The New History of the Battle of the Somme

The poet and writer Siegfried Sason recalled that Saturday morning in the northeast of France: "In July of/kloc-0, the weather after the first fog was usually called paradise." . The second lieutenant of the Royal Welch Fuze Corps and his brother officers had breakfast at 6 a.m. and used an empty ammunition box as a table, which was "both unwashed and worried". At 6: 45, the British began the last bombing. He wrote: "For more than 40 minutes, the air was shaking and the earth was shaking." . "Through constant commotion, you can recognize the knocking and clicking of machine guns; But apart from the gunshots, we didn't take any revenge until several 5.9-inch shells shook the roof of our exhibition hall. " He sat there "deafening, stunned by the deafening situation", and when one of his friends tried to light a cigarette, "the flame of the match shook wildly." The person concerned wrote an elegy: Somme's first day.

At about 7:30 in Shanghai, 120, 1000 soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force rose from the trenches, crossed the no-man's land and advanced towards the German defense line. 100 years ago

This attack is the long-awaited "big push"-the beginning of the Battle of the Somme, and it is also a tough battle on the western front of World War I. The Allied Command hopes to blast the barbed wire in front of the troops in a week. But this is not the case. Before sunset, 19240 British troops were killed, and 3823 1 was injured or captured, and the attrition rate was close to 50%. The land they occupy is measured by yards, not miles. Faced with Germany's resolute counterattack, they had to cede most of their land back almost immediately. This year's sad centenary is by far the worst day in the history of the British army.

For decades, the chief culprit of this disaster has been at the foot of the British Supreme Command. In particular, Sir douglas haig, commander-in-chief of the British Western Front, was regarded as a ruthless fool in the judgment of American writer Jeffrey Norman (published in an article entitled "The Worst General")-"There is no denying that he is a butcher, but the most important thing is an arrogant fool". Therefore, his generals, who were slow and uncompromising, were considered to have betrayed the bravery of the soldiers in the trenches. The image of "a donkey leading a lion" has been frozen in the British imagination for half a century. For most of the time, Haig's American colleague General John J Pershing was regarded as a leader. His tenacity and independence turned the American Expeditionary Force into a victorious machine.

But this sentence was written by German officer max hoffmann and put into his mouth by British historian Allen Clark. He was very influential in 196 1 studying the title of donkey in the First World War. Clark later told a friend that he "invented" the dialogue he should quote. This general judgment is also wrong. Recent academic and battlefield archaeology, previously unpublished documents and the accounts of survivors from both sides all support Haig and his commanders' new views: they are smarter and more adaptable than other allied generals, and they quickly applied the painful lessons of the Somme River, giving an example that Pershing deliberately ignored.

I want to go further here and argue that it is time to really reverse the reputation of the two generals.

Although most Americans may not pay attention to World War I until the centenary of the US military's entry into the battlefield in the autumn of 20 17, the comparison between Haig after the Somme River and Pershing after that violent autumn provides a sober study. Despite the British example, Pershing took an amazing long time to adapt to the new reality of the battlefield, at the cost of unnecessarily shedding a lot of American blood. Too many American generals stick to outdated dogmas about how to fight the Germans, although there is a lot of evidence that this is necessary. A big debate about who is more ignorant on the western front has begun. Sir douglas haig (left), the general of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, learned from his mistakes; General john pershing (right) didn't. (? PVDE/ bridgman Image Company)

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Douglas haig, 1 1 and the last child, were born in a famous scotch whisky distillery and his wife. He was prone to asthma when he was a child, but his ancestors had several famous players. As an adult, a soldier in the British Empire is a model of masculinity. He became a soldier.

Conscientious, taciturn and energetic, Haig once held important positions in two all-round wars: the Sudan Battle of 1898 and the Boer War of 1899- 1902, and later became the center of the reform and reorganization of the British army; His superiors thought that he had a "first-class staff mind" in the War Department before the war, and thought about how Britain deployed expeditionary forces in France and Belgium when it had to. Nevertheless, he is still not sure about the changes in mechanized warfare.

