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Remembered Today:

'Monty' and his views of Great War Generals


Petroc

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It is one of the paradoxes of the Great War that line officers commonly complained of far too much interference by the staff and also of little or no communication. The few books I have read which were written by or about staff officers are adamant that there was continual communication at every level of the staff. Even GHQ officers paid daily visits to units in the front line. Field Marshal Montgomery was by any reckoning, a bit eccentric. I believe that a man who wore 2 cap badges to make a visual statement, would be capable of employing artistic license when trying to make a literary point.

Petroc, I have missed that statement of Haig's tactics. Could you give a reference or pointer, please?

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The battles of August 1914, with the substantial French losses that Salesie and PJA have referred to previously were fought as encounter engagements by the French under their doctrine of "offensive a l'outrance". This is particularly relevant to this thread as a feature of this was that the General rode with the advance-guard. This obviously has its advantages (morale, awareness etc.) but disadvantages (KIA, captured - the Colonial Corps at Rossignol; cut-off/out of touch with the main column - Trentinian at Ethe).

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It is one of the paradoxes of the Great War that line officers commonly complained of far too much interference by the staff and also of little or no communication. The few books I have read which were written by or about staff officers are adamant that there was continual communication at every level of the staff. Even GHQ officers paid daily visits to units in the front line. Field Marshal Montgomery was by any reckoning, a bit eccentric. I believe that a man who wore 2 cap badges to make a visual statement, would be capable of employing artistic license when trying to make a literary point.

Petroc, I have missed that statement of Haig's tactics. Could you give a reference or pointer, please?

I'll try to dig out a few references, albeit secondary printed evidence, but from what I've read (and I'm sure others could expand or correct) Haig's earlier experiences in the Field, at Staff College etc were instrumental in his articulation of the various phases of battle; I believe these theories were expanded in a pamphlet or manual issued in his name prior to the Great War

Andy

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Tom,

Regarding Monty's "showing himself to the troops"............

From what I have been told and read about, as many thought he was a show off or an idiot than welcomed his pep talks.

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To what extent do you guys think that the much-trumpeted version of Haig's tactical and strategic theories regarding, for want of better words 'pummelling, break-in and break-out and then pursue the enemy' were actually echoed by the Allies' experiences in Normandy after D-Day? This kind of warfare might not have been planned (and Haig has been criticised in the past for his retrosepctive comments along the line of 'oh, wel thats how I planned it in the first place') but was it inevitable?

Andy, have a read of Haig's final despatch: http://www.1914-1918.net/haigs_final_despatch.html

Cheers-salesie.

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Tom,

Regarding Monty's "showing himself to the troops"............

From what I have been told and read about, as many thought he was a show off or an idiot than welcomed his pep talks.

He had all the objectionable traits of the self proclaimed Messiah, unredeemed by the faintest touch of humility.

Many years ago I asked my dad what he thought about him, and I'll never forget his reply "..Well, son, he was a bit of a " See you next Tuesday". "

Phil.

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Tom,

Regarding Monty's "showing himself to the troops"............

From what I have been told and read about, as many thought he was a show off or an idiot than welcomed his pep talks.

I think I have been caught by a drop short here. I was in my funk hole so no harm done. I talked to several men who served with Monty in the desert. They thought he was a bit of a show off, my Uncle thought he was daft, but they did respect his idea that the men should be told as much as possible. Keep them in the picture, not in the dark. That may have been something he brought from the Great War where men were progressively more and more involved and kept informed as the British Army evolved from the BEF of pre war soldiers to a conscript army of undreamt proportions.

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Does it matter that Monty was a prima-donna, loved to appear in public, and had verbal diahorea, or that Haig was dour, mostly shunned the world outside his HQ, and suffered from verbal constipation? Both were in-post to lead an army against a fearsome foe and both succeeded in their mission - and that mission was not to gain enough public popularity to amass enough votes to win Big Brother, or the X Factor, or Strictly Come Dancing, but both were certainly Britons with Talent. Both succeeded, in different circumstances and with opposite personalities, to play a vital role in stopping the bloody Germans from winning.

