The Somme and Normandy compared

[SteveMarsdin]

Good evening All,

I think what Gordon Corrigan is trying to remind us is all war is hell and the danger with the Somme is we put it on a casualty pedestal which limits rational argument. As Siege Gunner has reminded us, in a British context, 36,000 at Towton killed in hand to hand combat, when the overall population was a lot less than in 1916 was a lot bloodier. Dave points to other earlier conflicts and even in the Argonne the American (and German) casualties of 1918, pale into insignificance with the early-history conflict that is supposed to have taken place there where 40,000 were supposed to have been killed in one encounter in hand to hand combat.

[david lee]

How are we to preceive the Great War, then ?

Just "par for the course" ?

There is, in the commentary of some, a determination to put that perception across. This is how the case is presented.......

After all, what do you expect, bearing in mind the precedents set in earlier eras ?

There was nothing exceptional, let alone unique, in the mortality rates of the Great War : the greater scale of the populations was bound to result in more deaths. We must not attribute to the Somme any special notoriety, bearing in mind that more Russian soldiers were killed in a single battle in WWII than all the Britons who died in the Great War, and that the fighting in Normandy in 1944 was, on a per capita/time basis, more deadly than the Somme for frontline British soldiers.

I hope I have exposed the last two statements as fallacious. That'll be enough to be getting on with....we need to avoid distortions like that, lest we fail to do justice to the ordeal of 1914-18.

Phil (PJA)

I do not accept they are fallacious!

Look at the American Civil War------it always pays dividends to.

"In the course of the Civil War 115 regiments (63 Union and 52 confederate) sustained losses of more than fifty percent in a single engagement. the highest rate of loss of the whole war was that of the 1st. Texas regiment at ANTIETAM (1862) : 82.3 per cent. This was very nearly matched by the 1st. Minnesota at Gettysberg the following year: 82%. These figures compare very precisley with, say, the 84% (100% of officers) of the 1/ Newfoundland Regiment on July 1st. 1916 on the Somme........."

John Terraine---'The White Heat'

Sorry, but the history of warfare---of battles on the grand scale, prove conclusively that the Great war was not out of the ordinary----for anyone but England. No fallacy at all!

Mass populations breed mass armies---given an equal, or nearly equal, technological base, they will inexorably breed mass casualties-----

The 'A' bomb and subsequent are, at rock bottom, mass killers.

The west has a technological superiority since WW2---we now number our casualties in battle in tens---or hundreds---thankfully.

Dave.

[phil andrade]

Did you read my post carefully, Dave ?

Are you agreeing with those statements made by Corrigan about Normandy, and by Braithwaite about the Battle for Moscow ?

You will, I hope, agree that those statements are fallacious.

The Great War was not out of the ordinary ?

I think that it contained more transcendentally bloody episodes than most conflicts of the modern age : they were certainly intensified by their containment in small areas, and their prolongation on static fronts.

If we are to put a more sober interpretation on the loss of life in battles like the Somme, and provide examples of other battles in other wars that put things into perspective, than let's at least try and get these figures right.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

[quote name='SteveMarsdin' timestamp='1302819095' post='1578336'

Corrigan is trying to remind us ... all war is hell and the danger with the Somme is we put it on a casualty pedestal which limits rational argument.

That sums it up well.

The Somme is put on a casualty pedestal......but it is put there for a valid reason.

The figure of 127,751 registered British Empire deaths in such a small area in such a short time entitles this fighting to its reputation.

We must avoid fixation on the outrageous loss of the first day...although there is that, too, of course.

More Britsh ( this includes Empire) troops died in four and a half months on the Somme than Frenchmen who died in ten months at Verdun.

I readilly acknowledge that our emotion over this tends to subvert rational assessment. This is compounded, I suspect, by an excessively "proprietal" view that we British have of losses in the Great War. The nature of the British Commonwealth, with its "family" emphasis, amplifies our emotional reaction.....Kiwis coming from the utmost ends of the earth, Aussies at Pozieres, Springboks at Delville Wood, Canadians at Regina Trench etc. etc. : it's understandable that, standing in the archways of the Thiepval Memorial. we are overwhelmed.

So, yes, Terraine was right to remind us that maximum intensity warfare between well matched and equally determined protagonists was bound to produce bloodbaths, whether it was Borodino, Inkerman, Spotsylvania, Passchendaele or Stalingrad. And, as for primitive buchery at close quarters in battles of Antiquity....well. we have only to contemplate Rwanda twenty years ago to appreciate what people can do to each other with machetes and clubs.

That said, I am unwilling to countenace the Somme in 1916 as "par for the course". Corrigan puts spin on figures to convince us that it was safer to be a British infantryman on the Somme than it was to be his counterpart in Normandy twenty eight years later. This is embellished by Sheffield, another Terraine disciple. Not so, I protest. Six times as many British soldiers died on the Somme than died in Normandy, and however we try to adjust these figures by assessing them in terms of ratios per capita per week, the Somme retains its edge in its lethality.

