In the dark days that followed the tragic and unnecessary death of Humpty Dumpty, a crisis meeting was held at the Royal Palace. Surrounded by his most senior counsellors, the King thumped the desk in exasperation. ‘What this shows,’ he thundered, ‘is that I need more horses and more men!’ This joke hinges on a remarkable aspect of human nature. We are smart creatures, and a vital aspect of human intelligence is the ability to learn from experience. But we also fail to learn from experience: as individuals, as communities, and as nations.
Perhaps the bleakest example of the human capacity to ignore the lessons of experience was provided by the Allied military command on the Western Front during World War I. The supreme commander of the British forces, Sir Douglas Haig, believed that to win the war the German army had to be defeated, and that the best way to achieve this was by massive frontal assault. He attempted this in 1916, with the Battle of the Somme. The British offensive was a disaster: they took 60,000 casualties, nearly 20,000 of them killed, on the first day. Undaunted, Haig pressed on with the assault for four months. In what remains the bloodiest battle in history, the British failed to reach the targets that had been set for the first day of the offensive.[1]
As winter closed in, making military operations impossible, there was much soul-searching in the British government. What should the war strategy be for 1917? Certainly, not another Somme. An amphibious landing to outflank the Germans? Helping the Italians to attack Austria? Or just holding the line and waiting for the USA to enter the war?[2] Haig, however, had no doubts. He wrote in his diary that the solution was plain.
1. Send to France every possible man
2. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ aeroplane
3. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ gun.[3]
Here was the King, demanding more horses and more men. Haig got his way, and the result was … another Somme. Though not as bloody as the previous year, the 1917 offensive similarly wrested a few miles of blasted quagmire from the German army at fearful cost in blood and treasure. Among the casualties were many thousands of young Australians.