19 14 within a few months after the conflict broke out in August, the mobile warfare hoped by both sides was replaced by a trench system extending for 400 miles, extending from the coast of the English Channel to the Swiss border. Sir Ian Hamilton, a British general, wrote: "The war has fallen into the lowest level of * * * and depravity. The "glory of war" disappeared because "the army had to eat, drink and sleep in its own corruption. "

The two sides spent 19 15 years trying to break through and rebuild mobile warfare, but the superiority of machine guns as defensive weapons frustrated this hope again and again. In the field of human conflict, so many people have never been wiped out by so few people, and the Germans adopted it earlier than France and Britain. On Som, they deployed a replica of the weapon of American inventor Hiram Max, a water-cooled belt weapon with a diameter of 7.92 mm, which weighs less than 60 pounds and can fire 500 bullets per minute. Its best range is 2000 yards, but it is quite accurate at 4000 yards. The French call it a lawn mower or a coffee grinder, and the British call it a devil's brush.

German MG08 machine guns provided terrible firepower. Fire rate: 400-500 rounds per minute. Best range: 2000 yards. Initial velocity: 2953 feet per second. Empty weight: 58.42 pounds (picture drawn by Saddam Hussein; Das Masine Gew Ehr Gheit (MG 08) MIT Allen Nurungen-Machine Gun Device (MG 08) and All Improvements)1965438+February 2, 20061day, the Germans attacked Verdun. In just six weeks, there were no fewer than 90,000 casualties in France, and the attack lasted 10 months. During this period, the total number of casualties in France was 377,000 (162,000 deaths) and that in Germany was 337,000. During the war, there were about 6.5438+0.25 million casualties in Verdun District. The town itself never fell, but the massacre almost destroyed the will of French resistance and led to a large-scale mutiny in the army the next year.

Mainly to relieve the pressure on Verdun, the location and time of the British-French attack were in the Somme River, nearly 200 miles northwest. 1965438+In May 2006, when General Joseph Joffre, commander-in-chief of the French army, visited Haig, he predicted that by the end of this month, the loss of France in Verdun would reach 200,000 pounds. Haig doesn't care about the survival of soldiers, but tries to buy time for his green troops and inexperienced commanders. He promised to launch an attack in Somme from July of 1 year to August of1year. "KDSP" and "KDSPE" and "KDSPS" Geoffrey replied that if the British army waited until August 15, "the French army would cease to exist", and "KDSP" and "KDSP" Haig promised on Saturday. July 1.

(Gilbert Gates) * * * * *

The six weeks from July 1 to August 15 may have no effect on the results. Haig faced the best army in Europe.

Haig can't ask the British Secretary of State for help to change the date or place. After meeting kitchener in London last February, he wrote in his diary: "I want to keep friendly relations with the French." . "General Jeff should be regarded as Commander-in-Chief. In France, we must make every effort to satisfy his wishes.

Haig is still an outstanding diplomat in the Western Union, which includes French, Belgian, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Indian and later American troops. Strangely, for a calm Victoria and a devout Christian, Haig, as a young officer, was very interested in idealism. He consulted a middleman who brought him into contact with Napoleon. However, it is difficult for us to find the almighty God or the emperor's hand on the ground chosen by Joffre and Haig for the attack in July 1 2008.

Up and down, the chalk piccadilly farmland, the winding Somme River and the Anklee River are all towns and villages that are easy to protect. The names of these towns were meaningless before 19 16, but later they became synonymous with slaughter. The Germans have been preparing to attack the Somme in an orderly way. The first two German trenches have been repaired long ago, and the third trench is under way.

German personnel built deep bunkers, well-protected bunkers, concrete strongholds and well-hidden frontier combat posts, and at the same time maximized the fire field of machine guns. More advanced bunkers have kitchens and rooms for storing food, ammunition and materials most needed in trench warfare, such as grenades and wool socks. Some people installed railings on the steps of the bunker so that once the bombing stopped, the machine guns could be pulled up. Historians John Lee and Gary Sheffield's recent research on battlefield archaeology shows that in some areas, such as around Tipwar, the Germans dug a real rabbit's nest with rooms and tunnels under their defense.

