World War I: The Glorious Version: The Battle of Le Quesnoy was New Zealand's last engagement of World War I. The battle's most famous image, depicting Second Lieutenant Leslie Averill stepping out on to the ramparts, revolver in hand, perpetuates the notion that war is a noble and manly enterprise. The censors were happy to let the image pass. What the New Zealand public were not permitted to see, however, were images of the utter slaughter that was the Western Front.
ON THE ELEVENTH HOUR, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh
month, 2018 – this Sunday – we will celebrate the centenary of the Armistice.
It is Armistice with a capital “A” because this was the historic ceasefire,
negotiated by representatives of both the Allied and the Central Powers, which
caused the guns to fall silent. With the coming into effect of the Armistice at
11:00 hours, 11 November 1918, the world-shattering conflict that would come to
be known as World War I finally ground to its end.
The past fortnight has been notable for the amount of media
attention devoted to a relatively insignificant incident which took place
during the final phase of the decisive allied offensive that knocked Germany
out of the war.
The taking of Le Quesnoy, by elements of the New Zealand
Division, on 4 November 1918, was unquestionably a moment of great gallantry
and humanity. By scaling the fortified town’s massive walls, the New Zealanders
obviated the need for the artillery bombardment by which the capture of so many
other German-occupied towns and villages had been effected. Small wonder that
the citizens of Le Quesnoy still fete the rescuers of their grandparents and
great-grandparents. Small wonder that the Germans laid down their arms and
surrendered to them. When, just a week later, the war ended, thousands of
human-beings were still breathing who, in the normal course of that terrible
conflict, would have been dead. It is a wonderful story and well worth
remembering.
But what happened at Le Quesnoy is about as far from typical
of the fighting in World War I as it is possible to get. For a start, the New
Zealand Division was advancing: moving forward through the French countryside
in a fashion which had become tactically impossible just a few weeks after the
outbreak of hostilities in August 1914. For most of the war a vast defensive
line, stretching all the way from the English Channel to the Swiss border, had
been transformed into an obscene meat-grinder into which the flower of European
manhood had been fed by commanders who had no idea how to wage industrialised
warfare without shedding veritable lakes of human blood.
The most famous image of the Battle of Le Quesnoy: that of
Second Lieutenant Leslie Averill stepping out on to the ramparts, revolver in
hand, perpetuates the notion that war is a noble and manly enterprise. The
censors were happy to let the image pass. What the New Zealand public were not
permitted to see, however, were images of the utter slaughter that was
Passchendaele. The bodies ripped to pieces by shrapnel; the grey-green corpses
barely visible in the all-conquering mud. These obscenities, grimly typical of
the rapacious imperialist conflict, are still considered unfit for general
consumption.
World War I: The Reality
In 1917, Britain’s wartime leader, David Lloyd George, told
the editor of The Manchester Guardian,
C.P Scott: “If the people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped
tomorrow. But of course they don’t know and can’t know.”
The tragedy of the past four years is that, for the most
part, the politicians and propagandists of 2014-2018 appear to share Lloyd
George’s breath-taking cynicism. Whether it be Sir Peter Jackson’s larger than
life heroes; or the fusillade of revisionist war histories unleashed by
military writers determined to gun down the comic accuracy of the final Blackadder series; allowing the people
to know the truth about World War I seems to be as impossible as ever.
Instead, New Zealanders are treated to the wicked conflation
of the humanity and valour of the men who took Le Quesnoy with the purposes of
the war itself. The conflict in which so many young New Zealanders perished was
not conducted in the name of humanity, but in the name of the King-Emperor –
whose representative, Lord Liverpool, announced this country’s participation
from the steps of the General Assembly Library, without the slightest reference
to the wishes of the people’s parliamentary representatives.
Moreover, as the butcher’s bill grew the supply of
volunteers dried up and the gaping holes in New Zealand’s lines after
Gallipoli, the Somme and Passchendaele were filled with conscripts. What could
New Zealand have become if those 18,000 young men who died – had lived?
That is the truly obscene cost of World War I: its
opportunity cost. The future that might have been.
This essay was
originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 9 November 2018.
