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Originally Posted by garinda
I should imagine the background as to why nearly a whole batalion of men were wiped out in a few hours, might be mentioned in passing.
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The Generals of the day Haig Gough Plummer etc thought that if you bludgened the enemy hard enough you could beat him. The Western Front was a war of attrition which was a bit daft as the American Civil war showed the men attacking a fixed defensive line always came of worse. Chuck in the fact that the shelling turned the place into a muddy moonscape did not help. A certain party just wanted the tommies to open a gap for the cavelry and even in later battles did exactly the same. The young men of Britain were cannon fodder literaly. The country lost a generation and those that survived were in many cases crippled and proberly could not earn a shilling for there families. I for one only have a vague idea about how the women coped with those who came back and those that didnt. In a time when it would have been hard enough on families how did they cope? There would have been no welfare state or pensions as such so it must have been horrendous. Today we live in a society that looks after the unfortunate with free health care social security payments etc but what of those poor families? I think it will be very educational as we have it so damned easy today.