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Monday, July 27, 2009
IT IS the most quoted statistic in the annals of British military combat.
On July 1, 1916, the first day of the battle of the Somme, there were 57,470 casualties, of whom 19,240 were killed. According to Winston Churchill, who spent time as a soldier on the front line in 1916, it was "the greatest loss and slaughter sustained in a single day in the whole history of the British army".
As British soldiers – many of them Irishmen – fled across no man’s land – a stretch of ground that varied from 150 to 800 yards in width – they were met by a hail of German machine-gun fire.
During a well-rehearsed loading-and-firing routine, German gun barrels often overheated and had to be changed. Water to cool the guns often ran out. To improvise, soldiers urinated on them to keep them cool.
"We were able to see our comrades move forward in an attempt to cross no man’s land," wrote Lance-Corporal Bury, watching from an observation post, "only to be mown down like meadow grass. I felt sick at the sight of this carnage and remember weeping."
We have become intimately familiar with the nature of the Somme experience, of its nihilistic slaughter, but we have been misguided about the significance of the battle, argues Dr William Philpott, a lecturer in military history at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and author of Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century. He spent four years writing his tome and "20 years thinking about it".
The battle raged for four and a half months. During that time, there were 420,000 British casualties, 200,000 French casualties and more than 500,000 German ones. The casualties on the first day of battle were alarmingly high but, over the ensuing 140 days of combat tactical, methods improved and losses diminished proportionately.
For example, in comparison with single-day engagements of pre-industrial wars, where 30% of an army could expect to be killed and maimed on the field, the casualties endured on the Somme were unremarkable.
The battle was, maintains Philpott, a turning point in the war and its grinding nature was all but unavoidable in order to break German spirit.
"The problem with attrition is that you can’t pin it down," he says. "It’s ugly. It’s killing people, in some ways, on a count. It’s difficult to conceive a) that military commanders could conceive war in this way, and b) that the troops committed were quite happy to be engaged in that kind of war because we look at it from the current perspective.
"We’re living in a completely different world when it comes to a) the nature of warfare, and b) our perception of warfare, which is why it’s very hard to get your head around what was going on a century ago.
"We’re also looking at it through the prism of World War Two, which suggests that this war was fought to end war and it didn’t and therefore – what was it all about?"
Interestingly, the battle’s chief beneficiary, Adolf Hitler, who used it for political gain in the 1920s, was a corporal for the German army during the Somme. Serving as a despatch runner, he had to retire because of a wound to his groin.
For the first time, German soldiers found themselves in a new sort of combat – materialschlacht, a war of materials.
"I used the term ‘industrial battle’ a lot," says Philpott. "It was a battle that involved machinery, artillery, aircraft, tanks towards the end, things that we associate with 20th century warfare whereas it was a battle that began with the instruments of nineteenth century warfare – infantry, cavalry and lighter artillery.
"I like to tell my students that Napoleon could have operated the armies of 1914. Essentially they were the same in their components and ethos but he wouldn’t have a clue about how the armies of 1918 would operate and in some ways I see the Somme as the first attempt to use the modern 1940-style armies as opposed to a failure to use the old 19th century style armies."
Of the battle’s heroes and villains, Philpott is critical of General Sir Douglas Haig for making strategic mistakes and of Lloyd George, British secretary of state for war, for not taking his share of responsibility.
Philpott cites Marshal Foch as its most notable combatant. "He was the only real military genius to emerge out of the First World War," he says.
The battle, which drew 25 countries into the corner of a field in northern France – and greatly contributed to Allied victory in the war – will probably be chiefly remembered for its blood sacrifice, though.
"There was certainly a strong sense of patriotism, of fighting for king and country, of dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – it is sweet and noble to die for one’s country – although Wilfred Owen goes on in 1917 to challenge that perception," says Philpott.
"The sense of purpose, the sense of patriotism, the sense of belonging, to what are essentially very homogeneous societies at this time is something we can’t understand. We have a multicultural, very diverse society, mainly mediated by modern communications technology.
"You didn’t have that in 1916. You had a racially homogenous society. You had a strong Christian faith. You had a limited media coverage conveying an official message with no thought or discussion about the situation. And to be honest, education levels were significantly less than they are today. There were less thinking people and thinking people are the ones who challenge."
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