We go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name

Christopher Hitchens reviews Peter Hart’s The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front:

From Hart’s book I was able to learn and grasp (and even picture) the historic importance of the “creeping,” or perhaps better say “staggered,” barrage. The descriptions one has so often seen, of entire ranks and files of British infantry lying dead almost symmetrically, like so much freshly scythed wheat, are all true. But these men were being expended while the British artillery struggled to evolve a system of covering bombardment that “walked” in front of them, smashing trench after trench and clearing them a path. Painstakingly leading us through a series of terrible engagements, Hart succeeds in showing how the gunners got steadily better (as did the guns). He also succeeds in giving one an enhanced respect for the German soldiers who held positions under this unbelievable rain of fire and were still—almost always—ready to fight. Sometimes they were too stunned and deafened and dazed to do anything but surrender, or rather, try to do so. An unpleasantly recurrent theme in the diaries and letters of British soldiers—Niall Ferguson has also been able to be honest about this often-avoided question—is the casual or even gloating way in which the Tommys boasted of killing German prisoners.

In America, World War II is really the Great War, but I’ve become convinced that World War I was the worst thing to ever happen in the history of the world.

Posted by on October 18th, 2009 at 2:26 pm


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