Regards, Ivan
Posted on 08/03/2004 4:32:16 PM PDT by MadIvan
ON THIS day, 90 years ago, the German cavalry under General Georg von der Marwitz crossed the Belgian border — an invasion which was to mark the point of no return for the bloodiest war of all time. They carried 12ft steel-headed lances, as well as sabres and rifles, and the fearful villagers who watched them referred to them as “Uhlans” — a reference to the Tartar horsemen of past barbarian invasions. Within a day of their advance, the first horrendous slaughter of the First World War had taken place. German troops, attempting to take the city of Liège, were mown down by defending Belgians, the dead piling up so high that they formed a barricade behind which the invaders were able to advance.
As Barbara Tuchman wrote, in her masterly account of August 1914: “The prodigal spending of lives . . . that was to mount and mount in senseless excess to hundreds of thousands at the Somme, to over a million at Verdun, began on that second day at Liège. In their frustration at the first check, the Germans threw men recklessly against the forts in whatever numbers would be necessary to take the objective on schedule.”
We remain appalled and fascinated by the Great War. It is, today, impossible to comprehend either the scale of the suffering inflicted on soldiers of both sides, or how the slaughter could be sustained for four years, without prompting mutiny in the trenches or wholesale revolt at home. The horror, of course, was largely concealed, not just by censorship or government propaganda, but by the extraordinary resilience, and reticence, of a generation which fought and died in unimaginable conditions, without complaint. That too is hard to understand in an age when the lack of a decent pair of boots in Basra or Baghdad prompts loud and vigorous protest.
The war was three years old when my father, aged only 16, joined the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, and something of what had happened at Passchendaele must, by that stage, have been known at home. Nevertheless, he, like many thousands of others, was desperate to get to the front. He falsified his age and altered his medical records — he was short-sighted — in order to join up. The training he was given was laughable. His battalion was drilled to form a hollow square of the kind last used in the Sudanese desert. My father and his fellow squaddies found it absurd, but no one thought to complain.
Even years later, when writing about the misery of the trenches, where forward positions were nothing more than holes in the mud, and where a score of his fellow soldiers drowned before they even saw action, his tone remained almost jaunty: “We lived in a discomfort that was both gross and grotesque. How we endured it I do not know, but why we endured it is perfectly clear. No reasonable person — even in 1917 — could conceive the possibility of Britain’s defeat, and to maintain Britain in the field was therefore a natural and realistic function . . . By (then) war had become an outrage against common sense, as well as against humanity; but we were more deeply committed to it than the German aggressors . . . we had decided to fight à outrance, against aggression, and I, a microscopic projection of general insanity, shared to the full its insensate purpose, and, with a robust perversion, enjoyed the brief remnant of my active service.”
To speak of enjoyment in such circumstances may seem close to insanity, but his attitude was by no means unique. The diaries and letters that have become part of the currency of that war are mainly couched in the same language of cheerfulness and defiance. I have often wondered why he never chose to speak to us about the horror of the trenches, limiting himself to a few anecdotes about absurd or comic incidents. I had assumed that it was because the events he had lived through had been so terrible that he chose to keep them private. I now wonder whether in fact it was because he knew he could never convey the intensity of his experience, or the extraordinary determination which ensured that final victory for the allies.
It was a German sniper’s bullet that brought my father’s war to an end, drilling its way into the back of his tin helmet, and ploughing out through the side, taking with it most of the back of his skull. How he survived neither he nor his companions could imagine, but ever afterwards the helmet, shredded hole and all, remained his most treasured possession. Today it sits in the Museum of Scotland, a testimony to his courage, and the inextinguishable sang-froid of his generation.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
I think that the title is the most profound part of the entire article. I am sickened everytime that a soldier voices his complaints about his chain of command or his situation in general to the media. We are doing 1 year rotations in Iraq and thus far had less than 1,000 thousand combat-related deaths out of the 200,000+ servicemen that have served in the theater. Our forefathers, who fought for YEARS in WWII, with much higher casualties and worse equipment, and against a more formidable enemy, must be rolling in their graves.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD
(1872-1918) Canadian Army
In memory of my grandfather - bump!
Described by Gen. Douglas MacArthur:
Described also (by George Will as I recall) as "Young men trying to wear out machine guns with their chests."
My Grandfather was gassed in WW1. Didn't kill him though, at least not right away.
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