This was done again and again, and I
remember one distinguished officer saying, with bitter irony,
remembering how many of his men had died, "Our generals must have
their little V's at any price, to justify themselves at G. H. Q."
In the battles of the Somme they attacked isolated objectives on
narrow fronts, so that the enemy swept our men with fire by artillery
concentrated from all points, instead of having to disperse his fire
during a general attack on a wide front. In the days of trench
warfare, when the enemy artillery was much stronger than ours, and
when his infantry strength was enormously greater, our generals
insisted upon the British troops maintaining an "aggressive" attitude,
with the result that they were shot to pieces, instead of adopting,
like the French, a quiet and waiting attitude until the time came for
a sharp and terrible blow. The battles of Neuve Chapelle, Fertubert,
and Loos, in 1915, cost us thousands of dead and gave us no gain of
any account; and both generalship and staff-work were, in the opinion
of most officers who know anything of those battles, ghastly.
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