The Somme casualties are put on a pedestal, and rightly so.

Phil (PJA)

[bill24chev]

WE must not forget that at the Somme the British Army was overwhelimingly a citizen voulunteer army. Conscription had not got into full swing, the TF & New Army were volunteers and mostof the old asweats of the pre war regulars would hold the line for eternity at Mons, Le Cateau, and from the Marne to Ypres. Previous WW1 battles had affected the population at home on less of a scale except perhaps for Scotland at Loos the length in time of the Somme Battle and the shock of the first day was felt in every community.

for the soldiers it has ben mentioned that units and formations were rotated in and uot of the line which did not happen in Normandy. Although I agree rest periods help it would still have been a daunting psycholgical effect on the men to know that they would at some time in the near future return to the cauldron of the Somme.

[david lee]

That sums it up well.

The Somme is put on a casualty pedestal......but it is put there for a valid reason.

The figure of 127,751 registered British Empire deaths in such a small area in such a short time entitles this fighting to its reputation.

We must avoid fixation on the outrageous loss of the first day...although there is that, too, of course.

More Britsh ( this includes Empire) troops died in four and a half months on the Somme than Frenchmen who died in ten months at Verdun.

I readilly acknowledge that our emotion over this tends to subvert rational assessment. This is compounded, I suspect, by an excessively "proprietal" view that we British have of losses in the Great War. The nature of the British Commonwealth, with its "family" emphasis, amplifies our emotional reaction.....Kiwis coming from the utmost ends of the earth, Aussies at Pozieres, Springboks at Delville Wood, Canadians at Regina Trench etc. etc. : it's understandable that, standing in the archways of the Thiepval Memorial. we are overwhelmed.

So, yes, Terraine was right to remind us that maximum intensity warfare between well matched and equally determined protagonists was bound to produce bloodbaths, whether it was Borodino, Inkerman, Spotsylvania, Passchendaele or Stalingrad. And, as for primitive buchery at close quarters in battles of Antiquity....well. we have only to contemplate Rwanda twenty years ago to appreciate what people can do to each other with machetes and clubs.

That said, I am unwilling to countenace the Somme in 1916 as "par for the course". Corrigan puts spin on figures to convince us that it was safer to be a British infantryman on the Somme than it was to be his counterpart in Normandy twenty eight years later. This is embellished by Sheffield, another Terraine disciple. Not so, I protest. Six times as many British soldiers died on the Somme than died in Normandy, and however we try to adjust these figures by assessing them in terms of ratios per capita per week, the Somme retains its edge in its lethality.

The Somme casualties are put on a pedestal, and rightly so.

Phil (PJA)

Hi,

"The Somme casualties are put on a pedestal, and rightly so".

They are indeed---but are they "rightly so"? It was a World War, after all. The figures for the March 1918 offensives far exceed those of the SOMME in 1916---and that is just British/ Dominion casualties....

To equate (at any level) Rwandan massacres of unarmed innocents by a bloodthirsty mob, with battle, in the sense that we are discussing, is to go far too far I think.

Did Egyptians and Hittites face off against women and children at KADESH?----Did any Greek Hoplite don his bronze panoply and proceed to murder unarmed people across the way---or did he crash into the spears of people armed exactly like himself----and just as detemined?

Of course the casualties in WW1 were horrendous (and, by the way, you just need to read my first post here wherein I agreed with you that Corrigan was making too much of the 'comparison') but put into perspective---not of 'British warfare' (though I shudder to think how many 'Britons' were massacred by Paulinus at the climactic moment of Boudicca's revolt) but of warfare , or more specifically, of battlefield dead, then no, WW1 is not spectacular----in any way other than the temporary hiatus of technology, that favoured defence over attack, though that never meant defence was cheap.

Look at French casualties in the first months of that war---in fact (as Terraine reminds us succintly) in 12 days of actual fighting----4,478 officers and 206,515 other ranks.

The Austrian losses in 1914 alone amounted to 1 million casualties----the Russians on a par.

So, British casualties are not out of the ordinary---it is insular myopia to see them as such I'm afraid. The history of battle shows us that men die---and small 'elite' units (like the BEF in 1914---or the Spartans in the 5th. century BC) whilst magnificent in themselves, 'feel' those deaths much more than the 'big battalions' do, and therefore a sort of mythology builds up of terrible, unprecedented, sacrifice.

