November 18 marks the centenary of the end of the Battle of the Somme, an event that passed essentially unnoticed, though it was a seminal event in the development of modern Canada. 
Its carnage was over 1.1 million casualties from a combined population (both sides) of about 170 million. (For a scale, there have been approximately 35,000 U.S. casualties in Iraq from 2003-1016.)
I became interested in the Battle of the Somme earlier this year due to a sheaf of papers in the back of my mother’s china cabinet, which I noticed while she was moving.
The papers were copies of transcripts of letters from the front by the adjutant of the 75th Canadian Battalion (4th Canadian Division), one of the battalions which led the closing assault at the Battle of the Somme. While other war-time correspondence in family archives tended to be sincere but dreary epistles, these letters were full of interesting details about life at the front – not just mud and food, but flares, “dug-outs”, young men having horse races, sightseeing at Amiens Cathedral five days after a battle in which 25% of the battalion were killed or wounded, the moral quandary of court-martialing soldiers who had wounded themselves to avoid further battle, typically because of what we today call post-traumatic stress disorder, with penalties shocking to today’s sensibility. In this note, I’ve collated all of the china cabinet letters available from the china cabinet, interweaving with information from War Diaries, to provide a narrative (pdf).
In the transcript, neither the author nor addressee were transcribed. From details in the letters, it is evident that the author was Miles Langstaff, then a recent graduate of Osgoode Law School. I presume that his correspondent, who had knitted him a sweater and walked with him in the valley of the Humber River in west Toronto, was my grandmother. Langstaff was killed on March 1, 1917 in an ill-conceived raid at Vimy Ridge, a month before the major victory in April 1917.
Transcript and narrative here.
Climate Audit 
100 Comments
Thanks very much for this moving contribution to never forgetting.
Presumably had Miles Langstaff survived the Great War (to End All Wars), your grandmother might well have married him rather than your grandfather and you would never have been born, for which lack the world would be poorer.
Yet let us remember the slaughter of the innocents at the Somme, almost unimaginable today. The offensive was waged with the “third British army” of the war, the first being the small professional force which delayed German First Army at Mons in 1914, the second being the all volunteer “pals” force of 1915 and the third a mass conscript army of 1916 on the French and German model.
The offensive was intended to help relieve pressure on the massive blood-letting by the French at Verdun. On the first day of the Somme alone, July 1, British and Empire forces suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 killed, and the French some 7000 casualties. The Germans endured 8000 killed, wounded and missing, and 4200 prisoners. The massacre continued until 18 November, ie 100 years ago.
In its worst year in Vietnam, 1968, the United States lost 16,899 uniformed personnel, including three women. In all 15 years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, the USA has lost 6902 service members. Most of the British losses on that one day were borne by the UK, which then had about 15% of present American population. As I said, almost unimaginable.
And I make this comparison despite having lost friends in both Vietnam and the presently ongoing wars.
The world changed that year a century ago.
First paragraph: 2003-2016?
Thanks Steve, I look forward to reading this
Another scale point about the astonishing losses at the Somme and the whole of the First World War. Britain lost as many soldiers on the first day of this five month battle as the US did in the whole of the Vietnam campaign.
I am always struck by the great sense of lost of talented people reading firsthand accounts of the Great War such as you have compiled. Have you read Vera Brittain’s “Testament of Youth”? She would have been of the same age as your grandmother Mary and describes the loss of both her brother and fiance in the war.
Steve, many thanks for allowing me the opportunity to read this important and moving historical document. It’s a long read but I still felt a sense of loss when it concluded.
I’ve read a lot about the trench warfare of WWWI but cannot think of anything that shares the thoughts of a participant better than this.
Please convey my appreciations to your mother for making this document possible.
I recommend this youtube channel for people interested in ww1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUcyEsEjhPEDf69RRVhRh4A?spfreload=5
LB
I’ve also been following Indy Neidell’s excellent “Great War” week by week centennial history articles in YouTube. He covered the end of the Somme campaign a couple of weeks ago.
A few years ago with the coming of the centenary of WW1, I read several histories of the war and the politics leading up to it. The war triggered many changes in attitude. Prior to the war, the military leaders in Europe were aware of the effect of the machine gun, barbed wire and artillery. They had used them extensively in their colonial wars but only directed towards non-Europeans. They calculated the amount of massed fire that a formation of soldiers with repeating rifles could muster. The prevailing opinion was that the effect of these weapons could be overcome by the “elan’ of white European troops. The spirit of the troops to attack would overcome all adversity. France incorporated this into its pre-war planning and used it in their Plan 19 to attack into the German center in the opening phases of the war. This only enabled the German plan of attack on the left flank.
I suppose the reason for my rambling here is that pre-WW1 military thinking is an illustration of a collective rejection of evidence in favour of a preferred idea by supposed experts. A consensus was shared among the military elite and this consensus was tragically wrong
Much of 20th century strategic military planning seemed to concentrate on how to win the previous war.
My Grandfather was in the Queens Own Rifles and fought in the Somme and I believe was wounded at Ypres. He and my grandmother immigrated to California in the 1930s. He used to tell me stories about things that happened in the military when I was quite young.
TAG, a lot of weight was put on the Japanese experience in 1905 against the Russians around Port Arthur. There, the Japanese used massed infantry attacks against dug in troops with machine guns….and the won eventually after taking large casualties. There the morale of the Japanese soldier (as also witnessed in WW2, individually for cultural reasons, the Japanese infantry were exceedingly brave). This was seized upon by some military theorists, particularly those in France although to a large extent all leading European nations agreed with the concept.
The British Professional army though did have a different approach to a degree. There were enough veterans at the NCO and officer level from the Boer war who knew from personal experience the impact that modern weapons could have. Unfortunately that army was essentially dead by the end of 1914 following the first Ypres battle.
These military theorists by the way, knew that the casualty rates would be high, but they thought they could, short term, stand those rates in order to win. In the end though, the lethality of modern weapons (modern in an early 20th century way) was such that tactics made only small differences in casualty rates. One of the French Generals made the undoubtedly true comment “Whatever you do, you lose a lot of men”.
Late war tactics were far more effective but even then casualty rates were high, the difference being that more ground was taken, and by late 1918 the German forces simply weren’t as good or as dedicated as they were in 1916 or so. Attrition had indeed taken its toll.
