A different sort of hell
October 18, 2013 3:54 AM   Subscribe

"Technically it’s not a book at all: The Great War is actually one continuous drawing, a 24ft-long panorama narrating the British forces’ experience of 1 July 1916, spatially and chronologically, from orderly morning approach to chaotic battlefield engagement to grim aftermath. There are no boxes of text or speech bubbles, no individuated characters, instead Sacco portrays a mass event in painstaking, monochrome, almost technical detail. It’s like a cross between Hergé and the Chapman brothers; the Bayeux Tapestry as a silent movie." -- Cartoonist Joe Sacco's latest project, The Great War is about one particular day in the War: 1 July, the start of the Battle of the Somme.

Joe Sacco (previously) accidently wandered into comics journalism:
Asked by Searle whether the inclusion of himself within his works was to signal the inherent subjectivity to the reader, Sacco smiled that “everything was accidental”. Coming from the world of underground cartooning, he was naturally drawn towards creating “first person stories” about his life and experiences, and this was something he continued in his trips to Palestine. As his journalistic impulses kicked in, he began to put together the story journalistically, and with all stories revolving around himself he labelled Palestine as “partly my travelogue, and my experiences”.
His comics on the conflicts in Palestine and Bosnia in the nineties led to graphic journalism assignments for e.g. the NYT and the Guardian.

For The Great War Sacco drew inspiration from Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches and the classic British antiwar comic Charley's War. For those curious to know what WWI through Sacco's eyes looks like, The Guardian has a slideshow.
posted by MartinWisse (20 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's like a cross between Hergé and the Chapman brothers; the Bayeux Tapestry as a silent movie.

As opposed to the riotous soundtrack that accompanies the Bayeaux Tapestry?

More seriously, this is kind of exciting -- I have a couple of reproductions of Japanese painting scrolls that are really interesting -- they are often a "single narrative" moving across the page as you scroll through the document. In some cases the narrative is a story, in some cases a procession, and, in at least one case, the movement of seasons across a landscape. So this kind of thing has a venerable history, and it's good to see someone bring it back. Also, WWI was more horrible than most people imagine, so it's good to get a reminder now and again.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:19 AM on October 18, 2013


As opposed to Technicolor spectacle, I would imagine.
posted by ardgedee at 4:28 AM on October 18, 2013


i can't think of a form as catastrophically suitable for the trenches, the only other friezes that are modern and violent are nancy sperro, but they aren't as narrative as this.
posted by PinkMoose at 4:30 AM on October 18, 2013


That Guardian slideshow of the first day of the Somme could have been the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Before sending General Pickett to occupy the Union position, Robert E. Lee opened up on Union lines with some 200 cannon for more than an hour. Because the elevations of the cannon increased as the tails dug into the dirt he effectively created the WW1 box barrage (used at the Somme) where a square mile of territory was supposed to be obliterated by artillery so that no living soul could have remained. When it appeared that the Union soldiers had abandoned their positions (actually they stopped firing to give that impression) Longstreet acting under Lee's orders sent Pickett, Anderson, and Pettigrew to lead their infantry divisions across about a half mile of open field into the decimated Union lines.

As soon as they emerged from the trees, the Union soldiers most of whom survived the cannonade, filled their cannons with canister and laid waste to them.

Arrogance. During the assault, the Confederates actually halted and redressed lines - while still direct hits from Union cannon. They continued to march towards the Union lines until so many of them were killed or wounded there was no assault left. Only then did Longstreet allow the survivors to retreat. It was a bloody slaughter to no good end.

The same thing happened at the Somme with the only difference being that the British had more soldiers than Lee and the Germans had machine guns. And both sides had stomach for seeing their armies killed. Lee retreated after his failed assault; The British kept it up for weeks. The scale of the slaughter is unimaginable: from July to November the British suffered more than 350,000 casualties with a third of that number killed dead.

For centuries, the British accepted the idea of an upper class that produced the leaders that would lead the rabble to victory in times of war. What was Wellington's remark? That Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. The Great War showed them something else: an elite upper class willing and seemingly determined to send tens of thousands of working class men to their deaths.

(Lee, on the other hand, was simply overconfident in the abilities of his men.)
posted by three blind mice at 5:29 AM on October 18, 2013 [15 favorites]


Thank you, three blind mice, and thank you, MeFiites. I have no desire to see this art, but I have learned something worthwhile today, as I always do when I come here.
posted by kemrocken at 7:05 AM on October 18, 2013


I'm excited to hear about this. The world needs more Joe Sacco.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:34 AM on October 18, 2013


Arrogance. During the assault, the Confederates actually halted and redressed lines - while still direct hits from Union cannon. They continued to march towards the Union lines until so many of them were killed or wounded there was no assault left. Only then did Longstreet allow the survivors to retreat. It was a bloody slaughter to no good end.

I'm not sure it's arrogance to pretty much do what the main style of warfare recommended in the period. Likewise, the Confederate attack actually DID temporarily breach the Union line at what is now referred to as the High Water Mark, but lacked sufficient manpower to hold the position or exploit it. Then the retreat was sounded.

To a degree, the Civil War in the United States offered hints of the modernity of war to come, from widespread use of firearms capable of rapid fire to trench warfare.

As an American, when studying the Great War, I can't grasp what an effect the war had on the nations involved for the length of the conflict. The Civil War comes close in terms of its impact on the population and civilian life, specifically the Southern States, but it's just ghastly the number of men who had to die for what amounted to a long bloody round of geopolitics.

My great-grandfather was drafted and sent over as part of the American Expeditionary Force and was only a few days away from being sent to the front when the Armistice was declared. Instead, he got almost a year's worth vacation in the ruins of France guarding German prisoners. We still have items from his trip, from a cautionary booklet from the Salvation Army about avoiding STDs to a German infantryman's cap.

The image is interesting (particularly when the artillery explosions subtly appear out of the trees on the horizon) and reminds me of the cycloramas that used to exist and tour of famous battles. I would love to see it in color.
posted by Atreides at 7:48 AM on October 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I saw the Cyclorama at Gettysburg years ago; I found it overwhelming, and that after just a short look. I want to see this book!
posted by wenestvedt at 8:02 AM on October 18, 2013


Wasn't it mostly that the British army, at that point in the war, just wasn't very good? Their artillery just wasn't up to the task; they had enough shells, but too many duds, and the gunners weren't very accurate.

There was also over-ambition, to be sure. The generals were a bit like the Soviets in 1942-1943, making big plans their armies weren't yet ready to execute fully.

Prior to the war, the UK only had a small professional army, and that force had taken huge casualties in 1914. It was still in the process of building a mass army, which Britain had never really had: it mostly relied on a fairly small force for security and intervention, the most powerful navy in the world for control of the seas, and foreign troops to do most of the fighting on land.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 8:06 AM on October 18, 2013


No Monday, at this point in the war it was much more complicated. the British far underestimated the depth of the German fortifications and the ability of the machine gunner to quickly re-establish their positions and begin firing, and they simply refused to see that taking the same approach day upon day was insane. Later in the war technology, in the form of tanks, began to make a difference in trench warfare, but frankly, by that time, the men left to fight were even less seasoned than the soldiers at the Somme.
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:27 AM on October 18, 2013


Apparently the next Hardcore History series is going to be a multiparter (possibly 5 parts) about the roots of the Great War. As if the wait for HH episodes wasn't crushing enough already...
posted by jason_steakums at 8:31 AM on October 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


The Great War showed them something else: an elite upper class willing and seemingly determined to send tens of thousands of working class men to their deaths.

Well, in all fairness, Wellington's Peninsular Army was the "scum of the earth" and were hardly working class. They were dredged up from the slums of London and other large cities, and army life was a ticket to three square meals a day, medical care, and some pay.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:34 AM on October 18, 2013


Wasn't it mostly that the British army, at that point in the war, just wasn't very good? Their artillery just wasn't up to the task; they had enough shells, but too many duds, and the gunners weren't very accurate.

I think the problem with the Somme barrage was not inaccuracy or duds but that the British were using shrapnel shells rather than high explosives, and shrapnel had absolutely no effect on Germans protected by underground bunkers.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:48 AM on October 18, 2013


I think the problem with the Somme barrage was not inaccuracy or duds but that the British were using shrapnel shells rather than high explosives,

In his memoir, Lloyd George explained that this was due to a shortage of acetone, which the British had previously imported from Germany. Desperate efforts were launched without success until Chaim Weitzmann - the future Zionist leader - came up with the process of bacterial fermentation to make it.
posted by three blind mice at 10:26 AM on October 18, 2013


I think the problem with the Somme barrage was not inaccuracy or duds but that the British were using shrapnel shells rather than high explosives, and shrapnel had absolutely no effect on Germans protected by underground bunkers.

I'd say the primary problem was General Haig. He thought of the Western front purely as a war of attrition. His thought was that whichever side threw more men into the meat grinder would win, and France and the Commonwealth had larger populations, therefore victory was assured. It's a mindset that lead him to make the same mistakes over and over again, satisfied so long as enemy soldiers were also dying in large numbers.

One of the few competent allied generals on the Western front was Currie. He identified one of the problems with the attack on the Somme as being that when the British artillery barrage ended the bunkered German troops popped their heads up and slaughtered the British troops who were advancing unprotected. One of Currie's many tactical innovations was the rolling barrage, a technique of slowly extending the range at which the guns were targeted while his troops advanced immediately behind that wave of ongoing destruction. His troops reached the German trenches immediately after the guns had swept over them, and consequently many of the Germans were still in their bunkers and unprepared for the assault. It worked quite well.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:55 AM on October 18, 2013


Okay, add inappropriate shells, caused by a failure to plan for a long war. Repeating the approach was a problem (as it was in Passchendaele, but this time with repeating a successful approach), but on the first day, they weren't repeating.

