“European culture has never been the same since WW I.”
I read that 50,000 British were killed in ONE DAY during WWI, not with firebombings or an A-bomb, but with shells and bullets - and generally, they had their officers (i.e., the upper class) at the front of the line, not the back. Given the population of England and the world at the time, this is mind-boggling.
First day of the Somme Offensive in 1916. 57,000 British casualties, of which a little over 19,000 were killed.
There are descriptions of the men climbing out of the trenches and advancing into the machine gun fire. They leaned forward, like men walking into a heavy rain.
“I read that 50,000 British were killed in ONE DAY during WWI, not with firebombings or an A-bomb, but with shells and bullets - and generally, they had their officers (i.e., the upper class) at the front of the line, not the back.”
It was the beginning of the battle of the Somme in 1916; they lost 60,000 killed and wounded on the first day. The officers that led were low-ranking officers (one was kicking a soccer ball as he led them out of the trench); the senior officers knew it was a deliberate sacrifice to draw German troops away from the French fortress at Verdun (which was close to collapsing). It worked, but the price was horrific; supposedly by the end of the first day British troops weren’t even running for the German trenches anymore. They’d walk towards them until they were shot.
The attack was bungled from the start; a mine that was supposed to explode under the German trenches as the British troops approached blew up before they left their own trenches; this alerted the Germans and let them move up additional machine guns.