The ANZACs- myth and reality

[NeilE]

Hi Pete

To me the effects of war trauma on individuals is as random as death and wounding on the front line was. Two quick examples: My English (maternal) grandfather saw service in the 8th Londons (Post Office Rifles) from 1917 (Arras and Paschendaele) to the German Offensive (he was captured, gassed and wounded on the first day) and then to a Silesian Coal Mine until he was released after the Armistice. He was an even tempered, genial man according to those who knew him with not a hint of the effects of the things he had been through apparent in his nature (though the side effects of the gas got him in the 1950's sadly). Contrastingly my Father who served in the RAAF in WW2 dealt with mood swings, depression, closet alcoholism and a chronic back injury (a full depth charge rack fell on him) from the war onwards. All traits he did not have prior to the war.

As to why this is I just don't know - personality, philosophic outlook, luck of the draw maybe? I have done some thumbnail inter-generational studies where family dysfunction can be traced back to 'Great-Grandfather who came back not quite right' and whose inability to fit in and dysfunctional traumatised behaviour affected the lives of his immediate children and beyond.

I have just finished reading Richard Holmes' 'Tommy' which is about the British soldier of the First World War. In his introduction, he talks about the current controversies surrounding historicial interpretations of the war, namely the battles between the revisionists and, for want of a better term, the traditionalists. Some have called the former 'Retro-Imperialists'. Holmes admits that he sits somewhere in the middle. Judging by his writings, Holmes does agree with other historians such as Gary Sheffield and Hew Strachan that the First World War was not a meaningless or a pointless conflict as it is often remembered. (Strachan calls the war a 'victory for liberialism'). Holmes also agrees with Strachan's assertions that popular memory and perceptions of the conflict have been shaped by a very small minority of those who took part, namely the poets and novelists. Regarding the latter, Holmes believes that their views were not typical and did not reflect the attitudes of the common soldier. As Captain Flashart says in Blackadder Goes Forth, "Don't you think I get tired of this damned war...the mud, the blood....the endless poetry!"
Holmes also challenges popular myths such as the popular image of the pompous over-fed generals sitting safe behind the lines in their warm chateaus whilst the PBI suffered in the trenches. He cites the fact that far more high-ranking British officers were killed in the Great War than there were in WW2.
However Holmes still agrees with the other side of the line, namely the traditional viewpoint of the Great War being a uniquely terrible and cruel conflict that left many scars on western civilisation.

Personally I sit more in the 'Traditionalist" camp than that of the "Revisionists". Whilst one of rationales for the war on the Entente's side was "The Defence of Liberal Values" (one of the popular recruiting motivations in the UK and Commonwealth, and perhaps too the USA) against the "Onslaught of German Monolithic Kultur and Absolutism". Of course the truth of the matter is probably much more complex than that with the causes and reasons for the war being more of a multi-dimensional phenomena arising from multiple sites than anything else. The forces of political economy in the rationale for war also cannot be ignored, such as the notion it was primarily a battle for economic ascendancy.

One thing that tends to undercut the notion of a "Victory For Liberalism" is the rise of socialism and communism, during and after the war. Liberalism, like most cultural and social institutions after The Great War, were never the same again as in their pre-1914 glory days. Liberalism, essentially a doctrine of the political elite of the time was destined to be eclipsed by the rise of more leftist trends and began a slow and steady decline from therein, as the focus for the impetus of progressive social change shifted from the Liberalism of a narrow political elite to wider more broad-based populist Labour movements - this was accompanied by a widening of democratic process - after the war elections seemed to mean more. A spread of universal sufferage after the war also assisted this process.

So I find the notion of The Great War as a Victory for Liberalism" a somewhat debatable point, though in one sense it might have been. Another factor undercutting this notion is that German political life was not as monolithic as it would have to be if that notion was correct.

I do find notions of "Lions led by donkeys" (Laffin) to be simplistic also. though the truth (for me) is closer to this notion than not. Arguments by Barnett and others that the British generals learned from the messes of 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1917, and became just the men to win the war in 1918, are just laughable and the proposition does not stand up to a wide examination of source material. For example If it was the case why were British training methods still based on the "Field Service Regulations 1909" in 1918 as they were in 1914, despite the total inadequacy of these for modern warfare? The British even up to 1918 failed to learn the lessons of the French and Germans, (and also the Canadians and to a lessor degree, The Australians) had employed in the case of the former two from 1916 onwards and the Canadians from 1917.

Progress was made surely but this was often in spite of the British Armies' hierarchy rather than because of it.

I also find Strachan's argument that the 'highly strung' war poets shaping popular memory does nto stand up to argument either. This notion arose amongst Haig apologists in th 1960's originally so it is not an original notion for Strachan and the revisionists. The works of the 'war poets and novelists' etc more reflected the experiences of their fellow soldiers than created it. The notion of the literary subaltern being the sole source of influence is also not correct. Throughout the twenties and early thirties there were proliferations of memoirs from generals right down to privates and many of these were written by non-academic trained men who had been there and experienced the horrors for themselves. Plus the average soldier knew his experience, it wasn't something created from outside. few were as savage as Sassoon perhaps but the author's knew what they saw and experienced. There is more to be said on this but for brevity I'll stop here.

