The date of July 1 doesn't resonate for Americans the way Pearl Harbor day (12/7) or Gettysburg (7/3) does - but people remember the first day of the Somme in Britain, even now, 92 years later.
On that catastrophic day, England's proud volunteer army marched to its utter destruction: about 20,000 men died the first day, due to bad intelligence, bad planning, and rigid, non-responsive military command. Military mismanagement was concealed from the public for years, and the blunders on the Somme were repeated on a larger scale, under the same leadership, a year later.
The result was a catastrophe from which Britain has arguably yet to recover.
While our problems in Iraq are very different, there are important points in common: bad intelligence, a poorly-thought out mission, suppression of accurate journalism and public dissent, and deification of marginally-competent generals while a political and arms-manufacturing elite cashes in.
The fate of Britain and the British empire should be a cautionary tale for us today.
The assault on the morning of July 1 was supposed to be the decisive stroke that would end the war. Douglas Haig, the British commanding general, mistrusted his men, and ordered them to walk shoulder-to-shoulder into murderous machine-gun fire - confident that his artillery would have silenced those guns.
Like our own Donald Rumsfeld, Haig believed that conventions of war were quaint: his men were under orders to murder German prisoners, and followed by military police empowered to execute fellow soldiers on the spot if they failed to advance. (These practices weren't unique, and led to the Geneva conventions after WWI. See Martin Gilbert, The First Day on the Somme)
Haig over-estimated the impact of the week-long preparatory bombardment. He ignored intelligence that his guns were insufficiently powerful to destroy German bunkers 50 feet underground. When the British troops began their famous walk on the morning of July 1, the German troops emerged from underground and slaughtered them.
(JRR Tolkein, by the way, arrived later in the extended battle. Many images of the slaughter can be found in his books, The Lord of the Rings: the mounds of dead at Helms Deep, the desert of Mordor, the Satanic siege machinery at Minas Tirith, the underground tunnels of Moria, the beautiful corpses of the elves in the Dead Marshes. Tolkein hated the interpretation that his work represented an allegory about the two world wars. He felt that the allies did exactly what his heroes didn't - succumbed to the lust for power, and adopted the methods and goals of the enemy.)
(Hitler served at the Somme too. He decided that the power thing was really cool.)
(Which do you think is a better read, The Lord of the Rings, or Mein Kampf?)
At home in England, awareness of the scope of the disaster was muted. Casualty reports were delayed, journalists repeated the assurances of military "experts" that great progress was being made, and independent eyewitness journalism was nonexistant (see Gibbs Now it Can Be Told) British troops advanced a few miles; while the Germans retreated to newer and stronger fortifications a few miles back.
Haig remained in command. The next year, he planned the battle of Passchendaele, demonstrating similar failures of judgment. 300,000 British soldiers died in that failed attack.
Civilian political leaders tried to challenge Haig, but failed in the charged 'patriotic' atmosphere. Efforts to block conscription failed when the Germans made major advances and nearly won the war.
Public disillusionment took time. Nearly 1,000,000 British troops died, and the country ran up massive debt to the US, which crippled the British Empire.
After the war, Haig's blunders became more widely known - though the British right wing continued (and still continues) to defend him. Increasingly fixed pacifist sentiment contributed to the rise of bitter communist-oriented labor movements, culminating in the general strike of 1923, and the rise of Hitler (whom many of the same British public figures who defended Haig also supported, since he was seen as a defense against the communist threat).
What parallels exist to our time?
As noted, there are substantive differences between WWI and our present day. But consider certain principles:
A militarized public discourse creates a climate in which dissent and honest examination of the issues is denounced as treason.
When the press is intimidated, incompetent generals remain in command, and the troops under them suffer.
A fevered propaganda climate encourages tolerance in the general public of mistreatment of prisoners. Tens of thousands of prisoners were murdered on both sides, with little military gain.
The true scope of of the consequences of catastrophic management takes time to emerge, and pro-militarist intellectuals busy themselves diffusing the blame.
Debt-financed wars leave lasting economic damage and political instability in their wake.
Generals and war profiteers support massive public spending during wartime, but debt destroys the capacity of great nations to maintain their stature: true power depends on economic productivity, not guns.
Given the benefit of hindsight, what should the British have done? The Germans sent out feelers for a peace treaty after their failure at Verdun, just prior to the Somme campaign. Political leadership on both sides feared public outrage at an armistice -- and indeed, look at the outrage in Germany that the Nazis and others stoked with their mythology that the soldiers at the front had been 'stabbed in the back' when its political leadership finally saw that the war was lost, and surrendered.
We should likely be braced for all manner of similar mythology when we eventually are forced by political and economic realities to withdraw from Iraq, as our war debts come due, and as the Saudis and Chinese exploit their rising power.
Perhaps there is nothing the British could have done, given the state of captivity of their media, and the trusting ignorance of their public.
The more critical questions is, what can we do now?
We need to oppose the deification of David Petraeus, and the next hero-general who succeeds him.
We need a coherent long-term plan, including a plan of how to end the war, and how to retire our debt.
Mistreatment of prisoners weakens us, rather than strengthens us.
Clear-sighted, critical journalism strengthens democracy, and puts pressure on the military to discontinue failed policies.
Leaders who deify military violence can get a whole lot of people killed. McCain often speaks of military sacrifice as the highest form of patriotism, for example.
Well, there you have my thoughts on the Somme. I'm sure there are many of you who might think this topic is irrelevant - if so, thanks for reading this far. I'm sure there are others of you who are more knowledgeable than I am - if so, please use the comments to educate me.
I think we would all do well to reflect on the ditches and fields of the Somme, carpeted with the young corpses of one of the bravest, most inspired generations that Britain ever produced.
I think they would want us to remember them, and reflect on what they would teach us.