The 'terrible' bit----the 'sacrifice' bit, are not here doubted-----("there are few die well that die in a battle)--- but the 'unprecedented' bit is. The army on the Somme, and the Generals guiding it, were locked into a dreadful 'learning curve'----- but the blame for that must lie with the idea that maintaining a huge trained army in peace time is anathema to most democracies----now as then, and rightly so------but men pay in blood for the savings to the exchequer, at some point.

After the battle of STAMFORD BRIDGE (1066) the survivors of the Viking invasion force which had descended on England in at least two hundred Longships, when given leave to return to Norway unmolested by Harold, and asked how many ships they would need, replied that twenty would suffice! The subsequent records of the hitherto yearly Norwegian muster misses a full generation after 1066----indicating few of military age left.....

Casualties are endemic to battle----of course they are. The numbers tend to relate to the size of the armies engaged----and to the determination and morale of the sides engaged. The American Civil War, WW1 and the much more bloody WW2 all prove that quite conclusively for the modern age. The ancient and medieval ages speak of unrelenting battlefield dead (the steel Gladius killed more men than the two 'A' bombs by a factor of many tens)

Compare the ethnic cleansing of Alexander---or Julius Ceasar with Rwanda if we like------ or German atrocities in Russia in WW2 (regular Wermacht as well as SS units) but not of battle between like minded armies.

That is a different thing altogether, and it diminishes the 'morality' of open battle, in the western tradition---and it of course has a 'morality' let us not forget that.

Dave.

[Jack Sheldon]

This debate has widened somewhat over the past few days and I suspect that we may be losing sight of what I think that GC was getting at. I have already pointed out that daily casualty rates of attacking infantry show distinct similarities throughout the twentieth century; others have pointed out that the infantry in Normandy was left in the line for extended periods of time. On the Somme, mauled formations were pulled out of the line rapidly and replaced. We only have to consider Guillemont and think about the number of fresh divisions that were sent against the German 27th Division during August 1916 to see that that was the case. Contrast that with the experience of, say, the 3rd Division in Normandy. Having landed on Sword Beach at H Hour, D Day, they then fought through all the battles around Caen -for Carpiquet airfield and Goodwood, for example. Then, what about the lightly equipped men manning the airborne bridghead and seeing their numbers dwindle? All this, in my opinion, made the experience far more intense and trying for the combat troops, the infantry and engineers in particular, because of the fact that their war was a minority activity in Normandy and during the subsequent campaign. The percentage of units; the combat element of the army; the men doing the dirty work of fighting and dying was far smaller than had been the case in the First World War. The greatest risk to most other members of the British army from Normandy to the Baltic was traffic accidents. So, I am inclined to think that the average infantryman in his platoon or company was exposed to high risk for longer periods during the ten weeks of the campaign than in any comparable period during the Somme and that the cumulative casualties they suffered and mental and physical strain they endured was indeed greater.

Jack

[david lee]

Hi Jack,

Yes, I have helped to widen it! As I said in my first post in this thread---I see little reason to 'compare' wars and leadership----but once started along that path, it is quite right to follow it through with further 'comparisons' ----which, by analogy, point up a particular truth, I think.

It is like 'what if's'---they often concentrate on one side and forget that in this 'what if' paradigm we can be allowed to speculate further for ALL sides.

My apologies if I am guilty of bringing an 'extended' history into this debate, but I feel I do so rightly. Battle is a dreadful expedient, and it is worthwhile at least trying to get our heads around it a bit----the more so as we can do it in the safety of our 'armchairs'---thanks to very long generations of men, most of them giants, upon whose shoulders we stand today in democracies and freedom.

Cheers,

Dave.

[Jack Sheldon]

Dave

I have no quibbles with adducing evidence from earlier conflicts at all. In fact I think that I side with your view that the rate of Somme casualties was not at all that unusual. I seem to remember, however, that some doubt has been cast on the veracity of the casualty count arising from early edged weapons clashes but, even if true, I do not think that it diminishes your central point.

Jack

[david lee]

Dave

I have no quibbles with adducing evidence from earlier conflicts at all. In fact I think that I side with your view that the rate of Somme casualties was not at all that unusual. I seem to remember, however, that some doubt has been cast on the veracity of the casualty count arising from early edged weapons clashes but, even if true, I do not think that it diminishes your central point.

Jack

Hi Jack,

I did'nt think you had any problems my friend, and whilst accepting your point about ancient battlefield dead the fact is inescapeable that empires and civilisations fell with almost a grim regularity in those days, and they would not have fell softly.

The Greek dead at MARATHON are known--192 (Athenian dead actually---the Plataean allied dead are not known but it was a small contingent) the burial mound and inscription on columns were erected, and though now lost, were there for generations to be consulted.

Greek Hoplites fighting Persians incurred on those unfortunates terrible casualties (comparable, though differently incurred, with the deadly Longbow rates in the hundred years war) and the figure of 6, 400 Persian dead need not be completely accurate, and indeed probably is not----but the fact remains that the Persians were routed in that little, though earthshakingly important, battle.