If anything then, I am a 'Modern Traditionalist' when it comes to a viewpoint on The Great War.

I have Persico's book but have not read it yet. Its in the queue....

Here's an interesting US essay on the Revisionists from "The New Yorker" - its sort of a a review of Strachan's book its a bit long at six pages but interesting also:

The Big One: The New Yorker

Oh yes... the more British generals killed argument is also a bit misleading. All of these were either Brigadiers or Divisional Commanders (mostly Brigadiers). Not one army or Corp commander amongst 'em, nor any staff generals either. Brigadiers led their men to battle usually and had their headquarters close to the front line. Its not surprising their mortality rate was high. Overall the notion that the high ranking officers were willfully ignorant of the lives and battle conditions of the lower ranks still holds true.

All of these debates produce interesting if sometimes questionable work that add some things to our knowledge of The Great War (well maybe not Ferguson). There are other interesting trends also to catch up on - "The 1914-1945" movement, The Oral History based authors, and interesting work like Robert Cowley's anthology

An interesting question is where does this little field of WW1 Aviation history fit in all this? Now that's an interesting question....

Cheers

Neil

[NeilE]

testing....

[Pete Hill]

Hi Neil
Yes good question, where does WW1 aviation fall into this discussion? The Washington Smithsonian museum's 1993 exhibition- "Legend, Memory and the Great War in the air" aroused some controversy as it arguably presented revisionist views of the conflict.
Namely, that the reality certainly did not match the popular image and legend (I personally agree) and secondly, that the air war was largely a sideshow, a kind of seperate war that had little real strategic impact on the larger war on the ground. Regarding the latter point, I am not sure where I stand. The exhibit argued that the air-forces of both sides made no real in-roads into helping to break the deadlock on the Western Front. They did point out the value of reconnaissance providing the weather was clear and there wasn't too much smoke or gas. But, they said, aircraft were unable to be much more than of nuisance value when it came to direct impact, such as bombing and strafing, largely due to sheer technical limitations of the time.
Personally, I think it is a little unfair as it would be akin to accusing the aircraft of WW2 of possessing limited value because they failed to win the war entirely on their own. No one has tried to argue that the Hawker Typhoon was solely responsible for winning the battle of Normandy in 1944 and no one has denigrated the aircraft for failing to do so!
A single pin-prick may not topple the beast but you could argue it certainly helped if combined with a thousand other pin-pricks. The low-level bombers and trench-strafers may not have broken the German lines in 1918 but they certainly did their part in weakening it as did the heavier bombers striking at targets behind the front. The exhibit seems to forget that 1914 was only 11years after the Wright Brothers.
Where I agreed with the show was how it starkly contrasted the grim reality of the air war with the popular perceptions of it that grew later on, fuelled by adventure novels and romanticised films. The exhibit featured a rare authentic Pfalz fighter and it was dryly pointed out that the aircraft logged far more flying hours as a prop for post-war Hollywood movies than it did during its time with the German IAF.
It is interesting to note that the Smithsonian, perhaps keen to pursue a revisionist tone in its shows, planned, for its major exhibit in 1995, one for the 50th anniversary of the Atomic Bomb attacks on Japan with the nose section of the B-29 Enola Gay as the centre-piece. Word got out during the preparation stage that the exhibit was going to be revisionist, ie question the use of the A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with many displays highlighting the horrific effects of the weapon. The ensuing controversy with furious attacks by veterans groups and historians forced the curators to cancel the exhibition even before it opened.
I think I sit in the traditional camp regarding the impact of air power in WW1, in the sense that it proved invaluable as reconnaissance and had some effect through bombing albeit in a limited sense. The main purpose of fighters was to destroy the enemy's capacity for reconnaissance, namely downing the balloons and two-seaters, and to gain air supremacy to allow their own side's bombers to have freer rein. One should look at the broader picture, not just view the war as a duel between opposing aces looking to build up personal victory scores as some historians have done.
Richard Townsend Bicker's book about the air-war - "The Great War in the Air 1914-18" gives a good summary of the conflict although it is marred by Bickers' smug sense of superiority of all things English. Like many books about the air war, it focusses too much on the Aces and too little attention is given to the experiences of the rank and file, the silent majority of 'average' fliers whose perceptions, memories and experiences were often very different from the small elite of experten.
Quentin Reynolds "They fought for the Sky" and Lou Cameron's "Iron Men and Wooden Wings", both published in the 1960s, are useful in the sense that they present easily readable, one-volume accounts of the war but they are overly heroic and/or melodramatic in tone and, again, tend to dwell on the Aces. They also contain numerous errors and a few myths which subsuquent historians have disproved.
Norman Franks' books on the air war ( such as "Who downed the Aces?" and "Bloody April, Black September") are good in the sense that they are based on exhaustive research and contain much detail. However, and forgive me for being bitchy but, as a writer, Franks makes a good researcher. Most of his books are for the fanatic rather than for the general reader and are so clogged with exhaustive and incidental detail as to make them at times almost un-readable.
Peter Hart's recent (and rather revisionist) book "Bloody April" seems determined to convince the reader that this month was not the disaster it has been usually portrayed as.
Moving on to first-person accounts, Cecil Lewis' Saggitarius Rising' and W.M.Yeates 'Winged Victory' are probably the best although I also admired American Bill Lambert's 'Combat Report' and Canadian Billy Bishop's 'Winged Warfare'.
Derek Robinson's trilogy of novels centred on the fictious RFC unit- 'Hornet' Squadron namely 'Goshawk Squadron', 'War Story' and ' Hornet's Sting' give a good impression of the aerial fighting. They are flawed however in being sometimes too self-consciously revisionist as if Robinson is revelling in his 'Gee, clever me, I'm debunking some myths here aren't I?' fashion of story-telling. Also I find his characters rather narrow and repetitive in their 'types'. But when it comes to describing what it is like to fly and fight in those times, there is none better.
Thanks for the New Yorker link to the review of Strachan's book, I enjoyed and agreed with the assessment. I think I am like Richard Holmes and lie somewhere in no man's land between the two camps. For instance I don't agree with Len Deighton's claim that the British in WW1 were 'the most highly disciplined and least effective' of all the armies on the Western Front. Then again I have doubts about Gary Sheffield's belief that the closing months of the war saw the British army reach its all-time peak. I tend to agree with Les Carlyon's argument that whilst the numerically depleted Australians were lean, mean and at the height of their powers in August 1918, the war-weary British, depleted by enormous losses and bottom-heavy with raw replacements, were in decline. It was not due to cowardice or lack of will, it was probably simple exhaustion and the loss of too many fine and experienced men. The superbly trained BEF of 1914 was long gone and the eager, fit and brave Kitchener volunteers of 1915-16 had seen too much fighting and too many casualties. There were noble exceptions such as the 43rd Wessex and I agree with Strachan's assertion that that division performed superbly in the last months of the war.
I have to pause here, sorry, Neil. My little son has just woken up from his nap. Stay tuned, more on the way. Pete