In response to these fortifications, the British and French high command fired a total of 1 .6 million shells in the seven days before July of/kloc-0. Captain G.H.F Nichols, the official historian of 18 Division, wrote: "The scale and scope of this bombing exceeded the previous experience of mankind. Colonel Lance Sidney of Queen Victoria's Rifle Team recalled: All officers from the colonel down told us that only a few Germans could fight after our heavy shelling. Some British commanders even consider deploying cavalry after infantry raids. " "My strongest memory: all these great cavalry are ready to follow the breakthrough," recalled Private Redband of the Fifth Regiment in West Yorkshire. How I wished!

Subscribing to Smithsonian magazine now costs only 12 dollars. This article comes from the Smithsonian magazine in July/August.

Choose from buying, but three-quarters of a large number of British shells are made in the United States. According to German observers, about 60% of the medium caliber artillery shells in Britain and almost every Grenade fragment did not explode. British sources show that each one is close to 35%. In any case, the quality control of the War Office has obviously failed.

Historians are still debating why. Shortage of labor and machinery and overwork of subcontractors may be the main reasons. In the next century, farmers will live to farm so much land, and the unexploded shells they collect are called "Iron Harvest" (20 14). I saw some newly discovered shells on the roadside near Sayer village. )

So when the whistle sounded and the soldiers climbed out of the trench at 7:30 that morning, they had to try to get through the barbed wire. According to the official history of the British H War.

For example, the 29th British Division stipulates that every infantry soldier "should carry rifles and equipment, 65,438+070 rounds of ammunition for light weapons, an iron ration and a ration on the day of assault, two belt sandbags, bombs [grenades] from two steel mills, helmets, gas helmets in backpacks, water bottles and backpacks on his back, and clothes and ID cards for the first aid field." There is also: "The troops of the second and third waves will only carry 120 rounds of ammunition. At least 40% of the infantry will carry shovels and 10% will carry pickaxes.

Only soldiers' personal equipment; They must also carry many other materials, such as flares, stakes and sledgehammers. No wonder British official history says that these people "can't walk faster than walking."

The British army bears almost half the weight. (? IWM (question 744)) * * * *

Most of the deaths in a day occur 15 minutes before the battle. "At this time, my confidence was replaced by the fact that I was sent here to die," recalled crossley, a light infantry sergeant of 15 Drums (his situation was later proved wrong). "When the Germans fought in the eighth division, the air was filled with it.

"The harsh noise of steam," Henry Williamson recalled. "[I] know what it is: machine gun bullets, each faster than sound, hissing and popping almost at the same time, thousands of bullets." The man who was hit wrote, "Some people seem to stop, lower their heads, sink into their knees carefully, roll slowly, and then lie quietly. Others rolled around screaming and grabbed my leg, and I had to struggle to break free. 109 Paul Seth of the Reserve Infantry Regiment recalled: "The British people walked as if they were going to a theater or a parade ground. "./Karl Blencke of the Kloc-0/69 Regiment said that he changed the barrel of the machine gun five times after firing 5,000 rounds at a time to prevent overheating. "We thought they were crazy," he recalled.

Many British soldiers were killed when they reached the top of the trench steps. 80 1 Members of the Newfoundland regiment of the 88th Brigade overstepped their authority that day, with 266 deaths and 446 injuries, with a casualty rate of 89%. Pastor. On July 4th, Montague Bailey, pastor of No.43 casualty clearing station, wrote to his wife, "No one can write the whole truth of what happened on Saturday and Saturday night on paper. If he reads it, no one will be sick. "

In Winston Churchill's judgment, the British are "no less martyrs than soldiers" and "the Somme battlefield is the graveyard of Kiki troops".