They must have suffered severely to swallow their pride---the pride of generations of Imperial glory--- and retreat from the army of a 'petty' state.

The figures for Alexanders victories---and Hannibals, are well enough attested, and meet what Col. Bourne called 'inherent military probability' very well.

The dead at SALAMIS can be assumed correct---the number of rowers on a Trireme was set, (170) and about 30 or so Marines on Persian Triremes, considerably less on Greek, and all the sources agree on how many were lost.

Cheers,

Dave.

[phil andrade]

The figures for the March 1918 offensives far exceed those of the SOMME in 1916---and that is just British/ Dominion casualties....

Dave.

You miss an essential point, Dave...in March 1918, the British casualties included many prisoners and relatively few killed.

Yes, there were 236,000 British casualties in sixteen days between March 21 st and April 5th 1918, a toll of fifteeen thousand per day, more or less. But a very large majority of those, being prisoners, or gassed, or slightly wounded, lived to return home. Barely one tenth of them lost their lives. More than thirty per cent of all the British Somme casualties in the 1916 battle were fatal.

Phil (PJA)

[david lee]

You miss the essential point, Dave...in March 1918, the British casualties included many prisoners and relatively few killed.

Yes, there were 236,000 British casualties in sixteen days between March 21 st and April 5th 1918, a toll of fifteeen thousand per day, more or less. But a very large majority of those, being prisoners, or gassed, or slightly wounded, lived to return home. Barely one tenth of them lost their lives. More than thirty per cent of all the British Somme casualties in the 1916 battle were fatal.

Phil (PJA)

My point is really, i suppose, that (as I said in my first post) comparisons of just about anything from WW1 and 11 are rather fruitless and can cause more bother than they are worth---especially where Britain's effort is concerned. The only way to avoid casualties, is to avoid battle. The only way to avoid massive casualties is to make sure you fight only secondary enemies, and leave someone else to fight the main and deadliest foe.

This is what Britain and her dominions did not do in WW1---they fought the Germans, and the sideshows were, as always, very expensive and wasteful------ Turkey, for instance, was beaten on the Western Front. Britain fought with great effect, effort and honour (there is honour in battle) in WW1 and the casualties incurred are down to the grim devotion of their enemies across the way.

Can the same be said of WW2? I am not convinced. It has already been touched on, but the real attritional battles in that war took place in Russia----Somme's and Passchendaele's happened alright, but they have Russian names, and because of that Britain and everyone else was spared the need to give 'the last full measure' to the extent of WW1.

My response to battlefield casualties, dead or horribly mutilated or very lightly injured, is simple, though I trust not simplistic------You will inexorably engender them if you involve yourself in battles, simple as that---and as deadly as that. Napoleon was, as often as not, profligate with his mens lives. Wellington, whilst normally frugal, could, on occassions, be just as casual. Grant (he supplied a cripple or a corpse to every home in the North') every bit as much vilified in the U.S. as a 'butcher' type general as Haig in Britain----and with just as little truth or commonsense, was not frightened of casualties, and Lee certainly was not (at Gettysberg Picketts division suffered 67% casualties, Trimbles division 52% and Pettigrews division 60%).

Leningrad in '41 to '44 had possibly 900,000 DEAD! Now I accept that this was one 'battle' that went on for 3 years or so---but the timescale is less important than the figures, themselves terrible enough, but subsumed and totally eclipsed by the total Russian military dead----let alone the horrendous civilian dead.

Herein a point when talking of dead in battle. How many of those men that surrendered at Singapore to the detestable (then) Japanese made it through their horrific incarceration and forced labour? There are worse fates for a country than suffering casualties in war and battle---ask France in WW2, or Poland. Ask occupied Belgium in WW1, and what horrors that simple sounding word 'occupied' conjures up!

The history of battle proves this conclusively. Victory ---be it for the removal of Slavery in America, or the survival of a democratic Europe in two World Wars--- is the 'ends'------ the 'means' is young men dying to retain that. How many die in the process is really up to the enemy, had 'we' been fighting Italy only in WW2 it would not have been a costly war for anyone---but, unfortunately we were fighting Germany---a 'horse of a different colour' I think.

Chers,

Dave.

[phil andrade]

Those casualties for the March 1918 offensive....I mistakenly cited 236,000; sorry ! Should be about 160,000 for March 21-April 5th 1918, of whom about fifteen per cent were fatal. There were another 76,000 British casualties in the Lys offensive from April 9th to the end of that month.