[NeilE]

Originally Posted by Pete Hill

Hi Neil
Yes good question, where does WW1 aviation fall into this discussion? The Washington Smithsonian museum's 1993 exhibition- "Legend, Memory and the Great War in the air" aroused some controversy as it arguably presented revisionist views of the conflict.
Namely, that the reality certainly did not match the popular image and legend (I personally agree) and secondly, that the air war was largely a sideshow, a kind of separate war that had little real strategic impact on the larger war on the ground. Regarding the latter point, I am not sure where I stand. The exhibit argued that the air-forces of both sides made no real in-roads into helping to break the deadlock on the Western Front. They did point out the value of reconnaissance providing the weather was clear and there wasn't too much smoke or gas. But, they said, aircraft were unable to be much more than of nuisance value when it came to direct impact, such as bombing and strafing, largely due to sheer technical limitations of the time.....

....I think I sit in the traditional camp regarding the impact of air power in WW1, in the sense that it proved invaluable as reconnaissance and had some effect through bombing albeit in a limited sense. The main purpose of fighters was to destroy the enemy's capacity for reconnaissance, namely downing the balloons and two-seaters, and to gain air supremacy to allow their own side's bombers to have freer rein. One should look at the broader picture, not just view the war as a duel between opposing aces looking to build up personal victory scores as some historians have done....

... Norman Franks' books on the air war ( such as "Who downed the Aces?" and "Bloody April, Black September") are good in the sense that they are based on exhaustive research and contain much detail. However, and forgive me for being bitchy but, as a writer, Franks makes a good researcher. Most of his books are for the fanatic rather than for the general reader and are so clogged with exhaustive and incidental detail as to make them at times almost un-readable.
Peter Hart's recent (and rather revisionist) book "Bloody April" seems determined to convince the reader that this month was not the disaster it has been usually portrayed as.
Moving on to first-person accounts, Cecil Lewis' Saggitarius Rising' and W.M.Yeates 'Winged Victory' are probably the best although I also admired American Bill Lambert's 'Combat Report' and Canadian Billy Bishop's 'Winged Warfare'.

Derek Robinson's trilogy of novels centred on the fictitious RFC unit- 'Hornet' Squadron namely 'Goshawk Squadron', 'War Story' and ' Hornet's Sting' give a good impression of the aerial fighting. They are flawed however in being sometimes too self-consciously revisionist as if Robinson is revelling in his 'Gee, clever me, I'm debunking some myths here aren't I?' fashion of story-telling. Also I find his characters rather narrow and repetitive in their 'types'. But when it comes to describing what it is like to fly and fight in those times, there is none better.

