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| Subject: Lest we forget | |
Author: Lachie Munro | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 15:50:39 12/17/04 Fri In reply to: Dave (UK) 's message, "Hoon's axe falls" on 13:36:41 12/16/04 Thu LEST WE FORGET by Lachie Munro "They are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall." - General Wolfe on his Highland troops in Canada. It's that time of year again when we remember the dead of two world wars (and our thoughts may turn to present conflicts), but there's a persistent and morbid fascination in England with the first of these wars - not with the futile obscenity of working man fighting working man to prop up corrupt and decayed empires, nor that it lead directly to World War 2 and many more deaths, nor the estimated 20 million civilian deaths in Europe from influenza that were precipitated by the war (including my grandmother who died on Armistice Day 1918 leaving seven young children); instead, writers and filmmakers seem obsessed with the individual tragedies of the middle and upper classes - the trauma of war, the 'lost generation', 'doomed youth' - "there's some corner of a foreign field . . . " etc., and of course - the tremendous loss of life. The loss of one life in such a conflict would have been a tragedy, but let's try to shed some light on this - just how many were lost - 30%? - 40%? - 50%? - not quite. Deaths as a percentage of the whole British Army (including the Scots and the Irish) were 11.8%, i.e. fewer than 1 in 8 died - far too many, but not as many as we may have been led to believe. However, the Scottish death-toll, taken separately, was a staggering 26.4% - i.e. over a quarter of mobilised Scottish soldiers (including non-combatants) never left the field, not to mention the physically and mentally scarred. This unenviable (sorry 'proud') record was only marginally beaten by the Turks and the Serbs, the large majority of whose casualties died of disease rather than gunfire. (When the Scottish and Northern Irish deaths are removed from the statistics, the remaining 'British' death rate drops below 10%). So why did so many Scottish soldiers die - was it poor leadership, lack of discipline, cowardice, or a death-wish, or was it perhaps that the Scottish regiments, damned by their bravery and effectiveness were continually and indiscriminately used as spearheads to soften up the enemy prior to a mass attack, and as a consequence took the full force of stolid German resistance? Although the loss of life in World War 2 was nowhere near as high, it remains a fact that a quarter of all British casualties were Scots (in the Korean War it was a third) - from a country that had only 10% of the total population, the 'proportional' sacrifice was even greater than in World War I. Generations of Scots have either ignored, subsumed, or not been apprised of the fact that the flower of their manhood was, and continued to be, cynically thrown away with hardly a voiced raised in protest, and that Scotland, the country that gave most for 'King and Country' never recovered economically, culturally, spiritually, or nationally. In the light of current events I leave it to the readers to decide whether General Wolfe's words echo down to this day. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: Righty ho. | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:20:48 12/17/04 Fri I think that it was Lenin, wasn't it, who insisted that the Great War was a war between the industrial classes for raw materials and markets and that the "working class" soliders were their unwitting dupes. Perhaps in Russia and Germany this may have an element of truth, but in Britain, the Dominions and the Unites States - democracies every one - this is a bit fanciful, or at the very least over simplistic. Samuel Johnson was not far wrong when he pointed out that British patriotism is in fact an invention of the lower classes, and not the Europeanised aristocracy with all their Grand Tours, French wine, Italian tailoring, and German wives. As for the disproportionate contribution of Scots, this has been true of every conflict since the seige of Havannah in 1759. I am not a Scot, but one does get the impression that most Scots (that's ordinary Scots, not the Anglicised gentry) take great pride in Scotland's military record. I imagine that many would be insulted at the suggestion that the only reason for their pride is that they have been brainwashed by an English bourgeois conspiracy to make the Scottish Proletariat into canon-fodder for England's capitalist-imperialist foreign policy. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: It has historic reason | |
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Author: anon [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:51:35 12/17/04 Fri "they have been brainwashed by an English bourgeois conspiracy to make the Scottish Proletariat into canon-fodder for England's capitalist-imperialist foreign policy." General Wolfe "No big mischief if they [Scottish soldiers] fall... what better way of dealing with your secret enemy" Peel said much the same. The Scottish economy has been run down, and the empire needed soldiers. It both helped the empire, and killed off the "secret enemy". [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |