Today being Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the First World War’s end, it’s fitting to not just to remember those who fell in that costly war but also learn the lessons from the mistakes that ended up wasting so many lives.
Undoubtedly the biggest tragedy of the war was the sheer cost in soldiers’ lives which was due to the commanding generals’ refusal to accept the era of the cavalryman was over as the machine gun, supported by heavy artillery and the airplane, became the main battlefield weapon.
This wilful blindness to technology is even more galling when one considers the machine gun was an invention of the US civil war fifty years earlier and had been extensively used by the European powers in conquering and subduing native populations in their colonies.
Those commanders such as Haig, Gough, Ludendorff and Kaiser Whilhelm — the “donkeys leading lions” — ignored the technological changes that had changed their industry.
Worse, they wouldn’t listen; Haig rarely visited the front or spoke to his junior officers and men and the Kaiser was forced to abdicate and live out his days in exile because he ignored the discontent in his own country.
In times of great change, we need to listen, learn and adapt. As we saw in the 1914-18 war, the costs of not doing so can be great.