The Somme 1916

lloyd

rlw said:

lloyd said:

Jesus what a cluster fuck of wasted lives.

Poor bastards, I weep when I see the graves or any footage.

Lost a lot of great grand uncles as most did, the only reason I'm here is because my great grandfather got "lucky"

Disgusting chapter in Europes history.

RIP to the fallen and hats off to the French that keep the graves bloody immaculate.

It isn't the French but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. (I think).

I don't want to get bogged down in semantics but whoever does it, does a great job, no doubt some French gravekeepers on the pay roll.

DaevidJ

My grandfather served in the Royal Field Artillery there and at Mons...

Shameful waste of life

lloyd

Here's some poetry by a Welsh poet named Hedd Wyn, he's basically our Siegfried Sassoon, died at Paschendale in 1917. 

Was awarded the chair (anonymously) in the Eisteddfod for his work, only for it to be announced at the ceremony that he'd died 6 weeks earlier.

Bloody grim stuff.

Gwae fi fy myw mewn oes mor ddreng,
   A Duw ar drai ar orwel pell;
O'i ôl mae dyn, yn deyrn a gwreng,
   Yn codi ei awdurdod hell.

Pan deimlodd fyned ymaith Dduw
   Cyfododd gledd i ladd ei frawd;
Mae sŵn yr ymladd ar ein clyw,
   A'i gysgod ar fythynnod tlawd.

Mae'r hen delynau genid gynt
   Ynghrog ar gangau'r helyg draw,
A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt,
   A'u gwaed yn gymysg efo'r glaw.

Here's a translation for you saeson, but it's better in Welsh:

Woe is me that I live in an age so boorish*,
   And God at ebb on a distant horizon;
After him, man, (both) lord and commoner,
    Raising his ugly authority.

When he felt God's going away
   He raised a sword to kill his brother;
The sound of battle is on our ear,
   And its shadow on poor cottages.

The old harps that were played before are
   Suspended on the branches of yonder willows,
And the scream of the boys filling the wind,
   And their blood mixed with the rain.

ICBM

dogload said:

Sadly the Battle Of the Somme was partly necessary to relieve the weight of the German offensive at Verdun, which was costing the french heavily ion manpower. Whatever the cost to the men in the Somme battles, it served the purpose of drawing German forces away from Verdun.

Using the men to reinforce Verdun would have been more effective and less costly.

WWI was a war in which defence was far stronger than attack and caused less casualties, so any offensive action at all from the Allies once the navies had decided the outcome of the war at Jutland was the wrong thing to do. Whatever the tactics in any of the offensives after June 1916, they were for nothing.

As ESblonde says they barely advanced more than a few hundred yards in the whole war anyway. On the few occasions when there was a 'breakthrough' and the front moved a couple of miles or so, the attacking side was incapable of following up and the ground was soon lost again.

Pointless doesn't even come close to describing it unfortunately.

Fretwired

Forget this is the Daily Mail .. nice piece about men dressed as soldiers handing out cars .. check the video in Glasgow ..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3669617/Silent-actors-dressed-ghost-soldiers-posted-stations-country-poignant-reminder-lost-bloody-Battle-Somme.html

chillidoggy

Having visited a few of the war graves in France, I found them quite moving, and the sheer size of them astonishing.

ESBlonde

One thing to note is that the German push toward Paris was huge, when stopped it was the allies job to dislodge the invader, so allied trenches were deliberatly temporary whilst the German trenches had concrete bunkers and tunnels etc. and the men slept on beds.
In addition the Germans took thier positions on the best land by retreating a short distance and thus having positions overlooking the allied trenches. It was said at wars end that the soldiers took over the german trenches looked back and could see their own lines laid out like a map, a total contrast.
A lot was learned about warfare as a consequence, sadly we didn't learn not to have war.

CHRISB50

It's hard to fathom the scale of the loss of life that occurred. Just horrible.

My great grandfather was married on a Friday and went to war the following Monday. Came home four years later. He was at the Somme and was lucky enough to make it.

May they all rest in peace.

