When the barrage lifts
... , July 1, is the ... anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. They took 60,000 casualties, of whom nearly twenty thousand were killed.The Tommies were to get out of their trenches and advance across No Man's Land towards the enemy trenches. This maneuver was to be preceded by an artillery barrage on the enemy lines.
The following is from Paul Fussell's 1975 classic The Great War and Modern Memory:
Every day still the Times and the Telegraph print the little "In Memoriam" notices — "Sadly missed," "Always in our thoughts," "Never forgotten," "We do miss you so, Bunny" — the military ones dignified by separation from the civilian. There are more on July 1 than on other days, and on that date there is always a traditional one:9th AND 10th BNS., K.O.Y.L.I. — To the undying memory of the Officers and Men of the above Battalions who fell in the attack on Fricourt (Somme) on July 1, 1916. "Gentlemen, when the barrage lifts."B.H. Liddell Hart, who was in the 9th Battalion of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, explains. Just before the Somme attack, "the officers assembled in the headquarters mess, in a typical Picardy farmhouse. Recent strain between the commanding officer and some of the others led to an embarrassing pause when the senior company commander was called on to propose a toast to the C.O. On a sudden inspiration, he raised his glass and gave the toast with the words: 'Gentlemen, when the barrage lifts'."
The battalion attacked with some 800 men. Twenty-four hours later its strength was 80 men and four officers.
To understand the British military from Churchill to today - you need to know the Somme. As Churchill said,
..it was at Somme, the hinge of popular opinion on the nature of war changed and forever altered our perceptions of war.
59 comments:
Phib, the day and date are wrong.
That is a quote from a few years ago ... I'll "..." the day to remove confusion. Follow the link and you will see further context. Thanks for the note though.
Interesting post. For a student of military history, and for an officer, I find the study of the First World War to be difficult at times, because of the wasteful and stupid decisions made by supposed senior commanders who committed the cardinal sin of never having walked the ground.
Churchill's quote is particularly true. Three very sad and important perspectives from the three major combatants:
Robert Graves' classic Goodbye to all That
Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (the book is even better than the old Lew Ayers movie)
The first chapter of Allistaire Horne's To Lose a Battle: France 1940
July 1 was also the anniversary of the First Day of Gettysburg, and Buford's momentous decision to stand and fight a delaying action. (How many of today's commanders would have the seeds to do that?)
my great grandfather fought there with the French army. I have, on my desk, a flattened mortar shell casing that he etched a battle scene into with his knife. What these men went through....
As for that d@mn Yankee Buford, a nice summary of his evil professionalism can be found here. A very good case of knowing your men, knowing your place in the larger battle to come, kwowning your field, knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses - and knowing some things are worth standing and fighting until your last round.
Not a single PPT either .....
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO SAL AND THE PORCH!
20,000 killed in one battle on one side. This was a burning of the crop and destruction of the seed corn... imagine if an Einstein or a Saulk was one of the casualties?
What might have been.
We are not so far removed from a day when we could seee that again. We like to say the last wars will never happen, yet they do. And they will...
With nukes around devastation on even more scale is still possible... Think how much a even few NK airbursts would kill - including probably many US troops.
The Civil War and WW1 were examples where outdated tactics were used in face of vastly improved firepower.
I remember reading in a book on the development of infantry weaponds in the 20th Century, by Sandhurst infantry instructor John Weeks, that the British High Command seemed to allow the casualities that they took in the trenches because the experience of the men in the Imperial General Staff had been in fighting in supressing native uprisings in Colonial wars. They were not capable of " undestanding the difference between a Fuzzy with a pointed stick, and a German with a machine gun ".
URR: To answer your question, Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster
Ewok,
if NK airbursts a Nuke over the US, the EMP effects will make the Somme look like a party.
read "one second after"
I've meant airbursts over US bases in SK,Japan... NK are still unable to reach mainland US with their missiles (though they are working hard on it, and who knows what they will achieve by say 2020...)
This is reason one thing I would under any circumstances NOT cut from defence budget is BMD.
Too much at stake.
As for the EMP, it would take megaton-yield high-orbit detonation, something only US, China and Russia can do ATM. Still scary thing...
And on the happier note:happy ID for my US friends :)
Wonder when this administration is going to tell us we need to "get used to the idea of a nuclear North Korea", like they did regarding a nuclear Iran.
Pays to be a winner, Phib. ;)
Byron,
He and a few others. But damned few others. And Salamander is right. Not a powerpoint brief to be had anywhere at the Lutheran Seminary. A "paperless TOC" when it consists of key commanders in the saddle.
at least 2 administrations back have been living with nuclear NK... so nothing new
BTW, at least NK seems to be intersted in survival of its leadership (if not a nation), no wannabe martyrdom en masse like Iran...
URR, I'll also add the Captains of the Hoel, Johnson and Roberts...
Phib, even Bobby Lee admired Bufords grit.
Well, since Crimean War/1870 French-German War there was not single major war for the Great Powers to experience full firepower of the Maxim gun. 1904-5 Russo-Japanese war should be warning sign, but was ignored as "fanatical Samurai vs Russian masses" clash creating mass casualties.