Worth noting as well that although there was only a limited period of intense fighting in Western Europe June 1944-April/May 1945, casualty rates for British and US forces in that period were as high if not higher than those from WW1. However survival rates were better because of superior medical care (antibiotics for a start).
There was the pre-WW1 military consensus that élan and the spirit of attack could overcome the lethality of modern weapons. Additionally, there was a naval consensus on the primacy of the dreadnaught. This was the all large gun battleship that was the object of the pre-WW1 naval race between the UK and Germany. These large ships were so expensive that building two or three a year put sever strain the finances of major countries like the UK and Germany. They were the basis of naval planning for these countries. They were obsolete before they were built.
The naval mine and torpedo had been developed in the late 19th century. With these weapons, small ships had the capability of defeating large battleships. The only engagement between the battle fleets of the UK and Germany in the war took place in the battle of Jutland. At the end of that battle, the UK fleet was maneuvering to deal a perhaps fatal blow on the retiring German fleet. The German commander ordered a torpedo attack by his destroyers on the UK fleet. In response, Admiral Jellicoe, the UK commander, ordered his dreadnaughts to turn away and retire from the battle zone allowing the German fleet to escape. After the war, Jellicoe received strong criticism for this. However, his order was in compliance with standard British doctrine. The dreadnaught was not fit for purpose. It could not defend itself. It was defeated by the torpedo. It was obsolete before it was built.
So there were two expert consensuses before the war that guided military planning and put severe strain on public finances. Both were quite wrong.
TAG, interesting take but, I feel, not entirely universally accepted. The Dreadnought battleship WAS the prime naval means for dominating the sea in that period. Although British doctrine said that one should turn end on to face a massed torpedo attack, Jellicoe *could* have turned towards the German fleet not away and been in contact. In fact torpedoes in WW1 sunk very few Battleships (One Austrian large pre-dreadnought I think) though a significant number in WW2. Torpedoes launched from destroyers/torpedo craft (WW1 destroyers were pretty small)sunk no battleships. I think one British battleship (Marlborough) was hit by a torpedo at Jutland but it was able to continue in the line of battle. So in fact the doctrine about the lethality of torpedo boat/destroyer attacks was faulty and it posed a much smaller risk to Battleships than perceived.Battleships dominated the ocean, submarines could certainly threaten trade and were a major threat for that, but with the fleet, Britain could not be invaded with the means available in WW1.
As for the cost, in 1912 (I think) the British had the slogan “We want eight and we won’t wait”; they built 8 new Dreadnoughts that year without excessive strain on the treasury. Battleships were actually *relatively* cheap, large scale armies, now they were expensive.
However following the immediate battle, Jellicoe and his grand fleet were positioned between the German fleet and their base. That night the Germans infiltrated between the British ships, being spotted an a number of occasions, but because of the training and doctrine in place, they were not fired upon not reported, which is extremely odd. Had the British fired the first time they spotted a German ship attempting to cut through they would likely have prevented the infiltration, and the Germans could not withstand another major fleet action.
There is a really excellent book on Jutland and the whole training/doctrine/signalling issue in the Royal Navy at the time and leading up to WW1. It is “The Rules of the Game” by Andrew Gordon, I highly recommend it as excellent history and a good read as well.
The Battle of Jutland was a mishappen affair. Jellicoe realized the utmost dream of naval strategists of the dreadnought era: crossing the T. That should have led to the destruction of many German ships, but it did not. Further opportunity was squandered in the chase, as you pointed out, Ed. One thing I have just learned over the web, that I did not know before: the British armor-piercing shells were defective and exploded on contact rather than by fuse (after penetration). The cordite in the charge was unstable. One authority claimed six more German ships would have been destroyed but for the defective shells.Whew!
The essence of this discussion is, for me. that there were two consensuses at the outbreak of the war – the military with the importance of élan and the naval with the primacy of the all big gun dreadnaught. Neither of these consensuses was proven by the realities of the war. However, contrary to the common opinion, military tactics and technology continually evolved though the war until finally by 1918 the machine gun and the wire had been overcome and the militaries of both sides were able to break out of the trench system. The generals were not the “donkeys” that they are often made out to be.
This cannot be said of the naval consensus, however. For example, at Gallipoli, a fleet of dreadnaughts and supporting ships tried to run the straights. They were defeated by a combination of floating mines and shore batteries and yet the big ship consensus was not broken. The floating mine, a metal ball containing explosives, defeated the most technologically advanced weapon of its day. Billy Mitchell arranged for aerial bombing tests on naval vessels, sank a number of ships including a large German one that had been at Jutland, but these led only to his eventual court martial.
Sometime I personally compare the naval consensus to the climate consensus that so much is written about. I don’t know enough to have a real opinion about climate but I take note of the resistance there is to good news in climate research. If there are estimates that climate sensitivity is on the low and perhaps benign side, then I can be sure of reading opinions that this just cannot be so. The consensus is too wrapped up in itself to allow for this sort of finding. I suppose that this would not be surprising to sociologists and anthropologists but, for me, consideration of the responses of the two consensuses of WW1 to contrary events is revealing.
TAG, I don’t particularly disagree with your analysis of the army tactics, just wanted to point out that it wasn’t entirely made up. It was based on a combination of study (like of the Japanse assault on Port Arthur) and on a degree of wishful thinking. It was also thought that with th right Elan smashing Victoria cult be achieved and it would be a quick war. Not everyone nought that, Kitchener certainly was planning for a long war, and Haig also did not believe in the war “being over by Christmas” as was the popular view.
The French were particularly jnfcted with the Elan in the attack bug, their initial strategic plans were very unrealistic and involved huge infantry attacks through Alsace and Lorraine, these failed with heavy casualties and if successful would only have actually helped the German plan to envelope Paris from the West. British doctrine, modified heavily after the Boer war also did not ascribe nearly so heavily on momentum in the attack. However morale was very important, do staying power in the attritional war that followed.
However I do disagree on the Naval start by. At the time the Dreadnought Battleship was indeed ruler of th waves. The attempt to force th Dardenelles is misleading, a piece of water dominated by land based guns on both sides and with very restricted navigation ideally suited to mines, and indeed with a current that could be (and was) use to float free mines down onto th ships. An almost unique situation and of no consequence elsewhere. Mines did inflict casualties, notably the Hampshire carrying Kitchenr to Russia, but that was a Heavy Cruiser. Several Battle ships were damaged by mines, I think the Derflinger was further damaged by a mine after Jutland, but in WW1 mines were obstructions but not terribly important in controlling the seas. The were numerous minefields in the North Sea and Channel, none of these prevents the battle fleets deploying and fighting at Jutland. And they didn’t prevent th Germans from bombarding several British coastal towns either.
