Mud blood and poppycock

I've just finished reading a great book on World War One called Mud blood and poppycock. The author, Gordon Corrigan, with an entire career in the upper echelons of the armed forces behind him, sets out to destroy a number of the persistent myths of WW1 in a robustly argumentative but persuasive style.

Most memorably, he challenges the idea of there having been a "lost generation", arguing that, in fact, both German and French fatalities were significantly higher. He has a raft of statistics to support his argument, for example for every 12 men mobilised, only 1 was killed. He suggests that the reason for this perceived "lost generation" is the way that Britain mobilised troops i.e. usually by geographical location, so The Battle of The Somme, for example, will have produced a concentrated number of casualties in specific communities.

This really surprised me. But not so much as his contention that it was not the generals who were to blame for unnecessary bloodshed. Rather, the meddling politicians of the era, especially Lloyd George, had more blood on their hands than history admits. The most memorable scene from Blackadder Goes Forth, for me, was the scene on the eve of the battle, where a group of NCOs are standing around a map of the battlefield with tin soldiers arranged, and one of them simply picks up a pan and brush and sweeps all the soldiers into the dustbin. This seems to resonate with people. But a few years ago, I read The Wipers Times, a series of satirical journals produced in the trenches, and I was struck how much criticism was meted out to Lloyd George compared to the military leaders.

This was a good read, though quite hard work as there's quite a lot of military detail, and I particularly enjoyed the occasional lapse into military vernacular such as a soldier's biggest fear being the loss of his "wedding tackle"!! How quaint.