The worst battle in history to be in as a soldier?

[Stuart Mackey]

Those quotes are from 1915.


Haig was far from alone in being unable to adapt to how war changed with the advent of the machine gun, aircraft, long range artillery, and other new weapons that didn't exist in the golden age of cavalry.
Maybe I'm too harsh on him, but isn't coming up with new tactics and ideas a Commander's job when the old ones fail miserably and cost too much in both materiel and human life?

Those quotes from 1915 are also from a period when they still thought that mobile war was still possible if they could force a breakthrough. Prior to that they were fighting in a mobile manner [so called race to the sea"], or at least as fast as a man can march and Haig and the rest of the BEF generals, bar Feild Marshal French, were reasonable at it.
The BEF soldiers at the time could and did defeat an enemy armed with machineguns by grit, determination and excellent training, but by 1916 you had a compleatly different army. But the generals did not adapt well or quickly enough, but what else could be done? technology had, for the moment, defeated the millitary art.

[Vaporous]

Of course no one took him seriously. After all, what could a damn rebellious ex-colonial hack from a mickey mouse military teach the European powers?

It isn't just Buford, Europe in general ignored the American Civil War. I'm not sure if the Americans themselves failed to learn the lessons of the CW, American tactics during WWI is not a subject I'm familiar with.

Cold Harbour - Confederates in trenches inside a forest anahilate charging Union forces.

Checellorsville (or was it Fredricksburg?) - Confederates take cover behind a stone wall and cut the advancing Federals to ribbons.

Gettysburng - Union forces are dug-in, fortified, have plenty of artillery support, and a mile-long shooting gallery in front of them. One hour of constant artillery barrage does jack-shit to them. Rebels advance, Yankees kill them and rape the corpse.

How is it that nobody noticed that charging a prepared position was a great way to get your men killed and do a shitload of nothing? And that was with soldiers armed with fucking rifled muskets, a few single-shot rifles, and even fewer repeater rifles. They say hindsight is 20-20, but consider that the trench warfare the happened in the Great War could have been extrapolated to a certain degree from the ACW.

Black Jack Pershing was an incompetent prick. The only thing that saved his ass after the war is that the congressional hearings were fucked with for political reasons.

Cold Harbor, the one Grant wanted back. This one was fuck-all stupid.

It's Fredricksburg. Longstreet set his corp up on Marye's heights, dug in, and watched Burnsides army wait for pontoons for a few weeks. Quote the Longstreet "Line up every Yankee there is, and give my men plenty of ammunition, and I will kill them all, before they reach our lines." Also, the more famous "It is good war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it." Longstreet proves once and for all not to fuck with fortified positions.

Gettysburg. Longstreet bangs his head up against a tree while 15,000 Conferderates march for a mile across an open ground up hill in the face of enemy artillery and entrenched infantry behind a wall.

Longstreet is the clearest example of an officer who thought that marching out in parade blocs was batshit loco. stonewall Jackson represents the opposite view rather well: he ordered spears for his men. And there was a Pennslyvania cavalry unit that actually used lances until 1863.

Vote for Worst battle goes to Stalingrad. It can't be worse then that, unless you fight the same battle with poison wind, acide rain, and spontaneously exploding dirt clods thrown in for kicks. That's the absolute horror.

Someone should have taugh WWI generals about Petersburg, and the sorts of things Grants machine guns did to an attack, on top of everything else.

[Falkenhayn]

Vote for Worst battle goes to Stalingrad. It can't be worse then that, unless you fight the same battle with poison wind, acide rain, and spontaneously exploding dirt clods thrown in for kicks. That's the absolute horror.

You've essentially described the battles for control of Fort Duomont and the surrounding works at Verdun.

[XPViking]

Perhaps any battle when your side is losing. But I think the Korean war wasn't exactly a vacation spot. Especially when both sides were trying to take hills during 1952-53 and sending troops into the meat grinder.

The Korean War

[Glocksman]

Those quotes from 1915 are also from a period when they still thought that mobile war was still possible if they could force a breakthrough. Prior to that they were fighting in a mobile manner [so called race to the sea"], or at least as fast as a man can march and Haig and the rest of the BEF generals, bar Feild Marshal French, were reasonable at it.
The BEF soldiers at the time could and did defeat an enemy armed with machineguns by grit, determination and excellent training, but by 1916 you had a compleatly different army. But the generals did not adapt well or quickly enough, but what else could be done? technology had, for the moment, defeated the millitary art.

