British Generals in the Great War

British Generals in the Great War

Ever since the first world war the quote 'lions led by donkeys' has

been used to describe the British army, and refers to the brave troops

as 'lions' that are being led by stupid 'donkey' generals. It came

about as much of the public and soldiers opinions stated that the

generals were incompetents who led their men to the death regardless

of whether the battle they were fighting was a lost cause. The quote

originated from the German troops, who respectfully commented on the

British soldiers' bravery and upon how their lives where so carelessly

wasted by their 'idiot' generals; many modern books, films and tv

shows, for example hilarious 'Blackadder Goes Forth', still echo this

belief. Is this however a just assessment of the British generals of

World War 1?

This portrait of moronic, heartless generals was rather popular and

actually stemmed from many very real facts. Evidently, the main reason

for these opinions is the alarmingly great number of casualties that

each battle produced; the worst such example would be the Battle of

the Somme that had raged from the 1st of July 1916, when over 19 000

British soldiers were killed and around 57 000 were wounded during the

first day alone. Soon battles became referred to as 'slaughter' rather

than fighting, and it seemed to many that the generals' strategy was

to simply outkill the enemy - this was based on reality, the generals'

view was that as the Germans had less men it did not matter if the

Allies lost more, eventually they would still prevail. The long list

of fatalities alarmed public and soldiers alike - but what appeared

even more shocking was ...

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the generals were indeed responsible for a portion of that loss they

ultimately achieved their goal by winning the war - therefore, they

musn't have been complete 'donkeys'. It is wrong that these men were

reffered to as beasts - if not for them, if not for leaders, there

would have been no strategy at all and the entire conflict would

surely have been won by the Germans. In order to fight effectively

there must be strategy, for there to be strategy there must be order,

for there to be order there must be leadership; whoever the leaders

are must be able to make difficult decisions and choices of literally

life and death. Mistakes cannot be avoided, but they are important to

learn from and to better the strategies from. The soldiers of the

First World War were indeed lions; but their generals were far from

donkeys.