"The author was ashamed to put his name to it, so clearly no historian."
What a crass statement
"I am just repeating the historians."
No you are not - you are throwing up names and claiming support - nothing more
You have claimed Paxman backed your case - you have been given examples of statements in the programme - you refuse to respond
"Had to fight.
Peoples' support.
Well led."
All covered and called into question by Paxman - all unanswered by you.
Paxman covered all the differing reasons young men (boys sometimes) joined up - you insist that they joined up dedicated to the war and returned the same.
You have been given actual instances of veterans who have written or spoken of their being conned or blackmailed with 'white feathers' or have gone off with commitment and returned disillusioned - "misfits or attention seeking liars all" according to you.
These would include the last survivor of World War One, Irish poet Patrick McGill and the Liverpool docker we spent three days recording - all dismissed.
You hitched your wagon to Paxman yet refuse to respond to what the programmes said - you have yet to deal with those who came home on leeave and were disillusioned and the ignorance and indifference of those at home and the fact that the Military locked Sassoon in a lunatic asylum to silence his descriptions of the war.
You ignored the corruption connected with recruiting, the racketeering connected with food rationing, the inadequacy of home defences.....
You refuse to respond to the contradictions of your own statement describing the warfare between the Prime Minister and his generals, or the behind-the-scenes disputes among the military staff - straight out of 'Oh What a Lovely War'
You ignore the fact that your dissident historians have described themselves as out-of-step in attempting to correct the popular view.
You have attempted to manipulate history in order to show that what soldiers said about their experiences were lies and that historian who were writing at the time of the war, or in the immediate period following were all wrong and on;ly those coming a century later and still living are to be believed EVEN THOUGH NO CONSENSUS VIEW OF THE WAR EXISTS
You are a coulpe of weirdos
Jim Carroll