ESBlonde

Given that the battle commenced 7.30am and nominally ended before dusk at say 9:30pm, thets 14 hours of combat. 14 x60 mins x 60 secs div by 19240 deaths. I know thats simplified and men died before and after that time but the major advances were over by supper time. Statisticly a man dies every 2.6 seconds in that period on that day.

Clarky

lloyd said:

Here's some poetry by a Welsh poet named Hedd Wyn, he's basically our Siegfried Sassoon, died at Paschendale in 1917. 

Was awarded the chair (anonymously) in the Eisteddfod for his work, only for it to be announced at the ceremony that he'd died 6 weeks earlier.

Bloody grim stuff.

Gwae fi fy myw mewn oes mor ddreng,
   A Duw ar drai ar orwel pell;
O'i ôl mae dyn, yn deyrn a gwreng,
   Yn codi ei awdurdod hell.

Pan deimlodd fyned ymaith Dduw
   Cyfododd gledd i ladd ei frawd;
Mae sŵn yr ymladd ar ein clyw,
   A'i gysgod ar fythynnod tlawd.

Mae'r hen delynau genid gynt
   Ynghrog ar gangau'r helyg draw,
A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt,
   A'u gwaed yn gymysg efo'r glaw.

Here's a translation for you saeson, but it's better in Welsh:

Woe is me that I live in an age so boorish*,
   And God at ebb on a distant horizon;
After him, man, (both) lord and commoner,
    Raising his ugly authority.

When he felt God's going away
   He raised a sword to kill his brother;
The sound of battle is on our ear,
   And its shadow on poor cottages.

The old harps that were played before are
   Suspended on the branches of yonder willows,
And the scream of the boys filling the wind,
   And their blood mixed with the rain.

so very sad and yet so beautiful too..

I wish I could speak Welsh

Clarky

for those of you have haven't seen it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022twsy/episodes/guide

I thought it was brilliant..

it's not over done, quite earthy and the characters remind you of people could actually know

Evilmags

Dad´s got copies of old letters written by a friend of his (who I met when he was 98 and I was 6) and its fair to say they make for some extraordinary reading. They pretty much all expected to die. 

I never quite understood why the UK got involved if I´m honest. It cost us millions of lives, we essentially sent loads of innocents who did not know each other to have an argument between people who did, it cost large swathes of empire, led to the Republic of Ireland and put the UK into horrific debt. Then we imposed economic ruin on Germany and gave Hitler the fertile grounds he needed. Insanity.

lloyd

The whole thing was pointless for everyone though wasn't it?

Not just in the way that all wars seem to be pointless but this one was just fucking brain-dead, in it's inception, through to it's tactics-send wave after wave of men running at machine guns stupid.

ICBM

Evilmags said:

I never quite understood why the UK got involved if I´m honest.

It was because we had given a guarantee to Belgium in the 1839 Treaty Of London that Britain would protect Belgian neutrality, so when the Germans invaded Belgium in order to go around the end of the French defensive lines - as they would do again in 1940, you would think someone remembered - we were forced to intervene.

Evilmags

lloyd said:

The whole thing was pointless for everyone though wasn't it?

Not just in the way that all wars seem to be pointless but this one was just fucking brain-dead, in it's inception, through to it's tactics-send wave after wave of men running at machine guns stupid.

The most pointless waste of life in Human history apart from Mao´s Genocide. The more I look at why it happened (it was almost a family fight for fuck sake) the more I´m convinced the world and especially the UK would be a much better place if it the UK had stood by, protected its borders and seas and not killed so many of its own men. Ironically it wiped out the aristocracy (2 generations of inheritance tax at the same time, lovely how those who die in service still get to lose everything) and led to one of the biggest boom and bust cycles in history. 

lloyd

Evilmags said:

lloyd said:

The whole thing was pointless for everyone though wasn't it?

Not just in the way that all wars seem to be pointless but this one was just fucking brain-dead, in it's inception, through to it's tactics-send wave after wave of men running at machine guns stupid.

The most pointless waste of life in Human history apart from Mao´s Genocide. The more I look at why it happened (it was almost a family fight for fuck sake) the more I´m convinced the world and especially the UK would be a much better place if it the UK had stood by, protected its borders and seas and not killed so many of its own men. Ironically it wiped out the aristocracy (2 generations of inheritance tax at the same time, lovely how those who die in service still get to lose everything) and led to one of the biggest boom and bust cycles in history. 

