WW1 kilted story

[madmacs]

Anyone who grew up in the 70's and 80's in the UK will no doubt remember fondly Commando Comics.

They're still on the go and still issuing 8 issues a month apparently.

Issue 4687 "First flight for Flanders" might be of interest to some.

[Theyoungkiltman]

That is nice...

[madmacs]

Having tracked a copy down... Standard story fare... Terrible artwork, especially when I looked at a 60's issue...

Still worth a read though.

[James Hood]

Those poor men.

Eternal honour and prayers to all who served the Allies in history's most tragic, unnecessary war.

[Theyoungkiltman]

Those poor men.

Eternal honour and prayers to all who served the Allies in history's most tragic, unnecessary war.

I think saying it was unnecessary isn't quite the right way to put it. War is not neccessary but tragically it is human nature to quarrel over sometimes the smallest things, thus war is inevitably a possibility.

[Mike_Oettle]

There certainly is an element of tragedy in the war zone that stretched from the Swiss border to the Flanders coast, but to call it unnecessary is stretching matters somewhat.
The tragedy is that advances in artillery, machine guns and aviation eliminated the mobility that has characterised wars before and since.
In every battle fought by the British on the Western Front, the cavalry stood ready to step in when the infantry had completed their task, and carry the fight to the enemy. But they were never used. The opportunity never arose.
The British did produce an invention that would revolutionise the way war was fought, in the form of the tank. But they had no clear idea as to how to use it. The initial battles in which tanks were used were unsuccessful for one reason or another, chiefly mechanical failure.
When they finally were used intelligently, they did make a difference on the battlefield. But this was in the dying days of the war, when British infantry charges carried the day and drove the Germans back.
And it is one of history’s most twisted ironies that when tanks were finally used effectively in conflict, it was the Nazi German war machine that used it to drive Belgium and France out of the affair entirely (apart from those who escaped to join the Free French and Free Belgians) and the British Expeditionary Force back to Dunkirk.

What was supremely unnecessary about the First World War was the high-handedness of staff officers. One group of staff officers was taken, shortly before most of them returned to Britain, on a quick tour of the trenches. (I believe they were the only such officers who visited the front line.) They had all been serving well behind the lines in comfortable accommodation, issuing orders that put men into those unsavoury subterranean conditions, with mud, inadequate sanitation and the constant addition of corpses close by – without once in all that time having any idea of the conditions the fighting men were operating in.
Bernard Montgomery, at that stage also a staff officer, remarked in his memoirs that this was a salutary lesson to him that commanders and their staff should always be aware of the conditions their men were coping with.

Yet despite all this it was necessary to hold the German advance back, and push forward against the enemy where possible.

It was equally necessary to engage in conflict on other fronts, to weaken the forces maintaining the German trench lines. It was for this reason that Britain pushed against Turkey from both the Persian Gulf and Egypt. It might have been more effective had the Gallipoli campaign been better managed, but delay rendered that another disaster (there was nothing wrong with the fighting ability and motivation of the troops landed there).
And although the Battle of Jutland was inconclusive, its outcome kept the German fleet in harbour – apart from the Unterseebooten that wreaked such havoc among Allied shipping. The Royal Navy showed its fighting spirit in the landings on the Belgian coast.
By the time the war ended, Germany’s colonies had been neatly parcelled up between the Allies, but eliminating the threat they posed was also a necessary aspect of the war.

One certainly can decry the vast numbers of young men sent to certain death. For close on a century people have loved to hate General Haig for his role in this. But in the end it was his strategic assessment that led to the final victory.
Regards,
Mike