AND WESTERN SOLDIERS
Some people claim to be astonished by contemporary terrorists who blow themselves up in the process of attempting to kill their enemies. However, are suicidal battle strategies absent from the record of Western warfare?
During the First World War (1914-1918) on the Western front (and on many other fronts), fighting was done out of trenches, with one enemy line facing the other. "Attack" occurred when long rows of soldiers got out of trenches and advanced through no man's land, hoping to cut through barbed wire, assault enemy trenches and break through the opposing line. Most attacks were unsuccessful and there was a substantial probability that an advancing soldier would be hit by an artillery shell or mowed down by machine-gun fire.
It is correct to draw a parallel between the behavior of soldiers during the First World War and contemporary suicide bombers? Is the fundamental dynamic the same? Or is a different dynamic at play?
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Historian Modris Ekstein describes the typical pattern of "battle" that characterized the First World War: "The victimized crowd of attackers in no man's land has become one of the supreme images of this war. Attackers moved forward usually without seeking cover and were mowed down in rows, with the mechanical efficiency of a scythe, like so many blades of grass."
The following are eye-witness accounts of typical attacks that occurred during the First World War. A German machine gunner wrote of his experience of a British attack at the Somme:
We were very surprised to see them walking. The officers went in front. I noticed one of them walking calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down in the hundreds. You didn't have to aim, we just fired into them.
A similar mode of attack--with similar results--occurred at the Battle of Loos. Pushing through to the German line on the second day of battle, British troops crossed the road. Their numerical superiority was considerable, but several dozen German machine guns faced them. The German regimental diary describes what happened:
Ten columns of extended line could clearly be discerned. Each advancing column was estimated at more than a thousand men, offering such a target as had never been seen before, or thought possible. Never had the machine gunners such straightforward work to do nor done it so effectively.
They traversed to and fro along the enemy's ranks unceasingly. The men stood and fired triumphantly into the mass of men advancing across open grassland. As the entire field of fire was covered with the enemy's infantry, the effect was devastating and they could be seen falling literally in hundreds.
Nine-million men were killed during the First World War and twenty-one million injured. The vast casualties were the result of millions of men behaving not unlike contemporary terrorists behave: Allowing their bodies to be blown to bits as they attempted to blow up the bodies of their enemies.
The following report was written by British General Rees immediately after the massacre of the 94th Infantry Brigade of the 31st Division by the Germans on July 1, 1916:
They advanced in line after line, dressed as if on parade and not a man shirked going through the extremely heavy barrage, or facing the machine gun and rifle fire that finally wiped them out. I saw the lines, which advanced in such admirable order melting away under fire. Yet not a man wavered, broke the ranks, or attempted to come back.
In spite of the fact that the attack resulted in the slaughter of nearly all of his men, General Rees seems to have been gratified by the result:
I have never seen, indeed could never have imagined such a magnificent display of gallantry, discipline and determination. The reports from the very few survivors of this marvelous advance bear out what I saw with my own eyes: that hardly a man of ours got to the German Front line.
General Rees was proud of his men because they had demonstrated honor and nobility. They had been willing to die for their country.
As suicide bombers sacrifice their lives in the name of Allah, so soldiers of the First World War martyred themselves in the name of sacred entities given names such as France, Germany and Great Britain.
For background information on the FIRST WORLD WAR, please consult ROGER GRIFFIN'S paper: THE MEANING
And Richard Koenigsberg' s papers:
AS
THE SOLDIER DIES, SO DOES THE NATION COME ALIVE: The Sacrificial Meaning of Warfare
VIRILITY
AND SLAUGHTER: Battle Strategy of the First World War
The IDEOLOGIES OF WAR AND TERROR
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