"The songs of the period, Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Canadian, USian, French, German, Turkish, Italian..., written at the time, tend to be as cutting and dismissive of the military leadership as those written much later."

Good heavens, any examples that go beyond typical military "black humour" coupled with their inherent ability to laugh at themselves and at any situation and under any circumstances they found themselves in.

As to those who wrote such songs much later - hindsight is bloody marvellous isn't it - but given the tools of the day nobody could have done any better as evidenced by comparison of military casualty rates for the First and Second World Wars (For the British, Commonwealth & Empire troops 9 out of 10 survived in both cases. German, French, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Italian losses were much higher so if the British were badly led then the others must have really badly led but at the end of it all the victory celebrations took place in London and in Paris, NOT Berlin and Vienna). The Germans in the First World War introduced the indiscriminate bombing of civilian centres of population that was further developed in the Second World War, yet the blockade of Germany by the Royal Navy in the First World War killed more German civilians than the RAF and USAAF strategic bombing campaign did in the Second.

Anybody wishing to reopen a thread or create a thread to discuss any of this feel free to do so, but somehow I don't think anybody will.