I think I looked into how it all kicked off, beyond knowing some guy got killed by a 'Slav  a year or two ago (probably to the day) and there's just a cluster fuck of information out there that points to no actual reason for it to go off the way it did.

At least with WWII they had to go and stop Hitler and deaths were for something.

I'm with the conchie's on WWI though.

ICBM

The family fight thing is not that much of an exaggeration. One of the fundamental causes of the tensions that led to the war was that Wilhelm was jealous of uncle Eddie's navy, and wanted one of his own. So he started building one. Unfortunately, as a policy to guarantee the security of their Empire - and in case they have to fight two enemies at once - the British had a doctrine that the Royal Navy should be equal to the next two largest navies in the world put together, so they accelerated naval building as well. That just made Wilhelm even more jealous.

So it is ironic that the war *was* in fact decided by the navies.

Meanwhile Eddie's son George left his cousin Nicky and his family to get shot by a bunch of disgruntled peasants...

Clarky

lloyd said:

Evilmags said:

lloyd said:

The whole thing was pointless for everyone though wasn't it?

Not just in the way that all wars seem to be pointless but this one was just fucking brain-dead, in it's inception, through to it's tactics-send wave after wave of men running at machine guns stupid.

The most pointless waste of life in Human history apart from Mao´s Genocide. The more I look at why it happened (it was almost a family fight for fuck sake) the more I´m convinced the world and especially the UK would be a much better place if it the UK had stood by, protected its borders and seas and not killed so many of its own men. Ironically it wiped out the aristocracy (2 generations of inheritance tax at the same time, lovely how those who die in service still get to lose everything) and led to one of the biggest boom and bust cycles in history. 

I think I looked into how it all kicked off, beyond knowing some guy got killed by a 'Slav  a year or two ago (probably to the day) and there's just a cluster fuck of information out there that points to no actual reason for it to go off the way it did.

At least with WWII they had to go and stop Hitler and deaths were for something.

I'm with the conchie's on WWI though.

if memory serves, I think WWI was always going to kick off, it was just a matter of when and where

Princip's [I think] assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand [I think] in Sarajevo was simply the spark that lit the fuse..

I recall my history teacher at school saying that even if the assassination was unsuccessful or didn't take place at all, it's highly likely that some other event would have set the events in motion within a few years

tactically, WWI was deeply flawed by using 19th century military thinking to go up against modern weapons [machine guns, artillery. barbed wire etc]. the early parts of WWI were [contrary to belief] very mobile. it wasn't until the Germans dig in that things got bogged down in the trenches.. each side trying to outflank the others trench works until they ended up stretching from the Alps to the Channel.. and at the time, no one had enough military imagination to find a solution beyond heavy bombardments and massed assaults..

given that the Royal Navy had complete control of the seas, it amazes me that a landing like D-Day never occurred behind German lines to cut them off from their supplies..

ESBlonde

Evilmags said:

Dad´s got copies of old letters written by a friend of his (who I met when he was 98 and I was 6) and its fair to say they make for some extraordinary reading. They pretty much all expected to die. 

I never quite understood why the UK got involved if I´m honest. It cost us millions of lives, we essentially sent loads of innocents who did not know each other to have an argument between people who did, it cost large swathes of empire, led to the Republic of Ireland and put the UK into horrific debt. Then we imposed economic ruin on Germany and gave Hitler the fertile grounds he needed. Insanity.

No the Americans (late to the party again) imposed the ruinous terms on the Germans in the last 36 hours after all the european nations (including Germany) essentially agreed terms likely to cause long term peace. The French and British were embarresd as the Germans sat down to be horrified at the different terms presented at the actual signing. Thats why Adolf insisted on the same railway carriage in the same location when he took the French surrender in 1940.

FX_Munkee

My Grandfather was wounded at the Somme, and later went to Archangel as part of the Russian intervention. I have a couple of photos of him in his Archangel campaign gear, he looks suitably impressive.
I think it should be mandatory for all high school children to visit the war graves in northern France to try and educate any that might get into positions of power.