Haig was mostly right in the end; WWI was won as a war of attrition. A few more Curries would have been required to build a force capable of penetrating the German front in 1917.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 1:34 PM on October 18, 2013


Machine guns and artillery.

These items are not just set up and fired at the enemy. Tactics are created in order to make them as effective as possible. It's helpful to have an overview of why machines were more than just another way to kill people: they represented a whole new version of tactics, as different as the airplane later proved to be in warfare.

In a defensive position, machine guns are placed so that they can focus on a particular patch of ground. The ground is chosen for its ability to compress the enemy unit into as small an area as practicable. For a visual aid, think about a fence with a gate. Pretend the enemy can't jump the fence, and must go through the gate. The machine guns are focused on the gate. The enemy can't get on line and use his firepower against the machine guns, so he can't set up a base of fire and a maneuvering element. The machine gunners continue to fire until everyone is dead. This is called a Kill Zone. It's designed in such a way that everyone in it dies within a few minutes.

Another method is to design the kill zone so that the guns fire into the flanks of the enemy, rather than in front of the advancing enemy. It's better to shoot through a line of soldiers as opposed to having to sweep the gun back and forth. For one thing, a bullet that misses the guy closest to you may hit the guy nest to him. For another, the guys on the other side of him can't bring their weapons to bear without shoot through their own men. Flanking fire across open ground lets the gunners use a cross-fire, where the enemy can't focus his firepower on one area without taking it away from another. The object would be to pin the soldiers down in a defilade and let the mortars turn them into hamburger.

In real life, the fence in my analogy is represented by minefields or natural barriers. Defilades in the open field are covered by mortars: that's why they had to keep moving in the face of heavy machine gun fire. If you hide in the gully the mortars will get you; if you make it to the machine gun you at least have a chance to bayonet the gunner. In WWI, commanders had begun to use the machine guns in the defense, but they hadn't yet gotten around to figuring out the best way to defeat them in the assault.

As the article noted, the artillery itself isn't very effective against troops in reinforced bunkers, but it raises hell with troops in the open.

The tactics used in WWI were pretty much the standard tactics of armies around the world. They were developed for troops using single shot weapons, and did not take the machine gun into account. Nobody on either side actually had figured out how to deal with this type of firepower: they were used to discharging their rifles, then making a bayonet assault on troops in a line. Artillery had to stop shooting when the opposing armies began the hand-to-hand part of the battle.

Nowadays, appropriate tactics against emplaced weapons includes hand-held rockets and air or artillery strikes, followed by an infantry assault. We don't charge machine guns anymore, if we can figure out a way to avoid it. The basic response to an ambush is to get out of the killing zone as quickly as possible. Several tactics exists to do this, and only one of them has the infantryman running into the guns.

Regarding the carnage at the Somme. It's impossible to separate politics and military strategy, but it is possible to discuss tactics the same way you dissect a football game. During WWI, I believe ignorance was holding hands with hubris. Arrogance was just the spectator, cheering them on. The competence of the individual soldiers had to do only with them doing the best they could to employ inappropriate tactics to the battlefield situation. Put simply, they were sent to execute a bayonet fight, and the other guy had a machine gun.

Later in the decade, influenza went on to show the world that man, as stupidly clever as he is, still isn't quite as lethal as mother nature.
posted by mule98J at 1:53 PM on October 18, 2013 [5 favorites]


They kept this up until November, too
posted by thelonius at 2:12 PM on October 18, 2013


The thing that I think is worst about the generalship in WWI is, they just would not give up on the dream of a decisive breakthrough, when, time and time again, the futility of this strategy was made evident, at a horrific cost of dead and maimed men.
posted by thelonius at 6:50 PM on October 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I don't want to filibuster, but one more thing. A major contributing factor to the July 1 disaster, was, the depth and quality of the German defenses. They were just beyond what anyone had realized. So, in areas of the line where there were local advances, the units were enfiladed by killing fire from redoubts north or south, where the advance was stalled. Everything was covered, everything.

I read a few books on the Somme. (There is, by the way, a little industry of conservative historians trying to rehabilitate its reputation. The best they have seems to be, if you were going to keep fighting WW1, and not negotiate a peace, you will only win in a battle of attrition, and, you won't learn how to do that without doing something like THe Somme. Some rehabilitation!).

The French, who had better artillery, better gunners, and better coordination, did do better, in the south part of the battlefield. The British units adjoining them also fared better than did the units who just got wiped out, perhaps in part because they had no fire from their right flank. But I think the French assaulted the lower ground near the river, too.
posted by thelonius at 7:22 PM on October 19, 2013


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