Siegfried Sason's soldiers once called him "Crazy Jack" because of his reckless and brave behavior: occupying German trenches with one hand or taking injured people to the fire, which was a feat. He will receive the Military Cross on July 27th, 19 16. He spent the first day of the somme river unharmed, but he remembered that a few days later, when he and his troops evacuated, they met the bodies of a group of about 50 British people. "Their fingers were covered with blood, as if they had admitted the existence of death." He wandered around the scene of the equipment and rags he left behind. "I want to say that I saw the horror of war," he wrote. "They are here."

He lost a younger brother in the war of 19 15, and he himself will be shot in 19 17. However, his departure from the war produced some of the most touching anti-war poems in the great war, which began in the somme river.

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As the official history of the British war says, "You learn more from failure than from victory. After all, failure is a real experience, and it is usually not attributed to excellent people. If the terrorist incident on June 5438+09 1 July 61day can bring comfort to British commanders, it is that they quickly learned from it. Haig is obviously responsible for the failure of his men. He launched a tactical revolution at all levels and promoted officers who could implement these changes before mid-September. The concept of "creeping artillery fire" proved to be effective: it began to crush any German who climbed out of no man's land before dawn, and then advanced in a precise and coordinated way, every four minutes 100 yards, before the infantry attacked. After the successful development of the photo image analysis system of the Royal Flying Team, the accuracy of the artillery has been improved. The quartermaster department has been improved, and so has the ordnance.

First of all, infantry tactics have changed. People were ordered not to March side by side, but to sprint short distances under the cover of fire. In July 1, the infantry attack was mainly carried out around the company, with about 200 people in general; By June 1 1, the company was composed of thirty or forty people, and now it has been transformed into four highly interdependent and efficient expert groups, with an ideal strength of 1 officer and 48 subordinates in each row. Without better training, tactics will be meaningless, and the British expeditionary force has performed well here. After July 1 year, every battalion, division and regiment must submit a post-war report with suggestions. Therefore, two new manuals have been published, including the practicality of barbed wire, field work, ground appreciation and avoiding enemy fire fields. By 19 17, a large number of new pamphlets ensured that everyone knew what people expected of him if his officers and non-commissioned officers were killed.

This is an energetic British expeditionary force. On April 9 of that year, in Arras, on June 7 of that year, a series of punitive failures were caused to the enemy. In the third Ypres from September to June in 10, the carefully prepared "bite the bullet" action occupied important terrain, and then it was slaughtered when the German infantry counterattacked and regained the terrain. After absorbing the impact of 19 18 German spring offensive in March, April and May, BEF became an important part of the Allied offensive. In the allied attack, the complex system of infantry, artillery, tanks, mobile machine guns and planes repelled the Germans from the Rhine.

The effect is very obvious. A captain of the German Guard Reserve Division said, "The Somme River is the muddy grave of the German field army."

German soldiers use machine guns in trenches,1965438+July 2006 (rue des archives/the Granger collection) * * * *

The United States sent observers to both sides from 19 14. However, Britain declared war in 19 17, and the US military entered the war in 10, so the US military command seems to have lost its experience. As Churchill said of Doug Boyd's family, "They are half trained and half organized. Only their courage, their numbers and their brilliant youth behind weapons, they have to buy their experience at a painful price. " In less than half a year of fighting, the United States lost 1 1.5 million people died and 200,000 people were injured.

Leading the United States is the expeditionary force who has no experience in large-scale wars, and no one else in the American army. 1898 After the victory of the Spanish-American War, the United States has not met its main enemy for 20 years.

"Black Jack" is a polite version of john pershing's nickname, which was given to him by racist students at West Point Military Academy after he commanded the 10 American cavalry bison team isolated from African-Americans in the battle with the plains Indians. He fought Apache in the late 1980s from 19, Cuba from the Spanish-American War, and the Philippines from 1903, all of which showed his personal courage. But by 19 17, he had almost no command experience except for small-scale anti-guerrilla movements, such as hunting, but he failed to encircle and encircle. Pancho villa is in Mexico, and the telephone number is 19 16. The later general douglas macarthur recalled that Pershing's "firm eyes, firm eyes and inspiring chin almost created a cartoon of the soldiers of nature."

