Saturday marks the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme in the first pan-European Civil war of the last century. The sound of a series of whistles broke the morning still. By the end of that day, the British Army had suffered its bloodiest day ever. 19,240 British lay dead or dying in the fields of France. Barely an inch of soil had been gained. Measures designed to protect the troops until the last possible moment were unused.
To give an idea of the size of the death toll, factor it up to the current population of the USA. If the same proportion of the population had been killed, over 133,300 Americans would have died. Every one of those now serving in Iraq would be dead and then some. That was the first day of one battle.
The Somme became one of the great icons of the futility of war for the British. The young men who so hopefully joined their local regiments in “old pals brigades” still serve today under the serried ranks of headstones. Many only “known unto God”.
That one day became iconic for the British and its futility served to spur on the peace movements of the 20s and 30s. The war ended with some 800,000 British dead – the equivalent of nearly 5.6 million Americans today. Other countries had greater proportions of their population killed. For the first time, bombs had rained from the skies on civilian populations. Sady the determination that this would be “the war to end wars” became as hollow as the British government’s promise of “a home fit for heroes”.
It took another generation and another almost six years of total war to bring a final cease-fire. Isolationism, the undermining of the League of Natins as a peacemaking body and the greedy exploitation of the defeated countries meant that the second outbreak of fighting was inevitable. That second conflict caused tens of millions more deaths. In the industrialised killing similar numbers of civilians were wiped out in a single day. Many times that were wiped from the Earth in a single instant in two Japanese cities. Through all of this the American homeland remained safe. On the mainland barely a handful of civilians were killed by enemy action.
In commemorating the day, there was a drumhead service in from of Lutyens great memorial arch at Thiepval. These are the first words of that service which perhaps illustrates how different British and European atitudes to war are from the American.
We gather together to give thanks to Almighty God for the heroism and sacrifice of those who fought in the Battle of the Somme. We pray that we may ever honour and be mindful of the high cost which has ensured our enduring liberty and peace. In honouring their memory we renew our pledge to strive for a world where justice and mutual respect is extended to all peoples and nations throughout the world.
Graves of the Unknown Soldiers
Peace
Thank you for the reminder. Rudyard Kipling wrote this after losing his oldest son, John at John the Battle of Loos in 1915.
“If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling
Thank you for sharing this piece of history, Londonbear…along with the (sadly) stark contrasts in philosophies regarding war. It made me long for presidents such as Eisenhower, warning of the military industrial complex and viewing war as a last resort. My mind is still unable to absorb the mere concept of preemptive invasions and occupations. I find it so utterly incomprehensible and sickening.
Peace
That’s why it has never surprised me that Europeans in general are far, far less eager to resort to military force to solve political problems… Americans fought in the World Wars, but Europeans suffered through them. Across Europe, there are places that remind people of what utter madness, tragedy and devastation a modern war entails. It’s still in living memory, the full price of war and the long recovery afterwards. It’s written in broken concrete and shattered stone, in acres and acres of graveyards, in historical monuments and across the oral and written histories of milions of families, many who suffered loss of not just soldiers in the army, but women and children and their homes, villages and towns. Europe still remembers…
Americans fought and died, but the destruction and horror of the war itself was far away. We had air raids and rationing, newsreels and newspaper photos… but none of that has the same gut-level, wrenching impact of running to underground shelters in the middle of the night, or coming out again to find your home, workplace, school or church blasted to rubble. Of living in fear and having to suppress your anger as the soldiers of a conquering army now patrolled your streets. Of worrying about the availability of food, heating oil, or where the bombs would strike the next time they fell.
Only American soldiers really saw and understood how devastating those great wars were, and their stories alone were not enough to have an impact on public perception and , not the way actually LIVING through it all did. And hardly any Americans really saw what the atom bombs did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki — and one reporter who DID see, and reported on it, was quickly “debunked” by “offical sources” (the debunker actually got a Pulitizer for his pains).
ISo it comes as no surprise that the people who have actually seen and suffered the destruction of modern war are strongly in favor of avoiding such a horror again… and those who lack that visceral, personal experience of war are those who mostly loudly proclaim its nobility of puppose. And those who have never put on a uniform, or faced the very real possibility of a horrible, painful death or brutal injuries from serving in a combat zone, are those who now are most enthusiastic about a military solution rather than pattempt a political or negotiated one.
And part of me is very concerned that we won’t really GET that point of view… until that devastation actually happens here, until we get away from the mythology of war and take a good, hard look at its broken, burning, bloody reality.