Hugh Sebag-Montefiore is the author of the new book Somme: Into the Breach, which focuses on the World War I battle. His other books include Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man and Enigma: The Battle for the Code. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph, and he is based in London.
Q: Why did you decide to write about the Somme?
A: The reason I wrote it is a mundane one. I wrote books
about two other iconic subjects of the World Wars—Enigma and Dunkirk. In England,
they are iconic subjects.
I was looking for something else that would catch the
public’s imagination in England. The Somme, given the centenary, was the most
catchy subject. That’s the commercial answer! The subject would interest
people. These days, one has to be careful about choosing subjects. There are
lots of other subjects I would like to write about.
Q: What are some of the most common perceptions and
misperceptions about it?
A: People think of it as a terrible failure, and as people
existing in muddy trenches. In fact, there were a lot of successful attacks. In
the Somme--it lasted four and a half months--it wasn’t that all the attacks
were unsuccessful but they didn’t know how to exploit the success they did
have.
They were able to break through the German lines but made
very basic errors that [one] wouldn’t make today and weren’t able to break
through. The most important day was the first day of July 1916. Everyone
regards it as a failure…there were 60,000 casualties on the British side.
But actually, they were so near succeeding. They got intelligence
that at the southern end of the front there was a gap in the German defenses
caused by British shelling. They weren’t used to managing intelligence and
attacked the whole line equally.
If they had seen what happened in the Israeli wars or in
1940 [during World War II], where Germany and Israel [respectively] concentrated on one area and
broke through and exploited the breakthrough, they wouldn’t have made that
mistake.
It would have saved thousands of British lives; they might
have broken through and won the war. It is one of the revelations in my book.
No one seems to have picked up on this intelligence failure.
Q: Why do you think no one picked up on it?
A: A lot is down to money. It’s expensive to spend a lot of
time going through records. There’s a lot of boring stuff that I went through
before I got to that.
I went to Australia and New Zealand—no British writers about
the Somme have ever written about that before; they didn’t have huge advances.
I was lucky to approach it—I’d done books that were reasonably successful, so I
was able to invest quite heavily in travel. A lot of books are underfinanced. I
spent much too much time on this book but it does pay off in some respects!
Q: You’ve described the relationship between two of
Britain’s top generals, Rawlinson and Haig, as “unhealthy.” What impact did
that have on the outcome?
A: That’s a really interesting aspect of it. Not being
purely a military historian, I was fascinated—it wasn’t just about the tactics
and hard metal but a psychological problem between two men.
There were two generals—one was famous, Sir Douglas Haig,
and the [other was the] guy in charge of the Somme itself, Sir Henry Rawlinson.
He made a bad mistake in March 1915 when the British made the first attack on
the Western front…
He was about to be sacked by the commander in chief at the
time, and Haig saved Rawlinson’s career…Rawlinson felt indebted to Haig, and
when they were planning the Somme attack, Rawlinson realized Haig’s plan was
crazy, and he said it was unwise. I think he felt constrained by the past debt
of honor.
Haig didn’t agree [with Rawlinson]. Haig’s idea was put
forward on the first day of the Somme. Rawlinson seems to have felt he couldn’t
stand up to Haig; normally a general of that seniority would have stood up.
The stupidity of Haig’s plan—Rawlinson had planned according
to scientific evidence how much artillery was needed to subdue the German
trenches. Haig said, you’re being too ambitious, you’ve got to aim at the
second German line as well.
Rawlinson had to shell twice as much trenches; the front
trench only got half as much as it should have. It was crazy to go against your
general on the spot.
That was the main thing that led to the disaster on 1st
July. It was fascinating that there was such a simple answer. Even if all the
other things had gone our way, this still would have been fatal.
Q: You focus not just on the warfare but on the impact at
home. Why did you choose to incorporate that material as well?
A: That was an accident that happened as the book was going
on. I hadn’t realized it would be part of the book. When I was in Australia I
found out about Red Cross files—every person in the Australian army who went
missing on the Somme, there was a file made by the Red Cross that interviewed
the soldiers that had last seen the missing soldiers.
The parents were searching for the missing soldiers; people
went missing for months. On the Somme, parents were searching wildly for their
children for 18 months, two years—it was awful.
The Red Cross would interview all the soldiers in the same
unit to find if they’d seen what happened. One of the most dramatic accounts
was Noel Sainsbury, an Australian who went missing. His parents got a
letter…that the 20-year-old had been seen dead.
I looked in the Red Cross files, and there was another note
from another prisoner that Noel was captured, he was sitting in the trench, and
the German officer shot him twice…there were very vivid accounts….I don’t think
the parents were ever given that account. The Red Cross was protecting parents
from the worst.
It made me realize it was fascinating finding out the
personal stories, the parents writing in to the Red Cross, saying they can’t
bear it any more.
When you’re writing, you experiment a bit. I realized it was
quite a good idea, and it made the chapters not just appealing to war buffs but
people like me…
Quite a few of these were quite moving. They don’t exist in
England in the same way, but I began looking for it, and found some cases where
there were family accounts from the British side. I highly recommend to any
writers who write about war to think about doing that. It makes it more
multi-dimensional.
Q: One hundred years after the battle, what do you see as
its legacy today?
A: When people think about Putin posturing in Russia, it
does have an effect. America and England will have the Somme in mind—is war
worth it? People went into Iraq easily, and Libya, but when it comes to taking
on Russia or China, I hope it will take a lot before they do it.
The lesson I would learn is that maybe there are other ways
of doing it, [such as] sanctions. Maybe it isn’t worth going to war with a
superpower if they take territory. It sounds craven, but there were terrible
losses on the Somme, and that legacy is left in mind.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m only just finishing publicizing this book—I’ve got to
come up with something…I have some ideas!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: One other thing people might be interested in are stories
of atrocities on the Somme. The whole battle was an atrocity. People don’t
realize a lot of the killing of prisoners—I didn’t realize how prevalent it was
by all nations, not just by the Germans but by Australia, Canada, New
Zealand—it shocked me…
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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