The Somme: a tactical lesson that wasn’t worth the price in bloodshed

THE BBC 1 documentary on the Salford Pals, entitled ‘The Somme — From Defeat to Victory’ (July 2), was just about as upbeat an account of the catastrophe of the Somme as one can hope to get — namely, hard-earned lessons of July 1, 1916 put to good use by increased tactical ingenuity and flexibility (aided by the invention of the tank) to support the French position at Verdun.

The word ‘victory’ is not appropriate in reference to the Somme when we left behind on the field of battle not only the Salford Pals but the flower of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Hardly a home in these islands has been untouched by long-lasting and irremediable sorrow, and the following generations have been blighted by the consequences of these military blunders and miscalculations. In Ireland it has taken us 90 years to bring the descendants of the 16th (Irish) Division and the 36th (Ulster) Division together in a common act of remembrance. Lessons learned in the manner of July 1, 1916 come at too high a price. But it is still unclear that the true lessons of that bloody day have been properly absorbed.

British soldiers are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq in wars in which a post-imperial Britain has no compelling reason to be engaged. Above all, it seems clear in hindsight (if not at the time) that British politicians and generals had insufficient regard for the preciousness of the individual lives of the common soldiers and their families.

The price of July 1, 1916 is still impossible to accept and makes a pyrrhic victory look like a bloodless triumph.

Even today the British government fails to recognise the claims of the families of the 306 soldiers unjustly shot at dawn. It is a repetition of the folly and callousness of 1914-’18. We shall know that the lessons of the Somme have been learned when these men have received a full pardon and their families a long overdue apology.

Dr Gerald Morgan

Trinity College

Dublin 2