Jim, I have provided links and quotes for about a dozen historians.
You reject them all for various reasons, but you can not produce a single current historian to challenge any of them.
Nor will you.

Musket, you suggest "count the graves and read the accounts of men in the trenches."

We all know the count, and I have read many accounts starting with Sassoon and Graves.
The historians have researched all the accounts available.

On history, I believe the historians.
You people believe all the historians are deluded liars.

Which is the most rational view?