What Tolkien Taught Me About The Battle of the Somme

[ArathornJax]

This article is by Sir Martin Gilbert and is quite interesting. To give credit, I noticed it posted over at TORN and in this case, I think the insights he provides are very valid here.

The use of pigeons as communications tools is interesting to me and I had never really connected it to how Tolkien uses birds for communications in his own mythology (thinking of the Crebain, the Ravens and Thrushes to name a few). Also, I wonder if Saruman's contempt fo Radagast may have reflected how some soldiers may have reacted to him? Pure speculation on my part. How I would have loved to be a new professor sitting by Tolkien. Also, I would like to hear the songs these vets really sang.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Not much time to comment now, AJ, but thanks for posting that very interesting article. I hope to have more to say later.

[ArathornJax]

Totally understand. When fall hits my life goes into high gear and finding time can be difficult. I look forward to your comments.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

The article is interesting.

I have recently been re-reading Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All That", in which he discusses his own experience in the war.

There is really too much to tell without telling the whole tale, and the comparison to a modern war, like the Iraq war, is shocking.

Without trivializing the loss in the Iraq war, there is simply no comparison in terms of casualties suffered between the trench war and Iraq.

Graves writes about the line battalions, which were constituted of about 800 men or less:

Our first battalion, for instance, was practically annihilated within two months of joining the British Expeditionary Force...with these and another small force.. reduced to thirty men and two officers...[they] recaptured[d] three lines of lost trenches...

In the course of the War, at least fifteen or twenty thousand men passed through the two Line Battalions, whose fighting strength never stood at more than 800. After each catastrophe the ranks were filled up with new drafts from home, with the lightly wounded from the disaster three or four months before, and the more seriously wounded of the earlier ones.

It did not seem uncommon, from what I read, to have a unit reduced by 90% or more due to casualties and then reconstituted as noted above.

Can you imagine if the Iraq war were conducted in such a fashion?

The tales of the indifference of the home front when you went on leave, and the tragedy of the chlorine gas, which mostly didn't work and when it did, it started releasing in your own trench, and when you actually got it to the other side, the wind would change direction--all of these things are recorded in vivid detail in Graves' book.

BrianIs AtYou

[MaidenOfTheShieldarm]

Thank you for posting this. I've been wanting to read it and just now got the chance. The two things that particularly caught my eye were the letters:

Guns firing at night are beautiful - if they were not so terrible. They have the grandeur of thunderstorms. But how one clutches at the glimpses of peaceful scenes. It would be wonderful to be a hundred miles from the firing line once again.

I would not care if only I knew how he went. I know that they cannot all be saved to come home.

I know they weren't written by Tolkien (although the latter was received by him) but besides being very beautiful in their own sort of way, they sum up so much of LOTR for me. The second, especially, recalls Frodo so much, knowing that he cannot be saved to come home.