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 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

     “GENERAL LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT JR – Quite a talent for fighting” by Glyn Harper (Exisle Publishing, NZ$44.99)

 

Glyn Harper is one of New Zealand’s most skilled historians dealing with war and military matters. He has written 20 books for adults as well as books for children. On this blog you will find reviews of some of his books -  Images of War presented as “New Zealand and the First World War in Photographs”, Dark Journey, presented as  “Passchendaele, the Somme and the New Zealand experience of the Western Front” and The Battle for North Africa  his very even-handed account of the battles of El Alamein. All these are books that show a strong interest in New Zealand’s part in both the First and Second World Wars. But “General Lucian K. Truscott” is something quite different. This is the biography of an American general who might be quite unknown to most New Zealanders. Think of American generals in the Second World War, and most [older] New Zealanders would easily think of Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, perhaps Omar Bradley and perhaps Mark Clark. But Truscott? Who has heard of him? In his acknowledgments, Harper says that his book is one of a series called Great Combat Commanders, created to make known “lesser-known battlefield commanders” and to analyse their military leadership and success on the battle field.  

Glyn Harper takes us through all the development of Truscott’s soldiering. Truscott was a Texan born in 1895. He was unable to go to West Point, but towards the end of the First World War – in which he had not seen any fighting - he became a lieutenant and for a short time he was sent to a station in Hawaii. He learned to play polo. At that time, cavalry was still regarded as necessary for an army. But after the war was over, congress decided to limit the size of the army and bit by bit cavalry became less important. Mechanised weapons – especially tanks –  took over from horses. Truscott married. He and his wife had three children, who later were to see their father as fair but a little authoritarian  - in other words, like most fathers in the 1920s. By the 1920s Truscott had risen to the rank of Captain. In the Depression, in 1932, there was the Bonus Army that took over much of Washington D.C. The army was called to drive the protestors out. Truscott was one of the horsemen who harassed and dispersed the protestors – not one of America’s greatest moments. He did well at Command and General Staff School, became a Major and, from 1936 to 1940, an instructor. By 1940 he was Lieutenant-Colonel and became part of the Armoured Regiment [i.e. what now took the place of horses]. Knowing that war would come to America, Eisenhower organised war games in which Truscott was prominent.

Shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour, America declared war against Japan and the Axis. Truscott was made full Colonel and was called to Washington D.C. Surprisingly, General George Marshall sent him to learn how British commandoes used amphibious raids on the coasts of Europe and elsewhere. Officially, Truscott worked with Lord Louis Mountbatten, whom he did not like [so who would?]. He became Brigadier-General and set up the group called the Rangers. Truscott was now transferred to General George Patton. Britain attempted to attack and take the French harbour at Dieppe. The outcome was a disaster and complete failure [leaving many dead Canadians]. Even so, Truscott saw the raid as “an essential though costly lesson in modern warfare”. More correctly Glyn Harper says “It presented incontrovertible proof how difficult amphibious operations were and the Allies were nowhere ready to invade France”.

Operation Torch was America’s invasion of the Western part of Northern Africa, relieving the British and Commonwealth forces who had fought against Rommel in the more Eastern part of Northern Africa. The Americans took over many beaches, took over Vichy possessions, turning them over to non-Vichy French [more or less], and moved on. But taking the beaches meant much loss of life and, as Truscott now knew, they learned that in amphibious raids they were still inexperienced. Truscott was promoted to Major General, Commander of the 3^rd Infantry and now under General Patton. Believing that the infantry marched at too slow a pace, he ordered the infantry to march far more quickly.

Next major event was the invasion of Sicily by American, British, Commonwealth, Polish and other forces in what was called Operation Husk. There was much training, and much information of the topography of Sicily, gained by air-force photos. Patton’s army was to march up the west side of Sicily and capture the city of Palermo, while Montgomery’s armies would march up the east side of Sicily to Messina, the town from which the Allied armies would be able to invade Italy’s mainland.  But, for the sake of his own prestige, Patton made his troops rush, recklessly, from Palermo to Messina, arriving a few moments before Montgomery arrived. As Patton’s subordinate, Truscott could not openly criticise Patton’s behaviour but in private he knew that Patton had behaved badly and unnecessarily put his troops in peril. General Omar Bradley, Patton’s superior, also disapproved of what Patton had done. Bradley said “For the sake of a favourable headline, Patton was placing the lives of many man in jeopardy”. Even so, Truscott still admired Patton. 

