War is Hell
My next writing project is not a new one; it's a
work-in-progress that hasn't seen much progress
lately. The goal is to finish it, and to hopefully
get it published. It's a short story that deals
with the topic of death—specifically, death
during wartime, and how the military has
historically dealt with it.
The story might be classified as science
fiction, but only because I've chosen to set it 100
years into the future. There are no warp drives, no
little green men, no time machines. Just a lot of
death in yet another war, and one man's failing
struggle to give the dead whatever shreds of
dignity he can muster.
Eerily, I wrote a large chunk of this
story—10 pages—in an archive in Parma,
Italy, while my then-fiancée conducted
historical research. In the pages I wrote, the
protagonist encountered hundreds of dead bodies,
casualties of war to be brought home. The
descriptions I composed were not pleasant.
The date? September 11, 2001.
I'll post an excerpt here soon, as I near
completion. In the meantime, I wanted to post an
account of one of World War I's most horrible
battles, something I came across during my
research. Unless future conflicts involve the use
of weapons of mass destruction, we're unlikely to
see the mass casualties of the first two World
Wars. But I hope that we—and by "we," I mean
we as human beings, not we as Americans or
any other nationality—never forget the immense
human cost of those wars.
I intend no moral comment, I only seek to
underscore the sheer scale of death. When you read
the six-figure numbers below, keep in mind that
they are not mere casualties. The numbers represent
lives cut short... hopes extinguished... families
rent asunder. And they are very large numbers.
· · ·
The Battle of the Somme, 1916
At 0730 hours on the first of July, 1916, after
a week-long artillery bombardment, Haig launched
the now infamous "Big Push" attack across the river
Somme. With the French Army being hard-pressed to
the south at Verdun, the British intended to break
through the German defenses in a matter of
hours.
The mistrust that High Command had of the
so-called "New Armies" manifested itself in the
orders to the troops to keep uniformed lines and to
march towards the enemy across no-man's land. This,
coupled with the failure of the artillery
bombardment to dislodge much of the German wire, or
to destroy their machine-gun posts, led to one of
the biggest slaughters in military history.
When the attack began, the Germans dragged
themselves out of their dugouts, manned their posts
and destroyed the oncoming waves of British
infantry.
After the first day, with a gain of only 1.5
kilometers, the British had suffered 57,470
casualties. Despite this, Haig pressed on with the
attack until November 19th of the same year. For
the meager achievements, total losses on the
British and Imperial side numbered 419,654 with
German casualties between 450,000 and 680,000. When
the offensive was eventually called off, the
British were still three miles short of Bapaume and
Serre, part of their first-day objectives.
Source: Major
Battles of WW I
©2003 Michael
Strickland ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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