A heavy lunch has taken its toll.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

Contrast that with the experience of, say, the 3rd Division in Normandy. Having landed on Sword Beach at H Hour, D Day, they then fought through all the battles around Caen -for Carpiquet airfield and Goodwood

Yes, that would be helpful. Let's look at the 3rd Division's casualties in Normandy, please. Anyone know what they were, and how many were fatal, and over what time span ? Make a comparison with British ( or Empire) counterparts on the Somme. Make allowance for smaller numbers within the battalions that were engaged in combat.

Let's see. Perhaps I'll have to shut up then and go away. I doubt it, though !

Phil (PJA)

[david lee]

Those casualties for the March 1918 offensive....I mistakenly cited 236,000; sorry ! Should be about 160,000 for March 21-April 5th 1918, of whom about fifteen per cent were fatal. There were another 76,000 British casualties in the Lys offensive from April 9th to the end of that month.

A heavy lunch has taken its toll.

Phil (PJA)

No problem Phil,

But my viewpoint on casualties-----in the final analysis---is this.

When in battle on the grand scale, as in the American Civil War, WW1 and 2, (one could easily add the 'Napoleonic wars) when you are all fighting to the absolute death and the losses already incurred militate against a 'negotiated peace' then, and only then, it does not matter whether dead or injured.

Let me explain that, at first glance, sanguine and jingoistic opinion.

The 'end' that matters is the survival of democracy and freedom---imperilled in all three of those wars. The casualties take from the belligerents essential manpower , be it wasteful 'charges' at Gettysberg or terrible 'day's' on the Somme---or indeed on 21st. March 1918 for the German attackers, and THIS is what is really important about casualties---- if too many, be they dead, or just out of the war for the present, they result in defeat, plain and simple, and that is the thing that cannot be countenanced. Defeat for the North meant the survival of slavery for the American negro. Defeat for the allies in two world wars meant 'a protracted Dark age' for freedom in the world---and, incidently, millions more Jews etc. murdered, and countless Chinese etc. murdered and all the odious side effects of domination by a militaristic empire hungry maniac in Europe and an equally horrific clique in Japan.

Casualties , dead, dying or injured are---horrible to say, incidental to the over-riding demand on civilisation, which is not to allow itself to succomb!

Now, I know that makes me sound incredibly bloodthirsty------though I am the mildest of men. I am just glad that greater men by far than I am have, down the generations, considered liberty a greater prize than life itself and we are in danger of minimising their repeated sacrifice when we start the dangerous game of comparing, and asking was it worth it and such things---things that they themselves seldom asked---or questioned.

Cheers,

Dave.

[phil andrade]

Dave

You have my respect, and thanks for keeping in on this thread.

You mention the American Civil War a lot, and with good reason. I've walked those battlefields in the East - Gettysburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Petersburg, Mannassas and Cold Harbor. I'd love to visit Shiloh and Chickamauga ...one day, maybe.

Solferino - another head on and hugely bloody encounter - I've been there too, and how macabre it is to see those ossuaries.

John Terraine is a historiographical hero. He made much of the analogy between Grant and Haig. Some people don't buy into it. I do.

I imagine that the Wilderness was a bigger trauma for Grant than the Somme was for Haig.

A point I wish to make....some of those battalions that were engaged in the later phase Somme fighting were deploying fewer than 500 men in their attacks . If we are to make allowance for the depleted numbers who were engaged at the sharp end in WWII, we must not forget that this was increasingly the case in the Great War, too.

Phil (PJA)

[Jack Sheldon]

In reply to 3rd Div casualties etc in Normandy, a useful book, well worth reading, is Monty's Ironsides: From the Normandy Beaches to Bremen with the 3rd Division Patrick Delaforce, Sutton Publishing 1995. Mentions of the cost are dotted through the book, but not in a comprehensive or systematic manner, because that was not the author's main objective. However,the intensity of the experience comes through clearly. Just to pick out one or two examples:

p 50 (referring to D Day) ' ... over six hundred young soldiers were dead or wounded.'

p 53 2nd Warwicks at Lebisey 'It was a very black day for the Warwicks. Their losses during the day were 10 officers and 144 ORs.'

p 55 2 RUR at Cambes 'Nearly 200 Ulstermen were killed wounded or missing during the taking of Cambes.'

pp 62 - 64 8 Bde Op Mitten (Battle of Chateaux La Londe and Le Londel) 'The La Londe battle was the most harrowing - most of the original officers (of 1 SLanR), many of the longer serving men were lost there and the battalion was never the same again ... here there were no flanks and the enemy had to be reached by direct approach over open cornfields. Some of the older officers prophesied a stalemate, repeat of trench warfare of the First World War ... We were subjected to intense MG fire from both flanks and the front and at the same time we were heavily mortared. Many men became casualties at once, others took refuge in a ditch and crawled back.' etc. etc.

p 66 'The immense cost to 8 Brigade in bringing Op Mitten to a conclusion ... caused the follow up plan ... involving the other two brigades to be cancelled.'