 

But Truscott’s greatest difficulty was with another General, Mark Clark. Now on the Italian mainland, Clark suggested that they could out-flank German forces. It took many difficulties to get men and tanks cross the Volturno river, especially because it was winter and Clark insisted on taking one of the many mountains that blocked the way. Then came “Operation Shingle” the Anzio disaster where there was an  amphibious landing but the beachhead went only part of the way intended. For months the Anzio landing was pinned down by German fire and German Panzers. Mark Clark left Truscott to take over the beachhead.  Glyn Harper calls this Truscott’s finest hour. Truscott managed to get an anti-aircraft system, look after the solders and raise their morale and gradually they pushed further and further into the original target. And all the while Truscott was ill and had laryngitis, making his voice croaky.

British and American forces adjusted to “Operation Diadem”, which meant attacking German forces on two sides. But Mark Clark ignored part of the plan and took his troops into Rome partly, like Patton, for his own prestige and showing that he had been the first to “liberate” Rome. Again, though Truscott disapproved of what Clark had done, he still got along with him. By 1944, Operation Overlord was in progress, pushing Germans out of northern France [and Belgium and the Netherlands]. And at the same time, Operation  Dragoon, largely dominated by American forces, was pushing its way through Southern France and much helped by the [anti-Vichy] French army. Truscott and his Division moved up the Rhone Valley.  But he was promoted and sent back to the United States to organise the 15^th Army… after some time he was picked to return to Italy and he commanded the Fifteenth Army facing the last German aggression, holding the Gothic Line in what proved to be in freezing weather. With Mark Clark leading, and with Truscott heading the Fifteenth Army, they pushed the German armies further and further into the northern-most Italian mountains until they surrendered. Six days later, all German forces surrendered. By this stage, at last, Mark Clark admitted that Truscott was a great general, reliable, being able to get on well with the troops and above all understanding what would be the best ways of fighting to the best purpose. Clark described Truscott as having “a thorough knowledge and quick grasp of military problems, particularly in combat and makes sound and rapid decisions…. A quiet but forceful personality, coupled with obvious personal courage and determination, which inspires confidence and loyalty of all personnel associated with him.”

When the war was over, although Patton had done well and made headlines, he became very indiscreet in what he said to the press – especially about the Soviet Union. So Eisenhower told General George Marshall to send Patton back to America… but Patton died in a car crash . Truscott took over the Third Army that Patton had commanded. With this army, Truscott became a sort of military governor in Bavaria and part of Czechoslovakia, sorting out things in post-Nazism. He found that, post war, many of his soldiers became “an undisciplined mob” as they wanted to go home. Truscott also had the task of signing off death warrants for Nazis who had committed atrocities. Sometimes Truscott had misgivings about this, wondering how many Allies also had not played according to the Geneva Convention.

As a matter of course, Truscott had to deal with an army that was still segregated. Only in 1948 did Harry Truman de-segregate the U.S. Forces. In personal matters Truscott had a brief affair with the novelist, playwright and journalist Clare Boothe Luce, unbeknown to his wife in America. Truscott returned to America when the war and his work in Bavaria were over, and for a few years he worked for the C. I. A. Then he retired to Virginia, died in 1965, and was buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington.

How can he be rated as a “great combat commander”? His greatest virtues were keeping a steady head, knowing how far he could push the troops he led without exhausting them, being able to deal with his superiors, and not seeking personal glory – unlike Patton and Clark. As this book says, Truscott had “quite a talent for fighting”. In that respect he was brave;  but, in one oration he gave, he warned soldiers that war was not glory and “he would not speak of the glorious dead because he didn’t see much glory in getting killed in your late teens or early twenties”. A level head indeed.

 

 

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“THE BATTLE FOR NORTH AFRICA” by Glyn Harper (Massey University Press, NZ45) 

Whether dealing with the New Zealand military or with other armed forces, it is hard to regard the First World War favourably. After a century, the causes of that war have become obscure to us. The First World War has come to seem little more than the clash of rival empires. Small wonder that, in recent years, New Zealand’s best military historians have presented quite unvarnished and sometimes unflattering views of Allied officers and men in action between 1914 and 1918. See, for example, the works of Chris Pugsley, Andrew Macdonald’s First Day of the Somme  (reviewed on this blog) and Glyn Harper’s Dark Journey.

But as I’ve argued before (see the posting TheOne True Good War), the Second World War is usually held in popular memory as a fully justifiable war – the defeat of Nazism and Japanese militarism – and New Zealand’s role in it is esteemed. There have been some dissenters from this view, such as Stevan Eldred- Grigg with his self-satisfied book Phoney Wars (reviewed on this blog), which argued that New Zealand contributed little to the outcome of the war and should have stayed neutral anyway. Eldred-Grigg’s argument was so unpersuasive that his book seemed to have been written more to start arguments than to enlighten anyone.

Yet given the generally anti-militarist views of modern New Zealand, and given fading memories, is there now a danger that the Allied cause in the Second World War will become under-esteemed? Being born long after the Second World War, I have no desire to see inflated patriotic myths revived. But I am concerned that the Second World War be remembered accurately, and that how it was fought is seen in relation to possibilities that then existed.

