|
Martin Gilbert’s The Somme is the latest
addition to the growing body of literature on the bloodiest battle
ever fought by the British army. In the summer of 1916 General Sir
Douglas Haig, in his first major battle as Commander-in-Chief, had
completed plans to attack in strength along a fourteen-mile front,
with the object of opening a wide gap in the opposing line through
which his cavalry would sweep forward into open country. Most of the
divisions that participated in the assault were green, made up of
volunteers who had eagerly answered the call to defend their
country. Some who had lied about their ages were as young as
fifteen, while others were over fifty. They were probably the finest
body of men Britain had ever put in uniform but they were
insufficiently trained to operate under conditions of trench
warfare. The British High Command seemed to think that its recruits
were incapable of learning anything other than the simplest of
maneuvers. Thus instead of the tried and tested “fire and movement,”
when some lay down to cover the advance of rest with rifle volleys,
the troops were instructed to advance, almost shoulder to shoulder,
in a series of long, continuous rows. During the first day of the
attack, the British army suffered 57,470 casualties, 19,240 of whom
were killed or died of their wounds.
The causes of this calamity are not difficult to
determine. The weight of the preliminary bombardment had failed to
cut the enemy’s barbed wire in many places or to collapse the deep
dug-outs where the defenders were sheltered. Thus when the British
soldiers clambered out of their trenches and made their way into no
man’s land they were inexorably mowed down, wave after wave, by a
pitiless stream of machine-gun and rifle fire. There was no question
of calling a halt to the battle because of the inauspicious start,
however tragic. The lengthy preparations involved, the need to ease
pressure on the French at Verdun, and Haig’s optimistic outlook,
dictated perseverance. The battle dragged on day after day with the
same dreary pattern. The attackers waded through pocked-marked,
muddy terrain, absorbing heavy casualties for negligible gains. At
last the weather in mid November compelled Haig to terminate the
campaign. During the four-and-a-half-month-long battle (1 July to 18
November 1916) the British army sustained 420,000 casualties, yet
nowhere had the Allied line advanced more than eight miles.
Gilbert, who has authored many books, is normally
unafraid to wade into troubled waters but there is nothing
controversial about his account of the Somme. His intention is to
investigate, not the battle as a whole, but rather an aspect of it.
He does not dwell on the happenings at British Army Headquarters,
the part played by politicians during the various phases of the
campaign and why it was allowed to continue in spite of the
staggering losses. These topics have been amply covered in the past,
most recently by Prior and Wilson in their superb monograph, The
Somme.[1]
Nor does Gilbert involve himself in the ongoing dispute among
military historians about the generalship of Haig and his principal
subordinates, and whether the battle seriously degraded the German
army or was the ultimate symbol of folly and futility. Instead he
tells the story of the Somme through the eyes of hundreds
participants who fought face to face with the enemy. As these men
wrote down their observations or feelings, they had no way of
knowing the outcome or whether they would live through the battle.
Indeed, many of those quoted in the book did not survive. Gilbert
has gone to great lengths to give the names of the cemeteries in
which many lie or, if they could not be identified, the monument on
which their names are listed. A number of first-rate maps show the
location of the cemeteries.
Gilbert is an excellent writer, a clear thinker,
and a bear for research. His selection of contemporary accounts,
mostly British but a few German as well, cover many facets of the
experience of battle—such as the daily life of front-line soldiers
when not in action; infantrymen witnessing the wholesale slaughter
of their friends; the execution of soldiers for supposed acts of
cowardice; and airmen engaged in dogfights or dropping bombs on
enemy targets. Interwoven with diary entries and letters are a
number of photographs and a series of outstanding maps depicting the
fighting over the course of the campaign. No other account of the
battle, not even Malcolm Brown’s,[2]
has conveyed the distant painful events with such intimacy.
The book, however, is not without flaws. There
are at least two factual errors. Gilbert identifies Donald Hankey, a
second lieutenant in the 1st battalion, Royal Warwickshire who was
killed leading his platoon, as the son of Sir Maurice Hankey, then
secretary of the War Committee (216). In fact, Donald Hankey was the
brother of Sir Maurice. Then too Gilbert indicates that the Somme
“prevented the Germans from transferring troops to where they were
badly needed on the Russian and Rumanian fronts” (257). As it
happened, the Germans reinforced the Russian front by sending nine
divisions from the west in July and August, plus five more between
August and October to deal with the Rumanians. But my main criticism
is with the structure of the book. At the outset Gilbert neglects to
lay out the battle plan in detail and the role of each local
commander. As a result, the general reader has no idea of the
connection between the individual actions and how their objectives
fit into the larger picture. Moreover, Gilbert frequently provides
brief biographies of the individuals he quotes and, if they happened
to have fallen at the Somme or elsewhere, the location of their
graves. Such information is interesting to the readers and
particularly useful to those who wish to pay their respects at the
gravesides, but it also interrupts the flow of the narrative. A more
appropriate place for it would have been an appendix.
For the general reader who wants to know how it
felt for the men who did the fighting, Gilbert’s book is the single
best account yet written. Still, for all its virtues, it falls short
of what I expected of someone of Gilbert’s stature.
Eastern Michigan University
gcassar@emich.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