So apart from extreme situations like the Dardenelles Battleships were not really supplanted until the rise and maturation of Naval Aviation. That was WW2.
Back to the Somme briefly, a major problem for the British was a dearth of capable commanders for the huge number of battalions, brigades, and divisions raised. A great many were officered by retired officers brought back into service, and many of these were out of date and not very competent, but they were all that was available. This is on major reason why so many f the units that fought on the Somme were relatively badly trained. In August 1914 Haig argued that th British should leave at least 10% of their skilled officers and NCO’s behind to train and form a nucleus for the replacement formations that would follow. However most of the political and military establishment disagreed, thinking it would be a short war and that there was no need to do so. Thus when the original expeditionary force was effectively wiped out in First Ypres, there really was almost nobody left to train and educate those who followed. That was made worse by Kitchenrs insistence on forming his volunteer army into a new set of formations and not to use the dieting territorial system. Some units were relatively OK, but many were poorly trained and hence the reliance on long lines of troops crossing no mans land, making them extremely vulnerable to defensive fire from machine guns and artillery.
In regard to the quality of leadership at the Somme, I have read that the British Armies were merely administrative units and that divisions would be assigned and removed from them on an as needed basis. As a result, officers from their separate divisions were never able to learn to work together and form a cohesive unit. The Canadian government refused the British request that Canadian soldiers be assigned as replacements within British divisions. The government insisted that Canadians serve in Canadian units and fight together as a whole. As a result, the officers of the Canadian Corps and later Canadian Army did gain the experience of working together coherently. This, along with the skill and competence of their commander, Sir Arthur Currie, is said to be key to the Canadians success
In regard to my speculation about issues with “consensus” and how a consensus may deprecate challenging data, I am reminded of the work of Jacques Ellul and his book entitled “Propaganda”. He identifies propaganda as a set of shared beliefs that have achieved the status of “emotion”. That is these beliefs are essential to a shared community and challenging them challenges teh integrity of the community. Ellul noted that the first victim of propaganda is the group that shares it. I can see the usefulness of Ellul’s insight in assessing teh dreadnought naval consensus of the early 20th century. Perhaps it would aso be useful in examining the consensus surrounding climate research.
TAG, I do not believe that naval strategists of the dreadnought era claimed that these were invulnerable to torpedoes and mines- or armor piercing shells. The “consensus” that the dreadnought was the foremost capital ship also held that these were vulnerable to such devices. You seem to think that vulnerability to torpedoes and mines negates that consensus. You seem to imply that strategists of that era ignored the vulnerability of dreadnought to these hazards. They most assuredly did not.
The challenge of aircraft carriers to the primacy to the dreadnought is a different matter. The dreadnought mentality persisted, wrongheadedly, until WW 2 when the aircraft carrier was shown to be the only capital ship of importance.
Churchill was one of the surprised. Of the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse by Japanese aircraft (two days after Pearl Harbor) Churchill wrote “That was the most direct shock that I had ever experienced.” Churchill had ordered these vessels to the Far East just a month previously, thinking to improve the strategic position of GB in that region. Thus it came home to the old school that the dreadnought era was over.
Interestingly, GB launched the first purpose-built aircraft carrier in 1918, the HMS Argus. The HMS Dreadnought was launched in 1906, I believe. So the primacy of the dreadnoughts as the for most capital ship was short-lived.
The last reference “Garnett, Colin …” gives a Page Not Found
http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/about-us/about-collection/pages/gifts-archives-published-materials.aspx
OT, but can I recommend that you take a few minutes to tell your mother that you love her and appreciate her efforts (no matter how effective/ineffective) to make you what you are today.
I lost my mother unexpectedly recently, and wish I had not left some things unsaid.
Never OT.
Miles Langstaff is a great narrator. Imagine having the poise to write such clear letters in the midst of such carnage. I have read WWI accounts from the Russian, British and American context
, but never from the Canadian perspective but the Dominion was well represented in that conflict, as this trove attests.
Off topic but cannot post it under the the old UK inquiry UEA treads: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/20/chilcot-inquiry-designed-to-avoid-blame-secret-cabinet-office-documents
Thanks Steve, and important anniversary and event to remenber.
I wonder why some horrible events are ingrained in common consciousness and others less so. You mention Vietnam and Iraq. At the moment I’m about 40 km from Guernica, and will see the famous Picasso again next week in Madrid after originally viewing it when it was still in New York. Partisan death estimates of the Guernica attack range from about 150 to 1650 but most historians now think the actual number is about 300. Yet I would say that event is much more well known than the Battle of the Somme where the dealths were thousands of times greater. Of course Picasso was young then and not French, but why didn’t other artists make a memorable painting to represent the insanity?
Geoff: if you don’t yet know of them, Paul Nash’s scenes of the trenches in France are stunning. He wasn’t on the Somme, but he did see the western front at first hand. See for example ‘The Menin Road’, and ‘We are making a new world’ at http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-powerful-western-front-paintings-of-the-nash-brothers
Many thanks for this Steve- these lessons of history must not be forgotton.
My grandfather was a Lewis gunner at the Somme and spent 2 years (1916-8) on the frontline.
Of his platoon less than 10 survived. Fortunately he was one of them.
He didn’t say much about his experiences, even to my father, who fought for 6 years in WW2,
saying “even though you were a soldier, you wouldn’t understand”.
I cannot begin to imagine what he did and saw.
Popular accounts of WW1 often show soldiers advancing on a trench and being mowed down by machine guns. By the last two years of the war, this was no longer true. tactics and training had advanced to counter these threats. Before attacks, the locations of machine guns would be determined and artillery fire plans developed to destroy these emplacements. For those machine guns that survived this, troops were trained to advance by leap frogging with supporting squads with each covering the other. the machine gun threat had been minimized.
