Primary source does not equal "good history", any more then secondary source equals "bad history". All primary source means is "eye-witness". It doesn't mean that Al's granddad had more knowledge, a more valid opinion, an unbiased opinion; it just means that he was part of it when it was happening. Make your own judgements about whether being close to events makes for an accurate assessment of what actually happened.

As for "false revisionist pro establishment view of WW1", I find myself on the opposite side to Musket again (great-great-granddad was German, Musket, if you want to put me in the pickelhaube! ;-) ). I've been interested in WWI for 30+ years. Yes, my granddad fought, he was wounded twice, the second time in both shoulders. In fact, the first time (if memory serves) was about a week after he was sent to France. Nice going. But he died when I was 3, so no, I've never spoken to a primary source & I never will.

The generals, in all armies, were neither blameless professionals nor butchers & bunglers. They fought a war that had never really been fought before (the ACW & the Franco-Prussian, the only big industrialised wars, were not on the same scale), without the experience or the knowledge to do so, in an age when everyone at every level of society was, well, an amateur. Time & motion, professionalism & all that jazz hadn't really been thought about.

Most importantly, they had to command vast armies without the communications necessary to understand what was happening or to be able to control them in any reasonable time-scale. No radio communication for a start.

The likes of Montgomery, Rommel, Eisenhower, etc got their "on the job" training in WWI. WWII would have been, well, WWI without WWI! If it's "revisionist" to suggest that, whatever the job they did, the likes of Haig, Foch, Hindenburg, et al did the best they could in the circumstances, then I'm a revisionist. False? No, I don't think so. I've read the apologists like Terraine & Corrigan, I've read the "Butchers & bunglers" (MacDonald, Horne, and too many to mention, since it was a popular tack through the 50's, 60's, and 70's). I've even read the liars, such as Alan Clark. The "truth", insofar as there can be a truth, lies somewhere between.

I do think that more distance & less "eye-witness" emotion has allowed more recent historians to make a better assessment of what really happened. You can read A.G.Lee, you can read V.M.Yeates. They were both accredited fighter aces in WWI. They have fairly opposite points of view. I don't know that their involvement makes them better historians than F.J.Bloggs, born 50 years afterwards!