But his boss had one.
http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/
:)
Delaying action is one of hardest forms of warfare, against the numerical odds and enemy initiative... But when executed well it can provide spectacular results by allowing well timed counterattack.
<span>I am dubious of Weeks' line of thinking. I believe the British IGS was loaded with ossified, hidebound oafs (" 'eavy-sterned amateur old men" ) whose military skills were gained as subalterns and who had little interest in continuing to study their craft.
The British Army had three years of disastrous casualties (as a percentage of troops engaged) in South Africa against Boers armed with Mausers, Maxim Guns, and Krupp field pieces. The lessons were there to learn, and had they been unaware of battles so far distant, they could have looked back at Gravelotte, and at Cold Harbor.
I don't believe the British Army came out of the war with a single quality senior commander, with the possible exception of Smith-Dorrien.</span>
But French and Germans were not a bit more better at the time. Germans managed to get innovative infantry tactics by 1917-1918, and Allies started deploying tanks en masse by the time, but it was quite slow reaction, given massive casualties of 1915-1916...
Ewok,
I consider the French to be significantly worse, but the Germans measurably better. No British commanders could have done what the Germans did on the Eastern Front from 1914-1916. And it is not coincidence that the changes in German tactical doctrine coincided with von Hindenburg becoming Chief of the German General Staff in the late-summer of 1916.
Had not the German ranks been ravaged by influenza, they might have taken Paris in March, 1918, before the Allies could have recovered.
On the Eastern front Germans had more space for maneuver and lesser quality opponents... And even then they managed to get quite mauled by Brusilov in 1916. (Though relying on Austro-Hungarian allies was one of the reasons too)
URR - I'm about half way through Ernst Junger's "Storm of Steel." Much different take than All Quiet. Have you read it? Your thoughts?
A few years ago I sat next to a brillent gentleman at a charity dinner. He took the position that the Fall of France in 1940 could be explained by Verdun in WWI. [I haven't checked his information, so this is my memory of his take - ] The German Army opposite Verdun was the Crown Prince's Regiment for pretty much the whole time. The French cycled almost their entire Army through that meatgrinder at one point or another. When Germany invaded in 1940, the entire French political leadership had memories of the horrors of trench warfare and basically would do anything to not ever see it again.
I see a very similar reaction in my German friends today. They are in their mid-40s. They are not patriotic (as we in the US would define it) and many of them would prefer to be Europeans than Germans. Given what happened to their country in the 20th Century I understand where they are coming from. Saying "The Germans started it" and "Nazis are evil" is true, but when so many of your family have died, and your cities leveled (at least during WWII) a proud, nationalist and assertive foreign policy doesn't look so hot.
The machine gun catches the popular imagination, but the main killer in WWI was artillery. IT was the first war where artillery did the majority of the killing, and the Germans had more and better artillery in most of their battles.
Nukes are a gift. They're the only weapon ever invented that has managed to scare statesmen enough to make them not want to fight.
Cassander: Civil War, Malvern Hill.
URR, Good picks all. I first read "All Quiet" in junior high school and "Goodbye to All That" is on my to-do list. My two favorite parts in the movie "Gettysburg" are Buford's stand on day one and Chamberlain's defense of Little Round Top. I took a couple of my NATO friends (as well as my teenage daughter) with me to see the movie when it played in Naples. I've walked the ground at Gettysburg and still stand in awe of the courage of the men from both sides.
Andrew, I agree with you. Much of what happened from 1936 onwards can be explained by the French and British experience of 1914-18. At the NWC I attended an excellent lecture by one of the Strategy profs who explained the rise of the Nazis and the Italian Facists in terms of the Great War.
Byron, you bring up an interesting question for me... did the Brits or any of them study our Civil War and battle tactics of our generals at that time?
Sorry our fearless leader cut the BMD out from under y'all, Ewok. Maybe in a few years....
Let's all sing along....
Absolutely, DB, the Brits and the Germans both were battlefield observers. The Germans were particularly interested in Jacksons "foot cavalry" and J.E.B. Stuarts use of cavalry in the deep strike role. 90 years later, it looked a lot like "blitzkrieg".
Once in a century, or the like, there appears a psychopath in the politics, who fails to fear anything and therefore can't be deterred. And while w were lucky to have reasonable people in charge of nukes for now, accelerating proliferation means more and more chances of nuke-armed madman on the loose.
At least we will be always welcoming Aegis boats in our ports :)
Sal, Excuse the ignorance, but what film was the second clip taken from ?? Wife's grandmother was an Army nurse in that war awarded the Silver Star - Chateau Thierry I believe
DB, All the major European powers had military observers in the field with Union and Confederate forces. In 1863 LCOL Arthur Freemantle, of the Coldstream Guards, published a best selling account of his time with the Confederate Army that included the Battle of Gettysburg. Unfortunately, the official reports of these observers, which included assessments of massed, rifled artillery; the use of railroads to move troops and supplies, repeating rifles, etc. were mostly filed away. The official opinion in most European militaries was that the Civil War experience was unique to the United States and had little applicability to their armed forces.
Thanks, gentlemen! Stuff I never read in the history books....
