Never been to a battlefield before. I cycled past the Somme on Sunday morning at about 5 AM, just as dawn was breaking - fog rolling over the field, looking pretty much as it probably did 100 years ago. By far the most sombering experience of the ride - I had a lump in my throat for the next two miles.
If anybody has ever thought about whether or not to go - do it. Gives you a tiny bit more perspective on life, and how insane war is.
0
Comments
Also, if anybody is ever in the Limoges area of France, Oradour-sur-Glane is worth a visit......
Went there a few years ago, unbelievable place
Now if I had the chance to go to Sagan (great escape) or Sobibor (the only camp where jews escaped) I would because they were two camps where some goodness happened. Even though neither no longer remain, just to stand there and soak the attmosphere in would be amazing. Just to stand in two very famous and different places would be great.
If you get the opportunity, there is a little town with a lovely town square called Poperinge, 10 mile or so west of, Ypres, great stop over for lunch.
The Oscillatory however is awesome, though a bit macbre with the bones of the French and German still on view.
Spent most of my time ignoring the girls texting their mates and trying to stop the boys smoking or sneaking off to buy the local beers.
I visited when I was living over there and it is incredible speaking to some of our elderly neighbours who can vividly remember the tanks rolling around and are still effected by the attrocities they saw to this day. The elderly lady in our hamlet told us she still had nightmares about what she witnessed in Tulle a day or two before the Oradour-Sur-Glane incident.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulle_murders
The Ypres area is not complete without a visit to Tyne Cot of course.
If I live long enough myself then my one year old grandson will certainly be told all about his 3 x great grandfather, who was mentioned in dispatches, and his 2 x great grandmother's brother and nephew who both made the ultimate sacrifice, one in each War, along with some more distant relatives, once he is of an age to understand.
We were convinced that the weight of shells we were capable of delivering prior to the attack would simply evaporate the enemy defences and therefore the plan was based around Artillery conquer and Infantry will simply occupy the destroyed German positions prior to a break through. Much nonsense is talked about "men were ordered to walk against machine guns" they were not and its a simplistic throwaway line that masks far deeper command and control mistakes that were made that led to so many deaths.
Another common misconception is that the men were untrained volunteers of Kitcheners Army and couldnt be trusted. Again this is just wrong, the heaviest casualties on the day were among the pre-war regular soldiers of the 29th Division at Beaumont Hamel, the pre-war regular soldiers of the 4th Division that had been in France since August 1914 and our own London Territorials of the 56th Division many of them who had been in the army pre-war.
Perversely the "untried Kitchener volunteers" of the 30th Division (Manchester & Liverpool Pals) and the 18th Eastern Division (mainly home counties Regiments) were the most succesful of the day capturing all of their objectives at Montauban and Mametz respectively.
The real problem was with Kitcheners Artillery unskilled in firing such a complex barrage over a week prior to the atttack. This is said with a heavy heart as my Great Grandfather Gunner 99022 Charlie Addams from Camberwell was part of the ineffective bombardment that proved a real failure on day one, these same gunners, less than a year later but with more experience proved their worth by breaking the German Lines at both Arras (April 17) Messines (June 17).
As a nation we have never recovered from the 1st July 1916, even the BBC frequently wrongly report 60,000 dead in one day. This is just wrong and triples the already terrible figure of actual deaths and just enhances our own inability to deal with the day.
In the end the Battle of the Somme went of for 148 days, it stopped any German Offensive Operations at Verdun against the French, it destroyed the German regular army through their relentless and wasteful counter attack policy and it led to their retreat to the Hindenburg Line in February 1917 as their only viable way of preventing us from breaking through.
The big tragedy for the British was the loss of that volunteer army, including our own Fred Chick a pre war addick who lies in Caterpiller Valley Cemetery overlooking High Wood. The calibre of men who enlisted in 1914 can never be quantified, the Somme was a much a qualitative loss as it was a quantitive one.
It also led to an over reliance on bombing or grenade throwing owing to the nature of the combat which in turn promted a skills loss in musketry which had served so well in the first months of the war.
The positives were undoubtedly the emergence of junior NCO's taking command decisions on the battlefield, the re-think of artillery as a power down to amazing commanders like Tudor who understood its not how much you fire but how you fire it, all of this came however at a huge cost in men and something that even after 30 years research as professional military historian I have not yet come to terms with.
Last thing I wanted to mention, we did not have the monopoly on huge casualties, the French had 23,000 men killed in one day before we fire a shot at Mons in 1914, the Turkish loose over 10,000 in one morning at Gallipoli in May 15, the Germans on 21 March 18 suffered horrendous casualties without gaining their objectives and the Russian losses on the Eastern Front are just mind numbing figures. I truly believe that the Great War remains to large for us to truly comprehend.
