Spare a thought at 07:30 tomorrow morning for 90th Anniversary of the greatest single-day disaster to befall the British Army. 60,000 casualties including 20,000+ dead in an area you can walk around in a single day. Nothing was ever quite the same after 'The Somme'. BTW, forum members Sommecourt and Airborne Medic are hosting battlefield tours over there this weekend, with many thousands expected to attend.
Definitely Martin! I´ll put an alarm to wake me. I can go back to sleep but back then so many lost their lives...Just think about it!
I have not read up much on the battle until your posting about it. I mostly read about the WWI aircraft. Were the British people informed of the great losses or was it kept secret ? If not was there any out cry for better results ? Seems like there would be but I don't understand the mentality of the times back then, or now for that matter. 60,000 losses in a day due to a stupid idea seems more than an army could recover from. I wonder if any of the survivors thought the land gained was worth it ?
It's a good question, Ta. The Somme changed British society for ever. The Army which went 'over the top' at the Somme was 100% volunteer - no conscripts. The country was sold the idea of 'one big push - and we will win'. Not even the propaganda of the time could hide the colossal casualty lists which began to appear in the newspapers. Until that time, if someone in authority asked you to do something - you did it. If 'King and Country needed you' - then, off you went. The Somme killed that notion for ever. After the Somme came conscription. There was no revolution as in Russia, but in WWII Montgomery, Brooke and the other British Generals knew that they wouldn't be allowed to throw lives away : one reason why Monty appeared over-cautious in American eyes.
TA, The official movie reels of the offensive were shown in British cinemas at the time as an idea to boost morale, but the relatively uncensored scenes from the front had the exact opposite effect.They were quickly withdrawn for a quick trim, then sent back out on limited public release. Back in the '70s, the BBC made a working-class drama called When the Boat Comes in which was set in the Tyneside shipyards. In the first episode, the main character (home on leave from the front) is sitting in his local flea pit laughing at the Somme movie. When asked why by an outraged woman, he tries to explain to her that she is watching a sanitized version of the original. It attracted a lot of flak at first, until the full story later became public. I have both sets of Hammerton Press's magazines called The War Illustrated for both wars, which were published weekly so that the public could have them bound into volumes later. Even by the standards of the day, the WW1 series is just one long propaganda exercise.
Thank you for the information Martin and Gordon. I will have to read up on WWI but as you both know we will have to take speed reading or live to be very old to cover all the history books we are wanting to read. I will have to see if they put, "When the Boat Comes In", on video. WWI is short changed by Hollywood compared to other wars. It sounds like a good show. I can remember back in 1968 and 1978 very little in this country was publisized about the 50th and 60th annerversery of the ending of the war. 1968 was anti-war and 1978 was apathy in general. That must have hurt the veterans.
I know what you mean ! FWIW, if you want to learn about 'The Somme' and want a good read as well, the one book I'd wholeheartedly recommend is Martin Middlebrook's 'The First Day On The Somme' . It was his first book, it's been reprinted many times, and it falls into the category of once read - never forgotten.
When the Boat Comes In ran for years TA, so there's every chance some of it is on DVD by now. Be aware though that it covered through to the Depression, so it's not all WW1. What kicked off Great War interest in Britain was the fact that the BBC documentary series The Great War started it's original run around 1965, with scripts written by John Terraine (among others) and original newsreel. This was the prototype for The World at War, which followed the same pattern. Unfortunately, TGW hit the spot for all the wrong reasons; a lot of what is passed off as "fact" about the period is actually opinion based on the general '60s zeitgeist; an archaeologist friend was shocked to hear of the existence of WW1 POW camps in Britain, since she was under the impression that very few prisoners were taken and they were kept in a dozen or so camps on the Continent.
Just back from the Somme - very busy time out there, with more than 10,000 people attending the service of remembrance at Thiepval. I will be adding some photos etc in due course on my Somme site: http://www.somme-1916.com/
