The Great Slaughter

For the past three days, I've been reading Les Carlyon's epic history of The Great War - at least, the Australian side of it.

Australians grow up venerating the tragic sacrifices of Gallipoli - our first major test in battle; and we all know who to blame for that disaster. Through poor planning and arrogance, the boats landed at the wrong end of the Gallipoli peninsular.

But it wasn't just the Australians who were slaughtered, in fact, the Brits and Canadians lost more. It was, however, our 'baptism of fire' in a war just beginning. Winston Churchill - yes, that one - lost his job over it and rightly so.

What happened in Europe - which this book deals with - beggars belief. If Gallipoli was a defeat, then the Western Front was an unmitigated disaster for the Aussies; and for the same reason. British generals who quiet literally fucked up in major ways. Worse, they were never called to account for that wholesale murder of troops.

Carlyon, in parts, tries to ease off on the criticism of the generals: Haig, Gough, Haking, Birdwood, McCay were the worst offenders. Haig, for example, never saw the ground the troops had to fight across. He and Gough searched throughout the war for the ultimate cavalry charge through the gap. Nor did the generals appreciate the advantage artillery gave them. Carlyon fails in trying to present a less critical picture because the facts, casualty figures, personal diary entries, dispatches contradict virtually every attempt to lessen the blame.

Time and again, Gough oversaw ill-planned attacks and wasted thousands of lives - not just Australians, but British, New Zealanders, Indian, Sengalese, Canadians... and never thought it a bad thing. He and Haking were of the opinion that 'character' would see the troops to the enemy trenches. If not, well then...

This book is a best seller here - in hardback - which is surprising for an almost 900 page tome on a part of history 90 years past. But Carlyon mixes dry recitations with excerpts from soldiers diaries and from Australia's official war historian C.E.W. Bean. Bean spent his time in the trenches with the men and with the commanders further back once he'd understood what was going on.

I used Bean for my History thesis at University; if Carlyon had written this book then, it would have been invaluable to me. Within it's pages, I found a clue to my grandfather's own diary. He'd been wounded, but, in transcribing the diary, I had to guess at where he was. Turns out he was wounded at Fromelles - one of Gough's disasters. The diary doesn't say, but from Carlyon's book, I can fit the pieces of the puzzle together and say Pa had his legs shot up bad enough to spend two months in England recuperating before returning in time for the ugliness of the Somme.

In another curious twist, I also discovered that a previously unknown great uncle, on my mother's side, was killed at Theipval, on the Somme while my grandfather - from my father's side was less than three miles away. My grandfather's diary entry for the day? B., C., and D. came out of line this morning covered with mud. Must be terrible in the line. He was big on the understatement.

It's unfortunate I only had one of his diaries for a month before handing it back to my grandmother; there were six in all and I would have loved to have read them. Sadly, she gave them away to people who weren't family.

When I'm done with this book, I'll get back to writing. For now, though, this stuff is as riveting as it is tragic.