Thanks for the New Yorker link to the review of Strachan's book, I enjoyed and agreed with the assessment. I think I am like Richard Holmes and lie somewhere in no man's land between the two camps. For instance I don't agree with Len Deighton's claim that the British in WW1 were 'the most highly disciplined and least effective' of all the armies on the Western Front. Then again I have doubts about Gary Sheffield's belief that the closing months of the war saw the British army reach its all-time peak. I tend to agree with Les Carlyon's argument that whilst the numerically depleted Australians were lean, mean and at the height of their powers in August 1918, the war-weary British, depleted by enormous losses and bottom-heavy with raw replacements, were in decline. It was not due to cowardice or lack of will, it was probably simple exhaustion and the loss of too many fine and experienced men. The superbly trained BEF of 1914 was long gone and the eager, fit and brave Kitchener volunteers of 1915-16 had seen too much fighting and too many casualties. There were noble exceptions such as the 43rd Wessex and I agree with Strachan's assertion that that division performed superbly in the last months of the war.

I have to pause here, sorry, Neil. My little son has just woken up from his nap. Stay tuned, more on the way. Pete

Lucky you! You are a very lucky man Pete!

Cheers

Neil

[Pete Hill]

Hi again Neil,

now where was I? Ah yes, the performance of the British armies in 1918. There is something of a feeling of wishful-thinking about Gary Sheffield's work such as 'Forgotten Victory' and 'Somme'. His annoyance at much of the myth-mongering about the war is understandable but his determination to prove the superiority of the British army in the field and to justify the campaigns of 1916 & 17 does lead him to selective quotation and, sometimes, even shallow arguments. To be fair, he is not unique in possessing this flaw. Just look at the work of US historian Stephen Ambrose.
That leads to another issue in military writings, namely how conclusions and observations can be influenced and coloured by a deep-seated fundamentalism in the beliefs of a historian. Ambrose, as fine a writer as he is, does have a profund reverence for the United States armed forces as an institution. He has passed critical comments on some broader aspects such as the US army's recruitment and distribution of manpower, namely allocating far too many of their best and brightest to rear-line duties whilst the poorer, under-educated youngsters get sent to the rifle companies at the front. Another was on the US army's tactical history where Ambrose admitted that for much of the army, even today, their tactics had not changed since the Indian wars of the 1870s-1890s where the basic technique of engagement was to send units out to invite ambush and then use superior firepower to overwhelm the enemy.
But Ambrose's hero-worship of the American fighting soldier has always prevented him from delivering not only any criticism of their conduct in the field but even any impartial judgement. One gets the impression that Ambrose must sit at his typewriter with representatives of US veterans groups looking over his shoulder, wary of any line or paragraph that could jepardize their un-sullied reputation. In works such as 'D-Day' and "Citizen Soldier', Ambrose points out time and time again, their superiority over the enemy and their many positive qualities. This reflects the enormous nostalgia and reverance that many Americans have for the generation of the 1940s and many politicians and community leaders are still required to bow their heads at any mention of them. This could be seen in the very clever marketing campaign for the 1998 movie 'Saving Private Ryan' in which it was virtually inferred that a failure to see this film was not only un-patriotic but almost immoral. There are many Americans, young as well as old, that believe that their nation reached its peak during and immediately after WW2 and woe betide any historian who dares question this. The Simpsons send up this notion very well when an eager-to-please politician delivering a speech to a group of Springfield's senior citizens utters "your generation was the best in US history and you are better and superior to all of us" to which Grandpa Simpson gleefully replies, "Damn right we're better. Keep it coming, sonny!"
Sorry to dwell on this point, but this can show how a historian's position can be affected by personal bias and even zealotry. I am certainly not singling out Ambrose as unique, many other historians of all nations can be as, or even more, similarly affected. I deeply admire John Keegan and his landmark book 'The Face of Battle' is one of my favourite books. But his dislike of all things Soviet did come through in his more recent book on the Second World war where any acknowledgement of Russia's sacrifice and contribution was only grudging and conditional.
UK writer Bryan Perrett described both the defences of Wake Island in 1941 and Tarawa in 1943. But, whereas he praises the sacrificial courage of the US marines in the former, he gave no such compliment to that shown by the Japanese defenders of the latter. His contempt for the Japanese comes through in his argument that the Japanese did not show any personal courage because their sacrifices in battle were more the result of institutional brain-washing.
Another UK writer, Geoffery Regan, in his various books on military blunders, seems eager to expose as much of the military establishment as he can, as being in-competent and bungling. Yet this often leads him to make absurdly generalised statements and sweeping criticisms that sometimes have little reflection of the reality.
A book I read on the Vietnam war called 'Un-Heralded Victory' ( I can't recall the authors name) had, as its mission statement, a desire to show the true history of the war, namely that in military terms, it was an American victory. The victory was then lost, the author argued, through the weaknesses of the US political system, the effectiveness of Communist international propoganda and the betrayal of the US war effort by the false perceptions of the war created by a minority of left-wing, University elite-Journalists. However, like Gary Sheffield in his determination to prove that the Somme was ultimately a British victory, albeit a flawed one, this author uses selective examples and shallow arguments. Its like a hunter going into a forest and shooting three birds all of which are coloured blue and then going home to his wife and saying that every bird in the forest must then be blue! The author concentrated on a select few battles to prove the superiority of the US army's tactics and conduct and ignored the many other factors that prevented their victory in Vietnam.
You mentioned Oral history as an issue. In his Face of Battle, John Keegan examined this issue, citing the popularity of authors such as Martin Middlebrook and Lyn Macdonald who presented books on WW1 structured around the oral and written memories and accounts of their experiences. He praised the value of these works but also commented on their limitations, namely that one sometimes needs to stand back and look at the whole wood and not just the trees.
I recently read 2 books on similar subjects- "Carrier versus Carrier' by Barrett Tillmann and "Leyte Gulf: the last fleet action" by H.P.Willmott. Both are about similar events, namely Pacific war sea battles, the former about the Phillippines Sea in June 1944 and the latter about Leyte Gulf the following October. But there, any similarities end. You could not get two more different styles of war history-writing. US Historian Tillmann (like Ambrose, another worshipper at the altar of 1940s-America) is a romantic, writing about the battle in 'human terms', happy to use emotive terms, even melodrama. Each service-man mentioned by name is also referred to by age and by his home-state to highlight their humanity and individuality. There is some discourse of tactics and equipment but Tillmann rarely steps back and uses colder, impartial analysis. The most controversial aspect of the battle, namely Admiral Spruance's decision to break off pursuit when a large portion of the Japanese carrier fleet was still intact, is only briefly examined in any detail. At times, Tillmann writes like he was penning captions for a war comic:- So-and-so 'splashed both Zeros with as many bursts' and such-and-such 'dived like an express train through the flak'.
H.P.Willmott, a British historian, is at the other extreme, a coldly calculating academic. Whilst Tillmann sits in the front row, Willmott calmly observes from the balcony. Scarely no one below the rank of ship's Captain is even mentioned by name, most of the book is a level-headed, impartial analysis and judgement of resources, tactics, conduct and decision-making. Willmott is highly critical of US Admiral Halsey but much more damning of the entire Japanese High Command, concluding that the battle was a one-sided slaughter, un-precedented in modern naval warfare. There are times when one wishes for a bit more warmth in Willmott's dry, dusty writing-style and content with at least an acknowledgement that young men suffered and died in the ships that were lost. But then it is refreshing to be rid of Tillmann's action-adventure style of historics.
Thanks for all your comments, Neil. Keep them coming! Pete