1965438+In August, 2005, his wife Helen and their 3-to 8-year-old daughters died in a fire that engulfed old San Francisco. In response, he devoted himself to his work. The key point of this work is that he did not make any rigorous research on the nature of the war on the western front in case the United States was involved. This is even more surprising, because he served as a military observer in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and the Balkan War of 1908.

When Pershing arrived in France, he had a firm idea of how the war should be conducted. He resolutely * * * "mixed up" some soldiers' attempts to enter the British or French army, especially advocating the "open" war mode of the United States. 19 14 An article in the Infantry magazine published in September excerpted the US military practice that Pershing believed deeply: Infantry who were hit by artillery fire would "jump up, gather together, form a long line and light it from beginning to end." . The last volley of the army, the last charge of the crowd, the quick sprint of the bayonet, and the roar of the cannon at the same time ... The cavalry rushed out of the bunker and roared with victory, and the attack began. Soldiers killed by bullets will plant their tattered flags on the ground, covered with the bodies of defeated enemies.

Anything far away from the actual combat mode at that time is unimaginable.

It is supreme in the actual infantry, and the "American official military doctrine" is timely. It was not until 1923 that the great role of artillery was realized. ) "It is the infantry who conquers the battlefield, directs the battle, and finally decides the fate." However, in the European battlefield, modern artillery and machine guns have changed all this. The famous saying "Firepower is an aid, but only an aid" is out of date and ridiculous.

Even in 19 18, Pershing still insisted that "rifles and bayonets are still the highest weapons of infantry" and that "the ultimate success of the army depends on their correct use in open war. "

19 17 in the summer, when Pershing and his staff arrived, Newton D. Baker of united states secretary of war also sent a fact-finding mission, including an artillery expert, Colonel Charles P. Summer, and a machine gun expert, Lieutenant Colonel John Parker. Sammer quickly insisted that American expeditionary forces needed twice as many guns as before, especially medium-sized field guns and howitzers. "Without these, the experience of the current war clearly shows that it is impossible for infantry to move forward." However, the US Supreme Command rejected this idea. Parker added that he and sammer were "both convinced that ... the era of riflemen is over ... bayonets will soon be as outdated as crossbows" and were considered heretics. The head of the training department of the US Air Force scribbled in the report: "John, speak for yourself." Pershing refused to revise the creed of the US Air Force. As the historian Mark grotte Lu Xian pointed out, "Only the struggle on the battlefield can do this."

These struggles began at 3: 45 a.m. on June 6, 19 18. In the battle of Bellowood, the second division of the United States launched a straight-line attack, killing or injuring hundreds of people in a few minutes, more than 9 people, and then taking wood five days later. The teacher, General James Hubbard, is from Pershing. He said, "When a soldier climbs to the front, adventure becomes an open war for him", although there has been no "open" war on the Western Front in the past four years.

Hubbard learned enough from his failure. Bello Wood agrees with Marine Corps Brigadier John Lejeune. He said, "The reckless courage of infantry with rifles and bayonets can't defeat machine guns, because they are well protected in rock nests." However, in the subsequent battle of Sowason, Pershing and most other high command personnel lost 7,000 people, including 75% field officers. A subsequent report pointed out that "these people are not allowed to sprint forward, nor are they allowed to use the bullet holes caused by our barrage, but they must follow the barrage and March slowly at a speed of 100 yards in three minutes." These people tend to gather in these "old conventional attack formations" ... with no obvious intention to hide. "

Fortunately for the Allies, Pershing's subordinate officers soon realized that their teachings must be changed. Robert Brad, John Lejeune, Charles sammer and george marshall, the outstanding chiefs of staff, adapted to tactics and other aspects, which made the elites of American divisions make great contributions to the victory of the Allies. It was they who took into account the lessons learned by the British and French troops on their first day in the Somme River in Katom two years ago. After the war, Pershing returned to his hometown and was welcomed by heroes because he put the army under the command of the United States and projected American power overseas. The rank of general of the army was established for him. But the way he started the war is out of date.