Hence I welcome Glyn Harper’s The Battle for North Africa, which is subtitled “El Alamein and the Turning Point for World War II”. As a good military historian, Harper does not present a partisan account of the clash between Allied and Axis forces in North Africa, but rather presents as impartially as possible the story of how a series of major battles were fought. This is a work of corrective memory in the face of incipient historical amnesia. It is a welcome companion to the symposium book El Alamein and the Struggle for North Africa (reviewed on this blog) which Jill Edwards edited five years ago, and to which Glyn Harper contributed.

What we generally call the Battle of El Alamein was in fact a series of three battles fought between July and October of 1942. As Harper explains in his introduction and opening chapter (“Military Background”), in 1940 the British under Wavell had defeated Graziani’s Italian army in Libya; but in February 1941 Rommel’s Afrika Korps and Panzerarmee landed in North Africa and pushed British forces out of Libya and into Egypt. The thorn in Rommel’s side was Tobruk, defended by Australians, which he attempted to besiege. But Rommel was starved of resources (the RAF and British navy controlled enough of the Mediterranean to keep supplies from him) and he had to abandon the siege.

Auchinleck replaced Wavell as British commander but, says Harper, the 8^th Army that Auchinleck commanded was “clearly dysfunctional” (p.21). British tanks (Crusaders, Matildas, Stuarts) were inferior to German panzers and had a shorter range of fire. The 8^th Army had an ongoing problem in coordinating armour with infantry. Morale was low. As a result, in May 1942, Rommel defeated Auchinleck at Gazala and was able to take Tobruk in what Harper regards as the pinnacle of Rommel’s career. The British had been “out-gunned, out-manoeuvred, out-generalled.” As for Rommel’s chronic shortage of materiel and supplies, there is this bizarre detail:

“As the British formations retreated, there was little time to carry or destroy their logistical support bases. In July 1942, the Axis forces were using as many as 6,000 captured vehicles as well as numerous British field guns with ample ammunition stocks. It is somewhat ironic that the spearhead units of Panzerarmee were enjoying British bully beef and Imperial Tinned Peaches while driving Canadian Ford trucks filled with Iraqi fuel.” (Chapter 1, pp.30-31)

The British were now on the defensive and what is known as the first Battle of El Alamein took place in July 1942. As well as a numerical advantage in manpower and materiel, the 8^th Army had a great advantage in military intelligence, given that general staff were able to read de-crypted Ultra signals. In this battle, New Zealanders presented an effective counter-thrust to the Italian Ariete division, and Australians and South Africans routed the Italian Sabratha division. But even though this first Battle of El Alamein was technically an Allied victory, it resolved itself into a series of minor actions with neither side gaining great advantage. Auchinleck’s leadership was hesitant and erratic and he often lacked the confidence of his officers. He frequently berated infantry for, as he saw it, under-performing, and ignored that lack of coordination between armour and infantry that had been one cause of excessive  New Zealand casualties at Ruweisat Ridge. And while this muddled battle was going on, anti-British Egyptian nationalists in Cairo were momently looking forward to being “liberated” by Rommel; and there was the big “flap” in which British officials and embassy staff burnt documents in the expectations of soon going into captivity.

The measure of both Auchinleck’s frustration and his army’s low morale is that he seriously petitioned for the reinstatement of the death penalty (abolished in 1930) for desertion. Some of his subordinates (including New Zealand commander Bernard Freyberg) wrote “appreciations” of what had gone wrong, including arguments for the greater coordination of arms. Back in London, Churchill and Alan Brooke argued that there should be a “clean sweep” of 8^th Army’s leadership. Churchill appointed General “Strafer” Gott to replace Auchinleck. Gott was not renowned for his skills as a leader. Perhaps fortunately, Gott died when the ‘plane he was travelling in, to take up his command, was shot down.

So it was Bernard Law Montgomery who replaced Auchinleck.

More decisive than Auchinleck, Montgomery ordered all plans for retreat to be destoyed. He faced his first trial in August 1942 when Rommel launched an offensive, generally known as the battle of Alam Halfa. Again the 8^th Army was, at first, on the defensive. But Rommel was severely ill, he had lost contact with most of his sources of military intelligence and his offensive bogged down when his panzers ran out of fuel. After six days, the battle was over. This was the last Axis attempt to reach Cairo and it was again, technically, an Allied victory. But it was by no means a knock-out blow. There was no immediate attempt by the 8^th Army to pursue Rommel’s foces and morale in the 8^th Army remained low.

