ISSUE 182 : Jul/Aug - 2010 - Australian Defence Force Journal

Bloody Victory: the sacrifice on the Somme and themaking of the twentieth centuryWilliam PhilpottLondon: Little, Brown and Company, 2009ISBN: 978-1-408702-246Reviewed by Colonel Darren Kerr, Australian ArmyWe were very surprised to see them walking …. The officers were in front. I noticed one of themwalking calmly, carrying a stick. When we started firing … they went down in their hundreds. Youdidn’t have to aim, we just fired into them.German infantryman, First Battle of the Somme, 1916 1Was Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander-in-chief who presided over theslaughter on the Somme, an unimaginative and dull officer who unnecessarily sent a generationto their deaths? Or did he understand that only ‘attritional’ warfare could wear down andultimately defeat the German war machine? Nearly 100 years after the battle of the Somme,there is still historical interest in this question.It must be said, though, that the weight of opinion among historians would tend to favour theformer proposition over the latter. It is difficult to defend a commander who presided over anattack in which 60,000 British troops were killed on one day; a day described by the historianHugh L’Etang as… probably the biggest disaster to British arms since Hastings. Certainly never before, nor since,had such wanton, pointless carnage been seen, not even at Verdun, where in the worst month ofall [June], the total French casualty list barely exceeded what Britain lost on her one day. 2In many ways, William Philpott’s 700-page book, Bloody Victory: the sacrifice on the Sommeand the making of the twentieth century, is both a reappraisal of the Somme and Haig himself.Philpott’s central thesis is contained in the title—that the Somme was a ‘bloody victory’ andit is time that people, particularly his British (and by implication Australian) audience, saw itthat way. For Philpott, the Somme marked not only the inevitable defeat of Germany in theFirst World War but also resonated throughout the 20th century as an epoch-shaping event.Not surprisingly, given this intent, those reading Bloody Victory for a tactical account or anexamination of what individual soldiers went through during the campaign will be disappointed.Philpott is a ‘big picture’ historian and his intent is not to get into the trenches with the menin those fateful months (much like Haig, who studiously avoided the front lines). This is not tosay that Philpott does not discuss the various offensives or that he does not assess the impactof the technology of war in 1916 on the British and French attacks but rather that his intent isto paint a broader canvas.91