Understanding the Costs of War

[Re. the letter to the editor by William H. Bacharach, July/August:] Certainly there is no requirement to agree with any of the views expressed by Andrew J. Bacevich (“Dreams of Dominance Collide With Reality,” Voice, April), but to glibly discount them as having no basis in the real world is spurious. In this Information Age in which we live, Bacharach could (with little or no effort) find enough background on Colonel Bacevich (U.S. Army, Ret.) to avoid the pratfall of a misinformed challenge of another’s credentials. Bacevich served with distinction as a soldier and commander, was a combat veteran and is the father of a young officer [1st Lt. Andrew J. Bacevich] recently killed in action in Iraq. While Bacevich may well be ignorant of many things, war and its costs are not unknown to him and his family.

Colonel Tom Dials
U.S. Army (Ret.)
Leavenworth, Kan.

Do-It-Yourself?

I am a subscriber to Military History, however my teenage son is the one who generally reads the magazine. In the most recent issue, I was horrified to read specific directions on how to build a Molotov cocktail (Hand Tool, by Jon Guttman, July/August). I realize that Military History does not claim to be a magazine for kids, but in view of what’s been going on in the world lately, do you think it’s advisable to give kids and/or adults directions that they or may not have already known? I realize all this information is available on the Internet if someone were to search for it, but why make it so easy?

Jodi Fayerman
Rockaway, N.J.

Editor responds: Our intent in the Hand Tool and Power Tool departments is to explain how weaponry through the ages was designed and functioned. Such weapons as the Molotov cocktail (essentially gasoline in a bottle) are so basic that even a simple description might read like instructions.

General Omissions

[Re. “The Worst General,” by Geoffrey Norman, June:] In planning for the Somme offensive, Haig never had any “insistence on sending infantry against the enemy in neat ranks at a slow walk.” The high command never issued orders to this effect; instead the pace and formation of the infantry advance were left to corps and divisional commanders, who felt that advancing in line was the best way to keep control amid the fighting, considering the inexperience of NCOs and junior officers of the new army.

Nor did Haig entertain “fantasies of cavalry charges across open country.” Cavalry charges when it employs shock rather than fire tactics. There was no question in the high command of using massed cavalry to break enemy positions using lance or saber. Instead, the cavalry was to advance as mounted infantry once the attack had broken through the last enemy trenches, through the gaps of disorganized enemy forces in order to keep them disorganized. The purpose was to keep the situation fluid until the infantry could recoup for the next push forward. In that tanks were not yet mechanically reliable, and armored cars had little cross-country capability, it was hardly a pipe dream to adapt cavalry to this purpose.

Haig did keep the possibility of breakthroughs in mind while planning both the Somme and Ypres offensives, which testifies to his unwillingness to settle for purely attritional battles. None-theless, both battles by the time they’d begun were overshadowed by crises along the French sector of the front—first Verdun, then the French mutinies—that made the wearing down of German reserves their primary objective.

And it worked. If the casualties of Third Ypres “hanging in the wire” were missed once Ludendorff’s Kaiserschlacht offensive began, the Germans were missing even more; 88 divisions had been bled against the prior British offensive. Had those reserves been at hand during the crisis, the Germans might very well have split the Allied front.

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