I can recall in one of William Faulkner’s novels (“Soldier’s Pay”), one of the characters (a soldier just returned to the US at the end of the war) using an expression about the chance for life of a machine gunner as something minimal. Faulkner was born in 1897 and so would have been of the generation that experienced this.
you say:”Popular accounts of WW1 often show soldiers advancing on a trench and being mowed down by machine guns. By the last two years of the war, this was no longer true. tactics and training had advanced to counter these threats.”
Sure, but this doesn’t mean that this characterization is untrue of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Also, in the case here, it sounds to me like that 75th Canadian, from their experience at Somme, knew very well how to prepare an attack to avoid being mowed down by machine guns. But at the Vimy Ridge raid on March 1, 1917, the central planners required them to employ tactics that they were dubious about and they were mowed down.
By the later part of the war, both sides were using a defense in depth. The use of intelligence and artillery resulting from intelligence demanded that Front line trenches were only lightly held. The defenders would withdraw to secondary trenches and then call for artillery to bombard the attackers in the trenches that they had just taken. The defending infantry would then counterattack from their secondary trenches and retake the front line positions
Wikipedia gives a detailed account of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, April 9-12, 1917, presenting it as a model of preparation and execution. It touches on the March 1 raid by elements of the “Fourth Canadian Division” in which there were “637 casualties including two battalion commanders and a number of company leaders killed”. Vimy Ridge had been converted into subterranean gallery by the Germans. It was not a position defended “in depth” even though this doctrine was by this time was standard German defensive procedure.
Steve: the April attack on Vimy Ridge is important in Canadian historiography as one in which Canada had a lead role and as an event where Canadians began to have a primary identity as “Canadians”, as distinct from a primary identity as members of the British Commonwealth. Ties to Britain were much stronger when I was a boy than they are now.
TAG- one story my father told me about grandfather was of him “going over the top” and seeing the men either side of him shot.
When he stopped to try and help one, he was ordered, at gunpoint, by the officer following to move forward or be shot.
Apparently it took my grandfather some effort not to shoot his own officer.
Yes, they would never stop. They had to keep up with the creeping barrage that was protecting them.
Wow Steve. That’s quite the labor of love!
Very moving. Captured what our grandfathers endured. Thank you for publishing.
My own family has some history such as this (not nearly as in depth). It really is history, not just numbers and dates, but the life of people of that period. And I find it the most interesting. I will read the PDF at my leisure, but wanted to thank you for making it available.
From the numbering, it looks like the letters collated here are about 25-30% of the correspondence that my mother transcribed. She recalls donating the originals to a municipal library. When I get time, I’ll chase the rest.
You’ve uncovered and unlocked a treasure there, Steve. Excellent presentation. Langstaff was a fine writer.
For the past few years I have been doing something similar based on speeches my great-great-grandfather wrote and delivered some twenty five years after the Civil War. They had been stored in a metal box at my grandfather’s house. My father and I transcribed them, which was difficult as they had been written in pencil and were barely legible. He had spent much of 1864 in the Army of the James around Petersburg and Richmond as the war came to an increasingly violent close. He was a captain in the US Colored Troops, which had white officers. He was wounded twice but survived to run a hardware business in Natick, MA.
Steve: good luck with the project
Steve: have you thought about trying to find and contact Langstaff’s relatives? They might appreciate having those transcriptions.
Steve: there is a namesake Miles Langstaff in Toronto on twitter https://twitter.com/dearshabby, who, judging from his twitter feed, is interested in other topics. Tim Cook, the author of the article on the Vimy Ridge raid, is now a federal government historian and I intend to contact him.
David McCullough’s Truman has a good description of Harry S. Truman’s involvement in WWI in France as an artillery officer, although the Americans got into the war fairly late. Highly recommended reading for a variety of reasons.
Thanks Steve for your transcription effort. During these centenary years, a lot of WW1 information has been released both in print and film – accompanied by much introspection.
In Australia, 100 years of concentrating on its first major action at Gallipoli is being supplemented by a much deeper look at its actions on the Western Front where the engagement and casualties dwarfed those at Gallipoli. Nation recognition and gradual separation from Britain has occurred in a parallel manner to Canada.
But from a personal point of view, where my father was rejected from volunteering in his late teens and my wife’s grandfathers fought for “the other side” – one dying, the other being permanently injured, the most important event with respect to WW1, has been to drive over the area of Northern France and Belgium, stopping at cemeteries, memorials and battlefront sites. You travel with reverence, awe and deep sadness as the incredible sacrifice of life sinks in.
Of interest to me was Langstaff’s account of the demoralization among German POW taken in the Somme offensive. They had lost faith in Germany’s prospect of victory, after only two years of war. It was the collapse of German morale at the end of the war that gave the Allies a sudden victory. The German high command panicked, communicated their panic and the whole nation suffered a collapse in morale. Germany had been starving for years because of the Allied blockade. Nobody in Germany regretted the exit of Kaiser Wilhelm.
Kaiser Wilhelm II was “too big to fail”: he was left to exile 70 km over the border in the Netherlands. Other German war leaders died of old age too (Helmuth von Mothe (the younger), Paul von Hindenburg, Erich Ludendorff).
Typo in para of letter, October 2nd 1916 Letter 32, 3rd sentence from the end: “we would like to have boom”, should be “been”?
Will continue reading tomorrow 🙂
Here are some links.
The first is a piece in the Irish News about the battle of the Somme.
http://www.irishnews.com/news/2016/06/30/news/the-somme—ulster-unionism-s-blood-sacrifice-584061/
The second is to a Wiki description of a play by Frank McGuinness, “Observe the sons of Ulster marching towards the Somme.” There are many sons of Ulster in Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observe_the_Sons_of_Ulster_Marching_Towards_the_Somme
The third details acts of bravery
Nobody had expected four years of siege warfare. They’d prepared for a war of manoeuvre but from the Channel to the Swiss border ran opposing castle walls.
The British were in a particular pickle because they’d never used conscription (unlike the French, Germans, Austrians, and Russians) so all they had was their tiny professional army plus some reservists, and territorials with precious little training. Who do you use to train the volunteers and then the conscripts? If you withdraw officers and NCOs from the Front you’ve weakened yourselves there. If you don’t your new armies are bound to be undertrained.
My family had boys who came home from Canada and the US to volunteer. Poor souls.
Thanks for taking the time to present Langstaffs letters to us.
I can’t understand why a privileged and talented young man would leave girlfriend and career, volunteering for something he must have known would be bad.