Just think on this, if a perfect general did exist what would we have to prattle on about? Both Monty and Haig have been criticised for their personalities - what do we expect from a general; perfection personified? It seems to me, that we have two prime examples in Monty and Haig, with their almost diametrically opposed personalities, to conclude that public persona is not a pre-requisite for successful generalship - so what is, could it after all be something as indefinable as a military X Factor? Or is it more to do with come the moment come the man, whatever his "flawed", but oh so human, personality may be? Or is it simply that a successful general's personality is never noticed by the public until he actually reaches the peak of a successful career?

In the final analysis, would we approve more of a failed general with an "ideal" personality or a winning general with a "flawed" one? And more to the point, is it not the case that any general, who succeeds in battle, automatically "develops" a perceived flawed personality? After all, even Marlborough and Wellington did not escape plenty of criticism for their non-ideal personalities! I ask again, does it matter that Monty was a prima-donna, loved to appear in public, and had verbal diahorea, or that Haig was dour, mostly shunned the world outside his HQ, and suffered from verbal constipation?

Cheers-salesie.

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If Marlborough and Napoleon understood the importance of morale, why does it seem to have been overlooked on the WF?

Like it or not, Owen wasn't alone in thinking

"Men, gaps for the filling:

Losses who might have fought

longer; but no one bothers."

It is not true to say either, that regard for the state of mind of the army's foundation element was completely missing in the Great War.

Away from the WF another great desert general had his GHQ within artillery range of the enemy, believing that

'... Staff Officers are like partridges; they are better for being shot over."

Col R E M Russell wrote of Allenby, 'There was scarsely a man in the force who did not feel he was a matter of personal interest to the C in C and the effect was miraculous. Such a contrast with the previous regime.'

This was a very real policy on Allenby's behalf. Witness his suspension of the Nebi Samwil attack on 24th November

"Allenby realized that continuing the attack with depleted, half-starved and exhausted divisions might lead to their demoralization.

This was the mark of a great soldier. Dawnay wrote of Allenby on the day that he suspended his offensive temporarily, 'More and more I am struck by the Chief's decision, and his flair for estimating how far and at what point it is right to keep up the pressure in spite of difficulties. I think that he is wonderful.' Dawnay had witnessed exhausted troops resting on their march rise to their feet and cheer Allenby 'again and again as he passed.' [Forgotten Soldiers of the First World War - David R Woodward, Tempus, 2006]

It was not just Mongomery who understood the importance of morale in WWII. When he was climbing the ladder of command Mountbatten used to keep index cards with personal details recorded so that he could chat to his men with confidence and make them an individual and not just a number. When Slim presented a copy of his book 'Defeat into Victory' to Festing, he endorsed it 'To Frankie Festing, who did so much to put the 'Victory' into the title of this book.' Front-line-Frankie was also famous for remembering not only who his men were, but also their nick-names. And as his own nick-name suggests, he was usually where it was hottest!

The 18th & 19th centuries as well as the mid-twentieth century provide examples of commanders who understood how important it is to make the men believe that they count as individuals and not just as cannon fodder. Why was this faculty so rare on the WF in 14-18?

Michael

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It would be idle to pretend that I have THE answer to your last question but perhaps part of the answer lies with the enormous expansion in men and materiel which the British army had to undergo in the course of the war. Trained in an army which was numbered in the tens of thousands and to be compelled to expand that until it became the largest army by far that Britain ever fielded, it may well be that the sheer size of the enterprise meant that it was not possible to keep the common touch. Are we seriously suggesting that Haig ought to have maintained a card index with the names and nicknames of his troops? I know of at least one instance from his diaries where he remembered a sergeant in a base hospital and his complaint, from a meeting a year before. The impression given by the men who worked beside him throughout the war is totally at variance with the view which gained currency after he died. There is a thread running on the WFA forum which suggests that Haig in fact did have the common touch. Several personal reminiscences of him by men who met him and were impressed.

