Atrocities by Matthew White

Author:Matthew White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

Second Artois

May 9–June 16, 1915

50,000

3 miles

Nothing

Gallipoli

February 19, 1915–January 19, 1916

125,00013

2 miles

Zilch

Somme

July 1–November 18, 1916

306,00014

8 miles

Zip

Verdun

February 21–December 16, 1916

305,00015

6 miles

Bupkes

Passchendaele

July 31–November 16, 1917

150,00016

4 miles

Nada

The only absolutely vital detail you need to know about any of these battles is that 19,240 British were killed on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, most of them in just a few minutes charging across no-man’s-land.17

As a purely practical matter, the number of British dead on the first day of the Somme accounted for maybe 1,400 tons of rotting tissue and bone littering the battlefield. Disposal on that scale would have been a logistical nightmare even in peacetime, but in wartime it was too dangerous for burial parties to collect bodies from no-man’s-land. Eventually it was discovered that a thriving population of rats in the trench zone would clean the flesh off the skeletons very quickly, so it became the official policy to leave the rats alone and let them do their thing.18

Because the war was fought by educated societies, thousands of letters sent home have been collected in books and archives across Europe, documenting the harrowing experience of battle. Open any history of the war and you’ll find dozens of small stories describing what it was like to be in the middle of it.

We crawled on our bellies to the edge of the forest, while the shells came whistling and whining above us, tearing tree trunks and branches to shreds. Then the shells came down again on the edge of the forest, flinging up clouds of earth, stones, and roots, and enveloping everything in a disgusting, sickening yellowy-green vapor. . . . I jumped up and ran as fast as I could across meadows and beet fields, jumping over trenches, hedgerows, and barbed-wire entanglements, and then I heard someone shouting ahead of me: “In here! Everyone in here!” There was a long trench in front of me, and in an instant I had jumped into it . . . under me were dead and wounded Englishmen. . . . Now I knew why I had landed so softly when I jumped in. . . . An unending storm of iron came screaming over our trench. At last, at ten o’clock, our artillery opened up in this sector. One—two—three—five—and so it went on. Time and again a shell burst in the English trenches in front of us. The poor devils came swarming out like ants from an antheap, and we hurled ourselves at them. In a flash we had crossed the fields in front of us, and after bloody hand-to-hand fighting in some places, we threw them out of one trench after another. Most of them raised their hands above their heads. Anyone who refused to surrender was mown down. In this way we cleared trench after trench.

. . . Four times we went forward and each time we were forced to retreat. In my company only one other man was left besides myself, and then he also fell. A shot tore off the entire left sleeve of my tunic, but by a miracle I remained unharmed.

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