The Donkeys This is the story of the destruction of an army - Histomil.com
Introductory Note
This is the story of the destruction of an army — the old
professional army of the United Kingdom that always won
the last battle, whose regiments had fought at Quebec,
Corunna, in the Indies, were trained in musketry at Hythe,
drilled on the parched earth of Chuddapore, and were
machine-gunned, gassed and finally buried in 1915.
I was drawn to this subject almost by chance. While
working in another field I came across the diary of an officer
in the Leinsters and was overcome by the horror of the
contents and the sense of resignation and duty that character-
ized the writing. I began serious research, back through the
orders of battle and the unit records, in an effort to find out
what happened to these men who endured for so long such
incredible privations, such extremes of misery and squalor.
Their casualties were frightful. In the first two hours of the
Battle of Loos more British soldiers died than the total
number of casualties in all three services on both sides on
D-Day 1944. And slowly, as the field of operations widened,
their fate became apparent. Again and again they were
called upon to attempt the impossible, and in the end they
were all killed. It was as simple as that.
My generation did not fight in the Second World War.
To many of us the First is as remote as the Crimean, its
causes and its personnel obscure and disreputable. I have
tried to put down simply, factually, tediously even, what
happened to these men in one year, 1915. Because in print
they have no memorial. The huge cemeteries of regimented
headstones that stand on 'ceded ground' — these are for the
'New Armies', the volunteers who died on the Somme the
***owing year and for the conscripts slaughtered at Pass-
chendaele. The graves of the soldiers killed in 191 5 are
harder to find: clusters of white crosses that stand where
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12 INTRODUCTORY NOTE
the men actually fell on the sites of the German redoubts or
of the advanced dressing stations, often away from the roads,
****** in folds of the ground, signposted only by the fading
green notices of the War Graves Commission. And in the
same way the evidence of their fate is scattered among unit
records, official histories, regimental magazines published
years afterwards. Today there are very few visitors to the
graveyards. The visitors' book at the Bois Carre cemetery
at Loos contains only three English names for the whole of
1959. And so it is with the sources which, undisturbed for
decades, gather dust in museum libraries.
I am anxious that this work should not be thought an
'indictment'. It is quite outside my intention to take part in
arguments which relate, in any case, chiefly to the years of
1916 and 191 7. This study is concerned simply with what
the Army was ordered to do, and what happened when it
attempted to carry out those orders; the results being im-
portant from a military-historical standpoint in that this year,
19 1 5, saw the core of professional quality dissipated before it
had been either properly equipped or substantially reinforced.
In compiling the material I owe an immense debt to
that acknowledged master of military history, Captain B. H.
Liddell Hart, who has allowed me access to his private files
on the period and has been of the greatest help at every
stage in the development of the book. I have also been
greatly assisted by Miss Coombs of the Imperial War
Museum Library, who has helped me in tracking down
obscure items — often on the slenderest of leads. My thanks
are also due to Captain Burgon Bickersteth, the historian
of the Cavalry Brigade, for his help with documents and in
conversation; to Colonel L. B. Beuttler for his assistance in
extracting material from the War Office library; and to
Captain G. C. Wynne from whose research on the period
over the last thirty years, and from whose tras*lations of
German documents, I have drawn at length.
ALAN CLARK
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