[NeilE]

Hi Pete

Well I have to say first off that you are a lot more widely read than I am!

One of the things that I always do when reading any historical text is to try to work out what viewpoint the author is coming from and what truth claims is he making for his/her work. it seems to me sometimes that recent military history is becoming a more political and ideological field than perhaps it once was. Many modern works seem to reference other wider debates (or aspects of them) and sometimes that can colour their worth and authority as an important work. Take Ferguson's "The Pity of War" for example, as a work it contains much worthwhile and even new research but at the end of the day Ferguson is so driven to make history fit his view of the world that his conclusions can only be regarded (at least by me) as somewhat suspect and in some cases so simplistic as to be trite and obvious. His chapter on why men fight for example attempts to create some individualistic model explaining this but it just ends up mostly stating the bleeding obvious. The whole work comes off as an intellectual exercise for the author and one is left with the feeling that he has little empathy for his topic at all.

I have read Ambrose's "Citizen Soldiers" and whilst I enjoyed it, I felt he walked a fine line where his admiration for the men whose experiences were his subject matter meant that he at times lost some of his objectivity. I find his works have done a lot to popularise the topic of American servicemen's' experiences in WW2, which up to a point was a not a popular topic prior to his works. Ambrose's work at times is an example of historical texts reflecting current attitudes and values in that his work reflects some current values towards the military in American culture today. Mind he is far from the worst in relation to this. Some of the stuff the History Channel on cable do is almost garbage (other things they put on are very good however).

An interesting work from the 70's (I think) is Charles Whiting's "The Battle of Hurtgen Forest". Whiting was a veteran himself but his account of the Hurtgenwald battles (Nicknamed "The Death Factory" by the US forces engaged there) is a relatively objective account showing both the successes and failures of this little known action, and is also unafraid to be critical of the generals involved whose conduct of the battles in the Hurtgen Forest were largely responsible for its very bloody outcome.

Mind you less subjective approaches can be equally problematic. Gave you read Peter Brune's "A Bastard Of A Place" about Kokoda and the Papua campaigns? I found it so dry and the author so concerned to relate the facts of the campaigns and small actions within it, that it was almost unreadable. In fact it is one of the few books I have never finished. I found it just wore me out with dry over- detail to such a degree that I am likely to avoid any of Brune's other works in the future.

Keegan's comment regarding the works of Middlebrook and MacDonald has some credence but misses the point somewhat. The oral history approach arose as a reaction to the reification of military history as campaign and unit history, and the doings of generals and politicians, and served to position the experience of the ordinary soldier more centrally in the historical analysis of the war. It also brought forward the various impacts of the war on the soldier as a significant factor in historical accounts of the period. Some of the works do look at a number of levels of the history - Middlebrook's "The Kaiser's Battle" (his account of the 1918 offensive) brings into play German voices also as well as an ongoing overview of the offensive also. I think its his best work because of this.

I think also you can't go past the late Patsy Adam-Smith works also. She does fall into some of the cliches about the diggers in "The ANZACS" but her asides about her own experiences of the impacts of wounds and trauma post-war on the diggers in her family give her work a dimension that others lack. Its a favourite work of mine as a result.

I guess writing history for a popular audience is akin to walking a fine line with the danger that elements of drama can be overplayed one way or the other. At the end of the day, the rationale of such works is to sell enough copies to make some sort of a profit and more people are inclined to read something that is dramatic and enjoyable to them than a drier, more objective sort of work. Such works I guess can be a gateway to further research if the individual is so inclined.

As an aside, I find the oral historians sort of work manages to capture both elements quite well if it's done effectively.

Have you read Michael Veitch's "Flak"? Veitch catches the drama of of the varied experiences of the RAAF personnel he interviews and openly admits to being in awe at times of his subjects; at times to such a degree he falls into cliche. He sets out to draw portraits of the men he interviews as they are now which is also an interesting touch. It may not be the deepest work but I found it both enjoyable and a worthwhile record of some of the experiences of the wide range of men he interviewed for the book.

Catch you soon Pete. I'm enjoying your insights, so as you say - keep 'em coming!

Cheers

Neil

PS: BTW Have you got any of the recent rain up there?

[Pete Hill]

