ABSTRACT
History has given the British high command, during the First World War a bad reputation and the public has a deep-seated belief that many of the British offensives made between 1914 and 1918 led to needlessly heavy casualties for negligible military gain. Since the guns stopped firing over eight decades ago, the Great War has resulted in a large volume of literature of varied quality and objectivity. The conventional image of that war is one of a senseless bloodbath – a stark war of attrition conducted by unimaginative and incompetent generals and lacking any tactical innovation. There is an almost indelible image of futility produced by the heavy losses sustained on the Somme and at Passchendaele in 1916 and 1917, which puts the blame for the slaughter of British soldiers on the Western Front directly at the feet of the British Expeditionary Force’s (BEF) commanders.