At this point, I put in a personal observation. For whatever reason, Rommel’s reputation has remained high. There is a certain mystique about the man. But Montgomery has aways seemed to me a less impressive figure and part of me always wondered whether his reputation had been built up by British propaganda. I therefore admit that my regard for him rose when I read Chapter 5 (“Preparation and Plans”) of Harper’s book. Churchill was anxious for a quick and decisive victory in North Africa – something to impress American allies as well as boosting home morale. He therefore nagged Montgomery about delivering such a victory and wanted him to prepare 8^th Army for an offensive in September 1942. Montgomery would not be bullied. He stood his ground and insisted that such an offensive required massive preparation and would not be possible until October. He then prepared the ground carefully – a rigorous programme of re-training troops, very extensive use of deception to lure Rommel into believing that the offensive would come from a direction other than the real one, and attempts to re-organise the use of armour. By this stage 8^th Army had acquired American Grant and Sherman tanks, far superior to British-made tanks. Unfortunately in this matter Lt General Herbert Lumsden was very uncooperative and Montgomery’s effort to form a corps de chasse floundered. Effective pursuit of the enemy remained a weak point.

By this stage, Rommel’s own preparations were entirely defensive. He had all German positions protected by large minefields and was at first optimistic about this defence.

So in Chapters 6, 7 and 8 Harper gives in great detail his account of the second Battle of El Alamein – the one that is remembered. The Allies had air superiority throughout. British artillery overcame counter-fire. British night-attacks demoralised some Axis units (German and Italian forces rarely attacked at night). The deception plans worked well, as some of Rommel’s forces were at first tied up in unimportant sectors. British sappers made effective breaches in Rommel’s protective minefields. 8^th Army infantry (Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Highlanders) generally reached their set objectives. Rommel was aware that he could soon face defeat. He had been away in Berlin on sick leave, and in his absence his subordinate, temporarily acting as commander-in-chief, had died of a heart-attack. Rommel wrote “I knew there were no more laurels in Africa” (quoted p.166)

Even so, this was no easy battle for Montgomery and his army. It went on for twelve days (Harper calls his seventh chapter “Slugging It Out”) and there were again failures in the use of armour. New Zealand infantry and 9^th Armoured Brigade made a major breach in enemy lines, with great loss of life, but the 1^st Armoured Division was unwilling the exploit the breach. In spite of this, the Panzerarmee was pounded and – despite Hitler’s orders that he stand his ground – Rommel had no alternative but to withdraw 60 miles west.

Churchill had the victory he wanted – the first British victory in the war against German-led troops. Panzerarmee was never again in a position to attack Egypt or reach the Suez Canal. Unfortunately, effective pursuit was again not forthcoming. This is the basis of most criticisms of Montgomery’s command. Weakened or not, Panzerarmee was still intact and the war in North Africa would continue for another 6 months until the end of the Tunisian campaign.

It is not only in his concluding chapter (“Reflections and Reputations”) that Harper assesses the reputations of the military leaders. My impression is that he believes Rommel’s reputation to be inflated and Montgomery’s to be lower than it should be. In the text, however, it is Auchinleck, Lumsden and a few others whom he most berates for their shortcomings. He is, throughout, aware of the difficulties Rommel faced getting fuel and materiel when the RAF and Royal Navy were regularly harrassing his supply lines. But he is also aware that, despite its many material advantages, 8^th Army was not an effective force until it had an effective leader. In his Introduction he quotes Freyberg:

“Freyberg was right in that the Italians and Germans on the Alamein position could not ‘stick it’ against the weight of manpower and materiel wielded against them by an Army commander who demonstrated considerable skill in their use.” (p.3)

He skewers a number of myths, including the idea that Italians were inferior soldiers to their German allies. In his introduction he notes: “The British Army at last showed it could beat the German Army in battle, even though that army had been made up largely of Italians.” (p.4) And: “While Rommel’s defeated Panzerarmee contained many Italian formations, it is a myth that these units did not fight well in North Africa in the Alamein battles.” (p.6) He proves this by recording (Chapter 8, p.230) that the Italians’ last armoured action, with much loss if life, gave the remaining Afrika Korps the chance to escape.

As a densely written and closely detailed work of military history, The Battle for North Africa often requires patience and close attention in the reading. But it is a persuasive and convincing account of a major battle that has often been obscured by legend.

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We feature each week Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.

“FIRST DAY OF THE SOMME” by Andrew Macdonald (Harper-Collins, $NZ39:99) ; “DARK JOURNEY” by Glyn Harper [paperback reprint of book first published in hardback in 2007] (Penguin-Random House, $NZ39:99)

 

It’s the week with Anzac Day in it and we are once again reminded of the First World War, with plenty of cues from the media about the Gallipoli campaign and all its overstated nationalist trimmings. I’m pleased, therefore, to look at a book which has nothing to do with Gallipoli, even if it was written by a New Zealander.