How he describes the hardships as well as the lighter side of his experience with a brave face and good humor is impressive, you can’t help starting to admire the man.
That he doesn’t make it is a reminder of the waste the Great War was. Like some other readers I looked up Vimy Ridge in Wikipedia and felt a connection when I read about the raids leading up to the real attack.
An astounding educational and darned interesting read!!
Thank you Steve!
Steve, thank you for sharing this beautiful account of events a century ago. I found it hard to read knowing how the story ended for so many remarkable young men like Miles Langstaff.
People knew what was happening (“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”); it did not make a difference.
The horror and pointlessness of WWI, and consequences for everything that has happened since, make me worry about our current world and its future. Is there a limit to human stupidity?
“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”
An added irony is that Sir Edward Grey, who said that, went on to become blind.
Henri Barbusse wrote “Journal d’une escouade” (Under Fire), a journal of the live in the trenches during the first year of WWI.
Online and ebook version:
http://manybooks.net/titles/barbusseetext03ndrfr10.html
My wife’s two great uncle’s were killed at Vimy Ridge.
Last name Lauder from Alberta.
Wow! Just . . . wow.
I have a letter, inherited from one of my wife’s relatives, that is similar and it sends chills up my spine to this day.
Thank you. A thousand times . . . thank you.
I very much enjoyed reading this Steve. Thank you.
Steve, thank you for this narrative. Without labor of the sort you’ve done here history abrades away more quickly.
You may have seen Captain Bellenden Seymour Hutcheson’s letter to Captain Gunyon that describes the events that lead to his receiving a VC. I mention him because he was likewise serving in the 75th Battalion and a doctor like your relative. If not it is well worth a read and of interest in itself. The letter was found in a trunk.
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ww1can/hutch.htm
I have a small pile of congratulatory letters and telegrams Hutcheson kept as well as the original Battalion Orders Dated Decr.21st.1918 announcing his VC. 98 years old. Perhaps this is the only surviving copy? It is order no.371. Humorously a leading bullet point on the first page, a warning about venereal disease, is longer than the mention of the VC on the last. Leave them with good news?
Here is my favorite item, a “TELEGRAMME”.
/ CAPTAIN BS HUTCHESON CAMC 75 TH
BATTALION CANADIANS BELGIQUE
= . HALIFAX NS 013 10 V CIAL = CTLE =
= SAFE = YOUNG =
Sent to him around 15/12/17. I hope Young survived the war.
Mark Steyn’s song of the week http://www.steynonline.com/4631/roses-of-picardy is Roses of Picardy, first published 100 years ago on December 4, 1916. Mark published a longer article a few years ago http://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=10963335. As Mark noted, Frank Sinatra covered the song in 1962 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yNeT2FL0bk.
Mark’s backstories on famous songs are fascinating and it’s very unlike Mark to miss an interesting historical detail, but I think that he (unusually) didn’t emphasize a relevant one here.
The Battle of the Somme was in Picardy the capital of which is Amiens). In his earlier article, Mark discussed the song in the context of the Armistice, but not in the context of the Battle of the Somme, which had ended only a few weeks earlier, during which there had been ~600,000 Allied casualties.
Steve McIntyre – Thanks for the great post and the transcription and inclusion of the letters on the Battle of the Somme. The letters were detailed and gave me a better understanding of what my grandfather went through. He signed up in March 1915 with the 44th Battalion out of Winnipeg, was at the Somme Regina Trench and got a flesh wound (gunshot) Oct 25, 1916, he recovered and rejoined the 44th and went to Vimy Ridge where he received Military Medal for a trench raid in Feb 1917, then he was wounded by artillery shrapnel on Mar 31, 1917 at Vimy. He recovered and rejoined the 44th in May 1917 and was wounded again in Aug 1917 at the Battle of Hill 70. He survived and made it home to his wife and 3 daughters. He never talked to any of his 9 children about his service and we only found out when I did the research using his war record, the 44th War Diary and the 44th history book Six Thousand Canadian Men.
Bill Wylie
“He never talked to any of his 9 children about his service…”
Probably too painful to recall. The frightfulness, the grievous loss of friends, all the emotions suppressed under the dire necessity of combat are still there. Those who revisit the battlefields of Europe in later years sometimes find themselves weeping uncontrollably.
Seventy five years ago, on this date, Japanese war planes from four Japanese aircraft carriers struck Pearl Harbor. They missed the U.S. carriers, which were absent from the base. Seven months later, these carriers sunk four Japanese carriers at the battle of Midway, crippling Japan’s naval capacity, and putting her on the defensive for the remainder of the war.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/20/christmas-day-truce-1914-not-one-off-researcher-reveals/
The news item at teh URL above describes Christmas Day and other truces in WW1. This includes truces at the Somme after the battle in 1916. According to the article , these truces were quite common. They were so common that reports of them were suppressed in the official records to discourage teh practice.
Steve: Re: Mann lawsuit & DC court of appeals ruling
The DC court of appeals finally issued their ruling regarding the motion to dismiss. One of the striking items in the ruling was the extent to which the court attributed the various investigations as exonerating Mann as demonstrating that the defendants knew and/or showed disregard for the truth. (ignore the poor wording and generalization of my statement)
My real question deals with the NSF report. As I recall, there was commentary that the NSF investigation only covered the period of NSF funding which was post the HS study. The memoradum report is somewhat vague as to the period which it actually covered. Let me know if you have any better insight and or information
Thanks for the help
This is o/t but interesting – an evolutionary psychologist discusses the reasons for, and disadvantages of, groupthink in scientific circles:
“Forming coalitions around scientific or factual questions is disastrous”
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27168
- John Tooby
I thought Steve (and others?) might be interested in this article–published today–written by Daniel Hannan, concerning his great-uncle who was lost in the Battle of the Somme. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/my-great-uncle-fell-somme-we-must-not-forget-ordinary-men-who-did-extraordinary-things-1587962
http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/59916/LANGSTAFF,%20JAMES%20MILES
WW2, Battle of the Atlantic, my uncle.
http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2470634/MORGAN,%20FRANCIS%20JOSEPH
Military leaders would have had better results if they had studied the American Civil War, the first modern war, rather than the Franco-Prussian and Austro-Prussian pre modern wars.k They would have learned from Grant’s experiences in the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Petersburg, that entrenched troops will inflict an inordinate amount of damage on the attacker. They would also have learned that preparatory 1 1/2 hour artillery barrages prior to an attack didn’t work out very well. The Confederates tried that at Gettysburg in preparation for Pickett’s Charge, which didn’t turn out so well.