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The 18th & 19th centuries as well as the mid-twentieth century provide examples of commanders who understood how important it is to make the men believe that they count as individuals and not just as cannon fodder. Why was this faculty so rare on the WF in 14-18?

Michael

Might it be a matter of scale ?

The battles of the black powder era were generally fought in a compass sufficiently narrow to require commanders to be in close proximity to their troops, which engendered a special need for some form of rapport.

With a static war extending over hundreds of miles, it was, arguably, neither feasible nor desirable for a commander in chief to dash around the front lines in an attempt to boost morale....as to whether his subordinate commanders at corps, divisional or brigade level should be so employed is moot.

Phil.

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If Marlborough and Napoleon understood the importance of morale, why does it seem to have been overlooked on the WF?

Like it or not, Owen wasn't alone in thinking

"Men, gaps for the filling:

Losses who might have fought

longer; but no one bothers."

The 18th & 19th centuries as well as the mid-twentieth century provide examples of commanders who understood how important it is to make the men believe that they count as individuals and not just as cannon fodder. Why was this faculty so rare on the WF in 14-18?

Michael

Why do you believe that morale in the BEF on the Western Front was low? The work of Owen, fine poetry as it is, is not representative of the thoughts of the vast majority who fought - indeed, the work of Owen and Sassoon only gained public popularity during the 1960s when peace movements became highly fashionable - Owen and Sassoon's poetry, along with a few other warrior poets, was used by these anti-war movements to make a one dimensional point whilst ignoring the majority of other WW1 poetry. And, despite masses of evidence to the contrary, this view is still prevalent in the popular mindset.

It is simply not true to even imply that the BEF's morale had collapsed - indeed, many of Owen and Sassoon's poems are written in awe of their men's spirit, in awe of their ability to remain buoyed and carry on fighting in such dire circumstances. To look at such narrow evidence, as a few of Owen's poems, is to deny reality - the BEF suffered no overall collapse in morale at any time during 1914-18. No mutinies as the French Army suffered in 1917, no collapse in fighting spirit and massive desertions which the German Army suffered from in 1918, no mass shooting of officers as in the Russian army in 1917 - do you really believe that the BEF could have achieved what it did when its morale had collapsed? The downfall of the German Army is the place to look for evidence of what a serious collapse in morale actually means; it means disaster - the BEF being a prime example of the opposite.

I'm afraid your assertion that morale in the BEF was overlooked on the Western Front, and thus implying it was virtually non-existent, denies the realities of the situation.

Cheers-salesie.

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I give credit to Owen, Sassoon, Montgomery et al for having been there and having written about what they saw for themselves

As I said, 'like it or not' - and obviously some will not

If the morale of the individual fighting man was not overlooked on the WF then perhaps a quote can be supplied, similar to Col Russell's about Allenby.

Who wrote about GHQ BEF in 1917, in terms of "There was scarsely a man in the force who did not feel he was a matter of personal interest to the C-in-C, and the effect was miraculous."?

Michael

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We must bear in mind that Owen and Sassoon were poets, intent on expressing their inner thoughts through poetry. I pass over the fact that they met while undergoing treatment for what I would probably describe as a nervous breakdown ascribable to post traumatic stress. I find it very strange that the poetry of the period should be appealed to to bolster opinions on how the war was fought and how well or badly the high command performed their tasks. This same attitude quotes a modern comedy series as a source of information on the subject. How many students of the Crimean War appeal to Tennyson in their analysis of the Battle of Balaklava? Is Shakespeare considered an authority on Agincourt?