Andrew Macdonald is a youngish military historian, now residing in London, who specialises in the Western Front in the First World War. First Day of the Somme is his third book in this field. It is a comprehensive account of a single day, probably the most notorious and certainly the most lethal day in the history of the British Army. This was 1 July 1916, the first day of the Somme offensive, in which the British suffered 57,540 casualties, comprising 19,240 dead, 35,493 wounded and 2737 “others” (missing or p.o.ws.). The German total casualties in the same day’s fighting were about 12, 000 including approximately 3,000 dead. Notoriously, on this day the whole Newfoundland Army Corps ceased to exist.

This single day has been covered before by many other writers, but usually only from the British point of view. In his introduction, Andrew Macdonald remarks that this was the case with the last major scholarly book on the subject, Martin Middlebrook’s “soldier-centric” The First Day on the Somme, published in 1971. Macdonald’s aim is to restore balance by giving as much of the German perspective as the archives permit, as well as the British one. And this he proceeds to do, with methodical accounts of preparations on both sides of the lines, and the sufferings of ordinary soldiers.

He begins (Chapter 1) with British high command and its ambitions. General Sir Douglas Haig believed that he could mount a major attack, which would punch through German lines and resume a war of movement as opposed to the trench warfare in which the conflict had become bogged down. In some respects the French supremo General Joseph Joffre supported this strategy, but was modifying his opinions somewhat as the prolonged meat-grinder that was the Battle of Verdun was going on. The subordinate generals of Haig and Joffre - Generals Rawlinson, Allenby, Foch and Petain - were very sceptical of this grand strategy and were more in favour of the “bite-and-hold” technique, knowing that a war of attrition would follow but that it was unavoidable. Before Britain’s Somme offensive began, the French general Fayolle wrote presciently:

“We have understood that we cannot run around like madmen in the successive enemy positions. Doctrine is taking shape. If there are so many defensive positions, there will need to be as many battles, succeeding each other as rapidly as possible. Each one needs to be organised anew, with a new artillery preparation. If one goes too quickly, one risks a check. If one goes too slowly, the enemy has time to construct successive defensive lines. That is the problem and it is extremely difficult.” (quoted p.18).

Macdonald argues that were many changes of commitment to the offensive by the French (who were preoccupied with Verdun) and the British. “In short, the British army’s final attack orders were the laboured sum of the shifting sands of coalition warfare.” (p.38) His introduction to high command all suggests a mighty mess in the making.

Whereupon (Chapter 2) Macdonald takes us to the lower ranks and gives a more worms’-eye-view of the prelude to battle. Of Haig’s 19 divisions, a high number were new to Picardy and under-trained. Conditions in trench life were already dreadful but by all objective measures, the morale of the troops had been rising in the months before the offensive. Tommies had picked up the idea that there really would be a major breakthrough that would hasten the war’s end. There was less insubordination and there were far fewer field courts-martial. Logically Macdonald then (Chapter 3) gives us the view from the German side of the lines, both officers and other ranks. The preparations for the British offensive were open and observable enough for the Germans to understand that a major attack was in the offing, especially when their binoculars saw thousands of lorries bringing up materiel to the British front lines and when they observed large changes of personnel in certain sectors. The German Commander-in-Chief Falkenhayn had the worry of having to send off a considerable part of his forces to the Eastern Front to counter a major Russian offensive. Germans in the trenches were regularly harassed by Allied air power which was numerically much superior to German air power. Even so, Germans had learnt in 1915 to dig much deeper defensive positions than either the French or the British, as often as possible capable of withstanding prolonged artillery bombardment.

So we come (Chapter 4) to the British bombardment of 26-30 June. This was intended to shatter German morale, kill most German front-line troops and cut the heavy barbed wire entanglements that stood before the German trenches, making it easier for British infantry to pass through. The bombardment was meant to last three days only, but went on for five full days as weather was bad and on some days, poor visibility meant difficulties with ranging. Even so, hundreds of thousands of shells rained down on German positions. Macdonald notes that there were pockets of scepticism about the effectiveness of this. Some shrewd Tommies realized that the whole bombardment would put the Germans in a state of high preparedness for the coming attack. British patrols observed that in most places, German wire was not cut at all, and British infantry trying to pass through would be easy targets for German machine-guns and riflemen. Also, piles of rubble in the nine villages that were completely destroyed in the British bombardment still made excellent defensive positions for German infantry. Says Macdonald: “German soldiers were, overall, well prepared to meet the British attack when it eventually came, and many were motivated by a desire to exact bloody payback for their ordeal by shellfire.” (p.122) Furthermore: “Senior British intelligence officers… ignored the abundance of available warning signs that the shellfire-torn German positions remained not only defensible, but also defended.” (p.129). Germans had had to remain in their deep dug-outs when the shells were falling, but only a very small proportion were in fact killed or wounded by the preliminary bombardment.

And so, from Chapters 5 to 10, there follows the detailed, scrupulously-documented, agonising tale of the day’s disaster in each sector.

