The Official History

[PhilB]

In Writing the Great War, Andrew Green gives the aims of the OH to be a readable account (based on official documents)for the public and a work of educational value to future military officers and strategists. Drafts were submitted to military participants down to battalion commanders. As an example, the draft volume on the first day of the Somme was submitted to 1000 officers, generating 1470 replies. I`m only part way through the book but I`ve not so far found any evidence of input from any non-officers. Do members feel that ORs should have had a voice in the official history of the war they fought for us?

[Chris_Baker]

No.

[Terry_Reeves]

No, because the OH required a broader picture than OR's , or junior officers for that matter, could give. I'm a bit perplexed by the phrase "the war they fought for us". They didn't.

TR

[George Armstrong Custer]

What Chris said.

[Neil Mackenzie]

Phil.

If the OH was being written today no doubt OR views would have been incorporated but back then - no chance!

That said, the view of any OR of the battle would have been so narrow and limited that while interesting it would not have really been appropriate in an OH (IMHO).

Neil

[PhilB]

Reasonable comments, gents, but it did purport to be a "readable account for the public". Since most of the public only had a connection to the dirty end of the business, a few words from the worm`s eye view might not have come amiss. And "future military officers and strategists" might benefit from knowing how plans hatched back at the chateau panned out in nomansland?

[stiletto_33853]

No, No, No.

[Halder]

Whilst I agree that ORs should not have been asked to comment on the draft, I do believe you raise a very valid point: there's little, if any, sense of the ordinary soldier in the British OHs. (The same goes for the German OHs too). It's perhaps not entirely surprising given the nature of British society back then. That said, the ordinary soldier's voice leaps off every page of Bean's Australian histories.

Sadly, the British official histories of WW2 are in a similar vein (though not quite as dry); interestingly. the American OHs are WW2 are filled with what I'd call the 'human' touch, as well as some pretty impressive historical research and analysis.

[Greenwoodman]

Er, no.

[Roxy]

Whilst I am not convinced that the 'worm's eye view' would have added much more information, I suspect that had the views of the entire Empire army been asked for, the OH would probably have not yet been written!

Roxy

[edwin astill]

I suppose another way of putting it would be"has anyone encountered anything in the vast resource of diaries, letters etc -from junior officers and men - that ought to have been included in OR?"

Edwin

[PhilB]

There are a number of contentious and costly actions in which the plans laid in the chateaux didn`t match the reality faced at the front. 1/7/16 and 3rd Ypres spring to mind. Rather than let those responsible report on and judge their own doings, a few voices from the business end, in the interests of balance, might not have come amiss?

[Chris_Baker]

Read some of Charles Bean's Aussie OH's and see if you think it makes a genuine difference. He gets closer to the rankers and there's lots more anecdotal evidence but in my mind it does not make the AOH either more readable or instructive.

[Chris Martin]

There are a number of issues at play when it came to the writing of "Official Histories" of many of the countries that comprised the British Empire. As has been mentioned, the sheer size and scale of such a project, naturally precluded the use of OR's testimonny or imput given that one man in one regiment had a narrower view of the war (that's not to say he did not understand what was going on around him). Also, and a fairly important point, the writing of "history" in that period, no matter what the subject, did not center on understanding groups or events from the ground up. The historical profession was still producing works heavily dominated by a top down view of important people. The shift in view with in the dicipline did not firmly take root until the late 60's-early 70's. To put it another way, few contempraries cared what the OR's thought. I find it hard to criticize or question the approach of the men who wrote the histories for something they could not reasonably have been expected to do.

I'm not sure of U.S. WW2 official histories, but S.L.A. Marshall's work on battlefield command centered on the O.R.'s mainly because to witness and access problems in battlefield command he had to look at those who were commanded, but from my reading of his work, I don't think he was truly taking a bottom up approach to his history.

That being said there is one Official History that I have read that inadvertantly used information from O.R's during the research stage. As P.W. Lackenbauer pointed out in his work, G.W.L Nicholson's The Fighting Newfoundlander was based in part on accounts by unofficial and amature historians who wrote in the wake of the war, many of whom were men of the Regiment, a number of whom were ORs. In Newfoundland there was no attempt to write an official history of the Great War until the early 60s. What Lackenbauer argues happened was that the inhabitants produced their own accounts and interpretations in verious papers, journals, the Vetern magazine, etc. Many were innacurate or mythologised, but none the less accepted as fact by the country and later provience. Thus when Nicholson collected material he inevitably used these sources, which included a number of OR accounts and the like. Lackenbauer does not say much other than that but Nicholson, I would argue, made no conscious decesion to single out OR accounts, it was more a matter of avalibility of sources. Nicholson served on the Army Historical Section of the Canadian Army under C.P. Stacey during the Second World War, and after the war worked with Stacey to produce the Canadian official history of that war. Nicholson was heavily influenced by Stacey, who was an exempliary product of his time and who made no real attempt to speak to or understand OR points of view. This is refflected in Nicholsons official history of Canada in the Great War, written a few short years to his work on Newfoundland.

[auchonvillerssomme]

The accounts were meant to be a factual higher level history of events. I'm open to correction but the majority of the information can be cross referenced to War Diaries and orders etc. At the lower level the information becomes anectdotal which then puts the information at the level of an unverifiable story...and there are plenty of those to read.

Mick

[charlesmessenger]

Yes, the Official History was designed to be a factual account of what actually happened and yes, it drew largely on war diaries. Edmonds and Co did, however, send out drafts of what they had written for comment. Even if they had wanted to, they could not have sent them to everyone to fought in a particular battle. If they had we would probably still be waiting for some volumes to be written! They therefore restricted themselves to battalion commanders and above. This was sensible since below battalion commander level the perspective would have become so limited as to make it difficult to put all the jigsaw pieces into a coherent whole. I sense that they realised that they could not be 100% accurate, but that is the fog of war.