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try not to get too diverted from the original theme of this thread

Rather than blind assertions of faith,

can we please have some relevant historical references regarding the subject in hand

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It might be pertinent to suggest that the morale of British infantry in Normandy, in 1944, was not of the same calibre as it had been in The Great War; and this despite Monty's generalship. I offer this as a suggestion, diffidently, and fully aware that it is contentious.

Phil.

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It is a very good question (that is, the comparison with men in Allenby's command) but applicable to all forces on the Western Front, was it not? Many memoirs and other evidence points to the dehumanising / part of a machine / helplessness of the individual on the WF. If men of all armies felt it, surely it is not to do with individual commanders or structures but the nature of siege warfare in the industrial age.

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Chris,

You are quite correct that the dehumanising effects of industrial warfare were felt by both sides in 1914-1918

But some commanders took steps to ensure that, despite this, their men still felt valued as individuals - giving them the impression that their lives would not be uselessly thrown away

Others appear to have ignored this aspect of man-management and consequently they may not have reaped the benefits

Michael

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It's an interesting thesis, Michael, and I have no doubt that you are right at unit level. Perhaps even the odd Brigadier or Divisional CO too. But Corps, Army and GHQ were controlling such huge armies (and did not have Monty's benefit of radio or press) I'm not sure how the commanders could possibly have had a widespread effect on giving men the impression that they were individually valued. Plumer certainly seems to have been popular but exactly how that came about, I am not sure.

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Would it not be the case that "morale" was more in the hands of the unit Commanders; Battalion, Company, Platoon or Battery, Squadron etc. than the more Senior Officers?

I have read and can't remember where, of course, that the individual soldiers usually knew their Commanders, or who they were, up to Brigade or even perhaps Divisional level, but above that rarely knew and were not particularly interested to know.

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I give credit to Owen, Sassoon, Montgomery et al for having been there and having written about what they saw for themselves

As I said, 'like it or not' - and obviously some will not

If the morale of the individual fighting man was not overlooked on the WF then perhaps a quote can be supplied, similar to Col Russell's about Allenby.

Who wrote about GHQ BEF in 1917, in terms of "There was scarsely a man in the force who did not feel he was a matter of personal interest to the C-in-C, and the effect was miraculous."?

Michael

It's not a question of liking it or not, Michael - it is a question of fact versus myth. True, Owen and Sassoon were there and wrote about what they saw - but what about the many other poets who were also there and who also wrote about what they saw? Why do you dismiss them so readily - because their views don't fit snugly with Owen’s and Sassoon's as well as your own view of events?

The thoughts of Owen and Sassoon were not representative of the majority who fought, and their view only became "popular" in the 1960s when used as a political tool by the highly fashionable peace-movements - and these so-called peace movements and yourself have a great deal in common, you both ignore the masses of other poetry that put Owen and Sassoon's thoughts into perspective. You ignore the words of men who were also there, men who also fought and sometimes died, men who were in a much bigger majority than Owen or Sassoon. The words of these men may not carry the literary merit of Owen, or the raw, direct style of Sassoon, but they, nonetheless, portray the feelings of the majority. I have neither the time nor the inclination to post poem after poem to show this simple fact - if you take just a little trouble you can easily find for yourself the poems that don't "prove" your point.

There are poetry revisionists as well, and to help you in your search, here's an extract from Poems of the First World War, Never Such Innocence, by Martin Stephen - Everyman 1993:

"The relative ability of the First World War generals may be in question; the result of the war is not. The superbly trained British Expeditionary Force was all but wiped out in helping the French hold the Germans before the latter reached Paris. Many more angels, and devils too, were created at the Battle of Mons than were ever seen in the sky over the battlefield, but such early actions were mere skirmishes compared with the battles that were to follow.