Arguably the worst moment in this nation's military history was the battle of Towton, but that was in another era.
The over reliance on artillery at the Somme was part of the problem. Using the wrong type of artillery shell especially in regard to what the artillery was intended to achieve was a bigger mistake. Another failure was the incorrect assumption that the German trenches were constructed to the same shoddy standard as the Allied trenches and would therefore be easily destroyed. The German trenches were constructed much deeper and with re-inforced concrete making them shell proof to all but direct hits from heavy ordnance and not enough of that was chucked over.
The other big problem was that the Somme was not one battlefield but was composed of several fronts over a 25km or so area and that meant spreading the use of artillery fire over too wide and unconcentrated an area, consequently a lot of it was wasted. Fighting over such a front was also way too ambitious for an army that had no experience in fighting such a battle.
The French however achieved their objectives on day one of the Somme and it's worth looking at what they did that the BEF failed to do. They attacked over a much smaller and more focused area - consequently their artillery was concentrated on a relatively narrow zone and did a pretty good job of smashing the German defences. Once leaving the trenches they attacked in smaller units using craters and whatever cover they could find so that relatively few were lost before they arrived at the German trenches. They also used a rolling barrage, appreciating that having fixed times to achieve certain objectives would quickly break down if/when they were held up. The British/Allied army by contrast had a strict timetable to adhere to - once they fell behind that they found their advance out of sync with covering fire which assumed that those objectives had been attained. Consequently the German defences were not under much of a bombardment.
The French had more experience of fighting such a battle and had adapted and evolved their tactics - Haig was too inflexible and dogmatic in his thinking and planning.
Another common misconception is that the men were untrained volunteers of Kitcheners Army and couldnt be trusted.
I'm not sure that anyone has ever said that but whatever.
even the BBC frequently wrongly report 60,000 dead in one day.
Doing a google search for "BBC + Somme + 60,000 dead" I could see no reference on any BBC site that makes that allegation. Are you making this up?
it stopped any German Offensive Operations at Verdun against the French
Verdun started in February 1916, the Somme four months later in July 1916. The German offensive continued until mid-December 1916 a whole month after the Somme offensive ended.
it destroyed the German regular army...
The war continued for two long years after the end of the battle. In 1917 the German army survived large scale Allied offensives at Arras, the Nivelle and the Third Battle of Ypres, though at great cost. They even managed to counter attack in 1918 and regained a lot of lost ground and it wasn't until late 1918 that the Germans began to retreat, but by then the Yanks had joined and the naval blockade was starving Germany into defeat, this is not what I would call a destruction....
In any case Allied casualties at the Somme were much higher than German casualties - ca 625,000 to around 500,000.
The positives were undoubtedly the emergence of junior NCO's taking command decisions on the battlefield,
Auftragstaktik had been a standard part of German military training for NCOs and junior officers for several generations prior to WWI and the Somme. I suppose it was good that the British Army eventually caught on though.
commanders like Tudor who understood its not how much you fire but how you fire it,
As I demonstrate above, this was nothing that the French weren't already doing and reasonably successfully. Sadly the British army rather than look at what other armed forces were doing and then imitate and improve sadly had to learn the lessons the hard way.
The whole sorry episode was a total waste of human life.
Towton is a great point as you know up to 28,000 men died so far greater numbers than the Somme. I referred to the British Army which we really dont acknowledge until post Civil War so 1461 pre-dates that a little but you right to bring up such a huge event.
The over reliance on one area of technology i.e. Artillery should have included the training of the gunners, the tactics employed such as non-effective wire cutting, the French inibility for night firing and without doubt the wrong type of shell. As important was type of fuse, once the vastly improved 106 model that came into circulation the following spring it was far more reliable and effective.
I am really glad you highlight the French and thier understanding of warfare, I recently wrote a paper on the French Army who remain hugely undervalued in certain history circles. We were very much the junior partner even by 1916 and lessons such as creeping barrages and the use of heavier guns in a concentrated zone were picked up from them. I am filming a documentary about 1914 for BBC2 in a couple of weeks and we will certainly be making this point. Originally they were going to attack a far wider stretch of the Somme southern sector but when Verdun started on the 21 February of the same year this was drastically shortened as not even an army of their size was able to committ significant amounts of men on two fronts. What they did was hugely succesfull and certainly assisted the 18th and 30th Divisions attacks in the area.
