Ninety years ago on 1st July 1916 the debacle that was the opening offensive of the Battle of the Somme took place leaving 20 000 British Soldiers dead and 40 000 wounded or missing…the army’s highest casualty rate for a single day’s fighting. The guns continued until muffled by the November snows with the Death Score standing at Germany 650 000, Britain 425 000 and France 200 000.
In June 1917 a Celebrated War Poet was shot dead while recuperating from shell shock. A conscientious objector…previously a top police detective…was sent to France to prevent a major Political Scandal at home. The story is told by Ben Elton in The First Casualty. Here is an edited extract.
Fifteen men grouped by the fire squatted down with their trousers round their ankles chatting idly as if they were in the pub. Everybody smoked and drew contentedly on their Players Navy Strength as the talk turned to the origins of their current misery.
‘The question I always ask is, why did anyone give a fuck about this bleeding Archduke Ferdinand what’s-his-face in the first place?’ one fellow said. ‘I mean, come on, nobody had even heard of the cunt till he got popped off. Now the entire fucking world is fighting ‘cos of it.’
‘You dozy arse,’ another man admonished, ‘that was just a bleeding spark, that was. It was a spark. Europe was a tinder box, wasn’t it? Everyone knows that.’
A corporal weighed in to settle the matter. ‘Listen, it’s yer Balkans, innit? You see, yer Austro-Hungarians...’
‘Who are another bunch we never gave a fuck about till all this kicked off,’ the first man interjected.
‘Shut up an’ you might learn something,’ the corporal insisted. ‘You’ve got your Austro-Hungarians supposed to be in charge in Sarajevo but most of the Bosnians is Serbs, right, or at least enough of ‘em is to cause a t’do.’
‘What’s Sarajevo got to do with Bosnia then?’
‘Sarajevo’s in Bosnia, you monkey! It’s the capital.’
‘Oh. So?’
‘Well, your Austrians ‘ave got Bosnia, right, but your Bosnians are backed by your Serbs, right? So when a Bosnian Serb Loony shoots the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Austrians think, right, here’s a chance to put Serbia back in its bleeding box for good, so they give ‘em an ultimatum. They says, “You topped our Archduke so from now on you can bleeding knuckle under or else you’re for it.” Which would have been fine except the Serbs were backed by the Russians, see, and the Russians says to the Austrians, you has a go at Serbia, you has a go at us, right?
But the Austrians is backed by the Germans who says to the Russians, you has a go at Austria, you has a go at us, right? Except the Russians is backed by the French who says to the Germans, you has a go at Russia, you has a go at us, right? And altogether they says kick off! Let’s be having you!’
‘What about us then? The first man enquired. The rest of the group seemed to feel that this was the crux of it.
‘Entente bleeding cordiale, mate,’ the corporal replied. ‘We was backing the French except it wasn’t like an alliance…it was just, well, it was a bleedin’ entente, wasn’t it?’
‘An’ what’s an entente when it’s at home?’
‘It means we wasn’t obliged to fight.’
‘Never! You mean we didn’t have to?’
‘Nope.’
‘Why the fuck did we then?’
‘Fuckin’ Belgium.’
‘Belgium?’
‘That’s right, fuckin’ Belgium.’
‘Who gives a fuck about Belgium?’
‘Well, you’d have thought no one, wouldn’t you? But we did. ‘Cos the German plan to get at the French was to go through Belgium, but we was guaranteeing ‘em, see. So we says to the Germans, you has a go at Belgium, you has a go at us. We’d guaranteed her, see. It was a matter of honour. So in we come.’
An older man interjected. ‘It wasn’t really about honour,’ he said.
’Do what?’ queried the corporal.
‘Well, we’d only guaranteed Belgium because we didn’t want either Germany or France dominating the entire Channel Coast. In the last century we thought that letting them both know that if they invaded Belgium they’d have us to deal with would deter them.’
‘But it didn’t.’
‘Sadly not.’
‘So what about the Italians, an’ the Japs, an’ the Turks, an’ the Yanks, eh? How did they end up in it?’ asked the original inquisitor.
‘Fuck knows,’ said the corporal. ‘I lost track after the Belgiums.’
For a while the conversation lapsed as the soldiers concentrated on their bowels.
‘You lot make me laugh, you really do,’ said a man who had not spoken yet, a thoughtful-looking fellow in steel glasses who up until then had been staring at a book whilst he did his business.
‘Oh, that’s right,’ the corporal sneered, ‘’cos you’d know better, wouldn’t you, Price.’
‘Yes, I would, Corporal. I most certainly would. This war, like all bourgeois wars, is the inevitable result of capitalism.’
‘Oh Gawd, here we go.’
‘A bayonet is a weapon with a worker on both ends. War creates markets and generates new investment,’ Price continued. ‘It also provides a nice distraction to idiots like us who might otherwise notice that we live in a constant state of near-starvation while the owners of the means of production are too fat to get out of their Rolls-Royce cars.
War is the last stage of the capitalist cycle and as long as we have Capitalism we’ll have wars. If you want to get rid of war you’ve got to get rid of Capitalism.’
‘What, and there wouldn’t be wars if your lot was running things?'
‘Course not. Why would there be? The workers of the world are all comrades. Truth is, you’ve got more in common with Fritz and his mates having a shit just east of Wipers than you have with your own officers.’
