The classic account of perhaps the greatest organised bloodbath in history. I remember when it came out in 1970, it completely upended all the sentimentalised tosh we had been taught to believe about our heroic grandfathers. There was heroism, that's for sure - and it was all for nothing. Something like half a million men died on July 1 1916, for absolutely nothing.
The great breakthrough had been planned for several months but it had to be brought forward in order to releive the French at Verdun. To be clear, the French withstood hell at Verdun. We should also remember, which Middlebrook reminds us from time to time, that this was a Franco-German war, a re-run of 1871, and we were only there on a gentleman's agreement, helping out.
The scale of the battle, even on that first day (which was meant to be the only day) was too immense for the modern reader to assimilate. This is where Middlebrook's stroke of genius, since adopted by many, comes into play. He has chosen ten men, from all over the UK and of all ranks, whose fortunes he follows. They range from the outliers - the 68 year old who volunteered along with three sons - to the everyday run-of-the-mill man who wanted something more exciting than drudgery in the aforementioned mill. They allow us to relate. The machine of the new style of war is humanised.
Middlebrook also draws on first-person testimony. Again, he covers the range. There are the published war diaries of Earl Haig and his commander on the day, General Rawlinson; and there are dozens of privates and lance-corporals whom Middlebrook interviewed during his research. The interviewees all, of course, survived.
Middebrook is the only war historian I recall reading who explains how armies are built. He takes the time to point out that the German army on the Somme were all conscripts - Germany and France both had forms of national service which meant that every man under sixty had been trained in weaponry, discipline and basic military tactics. Britain had a small regular army, recently backed up by Territorials primarily meant for home defence. Everyone else was a volunteer (conscription did not even begin in mainland UK until 1916 and none of the first conscripts were anywhere near battle-ready in July). Most of those volunteers, and the vast majority of the Brits on the field on July 1 were New Army, men who had responded to Kitchener's famous (or infamous) "Your Country Needs YOU!" appeal. Kitchener was their hero; he had died at sea less than a month before the Somme, and now he was mythical, a hero. For every member of the New Army, this was to be their first action.
Middlebrook takes us carefully through the day, with pauses for review at midday and dusk, the same times the generals at HQ could have used to capitalise on the few successes there had been and do something about the appalling disaster unfolding elsewhere. He then takes us, commendably briefly, through what happened next. For the ten men whom he chose as guides, he tells us what became of them.
The book is, as I say, a classic. It is sobering, instructive, horrendous in what is described but always compassionate. The errors of leadership were largely unavoidable. Some misjudgments, however, were built into the plan from the first. The real catastrophe, it seems to me, was the failure of the man who was told to arrange eighteen trains to ferry the worst casualties from the field to hospital, who on day only managed three. How many deaths did he have on his bill?
The sort of slop I was fed as a child is now forcefed to contemporary children about World War II. The truth will come out and I'm sure there are historians out there waiting to bring it to light.
No comments:
Post a Comment