Ian Murray wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
>
<<< Did that charge make any kind of ruthless sense? What were the
generals who ordered it thinking?
Doug>>>
>
> ============
> There's a quote in "The Great War and Modern Memory"
> where one of the British General staff asserted divine
> inspiration for the strategy of the battle...if I
> remember right.
>
While it seems impossible that _no one_ in that war knew how to think, I have yet to come across an account of it that supports any other answer to Doug's question than "No one was thinking anything!" You can get the flavor of it very well from Robert Graves, _Good-bye to All That_, or even just a few pages from it. One mass attack was supposed to be preceded by a gas attack -- and no one noticed that the wind was blowing the wrong way. The mortars were also supposed to knock out a machine gun. But six months before mortars were not important, so they put a young colonialist from Jamaica who had a commission only because he was a gentleman in charge of the mortars to keep him from doing harm. The machine gun wiped out several platoons. And so it went.
After the war, one general visited what had been the front, and exclaimed, "You mean we were sending men into battle in this!"
Carrol