Hi Neil,

Regarding the book "Flak', that's not the same Michael Vietch who used to perform on TV's D-Generation and Fast-Forward in the 1980s and 90s?? I knew he was heavily interested in Military History and was a good serious writer as well as a comedic one so perhaps it is the same person!
It sound good and I think I saw a cheap copy on ebay the other day, may put in a bid. I like books that avoid the cliches. One book I have always loved is Don Charlwood's 'No Moon Tonight' which an English writer recently praised as being 'one of the best books about flying ever written anywhere'. Unlike most other autobiographical accounts written by Allied pilots, Charlwood is not afraid to show his vulnerable, emotional side and plainly admit the fear and struggle he endured during his experiences. As it was published in the 1950s with the memories still very fresh, there is a rawness that adds to its power. A more recent book of his experiences that he wrote a few years ago called "Journeys into Night" shows how the passing of time and age can mellow one's recollections and it doesn't have a fraction of the impact of the first book.
I do agree with your observation that Ambrose deserves credit for bringing his nation's WW2 experiences to a wider audience. His books and the movie 'Saving Private Ryan' will probably go down in history as being responsible for making young Americans realise that Vietnam was not the first war in which people actually got hurt. Ambrose is the contemporary equivilant of Cornelius Ryan and Walter Lord in that he can present the human face of momentus historical events. Although his book on the 101st Airborne "Band of Brothers" was a highly enjoyable read, it at times felt like an account written by one of those so-called 'embedded' journalists who can un-avoidably grow too close to the subjects they are writing about. Ambrose sometimes writes what US veterans of the war want to hear, rather than what really happened.
The book had some insightful revelations such as the American soldier's attitudes towards civilians. They actually admired the Dutch and the German civilians the most as they were hard-working, self-reliant, strong-minded and resilient. They found the English to be petty and small-minded, the Italians to be filthy, thieving and dishonest and the French lazy and self-pitying.
However, the book does not point out that the 101st soldiers were NOT typical examples of the American soldier in Europe. They were, together with the 82nd airborne and the 1st infantry divisions, the elite of the army and were much more motivated, highly trained and skilled than the average humble G.I. The common footslogger's experiences are often harder to paint in an heroic mould, the same reason why most books of the WW1 air-war concentrate on the top-end aces rather than the average pilot whose biggest battle was merely to survive and overcome fear. Thats the reason why Charlwood's book is so important, to serve as the counterpoint to the more heroically detached and flippant accounts of the air war written by men such as Johnnie Johnston and Paul Brickhill.
Perhaps the most honest account of wartime experiences I have ever read is "In Pharoh's Army' by Tobias Wolff. He writes about his tour of duty in Vietnam in 1968 and he readily admits that he has a relatively un-eventful time and is in only in real physical danger on a few, brief occasions which is basically what the majority of soldiers experience in the majority of campaigns throughout history. ( On one occasion, he had a Viet Cong member put a live grenade into his Jeep which failed to detonate, on another he helped out a US artillery crew on the first day of the Tet Offensive. He believes that it was that day that the Americans lost the war when the Vietnamese civilian people realised that the US army was prepared to flatten entire villages where a single VC sniper was holed up.)
Audiences demand 'blood and thunder' so the minority of warriors who experience prolonged, intense combat tend to be heard rather than the quiet majority of which Wolff was a member of. As the book 'Jarhead' vividly showed, for many the experience of war can be an anti-climatic one. If you believe the recent research that claims that in any modern battle, the majority of participants don't actually fire their weapons, you start to realise that accounts like Wolff's need to be more widely read. For most soldiers, battles are a confused blur of noise, smoke and confusion. My wife's British-born Grandfather served in the British army in Europe from D-Day plus 5 right through to the German surrender. He was in numerous actions including the battle for Caen in which his Battalion lost 370 casualities in just 9 days. Yet he freely admitted that he never actually got to fire his rifle and all of the losses his comrades suffered were the result of long-ranged artillery. Apart from ones already dead or captured, he never saw a live German apart from a teenaged soldier trying to surrender that, to his horror, one of his mates shot dead. His typical experience on the battlefield was huddling in a slit trench or lying under a hedgerow as the Nebelwelfers and 88s pounded the earth all around him. He never experienced any close-quarters fighting or even exchanges of small-arms fire and I have come to believe that this was typical of the majority of modern soldiers.
When I was living in Rainbow up in the Mallee, I chatted to an elderly gent who had been captured in Crete in 1941. Expecting to hear about bloody battles with the German Paratroopers, I asked him what he had been through. With a smile he cheerfully admitted, "I never fired a f----g shot! All they made us do was march round in circles for a few days with no-one knowing what was going on. I didn't see any Jerries. I saw a Stuka, I think, but that was off in the distance. Then they ordered us to surrender!"
That made me think of the 17,000 soldiers of Wellington's Anglo-Dutch army that sat in the rear in reserve and never fired a shot during the entire battle of Waterloo. Funny how we never read about their experiences!
I read Ernst Junger's "Storm of Steel" about his experiences as a German infantryman on the Western front 1916-18 a few years back and, unlike Wolff, he was certainly in the thick of it. This book has never been admired by those leaning politically to the left as Junger is stubbornly ambigious, never actually denouncing the war and maintaining his patriotism and nationalistic beliefs. Which is why many editions have been censored to remove the more right-wing statements and why he remained a controversial figure in Germany until his recent passing.
I read Robert Graves' 'Goodbye to All that' when I was at Uni and I was surprised by its tone, as it was not the anti-war tirade I had been led to expect. One example is Graves' thoughts on Trench-Foot which he believed was actually avoidable even in the worst of conditions and outbreaks of it were due more to poor morale and discipline amongst the troops.
If there is any conclusion to be drawn from all this, one should be wary of accounts being labelled as 'typical'.
Have you read "The Road to Verdun" by Ian Ousby, published posthumously in 2003 (slightly unfinished). Rather than an account of the battle, he sets the battle in the context of French history, namely the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the growth of French Nationalism afterwards as they yearned to restore their pride, influencing the decisions of the generals to hold Verdun at all costs. The dis-illusionment and the enormous losses of the battle is also examined in the light of the French army's performance in 1940.
I have just realised that this started out as a talk about the Anzac legends. What a tangent! Next up, Hungarian folk-dancing!
Talk to you again soon. Pete
PS, no rain up here. Still the drought goes on and on and on!

[Grovetown]

Best thread on the Forum lads.

Time prevents more contribution. Couple of quick ones though:

Of myths: I am disappointed how - in the UK - there is a (modern?) obsession with the 1st of July (with nearly everybody in the pub believing that 60,000 casualties is 60,000 dead); whereas 3rd Ypres is perhaps truly and better representative of the horror endured by Tommy and his allies.

When I was growing up, terrible conditions (of anything) were always referred to a "being like Passiondale"; now it's always the "Somme". Loss of touch with previous generations, I presume, has 'helped' this...

And indeed, 1918 was the worst year for British casualties, thanks to the Spring Offensive and the last '100 days'; while most believe it was a relatively easy homeward leg...

Of ANZAC: we were relatively recently (nastily) abused/ heckled by a drunken AB fan at Twickenham over WWI. Fair enough, but he then (surprisingly) was unable to a) tell us how many NZ casualties there were at Gallipoli or b) the Great War as a whole. When pressed for numbers, they were, 'scuse French, bollocks.