Alan, it seems that they did. There was perhaps one of the best historians and analysts of the US Civil war who taught at the RMC at least when Haig and the others who were leaders during WW1 attended. Of course rigorous attention to the curriculum wasn’t always the norm.
And about the short artillery bombardment, that is incorrect. As the ability to deliver precise targetted bombardments improved during the war, typical bombardments became shorter and shorter. By 1918 very short “hurricane” bombardments were the norm in attacks – for example in the August 8 Amiens attack and subsequently. Long drawn out bombardments such as at the Somme had their uses as a wearing out tactic, but made the ground near on impassable (especially for Tanks as deployed later in the war) and did ruin any attempts at surprise.
Overall all commanders but especially the British were on a steep learning curve during WW1. The British, prior to 1914, had not only not carried out exercises (not even on paper) with armies larger than 3-4 divisions, that hadn’t even thought about armies of that size. The Germans, French, and Russians at least had (with their conscripted forces) structures and doctrines in place for large scale troop movements.
As pointed out before, the generals took heed of all recent conflicts at least in some way. The very latest organized conflicts were the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, and the Boer war. I don’t think the Balkan conflicts (1900’s through to 1913, various Serbs, Monetnegrans, Bosnians, Croats etc versus Turkey) were considered as these weren’t particularly organized armies but very large scale insurgencies. The Boer war was regarded at least by the British as important at the unit tactical level. As a result the original British expeditionary force was actually very competent at that level with the ability to use cover, to shoot and move, and in basic skirmishing infantry tactics. Essentially all of this experience however was lost as that original force was destroyed through 1914 with only a remnant of those troops left alive after the end of the first Ypres campaign.
The Japanese experience at Port Arthur though was very important to the continental armies, especially the French. At Port Arthur, the Japanese basically used massed infantry attacks with some artillery from mainly field artillery in support. They were attacking entrenched and reasonably well equipped Russian regular troops and the Japanese eventually overran the Port Arthur defenses and took the place. The lesson taken was that although entrenched defenses were strong, infantry with high levels of elan and morale could overcome them and win without large artillery support provided they had the numbers and would keep attacking despite losses. I think that the main WW1 experience didn’t entirely disprove that theory but the idea probably didn’t properly factor in the quality of the defenders. Also the thinking about a “short war” probably made the planners lose sight of the cumulative impact of casualties. The Russo-Japanese War was relatively short and fought (on the Russian side) with limited reinforcements.
The US Civil war was also, at that point, 50 years earlier, and many probably assumed that lessons from that distance in the past were less important than modern experience. But basically your suggestion that the planners and generals should have paid more attention than they did to the lessons of the civil war is correct. It was the (in hindsight) obvious reference point of a large conflict fought between relatively well equipped motivated armies. Artillery did eventually make a difference and there was a large difference in that regard, but as to infantry tactics, real lessons available if they were studied.
Thanks for posting this blog. Some things should never be forgotten.
The Daily Mail has published an article featuring a climate whistle-blower named John J. Bates. He’s calling it Climate Gate 2 (should be 3). I hope you write a post on this story. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-global-warming-data.html
Just wanted to comment on Deflategate (that comments section is closed.) Even though I am an Ohio State guy, I think Brady has a lot of class. (While at Michigan, he gave encouragement to Steve Belisari, the OSU quarterback, who was going through rough spots) Sitting for 4 games may have helped Brady by resting him. As I have said before, I don’t like Goodell at all, but I still feel something fishy went on. (Which I don’t criticize the Patriots for that much because the “ethic” of football is if you can get away with it, do it — For instance, stealing the football in the pile after the whistle blows.)
Congrats to Brady and the Patriots.
JD
Yea, Wells lied. They should never have mentioned ‘Deflate and get rid of that jacket.’ They also had no class, revealing some irrelevant texts about one person’s wife.
Just wanted to say I really enjoy the rigor here, and it was great seeing Brady metaphorically spike the deflation accusation over the weekend. Look forward to future articles.
Mr. McIntyre, I just posted the following message over on WUWT. Do you have a link to any data that might be relevant?. I’d like to run a regression against temperature. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Mr. Watts, I may have a great project for your Blog. The IPCC Models provide the evidence to shoot down the AGW Theory. The IPCC Models most likely have a very very very low R-Squared, that is why they never publish the R-Squared of the models. You can host a project to beat the IPCC Climate Model R-Squareds. All you would need to do is create a repository for valid climate data. Dr. Spencer and Christy could provide the Satellite Data, Dr. Willie Soon could provide the solar data, someone else could provide the data for El Ninos and Ninas, others could provide data for clouds, albido, etc etc. The CO2 data is readily available. Once all the data sets are collected, multivariable regressions could be run on the data to identify the most significant variables, as well as establishing the R-Squared for the Temp=f(CO2) model. Once that data is collected, and the models run, it would provide great evidence for a court case. The Climate Alarmists would have to defend why a bunch of bloggers were able to create a climate model with a much higher R-Squared than the IPCC was able to do after spending billion of dollars. The models are the key to debunking this nonsense, and your website as the ability to reach the people that are needed to pull this off.
Here is a more detailed explanation of the project.
Climate “Science” on Trial; The Criminal Case Against the Alarmists
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/climate-science-on-trial-the-criminal-case-against-the-alarmists/
Steve, this comment is off-topic, but have you ever run a regression of IPCC Model Forecasts against temperature to get the R-Squardeds of the models? If not, would you run that most basic of studies, and if not interested would you publish a link to the data and I’ll run them? I’ve been wanting to do an article on the topic.
KNMI Climate Explorer. There is an explanation at Lucia’s The Blackboard of how to extract the data if you can find it.
Has this blog been abandoned or did the warmists finally win?
Alarmists had the One
Ring, now ruling all is done;
Science does them shun,
So much for the fun.
Of fear and guilt
Alarm was built;
Reason now does tilt
To lilies absent gilt.