Wonder how different history would have been if they had paid more attention and didn't suffer from a critical lack of imagination.
perhaps even more than Gettysburg the siege of Petersburg was a prediction of things to come - long lines of trenches being very hard to break thru...
ewok, Petersburg was discussed although it was seen more in terms of siege warfare, which certainly wasn't new. In general, although many of their observers felt that something revolutionary had happened, the leadership of most European militaries concluded that they had little to learn from our Civil War.
An interesting battle i'd not heard of, but I'm a bit unsure as to the relevance. Civil war artillery was still basically Napoleonic, while stuff they used in WWI was basically modern. The French 75mm was the first modern hydraulic recoil gun, but by 1914 the germans had many more and larger guns, and more of them were howitzers rather than direct fire. hydraulic recoil meant that the gun would't move after firing, resulting in much more rapid and accurate fire.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the rifle wasn't a lot deadlier than the musket, just that it wasn't the technology that drove the dynamics of WWI
Cassander, before you dismiss it, google it.
I did Byron. Just demonstrates my point that 19th century artillery couldn't be counted on.
Andrew,
It is on my (ever-lengthening) list, but I am anxious to read "Storm". I hear it is superb. Agree so far?
BTW at Somme artillery failed too despite enormous ammo expenditure... well dug-in infantry has to be smoked out in direct firefight/assault by well trained infantry (of course with all needed support) usually... Has been proven time and again, thru Grozny and Lebanon lately.
ewok,
I would not consider artillery at the Somme as having "failed". The mission of cutting the wire, always a a dubious prospect despite CIGS and senior commander assurance to the contrary, did not occur. But German artillery took a frightful toll of the attackers.
Cannon fire did indeed account for the vast majority of casualties on the Western Front. The improvements in rate of fire, projectile effectiveness, accuracy, fire direction and tactics, all increased lethality of artillery at least as greatly as did Maxim's little device did small arms. The great shortages of shells were due to exponentially higher expenditure rates than predictions pre-war. Not because of their ineffectiveness, but because of their effectiveness. Artillery became the only viable solution (and in many cases was) to a successful defense, and even a necessary component of offensive success.
We tend to miss the boat on retrospectively pointing to the various Revolutions in Military Affairs. Those developments that changed the battlefield forever. The Great War saw three, and in order of importance they were:
1. The cannon recoil system
2. The rapid fire machine gun
3. The combat aircraft
You should add at least the submarine as Germany came close to defeating RN before convoy system was adopted...OTOH aircraft became truly effective only in the last years before WW2. The rapid-firing guns were effective indeed, but well dug-in infantry can survive truly horrendous amounts of indirect firepower and still remain effective. OTOH infantry caught in the open by artillery is massacre.
What you say is true Ewok, but my assertion would be that there would be no Brotish commander who, given the same conditions as Hindenburg and Ludendorff had in 1914, could have had the acumen and imagination to have executed a Tannenberg or a Masurian Lakes.
And you are correct about the Brusilov offensive, in that the Kaiser's army took a beating in saving the situation for the Austro-Hungarians, whose performance was dismal. There was no British commander who could have rescued that situation, either.
I could add the submarine, perhaps, though not yet as a decisive weapon of war, as a fairly minor shift in tactics (convoys) defeated the majority of the threat. And I have always argued that the real RMA with submarines was not the vessels themselves, but the development of the powered torpedo. Beginning with the Whitehead design in the early years of the century, those weapons would drastically affect battle at sea far beyond their use by submarines.
But we have just strayed from France into the North Cape....
ewok,
Agree absolutely. My command and staff essay addressed just that subject.
That the American armies and battlefields of 1864-5 would look a lot more like 1914-15 than 1814-15, which is what they resembled in 1861.
Passchendale.
"<span>20,000 killed in one battle on one side. This was a burning of the crop and destruction of the seed corn... imagine if an Einstein or a Saulk was one of the casualties? "</span>
Harry Moseley, killed at Gallipoli. It's been said that his death alone made the war a "hideous and irreparable crime." If he hadn't been killed he quite possibly would've won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1916...through his experimentation he was pretty much singlehandedly responsible for taking the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom that we use today from being an obscure crackpot theory that no one believed to making it the commonly accepted model.
Dude is it it pathologic with you?
...was just trying to add to what you said? Hadn't been through this comment thread yet and was looking today. Wasn't attacking, although you apparently took it as such...
URR - Outstanding and a quick read. Very much "just the facts" and not a lot of introspection. Amazing the guy lasted the entire war. Ended up getting shot or shrapnel 11 times (most of them with an entry and exit wound each) - and received the Iron Cross (First Class), the Knights Cross and the Pour Le Merit. Great scene where he is debriefing a staff officer - "why didn't you go left here, instead of right?" - during the heat of the battle, in enemy trenches, he was suppose to figure that out? A lot of the adrenaline rush of battle.
I am sending it to a buddy who is a high school teacher doing the NEH program on The Great War - he's getting his masters in lit and has spent way too much time reading Fusell, Graves, etc. I may also send him Pressfield's Gates of Fire. Lord knows he needs some balance; he's not getting it in the program he's in.
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