Caught by surprise, Britain nevertheless managed to recruit and train the largest volunteer army in its history. Nearly 60,000 of these men were to become casualties on the first day of the Somme offensive in 1916. It is these men and this battle (actually a series of offensives launched over a number of months) that, ever since, have come to symbolise the war in the popular imagination. Weighted down with over 60 pounds of equipment, hundreds of thousands of troops went 'over the top', marching slowly forward in close-knit waves, in one instance kicking footballs ahead of them - all to be ripped apart by German rifle-and machine-gun fire. With the death of that army something went out of the heart of England. For many people the anguish and the truth about the First World War are forever symbolised by the work of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosen-berg, and the other famous 'trench poets'. So great is the association that, in Britain at least, the term 'war poets' can only be the poets of the Great War. Or so the story goes ...

To question that image of the First World War is regarded nowadays almost as sacrilege. Yet even a cursory glance at history suggests that in our reaction to the war, we show a response quite out of proportion to the known facts. The Industrial, French and Russian revolutions arguably had more political impact. The Second World War cost far more lives in Europe and as a whole. A great many more of these lives were those of innocent civilians. The Second War forced a radical and persistently dangerous division of Europe. Most of all, the Second World War ended with the detonation of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If it is true that a whole, tragic .generation was wiped out in the Great War, then the Second World War told us to prepare for a whole planet to be wiped out.

My own battle with the conventional image of the First World War started with a doctoral thesis on its poetry. My particular hero at the time was Isaac Rosenberg, who in the balmy days of 1972. could still be described as the undiscovered genius of the First World War. I carried into my research all the features that were, and possibly still are, the product of a standard education in English Literature at a standard British university. Doubts began to come at an early stage.

The turning-point, for me, came in an interview with a Norfolk gentleman-farmer who had served for the whole war with the artillery. He listened carefully as I waxed enthusiastic about Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Yes, he agreed, they were fine men, and fine poets. But, he added, I was not to think that they were altogether representative. He asked if I watched the ceremonies on Armistice Day. Had I ever wondered what it was that drew those increasingly ancient men out of their beds, and made them re-unite every year at chronic risk to life and health? He was like them. He remembered the war with sadness, sometimes with repulsion, but more often with pride. They had taken on the most professional army in Europe, and beaten it in a fair fight. They had also taken on German militarism, and, in his opinion, if the politicians had not messed it up in 1918 there might have been no Second World War...

...The First World War poetry we most commonly hear, and the one we are most familiar with, is actually the voice of outraged middle-class protest.

The poets of the First World War who have achieved lasting fame were poets first, and soldiers a long way second. The recruiting, and, later, conscription, nets drew in men who in any previous ages, given their education and backgrounds, would never have thought of enlisting, and as a result many more of these, even allowing for the vast scale, were poets than had been the case in previous wars. In addition, the war itself caused the writing of poetry by men who would almost certainly not have done so otherwise. The absence of an equal body of poetry about the war at sea, as compared with the war on land and especially on the Western Front, is not because conditions for a stoker at Jutland or Scapa Flow were any less horrific than for a soldier in the trenches, but rather because the Royal Navy retained much more of a traditional intake during the war, and to have written poetry at Dartmouth then would be analogous to playing Jerry Lee Lewis at a harpsichord recital now. Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, and Edmund Blunden, like so many other poets of the war, came from an educated class with an awareness of literature. Their view of the war is admirable in both poetic and moral terms; it would, however, be wrong to assume that it is therefore typical or representative.

That familiar voice from the Great War is also the voice of the officers, something which is also true of some poetry which is occasionally hailed as being 'from the ranks'. Very often this proves to have been written by a middle-class mind which happened to be serving in the ranks, and which commented on the attitudes of the majority of the troops, rather than actually capturing them. Although trench life did sometimes breed a much closer understanding of the ordinary soldier on the part of the officers, there was at that time an unbridgeable gap between officers and men in all branches of the armed services. Owen did not wish to write anything to which a soldier might say 'no compris', but persistently did just that, and was horrified by the crudity and gross sentimentality of the ordinary soldier's attitude to the war. All this changed as more officers were promoted from the ranks.