p 73 Op Charnwood: Lebisey/Pt 64 8 July (2nd Warwicks) 'Our casualties were very heavy - a total of 153. Our Canloan officer, Lt Cohen, was killed and five other officers wounded ... The RSM and three CSMs were wounded. 25 ORs killed and 93 wounded.'

p 74 (2 RUR) 'The men were dropping like skittles ... The medics just couldn't cope ...'

p 76 Herouvillette (2 Lincolns) 'Of the Lincolns 32 were KIA, including 3 officers and a further 6 officers and 132 ORs wounded - a total of 170 in the forgotten battle of Herouvillette.'

pp 95-97 Op Bluecoat (1 R Norfolk/2 Warwicks) 'Sourdeville had cost the Norfolks 176 casualties including 32 KIA.' 'On 9th the Warwicks were relieved ... having suffered 23 KIA, 143 officers and ORs wounded and 30 ORs missing.'

p 103 'For the Iron Division the Normandy campaign was over, but eight thousand young men of Monty's Ironsides were already casualties - and there was Northern France, Belgium, Holland and the Fatherland still to go!'

Jack

[bill24chev]

Jack

your quotes from the 3rd Div in Normandy could be quotes of casualties from the Somme, Arras 3rd Ypres and the battles of 1918. You make a good point that Normandy was as horrendous and as intensive as the worst of the Somme buti beleive not worse.

As i have said before, for the men at the sharpe end, usually the infantry, "war is hell" in any era.

bill

[david lee]

Jack

your quotes from the 3rd Div in Normandy could be quotes of casualties from the Somme, Arras 3rd Ypres and the battles of 1918. You make a good point that Normandy was as horrendous and as intensive as the worst of the Somme buti beleive not worse.

As i have said before, for the men at the sharpe end, usually the infantry, "war is hell" in any era.

bill

Your last para. encapsulates all I have trying to put across bill, though I know Phil (I fully reciprocate your respect Phil) and everyone else never for one moment claim anything less. We all, I believe, share in the repugnance to untimely violent death on ANY battlefield that all civilised men share, whilst being fully prepared to instantly recognise the absolute need for it sometimes.

It comes down, (casualties, that is) always, to the enemy, I believe, and not just his calibre, but his technological base, and, to a lesser extent, his numbers (Napoleon was sometimes right, the 'big battalions' can win). The Falkland Islands would not have been so easily, by 20th. century standards, liberated had Germans been the aggressors, and no-one wants to fight the Chinese........

The Somme was a dreadful, extended, drawn out 'school' of combat, and school can be hard on the pupils sometimes, (and on the 'teachers') but Britain's (and dominions---always, always dominions) citizen soldiers passed all their exams---and went on to university, one can truthfully claim. One can claim further I believe, massive (though, as I claim, not unusually for the war, even up to then, the casualties were, the Somme was a victory. As Peter Liddle say's "In 1916-17 terms a British victory had been won on the Somme, not one to be greeted with bell ringing and bunting, indeed one more appropiately honoured by the draperies of mourning, but a victory nevertheless. ....................A victory and an avoidance of defeat: no mean achievements"

'The 1916 Battle Of The Somme'

[phil andrade]

Thank you, Jack....quite a harrowing narrative.

I cannot help thinking that, when, as a schoolboy and a teenager, I was captivated by the commemorations of the fifttieth anniversary of the Great War, the Normandy Campaign of 1944 was presented in a very sanitised manner. Indeed, Normandy was portrayed as the "right" way to do things ; mobile warfare, advanced technology, competent and caring high command......and the Somme was cited as quite the reverse. How often we read that the cost of D-Day was only 2,500 Allied troops killed, compared with twenty thousand or more on the first day of the Somme. A lot of nonsense, but an interesting historiographical reflection.

The examples you cite lament battalion casualties in the order of 150-200 in various episodes. These are certainly not heavy by Somme standards, but rest assured I fully acknowledge your point......these numbers were concentrated on much smaller contingents of men actually engaged, and they were experienced again and again, until, in the cumulative impact, they suggest warfare of frightful intensity. And a divisional total of eight thousand casualties in this one campaign....yes, let me admit that I am shocked.

Conversations with men I used to work with, who had been in that campaign, dispelled any illusions. They all commented on the smell, which emanated from the thousands of cattle that were killed there, as well as the human wreckage.

This does not diminish my wish to remonstrate about the statistical travesty in Corrigan's analysis.