============
I don’t know anything with certainty, but I think Steve has lost some interest in climate issues as the discussion has reached something of a lull. The paleoclimate field is not receiving the attention it once did, so the field he knows best doesn’t merit as much focus as it once did. Combine that with general issues of energy/interest in one’s life, and I can see why a person would become less active.
In fact, a lot of climate blogs have become less active over the last few years. That’s true of both sides of the discussion.
I guess all there is to do now is wait 40-60 years and see if CO2 is the centerpiece to all the world’s problems. There is no weakness in coastal resort real estate values, even around DC.
Steve, come back, we miss your considerate blog entries!
Brandon, I really wish people could actually discuss over the lukewarmer -alarmist fence, but it appears it is not the time yet.
I’m afraid the Black Knight’s achilles heel (disinterest) has allowed Steve to go on with his life.
Eagerly awaiting the next concocted emergency from our alarmist friends.
I’ve dropped by the site several times, but only today did I appreciate the wonderful work you’ve done in organizing, supplementing, and illustrating the riveting letters of Miles Langstaff. It’s a sobering reminder that inept leadership often brings with it immense costs in lives and treasure. One almost cries when reading Miles’ concern over the waste of equipment, and his interest in collecting German memorabilia for his mantle, and then contrasting that with his anguish in dealing with the problem of self-inflicted wounds. What a horrible ordeal.
I’ve been interested in WWI all my life, and I read some earlier comments by TAG and others that I think are somewhat in error. The ships that were sunk in the Dardanelles were antiquated battleships that could no longer fight Dreadnoughts and Battle Cruisers, and the mines that sunk them were not floating, but moored at a depth of 15m, and had been laid on March 8th by a daring Turkish Captain in the dead of night, ten days before the sinking of the battleships. The string of mines was a total surprise to the Allies. Nor do I think that the guns guarding the Dardanelles were nearly as effective as claimed. They were nearly out of ammunition on the night of the 18th, and the Turks were prepared to abandon Constantinople, not realizing that the Allied commander would suffer a crisis of confidence following the surprise sinkings. And the earlier attempt to sweep the entrance to the Dardanelles in early March with fishing boat minesweepers was thwarted by inflicting just a handful of casualties. The boats had difficulty with the 3 knot current rushing down the Dardanelles, and their civilian crews were easily demoralized. I recommend Massie’s “Castles of Steel” and Gilbert’s Vol. III of the Churchill Biography, “The Challenge of War”. The behavior of Asquith and of Fisher as revealed in Gilbert’s work are quite shocking.
Robert Stewart, have you read A.J. Taylor? His work on the origins of the War and the part played by trains and logistics is reported in Keegan’s book. I ask because I’d like your opinion.
I don’t recall reading Taylor’s WWI books. I’ve ordered a used paperback of “Struggle for Mastery in Europe” and I look forward to reading it. Keegan’s “The First World War” does cover the logistic difficulties which, coupled with the belief that “trained” mass infantry armed with “modern” rifles, (single shot rifles with magazines,) could overrun machine guns, put a premium on speed of mobilization. Meaning you had to get tens of thousand of “trained” troops massed at your borders to thwart an enemy’s attack by their massed troops. The mobilization being facilitated by railroad transport, but movement from the railhead was unchanged from Caesar’s day being on foot and limited to 12 miles a day. The faith in massed infantry attacks proved to be a fallacy. Only the British had troops who knew how to attack machine guns based on their Boer War experience, and those men and officers were “expended” in the first few months of the war hoping for a quick victory. Leaving only green troops on both sides to be slaughtered, learning by doing, in the coming years.
I read an interesting book by Copeland, “Origins of Major War”, who argues that the war was intentionally fomented by the German General Staff. Their projections of economic growth led them to believe that Russia would soon surpass Germany. A war in 1914 was thus to be preferred to a war a decade later. I’m just now trying to reconcile Keegan’s description of the late days of July with Copeland’s, and I find some of Keegan’s arguments less convincing if you assume that the German General Staff was pulling strings to make sure Russian and Austrian went to war.
It is also fascinating to see the similarities between Europe in 1913 and today. Replace “imperial rule” with Brussel’s bureaucratic tyranny, both being unaccountable and endowed with immense power, and much of the rest falls in place. The elite in imperial days believed that war in the future was impossible because of the commercial ties that bound all nations, just as our elite presume “globalization” will inevitably lead to peace today. Nationalism, meaning minority populations restless under imperial rule, was regarded as the enemy of peace, just as patriotism and nationalism are considered problems in Europe today as lower and middle class workers resent their displacement in the workforce by immigrants who often can’t speak the native tongue. As usual, the elite choose to confuse the symptom with the cause. Introspection is not a beneficial adaptation in centralized bureaucracies.
I’ve certainly read commentary that suggests that the German General Staff were very keen on a war. The Austrians imposed very stringent terms on Serbia after the assassination (it is said) on the belief that Serbia couldn’t politically agree making war inevitable, but the Serbians did agree. Austria went to war anyway although it took them months to actually invade and they were repulsed the first time round. So if the Austrians were so keen,m why were they so unprepared ? (that maybe a misleading question, maybe they just were, they weren’t noted for their efficiency).
Certainly Germany’s war plans (Schlieffen Plan) rather depended on them being the ones to declare war and control the tempo.
Overall, I do find Keegan less than convincing in many areas. I’d suggest Gary Sheffield as another writer worth reading; and John Terrain as another with a different POV worth trying.
Ed, there is no question that Austria sought war with Serbia, but did they ignore the prospect of a wider war? The Kaisar extravagantly backed Austria with a diplomatic blank check. He could have reined them in. Russia mobilized first, and this brought about a general mobilization everywhere. I would put the blame on the three emperors as they all seemed eager for war. Their houses were extinguished, fittingly.
Robert Stewart, the book I had in mind was ‘War by timetable: How the First Wolrd War Began’ by AJP Taylor. It’s available on Kindle from Amazon for about $2.00.
Keegan refers to it somewhat skeptically in his ‘The First World War’ I thought Taylor’s case that the drive to get to the point of conflict on time and with a complete force became overwhelming when rail systems developed to the point they had by 1900.
A more obscure but very informative book ‘The Rise of Rail Power in War and Conquest, 1833 -1914 by Edwin A. Pratt describes what the author saw as early as 1908 in western Germany, railheads with no commercial purpose suitable for deboarding multiple trains simultaneously, rail shunts terminated in woods just short of French, Belgian, and Dutch borders whose extension to connect to their rail networks could be accomplished in a day or two. This in 1908.