It begins (Chapter 5) with VIII Corps’ failure at Serre and Beaumont Hamel. A huge British mine detonation was set off ten minutes before it should have been, giving Germans a clear warning that the attack was immanent. “German infantrymen raced up from dugouts and into the shellfire-torn trenches, propping rifles and machine-guns on broken parapets and shell-crater rims; they were ready and waiting 5-10 minutes before the British attack even began.” (p.147)

Macdonald is merciless in documenting the incompetence, or unfounded optimism, of many British field commanders. Chapter 6, chronicling X Corps’ bloody failure at Thiepval, is very personal in condemning Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Morland. A large British force – many of them Ulstermen – did manage to push through German forward trenches after the bombardment ceased, and pressed hundreds of yards into German-held territory, making what amounted to a mini-salient. But Morland kept insisting on more full-frontal attacks on German forward trenches, rather than taking the many opportunities he was given to out-flank German strongholds. Result? By the end of the first day X Corps, for all its valour, was rolled up by vigorous and well-organised German counter-attacks, no ground was gained, and the pile of British corpses was as big as it was anywhere else on the battlefield. Says Macdonald “Tenth Corps’ failure was the result of Morland’s bungled corps command. This included his artillery’s failure to neutralise German defensive obstacles and mechanisms, his deployment of the 49^th too far back, and his myopic planning. All these factors were decided before a single X Corps soldier stepped into no-man’s-land on 1 July. Morland had handed the pre-battle tactical advantage to [his German opposite number] Soden.” (p.206)

A similar scenario played out (Chapter 7) where III Corps had their lives squandered in an attempt to charge into Ovillers and La Boisselle under the incompetent field commander Lieutenant-General Sir William Pulteney. Macdonald depicts him as promoted beyond his level of competence and totally unprepared for the conditions of battle that the men under his command would have to face. Some tactical British successes are recorded in Chapter 8, but they are not properly exploited for the intended capture of much more German-held territory. In this case, Macdonald is fairly merciless about both the competence and the moral character of the field commander:

“The job of busting this defensive network fell to 55-year-old details man Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Horne. Before the war, Horne had served in India and South Africa, where he burned Afrikaner farms in a failed attempt to quell resistance. His previously non-descript career bloomed in 1914-16. Being a Haig protégé helped, as did the fact that both men were deeply religious. Horne sometimes went to church twice on a Sunday. But his rise to corps command in 1916 had more to do with Haig’s and Fourth Army commander General Sir Henry Rawlinson’s appreciation of his scientific, open-minded approach to warfare and a ‘meticulous and indefatigable personal attention to details of organisation and execution.’  Colleagues thought Horne courteous, charming, modest, honest and unpretentious, but Afrikaner families probably still saw him as a war criminal. While artilleryman Horne was said to be sociable and even humorous among friends, outsiders thought him sparing of words. He possessed a ‘wise, kindly look, with a suspicion of a smile coming through his seriousness.’ He liked horse-riding, hunting and fishing, found coarse language distasteful and later hypocritically raged against German scorched-earth tactics.” (p.250)

The climax of stupidity is the account (Chapter 10) of VII Corps’ assault on Gommecourt, this time under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D’Oyly Snow who “habitually talked a better game than he delivered” (p.325). The assault was intended as a diversionary attack, which Snow mistook for a mere “feint” – and after all his men had been duly slaughtered in a pointless assault on a strong position, Snow comforted himself with the thought that at least they had tied down some of the enemy troops for a while. Macdonald’s comment on this particular sector could describe most of the others:

“The 46^th’s failure was the result of mostly intact German wire, numerous defenders who sat out the preparatory bombardment in shell-proof dugouts, and large numbers of operational enemy artillery batteries that intervened when the attack began and ultimately decided the outcome of the battle.” (p.353)

In his summing up (Chapter 11), Macdonald is at pains to explain that the outcome of the first day of the Somme was not just the result of poor British planning, incompetent British field commanders and the over-confidence of British high command. It should also be credited to the greater skill of German troops in trench warfare and the greater professionalism, and ability to adapt to changing conditions, of German field commanders. Macdonald concurs with the judgment (pp.380-381) of the French supremo General Joffre that British artillery and infantry were at this point simply less skilled than either German or French artillery and infantry. On the first day of the Somme, the French contribution was the only part of the allied offensive that succeeded and met all its objectives.

            Instead of the knockout blow and the breakthrough to open country that Haig had expected, the first day of the 4-month battle of the Somme led merely to a long campaign of attrition. The Western Front war became, as it remained until 1918, slow-motion, grinding-down slaughter. There were no marvellous breakthroughs.

