I put myself firmly into the Terraine school of thought, and so suspect that I would largely agree with Hart as well. I will have to read his book.
That said, I snatch up every scrap of wartime verse that I can find, for those words capture so well my own experiences of infantry warfare from another era. War at the platoon and company level is a visceral and emotional experience that sears one’s soul whether it be at Agincourt or Khandahar.
Combat at the personal level is an entirely different experience than at the political or command level. They are different worlds. The tragedy of World War I was that technological advance of the machine gun had not yet been matched by the ability to mass through coordinated indirect fires and maneuver in order to counter the advantage of defenders with machine guns. But, everyone from Private to General worked to solve that problem and largely had done so by the time the Armistace came. World War II was an entirely different war because of what happened in France in 14-18.
The British, French, German, and even American leaders had their share of blunders, to be sure. I think that Terraine points out in considerable detail the lengths that the British Army went to avoid such blunders. Consider the alternative had Germany won.
Oh What a Lovely War is a great movie despite its stereotypic theme. Its available on DVD, and the songs can be viewed on You Tube - there are some good ones.
You got that right. Glad to hear it's on DVD as I've been nursing an old Beta copy for years. BITING sarcasm.
I suspect one sleeper is They Wuz Only Playing Leapfrog as a not-so-veiled jibe as the homosexuality prevalent among the officers then.
Maggie Smith does a beautiful/cynical job of getting "the boys" to enlist in We Need Recruits.
And Joe Melia is the spooky "Photographer" who is always smiling/leering at the camera as the travesty of WWI plays out. Frigging outstanding film.
The best guy they had was Kitchener and he was past his prime too.
I always say thank the Lord for J.J. Pershing. He determined to have Americans fight as a unit not fed piecemeal into British and French units to be slaughtered.