The book was published in 1914. I take it at face value.
We’re again living in a time when a preemptive strike may be considered by some morally acceptable. I suppose the Germans might have been able to claim that their preparations to support rapid troop deployment in the land of their neighbors was defensive.
I don’t buy it.
Pratt’s book is available free on Gutenberg.org
Robert Stewart writes:
This statement is correct but there is something additional that should be considered. The then modern battlecruiser “Inflexible” struck a mine and flooded its forward compartments. It had to leave the battle area and retire to Crete for repairs. On the way for repairs, the mine damage became so severe that the ship lost power and had to be towed. Eventually it had to be grounded to prevent it from sinking.
Additionally, during the action in which it struck the mine, Inflexible was struck several times by shells from shore batteries. None of these hits caused damage that would cause teh ship to sink. However one shell caused a fire which compelled the ship to retire to deal with it.
TAG, Inflexible was “old” even in 1915 and wasn’t really the sort of ship intended for use in a shore bombardment. Battle Cruisers were lightly armoured, and the Inflexible was amongst the very first BC’s and relatively lightly armoured even by BC standards,
Not surprising that she took damage from a shore battery.
The ships sunk were pre-dreadnoughts, French as well as British, and useless in general warfare but useful in this sort of operation. One major drawback was that they actually had very large crews (over 1,000 in some I believe) and quite a few were killed when the old ships were sunk. There were modern ships, not just the Inflexible but the brand new Queen Elizabeth, the first of the “Super Dreadnoughts” was present for a while. It certainly would have been a blow had she been seriously damaged or sunk.
However as also pointed out, the mines were fixed and laid at the last minute and were certainly able to swept fairly easily. The performance of the Navies was poor, they allowed the mines to be laid under their noses, they failed to sweep them immediately as they could, and then foolishly ventured amongst those mines without adequate precautions. The attempt to threaten Constantinople was certainly possible with competent leadership and actions, and the Naval task force failed on those grounds.
Ed, I agree with you. The force was chosen because it was expendable and otherwise of little use. The failure was due to incompetent leadership and the effort would have succeeded under a Nelson, or any of dozens of naval commanders from GB’s glory days. Such as Hornblower.:-)
If only Aubrey.
========
And we shouldn’t forget the incompetence of the Land commanders either. Gallipoli was definitely winnable, especially at the point of the second landings at Suvla Bay. They landed almost entirely unopposed on a flat section of the coast dominated by a low inland range of hills, which were initially also almost entirely undefended. A rapid advance to those hills would have made the possibility of a breakout much easier and made the Turkish defensive position much weaker.
To be fair on the troops, the initial landing was hastily planned and succeeded against considerable opposition. And the final withdrawal was masterfully managed.
One more thing about Inflexible, the initial withdrawal due to a fire was because the smoke from the fire was blowing directly into the area where they were treating those already wounded and it was causing significant distress. The ship withdrew enough to reposition itself so the wind blew the smoke away from the dressing station and also allowed the fire to be put out. The fire did not affect the fighting capacity of the ship at the time and she did return to continue the bombardment.
Conventional BC and Battleship guns are not in fact very good as shore bombardment weapons although they do fire large explosive projectiles. The issue is that they are typically designed to have a long range and a flat trajectory, whereas a lower velocity higher trajectory weapon would be better against ground targets that can take advantage of ground features for cover. That said, the various Battleships present at Normandy in WW2 were able to deliver very effective bombardments at times. This was because of improvements in accuracy and because they were used against troops and tanks deploying and not so much against defensive positions. And the long range at which they were firing did give the shells a higher trajectory. I know Warspite (15″ guns) was present at Normandy, a sister ship (somewhat modernised by then) to the QE at Gallipoli, plus Nelson & Rodney (16″ guns) and Ramillies (15″); and at least 3 US ships, Nevada, Arkansas, and Texas – all 14″ guns I think. Plus HMS Centurion, a WW1 Dreadnought sunk as a blockship in one of the Gooseberry breakwaters.
Commemoration today of the 100th anniversary of the Vimy battle.
Translation of France TV info news.
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.francetvinfo.fr%2Fmonde%2Fcanada%2Fcentenaire-de-la-bataille-de-vimy-un-verdun-canadien-insuffisamment-connuen-france_2137496.html
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Updated the 09/04/2017 | 11:01
published the 09/04/2017 | 11:01
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Close to 20,000 people are expected in the Pas-de-Calais to commemorate the centenary of the battle of Vimy Ridge April 9. François Hollande, the Canadian Prime Minister president Justin Trudeau and a part of the British Royal family will be present. The opportunity to revisit this important moment of the first world war, called Sunday on Ted, “Canadian Verdun” by Jean-Michel Lacroix, Emeritus Professor of American civilization at the University of Paris 3 Sorbonne.
Ted: why Vimy is an important date in the first world war?
Jean-Michel Lacroix: This is the “Canadian Verdun”. Unfortunately, Vimy is insufficiently known in France. It is an important date because this assault of the four Canadian divisions on the side of the British, with for the first time a commander who was a Canadian general, led to the birth of Canada as a nation.
Thousands of Canadians have died at Vimy…
Absolutely. The Canada war effort was 600,000 men while the population of the country was “only” seven million inhabitants. Participation was more important than the Americans. The Canada has lost 68 000 soldiers, where the Americans, the population ten times, to have lost 116 000.”
I would guess his is the History Department.
Steve,
I was reading a post at Alice’s http://energyskeptic.com/2017/jeff-masters-nations-that-collapsed-because-of-drought/
that is attributing the conflict in Syria to drought.
Attribution being a bit of a tricky thing I was wondering if your evaluation of the humanitarian disaster occurring in Syria would place drought high up on the list of potential causes.
Steve,
I know you are a golfer. Thought you might enjoy this quotation by Padraig Harrington taken from a Scottish poet that I stumbled upon. “Some people use stats like a drunk uses a lamppost — For support rather than illumination” (talking about statistics dealing with certain grooved golf clubs)
See 1:58 in Youtube link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IbU15uay4k
JD
O’Steve where art thou. In this time of tumult and upheaval it would be soothing for those of us who aspire to rational deduction; to have some more of your surgical dissections.
O’Steve where art thou.