There are some miscellaneous things that I should note about Macdonald’s book. More than once, in post-conflict analysis, he uses the term “butcher’s bill” for the statistics of dead and wounded. This might sound cynical and callous, but regrettably it is justified by his unflattering accounts of field commanders and their attitudes. Just occasionally I wish there was a glossary of specialist military terms (okay, I know it’s some sort of entrenchment, but what exactly is a “Russian Sap”?). I admire Macdonald’s habit, in each chapter on operations, of first giving us the view of the top brass, then cutting to the experiences of the ordinary soldiers in the front line – and then switching to the German perspective, which is the key novelty of this book. And as a sideline, it is interesting to find vignettes of people who much later became well-known – Cecil Lewis (later the author of the flying classic Sagittarius Rising) flies overhead with the RFC. The soldier-poet Siegfried Sassoon, to one side of this battle, gets a long shot of the action. Later famous as a theorist on military strategy, Captain Basil Liddell Hart [his middle name for some reason misspelt “Liddle” in this book] gives his soldier’s-eye view of action at close quarters (pp.257-258 and p.275). Sergeant Richard Tawney (later the illustrious economic historian R.H.Tawney) is knocked over by rifle fire and spends 30 hours lying wounded in no-man’s-land before he is rescued (p.264).

Of course the story this book tells is large-scale tragedy. Of course words like “futility” come to mind. Of course the horrors pile up, as does the sense of the pointlessness of it all. There are tears, curses, remorse, the honeyed self-justifications of officers, and slaughter, slaughter, slaughter reported in all its grisly detail. For some readers, Macdonald’s approach may seem a little clinical as he works methodically through the different sectors of this one day. But this is how military history should be written – giving us both the big picture and the individual experience. First Day of the Somme is a wrenching experience but also a documented one. True history in other words, and a great book.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  

The only reason that I do not spend as much time on Glyn Harper’s excellent Dark Journey is because it is the paperback reprint of a book first published in 2007. Dark Journey includes the text of two of Harper’s earlier military histories, Massacre at Passchendaele: The New Zealand Story and Spring Offensive: New Zealand and the Second Battle of the Somme. These make up the first two parts of Dark Journey, to which has been added the third part “Bloody Bapaume”. The original edition bore on its cover the subtitle “Three key New Zealand battles of the Western Front”. The new paperback reprint alters this to “Passchendaele, the Somme and the New Zealand experience of the Western Front”.

Like his fellow military historian Chris Pugsley, Harper is performing the valuable service of reminding New Zealanders that the greatest number of casualties this nation sustained in the First World

War were not in the Gallipoli campaign, about which we talk so much, but on the Western Front. The October 1917 attack at Passchendaele was the most lethal phase for New Zealanders (yes, I have a great-uncle buried somewhere there – but then thousands of New Zealanders of my generation could say the same thing.) But countering the German Spring Offensive of March and April 1918 was no picnic either; nor was the New Zealanders’ action in Bapaume in the last stages of the war (August-September 1918). At least one can say, however, that these two latter actions contributed to final victory. As Harper notes, they were hard fought, but casualties were fairly even on both sides and the German army was dislodged and pushed back. There is tragedy, but there is not that awful sense of futility one gets from reading about Passchendaele (or the first day of the Somme).

Dark Journey is well-illustrated, lucid in its prose, and very clear about unearthing memories of individual soldiers and their battlefield experiences. It is good and accessible military history.

Foolish Footnote: I cannot hear the name Bapaume without at once remembering Siegfried Sassoon’s bitter poem “Blighters” about idiotic civilians who turned the war into a cheap joke even as it was being fought. The poem was written in 1917, a year before New Zealanders were involved in action near Bapaume, and of course has no place in Glyn Harper’s history of the New Zealanders’ action. But here it is anyway:

The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin 

And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks 

Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din; 

“We’re sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!”

I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls, 

Lurching to rag-time tunes, or “Home, sweet Home,” 

And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls 

To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

Something New

We feature each week Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books

 “IMAGES OF WAR– New Zealand and the First World War in Photographs” by Glyn Harper and the National Army Museum (2013 edition of book first published in 2008) (Harper Collins $NZ100)

            Late in 2014 we will be commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Expect an avalanche of new books on the topic. In fact, expect the avalanche to grow heavier over the next four years, as writers and publishers find new ways of capitalising on salient events in the war.

            I’ve decided to begin this year by commemorating the century-old war in a rather odd way. Five years ago, in 2008, military historian Glyn Harper and a research team from the National Army Museum in Waiouru, put together Images of War, a book of photographs of New Zealanders in the First World War. The book has now been revised for a new hard-back edition of coffee-table size, bulky enough for me to have to prop it up with other books on my desk as I spent some hours poring over it.