I like the response "Im not sure anyone has said that but whatever" I am not sure how to reply really but I would counter that my research is usually deeper than google+somme+BBC so.....whatever
The Nine O'Clock News used the figures 60,000 on the 11th November 2011, the BBC Breakfast show hit me with the same figure when I went on to speak about Harry Patch passing away and most recently it was used on Radio 5 Live. Its not purely a BBC matter its a confusion between the phrase casualties and actual deaths, I turned down an independent TV production earlier this year as they had based the selling of their program on this figure in various pitches to TV execs so I try to stand by my own interpretation of history.
With regards to Verdun, to be pedantic the German Offensive started in February, our Somme Offensive in July after which there were no further German Offensive actions at Verdun, the battle of Verdun raged through to December but from July these were French Counter Attacks with the Germans on the back foot defending recently held ground. We have a good account of this from a German Ernst Junger in his very important book Storm of Steel, his unit the 76th Hannovarians were taken away from the Verdun Front to try to stop the British breaking through in the September, our attack on the Flers Courcelette Switch Line on the 15th was arguably the succesful day for us and one after which I feel we should have stopped the battle at.
The Germans High Comand themselves admit that the German "Regular" Army was destroyed on the Somme so its not just my take on matters, the size of the German military could sustain the war for two further years but the old Regular Army was gone and leadership and esprit de corps among them was never the same.
I would agree entirely with your views on junior commanders in the German Army though I am sure they admired the revolutionary British Army Training Document SS143 about Infantry Tactics at Platoon Level that evolved from our Somme experience and pathed the way for victory in the field in 1918. One of the guides I employ Jack Sheldon who has published numerous books on the German Army points this out and when he was at German Staff College in the 1970's it was still taught by them.
I completely disagree with you comment about Tudor, the fact was no-one was doing what he brought to the table, like the German Joseph Brockmueller he was inventive and changed the way battles were fought with artillery on the Western Front. To suggest the British Army was continually behind everyone and everything is just plain wrong.
Sorry if this does not fit your "narrative" as you once said of me but we clearly come from different angles on a number of points yet arrive at the same destination that too many men died
Professional Historian 1
There is a brilliant film by Humphrey Jennings called the Silent Village, made during the war, which imagines it was a village in Wales.
I like the response "Im not sure anyone has said that but whatever"
That was a comment in response to your suggestion that opinion suggested that Kitchener's volunteer army "couldn't be trusted" yet you mange to segue that into a separate comment of mine...
The Nine O'Clock News used the figures 60,000 on the 11th November 2011, the BBC Breakfast show hit me with the same figure when I went on to speak about Harry Patch passing away and most recently it was used on Radio 5 Live. Its not purely a BBC matter its a confusion between the phrase casualties and actual deaths,
No - just because there were a couple of isolated instances where talking heads on the BBC conflated total deaths with total casualties does not mean that the BBC made the mistake by policy - you are cherrypicking here. Do the basic google search that I suggest and you'll note that various entries on many different BBC webpages do get the distinction correct. Yet you choose to highlight the one or two times they got it wrong as though it were policy? This is the strawman tactic of debate - invent something you think someone has said and then knock it down. I thought historians checked their facts?
would agree entirely with your views on junior commanders in the German Army though I am sure they admired the revolutionary British Army Training Document SS143 about Infantry Tactics at Platoon Level that evolved from our Somme experience and pathed the way for victory in the field in 1918
They may well have done, but that particular document was not published until 1917 and the reasons for the German defeat on the western front go a lot deeper than the belated introduction of a training manual. You ignore the introduction of the Americans, the naval blockade and that Germany was on the verge of collapse after four years of war. The Schlieffen Plan called for a quick strike and victory but not a long drawn out war. In any case SS143 didn't prevent the German Spring offensive in March 1918 from making the biggest gains on either side (up to that point). SS135 of December 1916 was perhaps of far greater value in that it provided a basis for co-ordinating infantry and artillery attacks properly using air recon etc and put the onus on localised units to support infantry attacks rather than operate to the previous fixed schedule of often poorly co-ordinated timings across a front. In other words it introduced on an organisational level the sort of flexibility that the French army had already adopted except that it came six months too late.
The German (well Prussian) concept of Auftragstaktik however goes back over 100 years before the Somme. In the aftermath of a spectacular thumping handed out to them by Napoleon at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806. Clausewitz appreciated that as a smallish nation they needed to be a bit smarter in their use of armed forces and less feudal in their organisation. By that time large scale battles were becoming commonplace and it was impossible for one or two leaders to see and command all aspects of a battle and once the inevitable fog of war kicked in things would start to go awry. Auftragstaktik was developed further by Von Moltke and was first used properly in the wars of German unification - Schlesswig-Holstein, Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars in the 1860s/70s and allows junior commanders to act with the intent of the mission rather than to the sort of strict proscribed orders that the British used at the Somme.