A History of England17 Maalis 2024

186. Never fear, the Brits are here

We’ve been talking about the start of the First World War and, in particular, about the offensives and counter-offensives between French and Germans on the Western Front. What we haven’t considered was the British contribution to the French efforts there. That, in part, is because that contribution was, initially at least, so minimal – some 90,000 men out of a total of 2 million.

And for a while it wasn’t sure that even that number would go.

This week’s episode looks into the dithering on the British side, on the disagreements between politicians, and indeed between generals, often wrapped up with clashing personal ambitions. The dithering continued even after the troops finally went to France, epitomised by their commander Sir John French, who couldn’t make up his mind quite how to use his men or where, and had a curious way of collaborating with his French allies, whose language he didn’t speak, while his opposite number spoke no English at all.

A splendid way to go to war.

By the end of 1914, the British strength had built up considerably from the numbers originally sent. The soldiers had done well, though at the cost of taking heavy casualties. And, of course, by the end of the year they wre sitting in trenches, just like the French alongside them and the Germans opposite.

Illustration: German troops in a trench at Ypres. Public domain.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

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