Where today we might see mindless killing, many of those who presided over the war’s battles saw only nobility and heroism. “They advanced in line after line,” recorded one British general of his men in action on that fateful July 1, 1916, at the Somme, writing in the stilted third-person usage of official reports, “. . . and not a man shirked going through the extremely heavy barrage, or facing the machine-gun and rifle fire that finally wiped them out. . . . He saw the lines which advanced in such admirable order melting away under the fire. Yet not a man wavered, broke the ranks, or
...more