It's enough to concede that for the frontline British infantryman in Normandy, the combat was every bit as lethal as it had been for his father on the Somme. The lack of routine and rotation, the embroilment of so many civilians, and the shocking impact of high technology firepower at close quarters in the bocage, the threat of facing German armour, and the fanatical resistance of politically indoctrinated enemy soldiers....it conjures up a hellish vision. Add to that the terrific power of exposives dropped from the air - all too often killing allied soldiers by mistake : there are facets of this combat that are more harrowing than the static battlefields of 1916, with their routines and predictabilities. And I suppose the infantryman of 1944-5 was more susceptible to the terror of loneliness on the battlefield. Small wonder that so many of the Anglo- Canadian casualties in Normandy were evacuated suffering from "hysteria".

Having acknowledged this, I refute the notion that Normandy was "worse" than the Somme. Six times as many British soldiers died in twenty weeks in 1916 on the Somme than died in eleven weeks in Normandy : even if we dispense with the absolute numbers, and focus on the relative, the Somme was, I contend, the more fatal of the two.

Phil (PJA)

[david lee]

Thank you, Jack....quite a harrowing narrative.

I cannot help thinking that, when, as a schoolboy and a teenager, I was captivated by the commemorations of the fifttieth anniversary of the Great War, the Normandy Campaign of 1944 was presented in a very sanitised manner. Indeed, Normandy was portrayed as the "right" way to do things ; mobile warfare, advanced technology, competent and caring high command......and the Somme was cited as quite the reverse. How often we read that the cost of D-Day was only 2,500 Allied troops killed, compared with twenty thousand or more on the first day of the Somme. A lot of nonsense, but an interesting historiographical reflection.

The examples you cite lament battalion casualties in the order of 150-200 in various episodes. These are certainly not heavy by Somme standards, but rest assured I fully acknowledge your point......these numbers were concentrated on much smaller contingents of men actually engaged, and they were experienced again and again, until, in the cumulative impact, they suggest warfare of frightful intensity. And a divisional total of eight thousand casualties in this one campaign....yes, let me admit that I am shocked.

Conversations with men I used to work with, who had been in that campaign, dispelled any illusions. They all commented on the smell, which emanated from the thousands of cattle that were killed there, as well as the human wreckage.

This does not diminish my wish to remonstrate about the statistical travesty in Corrigan's analysis.

It's enough to concede that for the frontline British infantryman in Normandy, the combat was every bit as lethal as it had been for his father on the Somme. The lack of routine and rotation, the embroilment of so many civilians, and the shocking impact of high technology firepower at close quarters in the bocage, the threat of facing German armour, and the fanatical resistance of politically indoctrinated enemy soldiers....it conjures up a hellish vision. Add to that the terrific power of exposives dropped from the air - all too often killing allied soldiers by mistake : there are facets of this combat that are more harrowing than the static battlefields of 1916, with their routines and predictabilities. And I suppose the infantryman of 1944-5 was more susceptible to the terror of loneliness on the battlefield. Small wonder that so many of the Anglo- Canadian casualties in Normandy were evacuated suffering from "hysteria".

Having acknowledged this, I refute the notion that Normandy was "worse" than the Somme. Six times as many British soldiers died in twenty weeks in 1916 on the Somme than died in eleven weeks in Normandy : even if we dispense with the absolute numbers, and focus on the relative, the Somme was, I contend, the more fatal of the two.

Phil (PJA)

Hi Phil, we are back promptly to agreeing as my first post did.

Much as I admire Corrigan, his 'comparisons' are dubious-----but at the very least, such comments get everyone talking and re-thinking, from which a renewed understanding and consensus might arise. Not a bad thing that.

Remember this, from Middlebrooks 'The Kaiser's Battle'---

"Killed----59 men

Wounded-----180 men

Taken prisoner-----526 men

A battalion in the British forward zone in March 1918? No, these are the casualty figures of the first Gloucesters in April 1951 when cut off by the Chinese on Gloucester hill in Korea."

Similar to Jack's figures in intensity----but in the final analysis the Somme is a different thing altogether, the only area we probably disagree (with respect) on is whether those casualties deserve an especial place in a grim list of casualties on the battlefields of a long history of such. I would say, with sadness at the implied levels of loss, they do not. 'All in a days work' almost, horrible though it is to enunciate it like that.

Our enemies never baulked at casualties, their own, or imposng them on 'us'. It is inconcievable that 'we' should have, facing such a resolute and ruthless foe as the clique around the Kaiser---or the dictator and his clique later----as implacable enemies of Britain and the freedoms, though imperfect, she espoused, as Napoleon himself was.

Bad times to live through.

Cheers, Dave.

[phil andrade]

Jack and Dave.

Here's an answer to my question : 3rd Division's battle casualties June 1944 to April 1945 :

Killed : 1,579

Wounded : 8,039

Missing : 1,636

Total : 11,254. About 1,000 of the missing were dead...total fatalities just under 2,600. Using Corrigan's method this equates to a divisional death rate of 55 per week.

