The battle of the Somme

"....The modern fascination with the Battle of the Somme has its roots in the casualties of both the first day and following months. These were unprecedented in British military history. The British lost more than 19,000 men in the first day of battle; more than 420,000 British and commonwealth soldiers were dead by the end of the campaign in November..."

When I was young, the only book I read about World War I was "Over the Top"...(His description of gas warfare is HERE) quite horrifying even though it was a best seller. Later I read many: about women serving as nurses, and cooks, about ambulance drivers, and most recently about Tolkien at war.

Yes, I read "histories" but I am more interested in how people react and live.

One thing is the heroism, another thing was the horror...especially about the casualties of mustard gas. Another thing struck me was in the book on Tolkien, that he, like many of his fellow veterans, felt that the revisionist history about the "lost generation" led to not only seeing war not as a horrible necessity but as stupid and unneeded, and that ridiculed the heroism of those who fought.
The result, of course, was pacifism toward Hitler.

History repeats itself: The anti war trumpets sound the same story as they did in 1938 and 1925.

But if we have to learn something from that terrible battle whose scars still echo in those searching for peace, it might be this:

"...I once asked my grandfather, himself a World War One veteran, whether he thought it was just too simple to assume the Great War amounted to nothing but a "futile" waste of life.

He replied: "The generals did their job, we did ours. We won."

The same man wept on 3 September 1939 when the Great War became the First World War and another generation went to fight a "war to end all wars". The Great War did not end war any more than did the Second World War.

That failure is not something to blame on the men and women who did "their bit" in either conflict...."