To imply that excluding the Other Ranks' view was a reflection of the class system of the day is frankly ridiculous. Not even Professor Freedman's recent official history of the Falklands War carries any OR quotes. He did, however, draw on unit accounts which did.

Charles M

[John Gilinsky]

Considering the official histories of ww1 and in general those of the 20th. century: such official histories are written by the formally educated for others formally educated. Their intended audiences are NOT uneducated or undereducated other ranks especially from World War I. The politically correct as well as quite legitimate social historical consciousness raised by the post - ww2 historians it appears effects some people's vantages retrospectively (ah presentism! )

thereby distorting what was or was not accomplished. Did the official military histories set out to outline or describe let alone analyze human suffering, social costs of the war? Peruse the official medical histories with their massive statistics and medical terminology and stop and think of the sights, smells and sounds alone of witnessing only 1 per cent of what such medical histories detail. Moreover, simply because someone is not an officer does not mean that they have a truer picture of what actually happened or suffer greater pain because of their position in the armed forces at the time. To be sure being an other rank entailed greater dangers and hardships frequently but to assert that other ranks inevitably knew better than their "betters" to use an English phrase or to demean them as well as simply uneducated and ignorant are both fallacious.

History including the history of the Great War or World War I is still being written.

John

Toronto

[Chris Martin]

To imply that excluding the Other Ranks' view was a reflection of the class system of the day is frankly ridiculous. Not even Professor Freedman's recent official history of the Falklands War carries any OR quotes. He did, however, draw on unit accounts which did.

Charles M

It has nothing to do with a "class system of the day," rather what was considered to be history at the time. Political, labour, medical, military, and national histories written prior to the war and up to the late 1960's were dominated by the so called "great man approach." Or in referance to military history ,as Keegan calles it in The Face of Battle, "Drum and Trumpet" history. Historians writing in that period focused on officers and statemen, etc because they beleived them to be the makers of history. Its not until the development of social history that historians really began to put time and effort into what others had to say about their respective period. My point is that one can not fairly criticize Great War official histories for not looking at what other ranks had to say, given that the historical dicipline as a whole was not geared that way. There is more of a ground for criticizing Freedman's recent account given that he is writting in the wake of the development of social, new social, and cultural methodologies that have challanged what was seen at the time of their development, as outdated historical practices.

[auchonvillerssomme]

You can't get away with the fact that the Officers were the leaders, they were in effect the hisory makers, I accept that they couldn't have done it without the other ranks but they were the labourers just as in the building of a great building, the architect gets the awards, the bricklayers mate gets no appreciation.

Mick

[armourersergeant]

It would have become something so different to a 'factual'(you can debate if it is accurate) account, and more a recollection of what happened.

So...No

regards

Arm

[PhilB]

It has nothing to do with a "class system of the day," rather what was considered to be history at the time. Political, labour, medical, military, and national histories written prior to the war and up to the late 1960's were dominated by the so called "great man approach." Or in referance to military history ,as Keegan calles it in The Face of Battle, "Drum and Trumpet" history. Historians writing in that period focused on officers and statemen, etc because they beleived them to be the makers of history.

I go along with Chris on this. In the frame of reference of the times, the OR had nothing to contribute. If you`ve re-designed your garden pond, you don`t ask the frogs "How was it?" seems to have been the attitude. Martin Middlebrook is credited with ushering in the worm`s eye view book. Could such a book have been written, or better written, by ex-participants in the twenties? (Martin was an ex-NS officer in IIRC, the RASC)

[dfaulder]

QUOTE (Phil_B @ Apr 25 2008, 06:05 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

>><<Do members feel that ORs should have had a voice in the official history of the war they fought for us?

I think there is a matter of breadth vs depth as well here. One of my favourite "histories" is Cooksey's "Barnsley Pals", which is very much written from the OR's point of view - but it is not a history of WW1, nor even of the actions in which the battalions took part. Arguably it is not even a full history of the battalion - there is little, for instance, about the reasons for the disbanding of the 14th Bn (and the fact that T/Capt H Faulder was acting CO at the time and does not even get a mention is not clouding my view!). It is however a fascinating history of some of the ORs from Barnsley who joined up to "do their bit" (My Grandfather was not from Barnsley).

Holmes's "Tommy", is another very interesting book - that tells us a lot about the soldier's lot in the Great War - but it is not a history of the Great War as a whole.

So what would be a "History of the Great War"? If it had the "depth" of the above titles it would be a huge undertaking and still without the breadth necessary to understand "the War". But I guess that raises the question as to what one actually means when one refers to "the War".

David

[PhilB]

David, I wasn`t thinking of the ORs view INSTEAD of the OH view but in addition to it. If you`re going to write an OH of 3rd Ypres, for example, then at least a mention of what the HQ plans actually meant in practice might be instructive? The plans of GHQ are only effective insofar as they`re realistic at the private soldier level. And who`s the best judge of that?

[Roxy]

Phil,

I am not convinced by your argument that the best people to understand the strategic implications of the effectiveness of 3rd Ypres were the PBI at the other end of a bayonet. They were in a position to comment on the operational implications and their section/platoon commanders were possibly able to comment on the tactical implactions but for the strategic overview, they have little (IMHO) to add.

Roxy

[Chris_Baker]

At 3rd Ypres, an awful lot of men simply did not know where they were.