The darkest hour on the Western Front

[DC]

The Atlantic

"THE SOMME - The Darkest Hour on the Western Front" by Peter Hart
(Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/Somme )

Peter Hart is one of the chief historians at what the British still
call the Imperial War Museum, in London, and he is a member of that
tremendously tenacious group of scholars who cannot rest until honor
and credit have been restored to those who made up the British
Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders. Hart has no big-picture
sense of the place of the Great War in the narrative of the 20th
century � he is as committed to the mud of Flanders and Picardy as his
forebears were. Nonetheless, as one turns his pages, one is compelled
to be impressed by the way he builds his relentless and
one-dimensional case. The battles along the Somme were not one
repetitive fiasco after another, but rather represented a very steep
and painful learning curve, up which the British army agonizingly
inched, to eventually acquire the skills and sinews that wore down
Prussian militarism.

This doesn�t alter the fact, which Hart scarcely bothers to conceal,
that there was something doomed about the first assault...

Continued: http://xrl.us/Somme1

[Ulysses at Langdale Tarn]

On Dec 31 2009, 9:42 am, DC <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]

> wrote:
> The Atlantic
>
> "THE SOMME - The Darkest Hour on the Western Front" by Peter Hart
> (Amazon.com:http://xrl.us/Somme)
>
> Peter Hart is one of the chief historians at what the British still
> call the Imperial War Museum, in London, and he is a member of that
> tremendously tenacious group of scholars who cannot rest until honor
> and credit have been restored to those who made up the British
> Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders. Hart has no big-picture
> sense of the place of the Great War in the narrative of the 20th

> century — he is as committed to the mud of Flanders and Picardy as his

> forebears were. Nonetheless, as one turns his pages, one is compelled
> to be impressed by the way he builds his relentless and
> one-dimensional case. The battles along the Somme were not one
> repetitive fiasco after another, but rather represented a very steep
> and painful learning curve, up which the British army agonizingly
> inched, to eventually acquire the skills and sinews that wore down
> Prussian militarism.
>

> This doesn’t alter the fact, which Hart scarcely bothers to conceal,

> that there was something doomed about the first assault...
>
> Continued:http://xrl.us/Somme1

~~~~~~
Okay. So we are done with the Marne battle and now we are on to
the Somme offensive. Is Somme 1 the battle in which the 60,000
Tommies died trying to rush the Hun machine gun nests ?
What about the French at Verdun ? How many soldats did they
lose ? And what of "Blackjack" Pershing and his "one million
Yanks slogging thru hell" ? Let's face it. Hemingway was right.
It was the most pointless war in human history. The Americans
were buying paper lapel poppies to support W.W. I victims
as recently as 1960.

Cheers, David H
~~~~~

[bria...@webtv.net]

Keep in mind that the British records of the Great War are a set of
fraudulent documents - with lots of records removed, and their very
existence hidden.
The Australian public records contain whle sets of records of
cabinet meetings in England and lots of oher records - orders,
telegrams, all that stuff - that, according to the British records never
happened or were never written or sent.
Nice guys, huh ? Dennis Winters has wriiten all about this.
BPC

[Ulysses at Langdale Tarn]

~~~~~~~~
Brian, bravo zulu ! (USN signal for "well done")

You and those like you are the reason I go to USENET groups.
I want to read history from those who can digest the sources and
grind out synopses is readable English. You are such a person.

TYVM
David H Singanas
~~~~~~