The most convenient image of Great War poetry is based on the shock-and-horror category of writing. It symbolises what in our national guilt we feel we ought to think about the First World War. It is gripping, immediate - and something of a cul-de-sac. It prompted W. B. Yeats's famous remark that passive suffering was not a fit subject for poetry, and Yeats was too shrewd a critic for the complaint not to have a germ of truth in it. In Edward Thomas's poetry, in the words of countrymen quoted in Ronald Blythe's Akenfield, and in a host of other writings, there is the feeling that, horrific as the war was, life still went on, the seasons were unchanging, and time and nature covered the scars of war.

To Owen and Sassoon the war was an outrage, a crime against decency, civilisation, and humanity. To the aristocrat and the farm- or factory-worker (though for very different reasons) the war sometimes did not seem quite so appalling. The aristo-cracy had been conditioned since before Norman times to exchange their privileges for military service, and that had always carried with it the risk of mutilation and death. Such conditioning helped form the officer caste of the Regular Army. At times Julian Grenfell welcomed the war with boyish glee, and with the realisation that active service was just like school, only he did not have to wash nearly as often. To the farm-worker, who lived under conditions of feudal deprivation which nowadays are only a bad dream, war may have been frightful, but not nearly so frightful as it was for those from sheltered backgrounds.

When rural happiness could sometimes be measured in terms of a full stomach, something to smoke and drink, reasonable health, and warm place to sleep, it took relatively little for the average infantryman to achieve a modicum of contentment in the Army, a fact frequently remarked on in tones of wonder by the essentially middle-class officers. The same often applied to the products of the industrial communities as well. Previous suffering did not make army life good; it made it more acceptable, in a way that Owen's poetry rarely conveys, for all his desire not to write anything to which a soldier might say 'no compris'."

If you need any more pointers, Michael, I'll be happy to help. Now, as for using Monty, alongside Owen and Sassoon, as a source for your morale assertions - I have seen nothing from Monty that could possibly be construed as saying the BEF as a whole suffered from low morale, the only thing I can see in his criticisms is that the WW1 Generals got it wrong - but, as I said earlier, he lets himself down badly as a reliable source by failing to offer viable alternatives as to how WW1 should/could have been fought.

Also, here's a summary of a War Office Paper (entitled The British Armies in France as Gathered from Censorship', 18 December 1917, WO 106/401) which deals directly with the morale of the BEF on the Western Front - showing that such matters were not overlooked at the time. This study of the morale of the BEF in 1917, based on soldiers letters home, concluded that the morale of the army as a whole was sound but that the second army, which was bearing the brunt of the fighting at the time, had a somewhat lower morale than armies in quieter sectors. In the second army, the men’s letters where evenly balanced between favourable and unfavourable, whereas in the other armies the vast majority of letters were favourable - drawing the rather obvious conclusion that morale would move, either up or down, when an individual army's state of action altered. It also reported that there was plenty of war weariness, and an almost universal longing for peace, but there is an overwhelming feeling that only one kind of peace is possible and time is not yet come for peace.

There you have it, Michael, at least one paper showing that morale aspects were not overlooked on the western front by the powers that be, and that the men themselves, though war weary, felt at the height of the fighting at 3rd Ypres that the peace they wanted could not yet be achieved (taken from their own letters).

Low morale in the BEF? I should say not - and, given the comparisons I gave earlier with the other armies in the field in 1917/18, I ask again; do you really believe that the BEF could have achieved what it did if its morale had collapsed?

Cheers-salesie.

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An interesting and thoughtful post Salesie - many thanks. I have got to be honest and say I have some trouble with regarding war poets as the authentic voice of the front line soldier, though such is the emphasis on their work in the present day that it would be easy to see a facility with iambic pentameter as a pre-requisite for a commission. Anyone remember the cartoon of the two Tommies in a shell hole under heavy fire, with one saying to the other, 'I shouldn't be here; I'm not a poet!'

