Passchendaele: The Tragic Victory of 1917

This is an older account of this famous, or infamous, battle and acute in its description of this classic ultimate as a quagmire, beyond even Verdun, but more so in its indirect critique, from a military historian, hang the stiff upper lip. Perhaps this is the most horrendous action of them all, in the major league of battles in the wasteland, World War I style. What I find remarkable is the picture of the English numero uno general Haig, known to me from picture book photographs, but not known to me as a general, and a most flawed one, whose tactics betray the core obtuseness of the military tacticians of this era, with a studied indifference or inability to grasp, or even visit to see, the hell they created in abstractions. Even Lloyd George, stuck with him, had become restive at his gallant notions of cavalry charges applied to this inferno of the artillery, where a hundred thousand ended up 'missing', no dog tags for the archaeologists of mud. All that was gained, a few kilometers, was lost, or regained and lost again, and two thirds of the way through I found my normal sense of loyalty yielding to innovations in political philsophy, the 'right' of mutiny, perhaps the right and duty, for indifferent generals in luxurious castles, adding the forces of attack deserve no such battles, til finally, by the end, I was browsing the maps, what route might a deserter take from all this? Of course, as the author notes, this battle was, in a final note of its unforgiving nature, the evidence for much pacifism, even during the coming of the Thirties rearmaments, converging toward another war.