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Slaughter on the Somme

Revisionist history usually involves making some controversial accusation against an national icon no longer around to defend him or herself. Sometimes it is based on new information but more usually it is a deliberately provocative re-interpretation of the known facts. So it is fascinating with the centenary of the First Day of the Somme to see some commentators attempt to present it as a British victory - actually trying to restore the reputation of an icon, namely Field Marshal Douglas Haig, no longer around to defend himself. Some victory; 22,000 dead on the first day - about the same number of frontline infantrymen as we have in the present-day British Army. And let's not get into the numbers of men crippled for life, countless psychiatric cases and the lives ended prematurely in the years after the conflict. The cream of the British working class, the brightest and best who volunteered in 1914, was slaughtered on the Somme and Britain has still not recovered from the loss. The "victory" claim is based on the substantial damage done to the German Army. But the price paid was too high. The British artillery, on which the whole battle plan depended, was just not good enough at the time. When that became obvious on July 1st there should never have been a Day Two on the Somme. It is true that Haig was not the callous blimp that he has usually been portrayed as since the 1960s. But he was, sadly, probably the best of a bad bunch. The British Army's officer corps in 1916 and 1917 just was not up to fighting a modern war. It is notable that the "storm troops" of the British Empire in 1918, the Canadians and Australians, were commanded by a failed real estate agent and a former civil engineer respectively. Both the Canucks and the Ozzies suffered heavy casualties during the war but the losses would almost certainly have been even worse with a club-able chap of the right sort on loan from the British Army in charge. The Germans may have paid a heavy price to stop the British on the Somme but they were still able to come within an ace of smashing their way through the Allied lines in Spring 1918.

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