Having corrected him, we were then spanked by the AB....

Best wishes,

GT.

[Pete Hill]

G'day, GT and thank you.
I know the feeling. Down here it is all Gallipoli, Gallipoli, Gallipoli. The media focus so much on this event and the achievements of the Anzac Corps on the Western Front, which were much more significant to the war as a whole, are generally overlooked. Gallipoli's casualty list represented barely one sixth of Australia's total Great War death-toll but thanks to the Australian Media over the past decades, most young people are fixated solely on the Dardenelles. Thousands of young Aussie backpackers now flock to Anzac Cove in Turkey every year and the once solemnly quiet dawn service held there every April 25th is now in danger of becoming like Woodstock. A couple of years ago a photograph of a young backpacker using a soldier's grave-stone as a head-rest caused some outrage down here. It has become a trendy media-fuelled event and many flock there just to be seen, rather than reflect on the true meaning of that campaign. I wonder, GT, do English backpackers flock to Agincourt, Blenheim, Waterloo or Rhorke's Drift every year and start swilling lager cans and chanting 'One Nil, one Nil, One Nil, one nil!" ?
I look at the formal memorial services held at Gallipoli, the neatness of it all, the suits and ties, the young school-captains in their private school blazers, the government officials with balding scalps as shiny as their shoes. Everything is tidy, not a weed to be seen, the memorial stones are gleaming white and glinting black. Brass-band music sounding out with suitable mournfulness and some monotone sombre hymns and some oh-so-dignified speeches with the words- 'spirit', 'courage', hardship' and 'mateship' mentioned a lot. (The last word is pro-nounced 'Met-shup' in the Upper-Class Australian tongue).
I think about the battle of Lone Pine, fought in Gallipoli during August. The real battle. There was no neatness there, no dignity, no tidiness. Everything was strewn with debris and dust, everyone's clothes were filthy. Men fought each other in the semi-darkness of the log-covered Turkish trenches for many hours, stabbing, shooting, bombing, clawing at each other with bare hands. The main words used there probably began with 'F' and 'C'. The only music was the buzzing of flies. There were no flags, no speeches, no bugles sounding the last post. Just young men ankle-deep in blood, bloated corpses and excrement.
Thats why I detest memorial services that have lots of speeches, brass-bands, flags, suits and hymns. I think they should be entirely silent, we should just shut up and think about what those days would have been really like. We shouldn't need some wanker in a tight suit to tell us what we should be thinking. That's why when I visit Gallipoli some day, it won't be on April 25th, it be a time when its quiet, when the backpackers won't be there. So I can breath the place in and think in silence.
Yes, GT, most people think that the battle of the Somme ended on July 1st and most think that the German's March 1918 Offensive was doing well until for no apparent reason, the Kaiser surrendered. An American friend of mine tells me that in the States, the US involvement in the Great War is totally forgotten compared to Vietnam and (certain aspects of) World War 2. In Australia, it is our involvement in the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency that are the great forgotten events in our military history.
Tell AB that the Kiwis lost 2,000 dead at Gallipoli and the New Zealanders were the elite of the Allied troops. Like the Aussies, they were brave but, unlike us, they also knew what moments to keep their heads down.
Cheers, Pete.

[NeilE]

Hi Pete and Grovetown

Just a very quick reply as I am on holiday in Sydney at the moment. Gallipoli I think is remembered because it fits most closely the archetypes created by Bean et al and has become a template for national cliches about mateship et al. Gallipoli also gave us an enduring national archetype for mateship - that wandering pom, Simpson.

The reality of it all is obscured by the cliche. You have to "dig, dig, dig" to get to the real stories. I'm waiting for the examples to come forward where mateship was negated - wouldn't that cause a stir!

Passchendaele vrs The Somme: The 1st of July is perhaps more repesentative of the earlier phase of British battles on the Western Front - from Neuve Chappelle to Loos and culminated in what Haig believed to be the ultimate expression of the assault formula from those battles - !st of July 1916. Passchendaele I think produced more casualties overall and the shocking weather conditions must have added to the frightful memories of it all. Assault tactics however, weren't a lot different between the two, and the weather in the latter part of the Somme campaign was pretty shocking too (as was the overall casualty rate for the battle - which was over a million men dead or wounded if I recall rightly).

Passchendaele was fought by a different army too I think. The volunteers of 1916 were replaced/augmented by the conscripts of 1917.

Once again though The Somme has become archetypal - representative of the largely poor British generalship of The Great War and is also a representation of the anger felt towards the officer class after the war also. It was The Somme that first presented the butchers bill of The Great War to many ordinary towns and villages in Great Britain and the Commonwealth also.

Maybe Passchendaele will be more remembered at some stage - there are some good books about it now - for example Steele and Hart's book (title escapes me at the moment) is well worth a read.

Anyway back to holiday mode! I'll be back on deck 9th or 10th of March.

Cheers

Neil