The striking thing here is that the vast majority of these casualties were suffered by the Rifle Companies, who numbered about 4,500.

Compare this with Gallipoli, in which the 29th Division suffered casualties of 9,042 killed or missing and 10,993 wounded. Virtually all the missing were killed in this case. 9,000 dead compared with 2,600. Even if we allow for the much higher proportion of rifle strength in 1915, the Gallipoli experience is deadlier by a significant margin. The Corrigan method of divisional weekly deaths produces a figure more than five times higher than that of North West Europe 1944-5.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

'All in a days work' almost, horrible though it is to enunciate it like that.

Yes, a day's work indeed, in the case of Waterloo, Antietam or Borodino : but one hundred and forty one days in the case of the Somme.

The transition of batlle from spasmodic one, two or three day affairs into constant unremitting combat for weeks or more had been observed in Virginia in 1864, and was intensified in France and Belgium fifty years later.

We all know that there were nearly sixty thousand British casualties on the first day of the Somme, but the remaining thirty days of July took an average of 3,350 per day, August 1,900, September 3,350 per day, October nearly 2,000 per day, and the first eighteen days of November more than two thousand daily. These are awful figures for daily averages, but they are rendered more appalling by the prolongation of the fighting. Normandy in 1944 probably cost an average of roughly one thousand per day for the British and Canadians, after including D-Day itself : I note from Chester Wilmot's Struggle for Europe that British casualties were considered heavy when 1 Corps sustained 3,817 casualties in three days in the assault on Caen.

It will take an awful lot of persuasion before I abandon my view that the Somme fighting, by any reckoning, was exceptionally bloody.

Phil (PJA)

[Robert Dunlop]

There is a danger in contrasting daily averages. Readers might assume that the same numbers of men were involved in the Somme and Normandy battles. This would give the false impression that the ratio of casualties per men involved was three times higher in the Somme campaign.

Robert

[david lee]

Yes, a day's work indeed, in the case of Waterloo, Antietam or Borodino : but one hundred and forty one days in the case of the Somme.

The transition of batlle from spasmodic one, two or three day affairs into constant unremitting combat for weeks or more had been observed in Virginia in 1864, and was intensified in France and Belgium fifty years later.

We all know that there were nearly sixty thousand British casualties on the first day of the Somme, but the remaining thirty days of July took an average of 3,350 per day, August 1,900, September 3,350 per day, October nearly 2,000 per day, and the first eighteen days of November more than two thousand daily. These are awful figures for daily averages, but they are rendered more appalling by the prolongation of the fighting. Normandy in 1944 probably cost an average of roughly one thousand per day for the British and Canadians, after including D-Day itself : I note from Chester Wilmot's Struggle for Europe that British casualties were considered heavy when 1 Corps sustained 3,817 casualties in three days in the assault on Caen.

It will take an awful lot of persuasion before I abandon my view that the Somme fighting, by any reckoning, was exceptionally bloody.

Phil (PJA)

Last para. first Phil-----

Totally agree.

Your pointing out that the SOMME went on for 141 days is well taken---of course it is. This was Britains indoctranation into the big league---the continental league. The taking, at last, of Beaumount Hamel on the 13th. November effectively ended the 'Somme'---though it did'nt end officially for a further five days. As Terraine points out, the Germans had counter-attacked no fewer than 330 times!

Now those that know me from Aerodrome know that I am no apologist for ANY German army (whilst never doubting their devotion to causes---generally bad one's---and their almost sublime courage, and history of failure) but that figure of 330 counter-attacks----what deadly work that must have been! And what equally sublime courage in fighting through, regardless of casualties, to a victory, by the 'new armies'----soldiers and officers (even the much criticised staff officers, without whom war cannot be continued) AND Generals, all learning to be players in the aforementioned 'big league'.

The cost was dreadful, yes, of course, very high. But the stakes were considerably higher. As Haig said later-

"To have built up successfully in the very midst of war a great new army on a more than Continental scale, capable of beating the best troops of the strongest military nation in pre-war days, is an achievement of which the whole Empire can be proud"

Proud, indeed, and great honour to them. There is honour in war, and sometimes great dishonour in peace, France in 1940 bears witness to that. The casualties she was spared in battle on honourable fields she suffered dishonourably in 'peace'. And would still be, perhaps, in a 'what if' paradigm.

Again I think the fall of Singapore in a later 'German war' (or 'Japanese war' more correctly) is most instructive. About 100,000 British and Dominion soldiers surrendered to truly ghastly circumstances until the war ended. Of those----how many survived imprisonment, torture of body and mind, arduous forced labour? How much worse off could they have been fighting on, regardless of how many died on the field of battle?

Death in battle of soldiers is sometimes not the worst fate that can befall the nation that comitted them to that battle.

Cheers,

Dave.