GUEST,Raggytash - 17 Nov 14 - 02:34 PM

A number of points raised by your contribution:

1: "I quoted various historians who suggested that the leadership of the troops was less than competent."

Less than competent compared to who? Certainly not compared to their French, German, Italian, Austro-Hungarian, Serbian, Russian, Turkish, Bulgarian counterparts. You stood a better chance of survival in any Army commanded by British or Commonwealth Officers than you would have done in any of those named above and they commanded armies that carried the fight to their enemies from the outset - unlike most of those named above. Was that "leadership" perfect? No of course it wasn't nothing attached to war ever is, but they most certainly did better than most, lessons were learned every step of the way, tactics were improved and changed counter to the lies and misrepresentations depicted by fiction such as OWALW and Blackadder.

2: David Stephenson has far more quotes in support of the point of view:

"that agreement existed among political and intellectual elites that the war was legitimate and necessary, evidence that it would eventually be won."

Or that:

"the Allies' central cause was neither trivial nor unworthy'. He cites as a prime justification the 'genuine liberation' resulting from the expulsion of German forces from the occupied territories, while arguing that 'the destruction of Wilhelm II's autocracy created an opportunity, albeit fleetingly, for a more firmly rooted peace than had existed before 1914."

In the Shepard quote you provide there is no context:
- Whose "obsure and ignoble ends? - Not stated
- Which inept political leaders?
- Which unimaginative generals? - Could hardly be the British and Commonwealth Generals as they were the youngest and most innovative of the lot.

3: Richard Holmes (himself once a brigadier)with regard to Gallipoli "I wanted to show just how lunatic the whole concept of the campaign was"

"The whole concept of the campaign was", or, "the whole concept of the campaign they way it was fought?". I can see the latter but not the former, and the same would go for anybody that has studied it in any detail. Any idea, Raggytash, how close it came to succeeding? Both the initial naval operation to "force the Dardanelles", or the landings? Both would have been outstandingly successful and Turkey would have been knocked out of the war had the ships literally tried it "just one more time" (The reason? - Because on the day the Allies decided to abandon the naval assault the Turkish Gun Batteries and emplacements had all run out of ammunition with absolutely no hope of resupply). Of the landings - had the troops who made the landings at Suvla been ordered to proceed inland immediately to take the heights then the Turks would have been cut off completely and left with no alternative apart from surrender.

On Richard Holmes:

"Holmes's passion for the history of conflict was fired during his last year at school when he was transfixed by the BBC series The Great War, shown in 26 parts in 1964. "I was hooked from the start," he recalled. "It was the first time I had seen early film slowed down so that men and horses did not walk with a jerky quickstep. And although I was about to go to Cambridge to read History and thought myself no end of a scholar, it was the first time I had seen it suggested that the war's generals might be anything other than mindless and inarticulate butchers."

Remember that date 1964 now this from his Obituary:

"Forty years on, in his book Tommy (2004), Holmes continued to repudiate the view, promoted by the war poets, that the troops of the First World War were poorly led. He also re-examined the enduring legends about the prevalence of shellshock, drunkenness in the trenches, and soldiers shot at dawn for cowardice or desertion, pointing out that 90 per cent of death sentences were commuted."



4: "Peter Hart with regard to the Somme "Haig's Big Push was a human catastrophe" "Passchendaele came to epitomise the futility and pathos of the whole of WW1"

Really is that the same Peter Hart they are reviewing here:

"Hart does not duck some of the wider issues that are raised by the war. He writes from a tradition of British military history that for 30 years has sought to rescue the reputations of generals such as Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander on the western front for most of the conflict, and to show that the entire war cannot be summed up in the ghastly first day of the Battle of the Somme, when the British army suffered its highest-ever number of casualties.

The Somme lasted for four months and, the military historians argue, was part of a learning curve (their term) that continued for the rest of the war. By 1918 the British had mastered a new kind of industrial warfare, the nature of which no one had understood in 1914, and which, with tanks and aircraft, heavy artillery and integrated arms, tipped the balance against defensive trench warfare and played the decisive role in the final victory.

Such a thesis is at loggerheads with the idea of the war as futile butchery (and of Haig as the British butcher) that is summed up by the interwar "literature of disenchantment" (Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen) and expressed, for most people nowadays, by Owen's haunting poetry. Yet the military historians, to their chagrin, feel that they have lost this battle and that Owen's "pity of war" vision commands popular perceptions of the conflict."

Yes Raggytash by all means "If you are going to argue a corner please, at least, ensure your information is correct." Only thing is there is absolutely nothing at fault with the information that either myself or Keith are relaying to anybody reading this thread and the others on this topic.

5: "There are always belligerent bastards around, like me, who will check your "facts"

Good, very pleased to hear that, now tell us what "facts" have either myself or Keith got wrong. The basic message is:

A: That the British and Commonwealth soldiers knew full well what they were fighting for, they were neither conned or duped into anything.

B: That the British, Commonwealth and Empire Troops were generally well led throughout the period of the Great War. A war that saw the size of the British Army increase out of all proportion to any other Army of any other 1914 combatant nation. A war that in the closing months saw only the British and Commonwealth Armies capable of mounting offensive operations

C: That in terms of tactics it was the British Army that devised the means by which the stalemate on the "western front" could be broken and victory assured.