I should like to underline your point about morale being a fragile thing and subject to swings between peaks and troughs. Lord Moran's work on courage, just to mention one well known example, reminds us that it was never a thing to be taken for granted and there were certainly times when it was under strain within the BEF. Sir Phillip Gibbs, whom I regard as a reliable witness, noted in Realities of War of the final stages of Third Ypres, 'For the first time the British army lost its spirit of optimism and there was a sense of deadly depression among many officers and men...' However, it did not lead to mutiny or collapse, which is probably entirely to the credit of the leadership at battalion level and below,.

Jack

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An interesting and thoughtful post Salesie - many thanks. I have got to be honest and say I have some trouble with regarding war poets as the authentic voice of the front line soldier, though such is the emphasis on their work in the present day that it would be easy to see a facility with iambic pentameter as a pre-requisite for a commission. Anyone remember the cartoon of the two Tommies in a shell hole under heavy fire, with one saying to the other, 'I shouldn't be here; I'm not a poet!'

I should like to underline your point about morale being a fragile thing and subject to swings between peaks and troughs. Lord Moran's work on courage, just to mention one well known example, reminds us that it was never a thing to be taken for granted and there were certainly times when it was under strain within the BEF. Sir Phillip Gibbs, whom I regard as a reliable witness, noted in Realities of War of the final stages of Third Ypres, 'For the first time the British army lost its spirit of optimism and there was a sense of deadly depression among many officers and men...' However, it did not lead to mutiny or collapse, which is probably entirely to the credit of the leadership at battalion level and below,.

Jack

Unfortunately, Jack, the popular image of WW1 still stems largely from the poetry of Owen et al; a result of the trendy school curriculums deeply rooted in the 1960s and 70s. I'm glad to say, however, that you and others, though I may not always agree with you, are doing your damndest to counteract such deep-rooted mythology. As for the war poets being an authentic voice of the front-line soldier? Probably not, but they are an authentic voice of a "citizen" front-line soldier, albeit a mainly middle-class one - the real problem is that only a very narrow selection of them have been used to propagate the popular image of WW1.

And, although you are probably right about the quality of field leadership in the latter stages of 3rd Ypres, I can't help but say that overall we should not dismiss the fact that good leadership, as well as bad, is almost always a trickle down effect - that much of it is a result of what is done at the very top of any organisation.

Cheers-salesie.

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Chris,

Thanks for mentioning Plumer; at last a name and example from Europe

regarding your question as to how he managed; this from 'Plumer' by Geoffrey Powell

"It was Wavell's conviction [probably mentioned in his 1938 Lees Knowles Lectures at Cambridge & previously quoted by Powell] that the less time a general spent in his office and the more with his troops the better. Plumer thought the same. The greater part of his days were spent travelling around his units and depots, judging their quality and discovering their needs. In the process he became a recognizable figure and in this he was undoubtedly helped by his unusual physical appearance, so unlike the stereotype of a general. Yet in some manner he conveyed his quality of robustness to those who saw him even though he did not look the part. At the same time he gained a reputation of being a commander who cared for his troops and who sent them into battle as well prepared and trained as could be. Again and again, those who served under him, private soldier or general, Etonian or Australian backwoodsman, have described the confidence he inspired. Even the intelectual young Osbert Sitwell could be moved by his clarity of thought and expression."

Wavell had worked with Allenby in Palestine and had no doubt seen there the benefits of the C-in-C getting out & about amongst the men

Another WF general who comes to my mind is Monash; his staff were told that 'The Staff Officer is the servant of the troops' and that their watchword was 'efficiency.' His attention to detail was legendary eg: transport for the men, not only when they went up the front, but also when they came out of the line. How much this translated into higher morale I cannot say however, though his successes in 1918 speak for this.

Are there any more examples?

Michael

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