A war of attrition
Alan Judd
THE SOMME by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson Yale, £19.95, pp. 358, ISBN 0300106947 THE SOMME by Peter Hart Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 589, ISBN 0297847058 ✆ £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 This is Somme time, the time of year when the British nation is reminded of the British army’s worst day in battle (in terms of casualties): 1 July 1916, when it sustained 57,470 casualties, of whom 19,240 were killed. The words since spawned by that grim day must by now outnumber the bullets and shells fired during it and each year there are fresh books to remind us. For 2006, the 90th anniversary, we can expect a barrage.
Despite the mountain of commentary, the date and those figures are all that most will recall of it. In fact, such is our Somme-centricity, it’s all that many will know about that war at all. They will not, for example, appreciate that the Somme was actually a series of battles lasting into November 1916, by which time the armies of Britain and its dominions had suffered some 419,654 casualties (131,000 dead), that the French fought it too (204,253 casualties), that the enemy (whoever thinks about them?) suffered casualties varyingly estimated at about 230,000 or 450,000 plus, that the battle was launched on the 132nd day of that even greater inferno, Verdun (which features little in our historic consciousness, perhaps because no British war poets were present), and that the eventual result was the 25-mile German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in order to avoid more of what they called ‘Somme fighting’. Less still is it appreciated that the French army had suffered a barely credible 955,000 casualties by the end of 1914.
Many will, however, take it as read that the British military leadership was callous and incompetent, that the political leadership was venal and self-serving and that all the Tommies went like sheep to the slaughter at walking pace, shoulderto-shoulder. If they achieve nothing else, these two books should provide some corrective to the ignorance and mythology of so much of what passes for first world war history.
Robin Prior’s and Trevor Wilson’s The Somme is the more polemical, arguing that the role of politicians during both the Somme and the rest of the war — particularly the role of the War Committee — is still underestimated. From the 1914 deployment of the British Expeditionary Force onwards, every major event or strategy resulted from or required a political decision. Lloyd George’s suggestion that the generals were either out of control or not up to it, and that war was too important to be left to them, was never true; the politicians were as responsible as the generals for the way the war was fought and equally incapable of changing it.
Prior and Wilson persuasively attribute the grisly cost of 1 July not to inadequate infantry training and tactics, as has often been claimed, but to inadequate artillery support. Gunnery was less developed than later in the war and in those parts of the Somme front where the guns were more co-ordinated infantry gains were greatest. The authors are also critical of the attacks launched after 1 July for being too piecemeal, fought on fronts that were too narrow and with too little support. Although not all of this is new to first world war studies, it is a valuable corrective. However, some of the book’s assertions are too contentious to be accepted without more evidence than is offered. For instance, Prior and Wilson say it was ‘never Haig’s intention’ that the Somme should relieve pressure on Verdun (though it did) and that throughout the battles Haig vainly hoped to win the campaign (if not the war) at a stroke i.e. that his claim that he realised the war could be won only by attrition was a later rationalisation. Yet in a letter written before the battle (quoted in Hart’s book) Haig was explicit that his policy was ‘to draw off pressure from Verdun’ and ‘not to think that we can for a certainty destroy the power of Germany this year ... we must also aim at improving our positions with a view to making sure of the result of a campaign next year.’ This is less a question of being proor anti-Haig (though the tenor of Prior’s and Wilson’s book is anti) than of seeking to understand why it was that nobody in any army in that war found a way of fighting it without heavy casualties, why everyone naturally sought a breakthrough as a way of ending the slaughter and why no one found one. In this respect, Peter Hart’s The Somme, a more detailed, less polemical study, shows more understanding of the achievements, failures and limitations of those involved. No one had fought a war like this before and no British commanders had any experience of fighting a battle on the scale of the Somme. It was fought neither at the place nor at the time that Haig wanted, but he was given no choice. Industrialised warfare inevitably incurs a high butcher’s bill; casualty rates during the second world war Normandy campaign equalled those of the trenches, but we’re less aware of them because the campaign was shorter. Haig and his generals got many things wrong, particularly in the battles after 1 July, but they did grasp the attritional nature of that war. ‘They may have been unimaginative,’ says Hart, ‘they were definitely ruthless when required, but above all they were hard, practical men and they were entirely right.’ 1918 proved it.
For many readers, however, the most memorable feature of Hart’s book will be his extensive quotations from those who were there. As might be expected of the Oral Historian of the Imperial War Museum, his use of this material is vivid and varied, never less than compelling, and it amounts to the most comprehensive and insightful account of the vast tragedy of the Somme that I have read. If you feel you can take only one book on the subject, read this; if you’re a student of the war, read both.
Alan Judd is the author, with David Crane, of the National Portrait Gallery’s First World War Poets.
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