial of the start of World War One. I was born during the Second World War but as a child I often encountered veterans of the First World War who were still around in large numbers. None, however, survive today. In fact, Frank Buckles, the last American veteran of World War One, died just a few years ago at the age of 110. But back in the mid-fifties, the First World War was no more distant in time than the war in Vietnam is to us today. As a Vietnam veteran, I find that fact a bit hard to wrap my aging brain around.

Most of the WWI veterans I met in those days were only in their fifties or sixties, and included relatives and family friends. I remember seeing our milkman (for you youngsters, he was the man who delivered fresh milk to our house every few days) marching in our town's Memorial Day parade. When I pointed him out to my mom, she said, "Yes, he was quite a hero and received several medals for bravery." I never again thought of him as "just the milkman."

Those veterans were impressive men and I was a bit in awe of them. I suspect this had something to do with the stories I'd heard about life and death in the trenches as well as the air war waged by those early air aces in their biplanes. It generated within me an odd mixture of horror and romance. I believe, too, I was influenced by my father who, although he served during World War Two, often spoke of the earlier war's great impact on our world. The historian, Edmund Taylor, believed much the same when he wrote:

“The First World War killed fewer victims than the Second World War, destroyed fewer buildings, and uprooted millions instead of tens of millions – but in many ways it left even deeper scars both on the mind and on the map of Europe. The old world never recovered from the shock.” 

Among the WWI veterans I knew as a child my favorite was my Uncle Bill, my mother's older brother. He had served in the Navy during the war and for a time in France immediately after the war. Although I didn't get to see Uncle Bill too often -- he lived 50 miles away and died when I was just 14 -- I do remember him well. He was a lifelong bachelor and drove a really cool red 1955 Cadilac convertible; and he also had some very neat souvenirs from his WWI Navy days, including one of those spiked German helmets or "picklehuabe". According to Uncle Bill a US Marine had given him the helmet as a reward for rescuing him when he fell overboard in some French harbor after a night of celebratory revelry in late 1918. 

British troops going "over the top" - 1st day of the Somme

Unlike my uncle, who always had a story to tell, many of those who actually fought in the trenches said little about their wartime experiences. But almost every veteran who survived the horrors of WWI called that conflict "The Great War" in an attempt, I suppose, to distinguish it from all previous wars. It was, of course, a very stupid war, brought on by an attack of global insanity that particularly afflicted the "best and brightest" of their time. 

Many historians place the entire blame for the war squarely on Germany and Austria-Hungary because,  well, they lost. In truth, however, the Allied nations must shoulder their share of the blame. The British were determined to reduce German power anyway they could. The Russians wanted to do the same to the Turks. The French were still fuming over their loss in the Franco-Prussian War. The Serbs hoped to break up the empire of the Habsburgs and harbored any number of terrorist groups. Of course the Germans and Austrians, especially the Germans, were no less culpable. Indeed, on both sides heads of state were joined by the aristocracy, the military, and many intellectuals and artists in accepting the inevitability of the war. Some considered it necessary and even desirable, the natural and inevitable outcome of what had been the greatest arms race the world had ever experienced. For others waging war was a matter of personal, and by extension national, honor. And perhaps the irrationality of Nietzsche had so infected many Europeans that they saw violence as the only solution to their growing frustration with the status quo. The majority of the people, of course, wanted the peace to last. War would create only havoc in the lives of most farmers and factory workers and shopkeepers, especially for the millions who would be called on to fight the war. But the decision to wage war was not made by the people. It was made by others who really had no idea of what they were about to do to the world.

When the guns of August roared 100 years ago, few expected the war to last long. That very month Kaiser Wilhelm II promised his troops, "You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees." Sadly it took several autumns before the surviving soldiers returned to their families. And far too many never made it home. Compare the Kaiser's capricious comment with the observation made after almost fours years of war by a young private immediately after the Battle of Passchendaele in January 1918:

"There was not a sign of life of any sort. Not a tree, save for a few dead stumps which looked strange in the moonlight. Not a bird, not even a rat or a blade of grass. Nature was as dead as those Canadians whose bodies remained where they had fallen the previous autumn. Death was written large everywhere." 

Sir Douglas Haig

Perhaps the insanity that afflicted the leadership on both sides can be most graphically demonstrated by this comment by Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, who commanded the British forces during the catastrophic Battle of the Somme in 1916:

"The nation must be taught to bear losses. No amount of skill on the part of the higher commanders, no training, however good, on the part of the officers and men, no superiority of arms and ammunition, however great, will enable victories to be won without the sacrifice of men’s lives. The nation must be prepared to see heavy casualty lists."

Haig wrote this on the eve of that battle, a four-month disaster that resulted in over one million men killed or wounded and led to an Allied gain of only ten miles of French countryside. Haig, an unimaginative and pigheaded man who had little understanding of modern warfare, was perhaps the war's most incompetent military commander. As Winston Churchill would later write, Haig "wore down alike the manhood and the guns of the British army almost to destruction." I'm reminded of the comment by an anonymous German soldier who described the British troops as “lions led by donkeys" -- a tribute to the bravery of the individual soldier, but a condemnation of his leaders.

Some contemporaries we're remarkably naive. In 1912, just two years before the war, Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, made the following prediction: "The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous.” Well, we've moved through the wireless era, through the television era, into the internet era and war is more destructive than ever. Just two years later, as the war began, H. G. Wells actually believed it would cure humanity of its warlike ways. Apparently overcome by an attack of inexplicable optimism, Wells called it, "The war that will end war." It would of course do no such thing. Wells should have known this, but his progressive ideology prohibited him from accepting that war was just another consequence of our fallen human nature. Indeed just as Jesus assured us that "you always have the poor with you," He also warned us that at the "end of the age" we "will hear of wars and rumors of wars...For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom..." I suppose it's safe to say that war won't end until we end.

Others had convinced themselves that out of this war good would come. On April 2, 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson requested a declaration of war against Germany, he told the joint session of Congress that "The world must be made safe for democracy." How ironic that the conclusion of the war, less than two years later, would lead to the spread not of democracy but of totalitarianism throughout Europe and much of Asia. 

US WWI Cemetery at Chateau Thierre, France

The deadly foolishness that began the war continued all the way to its end and beyond. Marshall Ferdinand Foch of France, who commanded the Allied forces at the end of the war, accurately predicted in 1919 after the Treaty of Versailles was signed: "This is not peace, it is an armistice for 20 years."  And before those 20 years ended, we had been given Lenin, Stalin, the Soviet Union, the slaughter of millions of Russians, and the gulag where millions more were enslaved. The war also gave us Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich, the holocaust, World War II, and a half-century of Cold War. In some ways the horrendous mistake of the First World War was the catalyst of all that followed in the 20th century and beyond. We live with its repercussions today. Perhaps this centennial remembrance will lead to a deeper understanding of the causes of the First World War and help us avoid repeating the errors of the past.

The following video on the Battle of the Somme will give you a good sense of what it was like to live and die in trench warfare.It's an hour long but well worth viewing if you have any interest in World War One.



Two fairly recent books on the war, one on its opening days and another on its final hours, are well worth reading: Europe's Last Summer by David Fromkin and Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour by Joseph E. Persico. Because of the centennial, I expect the next few years will bring the publication of many more books on every aspect of the war.