As the preliminary matter tells us, the volume’s 700-odd photographs were chosen from over 20,000 in the military museum’s collection. Harper summarises judiciously the physical difficulties of taking photographs of war in the early 20^th century – not only the bulkiness of photographic equipment, which made genuine “action” shots virtually impossible, but also the military censorship which frowned on servicemen taking their own unauthorised shots in areas of operations. Yet – to the delight of historians – many servicemen disobeyed orders and took photographs anyway. Harper explains that in making his selection, he avoided images that were too obviously posed, or created for propaganda purposes, and too many formal shots of staff. The images are grouped together according to campaigns and areas of operations in which New Zealanders were involved – training in New Zealand; Egypt and Gallipoli; the Western Front; Sinai-Palestine etc. Harper precedes each section with a brief summary of how the war affected New Zealanders serving there.

Harper’s introduction reminds us of the importance of the First World War in New Zealand history. A staggering 100,000 New Zealanders served overseas, being 10% of the total population, which was then little over one million. This was greater than New Zealand’s manpower contribution to the Second World War. Elsewhere, he forthrightly explains what a foolish campaign the Gallipoli one was; and reminds us that the real killing field was the Western Front, where over 84% of New Zealand’s casualties were sustained.

His introduction does not mince words when it declares that “an aggressive militaristic Imperial Germany was determined to impose its form of culture on the world at the point of a bayonet.”  All historians would agree that every country involved in the war had its own ambitions, agenda and guilt; but this fact has led some to underplay Germany’s distinctive aggression. So much so that three years ago Stevan Eldred-Grigg produced a singularly silly book The Great Wrong War which would have us believe that Germany was simply a progressive “federal state” (Eldred-Grigg carefully avoided using the term Empire) grievously wronged by its aggressive neighbours. Frankly, this was over-compensation pushed to the point of absurdity. Harper’s statement may be a little un-nuanced, but it is nearer the historical truth.

Now how do I analyse a book whose main impact comes through its photographs? I have to point out at once that many of the images are blurred, faded, indistinct or grainy. They are not dramatically framed works of art. They are historical documents and (although some are visually striking), they have to be read that way.

I found myself considering how easy it would be to be fooled by some of these truthful images.

Take the image on Page 31, which shows a long line of New Zealand soldiers and their horses trekking down a dry, zig-zagging road on an arid hillside. At first glance, I thought it was a photo from the Gallipoli campaign. In fact, it is a shot taken in 1914 on the Port Hills outside Christchurch, during training exercises.

Or take the shot on page 76, which genuinely was taken during the Gallipoli campaign. A thick pall of smoke rises over a gully, looking like the Inferno. Is this the result of a heavy artillery bombardment? No. It is, as the caption explains, smoke created when ANZAC troops were “cremating” the unburied corpses of the enemy dead. (Meaning, in all probability, pouring petrol on them and burning them in the open air to kill the smell and discourage the plagues of flies that unburied corpses bring.)

There are other unusual and generally forgotten things that servicemen are glimpsed doing in this collection. Of course the images of the Western Front include smashed-up villages, mashed-up earth, water-filled shell-craters and the leafless remains of trees. But how often do we think of medicos (like the one seen on Page 117), retrieving the identification discs from corpses? And in another campaign (the Sinai-Palestine one), how often do we remember that the heliograph was still considered a reasonable means of communication – like the one a soldier is using on Page 232? Then there’s the Kiwi soldier on Page 132, standing guard over captured German machine-guns, to prevent them being “souvenired” or looted by other soldiers. All the captured weaponry has been painted with the identification “3^rd BTN. NZRB”. On Page 305, a soldier in the Veterinary Corps tries to calm down an agitated horse by stroking its nose. On the same page, there’s an image of two digs, one with his shirt off, hunting for lice to crush between their fingernails.

Some photographs show us that, at least for the camera, soldiers sometimes made light of war. There are a number of images where the troops have written jocular or boastful things over their dugouts. On Page 355 one Kiwi poses, nonchalantly and arms akimbo, behind an unexploded shell that’s almost as tall as he is.

More often, however, reality bites, be it in the images of soldiers marching and waiting; or in the images of fear and pain. Harper has noted how rare genuine actions shots of the battlefield are. But the image of the soldier on Page 66, readying a trench mortar for firing, shows his real strain. The smiles in some shots are clearly forced by tired or battle-fatigued men. Fittingly, the collection ends with images made by plastic surgeons are they documented the ripped flesh of men whose bodies they had to rebuild.

Not only the serving troops learned lessons in the reality of war. Early in the book there are those famous photographs of Prime Minister Bill Massey and Sir Joseph Ward, on the steps of parliament, being acclaimed by a large crowd when New Zealand declared war. It was almost fun and games at that stage. As photographs show, much later in the war the two of them (now coalition partners) visited the troops in France. Again, there was fun and games (the oft-reproduced photograph of the two of them fooling with a machine gun). But their visit to the wounded in July 1918 (photo on Page 207) shows their real concern. And by that stage neither of them found the war a matter for jokes in music halls to mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.