Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military)

by Gordon Corrigan

  The BEF that went to France in 1939 had been starved of money and resources until the very last minute; it lacked the professionalism of its 1914 predecessor and had very much the same equipment, but rather less of it. It was the British who had invented the tank, but the Germans who had taken note of it and developed the tank arm. German tanks in 1940 were no more advanced than those of their opponents, and fewer in quantity than the combined total of French and British; but what the Germans had done was to perfect all-arms cooperation, with armour, infantry, artillery and air forces working together. It was not that French and British of the Second War did not understand these things: simply that the Germans did them better.

  A democracy, and particularly a democracy that faces no immediate threat by land, such as Britain, will always be at a disadvantage at the beginning of a war. We do not wish, nor can we afford, large armies or universal conscription. There are no votes to be gained on defence issues in peacetime, and funding for education, health, welfare and public transport will inevitably take precedence over the armed forces. There will always be political interference in matters military, and that is the price we have to pay for living in a liberal, just, free society. Few would have it otherwise, but with that must go the recognition that there will always be a Somme, or a Normandy, when this nation puts a mass army into battle against a first-class enemy. Accept that, or do not bother to fight.

  To those who aver that there will never be another war of the scale of the two great conflicts of the twentieth century, one can only reply that such contentions have been disproved over and over again in the history of this nation. It is difficult to see another war between the powers of Western Europe – the European Economic Community, and its successor the European Union, have bound their economies together too tightly for war to be possible – but Russia is as yet a halting democracy, and China still sleeps. The prospect of Arab unity at some time in the future is not entirely far-fetched, nor may the vast continent of Africa remain for ever a fragmented economic basket case ruled over by quarrelling and incompetent dictators. The next Somme may be ten years away, or fifty, or a hundred; but it will come. In the meantime we should do well to remember that the only nation able, and conceivably likely, to come to our aid in the event of a major conflagration is the United States of America. America is no longer populated almost exclusively by Englishmen abroad: it would pay to be nice to her.

  In this book I have tried to show that the Great War of 1914 to 1918 was a just war, which Britain was right to join; indeed she had no other viable option, both in terms of morality and in terms of her own interests. As King George V said to Walter Page, the American ambassador to London, when he asked the King why Britain had entered the war, ‘Mr Page, what else could we have done?’ Given that we had to fight on land, rather than simply blockade our enemy, the absence of universal military service before the war made it necessary to raise a huge citizen army – an army that had no experience, was short of men to train it, and lacked equipment of all types. The New Army’s first encounter with all-out war on the Somme was inevitably shocking. The army learned, and improved continuously as time went on. I have emphasised that this was a coalition war, and that to look at it only from the stance of what the British army did is to miss the point. Haig and his generals may not have been the best team that the British army has ever produced, but they were pretty good, and did their best with what they had in a war whose like had never been contemplated. The men who served under them also thought the generals were pretty good, for had there not been trust between leader and led the British army would surely have gone the way of the French.

  There are very few veterans of the First War alive in Britain today: perhaps 100, all at least a century old, and the number shrinks by the week. Within a year, or at the most two, there will be none left. Even the children of the men who fought in the Great War are in their eighties, and their grandchildren are mature adults. The British people have chosen to snipe, to sneer, to believe that all was a waste and achieved nothing. It is true that very many British soldiers were killed; but in the last analysis that is what soldiers are for. Everything has its price, and the price of victory in war is the death of many of the people who contribute to it. The Great War is an episode in our history, not an emotional experience. In 1918 the soldiers thought they had won a great and just victory. There was glory, and there was pride. In what those men did, and in how they did it, we too should feel pride today.

  NOTES

  1 The American forces do not normally promote above the rank of General. Pershing was eventually a general as commander of the AEF. In Washington the Chief of Staff of the army, its professional head, was only an acting general, and reverted to major general after the end of hostilities. A few officers (George Marshall and Omar Bradley amongst them) have been elevated to General of the Army (equivalent to field marshal). General of the Armies is superior to that, and the British have no equivalent.

  2 American history has a habit of throwing up soldiers as Presidents in the aftermath of war: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Pershing could have been adopted as the Republican candidate had he really wanted it, and had he bothered to campaign energetically; he would also probably have won the election. He might well have made a very good President.

  3 Argument still rages as to the legality of the trial. The Vichy government, which controlled unoccupied France and those French overseas territories that had not declared for de Gaulle’s Free French or been occupied by the British, was a legal government, and the USA, Canada and the USSR, amongst others, had accredited diplomats to it. The legal arguments that preceded the trial centred on the fact that Pétain exercised authority in the name of the ‘French State’, as opposed to the ‘French Republic’ whose powers he had been voted.

  4 Report of the Committee on the Lessons of the Great War, The War Office, London, 1932 (Public Record Office, Kew, PRO WO33/1297).

  5 See Jonathan Bailey, The First World War and the Birth of the Modern Style of Warfare, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, Camberley, 1996. This pamphlet is particularly good on the development of artillery – the author is now (2002) the British army’s Director Royal Artillery.

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