The generals come off as buffoons, unwilling or unable to see that the cavalry was no longer effective, that the machine gun, gas, and other developments had changed dramatically the nature of war. Now a shovel, to dig ditches, was more valuable then a horse, a sword, a lance. And most importantly, there was no possibility of glory, of mano y mano combat, as the troops just sat in trenches, waiting to charge and be gunned down. It's unimaginable to think of what these young men went through though Robert Graves GOOD BYE TO ALL THAT is about as close as you can get.
Like many books about war, the statistics about the number of men killed are unimaginable; the Russians, always the worst, lost 90,000 men in six weeks early in the war. That pales next to the numbers lost during the Purge in the 1930's and during the war, I know, with estimates around 60 million, still, this was in a six week period.
Still, it's hard to understand the lure of war on the soldier, on the young, and it's the same for all wars. Here is a quotation from the text which tries to explain this: " The more wrenching and painful the experience, the greater the sense of belonging to a fraternity that no mere civilian could penetrate. Although the poet Robert Graves felt the war was 'wicked nonsense'...he found conversations with his parents (on leave) 'all but impossible.' In the end, he cut short his leave time and returned to the front. Veteran Guy Chapman adds: "Once you have lain in her arms (said of war), you can admit no other mistress. You may loathe, you may execrate, but you cannot deny her... No wine gives fiercer intoxication, no drug more vivid exaltation....Even those who hate her most are prisoners to her spell. They rise from her embraces, pillaged, soiled, it may be ashamed, but they are still hers (212-13).'" Chris Hedges added in today's The Writer's Almanac: "War gives us a distorted sense of self. It gives us meaning. It creates a feeling of comradeship that obliterates our alienation and makes us feel, for perhaps the first time in our lives, that we belong."
Perhaps the most upsetting is the incompetence and politics surrounding the Generals who ran the war. Field Marshall Haig was not only incompetent, unable to learn from experience, but used his political clout to keep his position. He lived like a pasha, in a castle, with retainers, servants, horses, etc., while his men existed in squalor. He continually devised plans to roust the Germans, each time a disaster, where thousands of men died for no reason other than his belief in his strategy and his God. At home, it was not much better as the government and military intervened with the press to make sure that the truth of the war, what was really going on, never drizzled down to the people, thus the people even in the 1917 were strongly in support of the war. Madness. Certainly, there were CO's and the like, and they were, for the most part, permitted to espouse their views, unlike other countries, but they were carefully monitored by Scotland Yard, to make sure they didn't go to far.
I have to admit am getting tired of this book, the same things over and over, lost battles, incompetence, fear of revolution or uprisings at home, with hardly a wift of something new, other than the coming of the United States into the war, finally, which ultimately turned the tide, as Germany's last putsch failed/ 200,000 American troops a month poured into Europe because of a German decision to use submarines to stop the US from sending supplies to Europe and an intercepted code from
Germany to Mexico promising them Texas and New Mexico if they came in on the side of Germany. The fear that Britain and France would not pay off their debts owed to the US also acted as a catalyst for involvement. Germany began to sue for peace only after their failed putsch and the fact that their citizenry, like those in England and Russia, were all living at or below poverty levels, as nothing was left to eat, all going to the war effort. And all powers feared what was going on in Russia, the supposed rise of the masses to overthrow the powers, wealthy and aristocratic, if only it were so, as Russia devolved into a dictatorship, authoritarian and ruthless, perhaps the most inhuman and deadly the world has ever seen, but that's another chapter.
The peace was just another prelude to war, mostly because of the stiff reparations demanded by the people, who through propagandists, had been made to view Germany as beasts without conscience, inhumane and cruel, and the anger of those countries who felt the brunt of the war, Lloyd George for Britain, Clemenceau for France. That they laid the grounds for WW II and the rise of Hitler is hardly debated any more. The consequences of the assassination back in Serbia in 1914 are staggering: 8.5 million soldiers killed on all sides, 21 million wounded. The toll among the young, of course, was particularly appalling as whole generations of French, British and German men disappeared, strangling the countries economies for decades...these would have been the leaders of a generation. Civilian deaths were estimated at 12-13 million. And to add extra irony, God dropped an influenza epidemic on the world, starting in 1917, with an estimated 50 million world wide, not sparing of course Europe. So, we have the deaths, the destruction of towns, roads, buildings, railroads, the depletion of resources, the enormous debts incurred, the rising of the underclass, and the flu epidemic, and you wonder how anyone survived, lived on. And even more difficult to understand, these three began another war, perhaps worst 25 years later. Madness reigns.
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