Like I said, perhaps I'm too harsh (and I'm under no illusions that I could do better), but the professionals are expected to be able to adapt to changing conditions and technologies.
Of course Haig was under pressure from the politicians, so he may not bear all the blame.

[Stuart Mackey]

Those quotes from 1915 are also from a period when they still thought that mobile war was still possible if they could force a breakthrough. Prior to that they were fighting in a mobile manner [so called race to the sea"], or at least as fast as a man can march and Haig and the rest of the BEF generals, bar Feild Marshal French, were reasonable at it.
The BEF soldiers at the time could and did defeat an enemy armed with machineguns by grit, determination and excellent training, but by 1916 you had a compleatly different army. But the generals did not adapt well or quickly enough, but what else could be done? technology had, for the moment, defeated the millitary art.

Like I said, perhaps I'm too harsh (and I'm under no illusions that I could do better), but the professionals are expected to be able to adapt to changing conditions and technologies.

Yes, they are expected to, and they did try, based on their earlier experience in that war, but they are only human. Lets face it, generals cannot do everything and victory in war is not just in their hands.

Of course Haig was under pressure from the politicians, so he may not bear all the blame.

What could the politicians do? The means to get past the conditions of WW1 did not mature untill WW2 and were in their infancy in that earlier conflict and were not enough to break things open when they arrived, esp given their primitive nature.
They were result of research, and the Generals and Politicians cannot make war winning weapons and tactics by clicking their fingers, or their mouse like in a computer game

[Tiriol]

The siege of Leningrad by the German forces was something I wouldn't want to be part of (the people who lived in that city had to eat each other at some point, or so I've read).

And I echo Edi: Raate Road was a total disaster - never mind a total embarassment - for the Soviets. I wouldn't want to be one of them there.

[WyrdNyrd]

The battle of Isandlawana, January 1879, South Africa.

I suppose it's made up for by the many battles where the British killed thousands and thousands of charging Africans and taking only double digit casualities, thanks to machine guns.

Even in the battle of Isandlwana, supposedly a "victory" for the Zulu, they lost far more than the British (3000 dead + 3000 wounded vs ~1400 British dead). The return of the warriors signalled a time of great mourning, the king saying that "the soul of the nation has been ripped out".

Spears << Rifles

(The Zulu didn't really expect anything less than a slaughter of their own troops, it's just that there was bugger-all else they could do against a modern army.)

Edit: Added figures from Wikipedia
Replaced "Muskets" with "Rifles". That was an embarassing anachronism.

[The Yosemite Bear]

The battle of Isandlawana, January 1879, South Africa.

I suppose it's made up for by the many battles where the British killed thousands and thousands of charging Africans and taking only double digit casualities, thanks to machine guns.

Even in the battle of Isandlwana, supposedly a "victory" for the Zulu, they lost far more than the British (3000 dead + 3000 wounded vs ~1400 British dead). The return of the warriors signalled a time of great mourning, the king saying that "the soul of the nation has been ripped out".

Spears << Rifles

(The Zulu didn't really expect anything less than a slaughter of their own troops, it's just that there was bugger-all else they could do against a modern army.)

Edit: Added figures from Wikipedia
Replaced "Muskets" with "Rifles". That was an embarassing anachronism.

yes I was going to say there was a battle in our war with mexico, where the US forces armed with muskets got our asses kicked by Mexicans armed with spears.

[tharkûn]

What could the politicians do? The means to get past the conditions of WW1 did not mature untill WW2 and were in their infancy in that earlier conflict and were not enough to break things open when they arrived, esp given their primitive nature.

Well for starters they could have devoted far more manpower and resources to opening the Black Sea to troopships and supplies. Germany may have the manpower to fill trenches from Switzerland to the sea, I doubt she could maintain that type of static defense from Black to Baltic. Yes forcing open the straights would lose ships, and it would be a rather bloody operation; however it was also the most strategicly valuable territory in the war.

[CmdrWilkens]

Two general thoughts I'm going to go into and at least one of them is related to the OP.

First off worst battle to be in: I'm going with Tarawa for a variety of reasons. This starts with the fact that being a Japanese soldier gave you a 99.7% chance of dying, higher that any other battle in the Pacific. (Despite the very true nature of Japanese suicide attacks many of the wounded did in fact become prisoners, not so much on Tarawa). Of more than 4,500 troops under uniform fewer than 19 Japanese survived to be captured of whom only 8 were combat troops. This in return for at least 1,100 dead Marines and another 2,400 wounded. Many of those were essentially slaughtered by machine gun fire trying to wade ashore across the reefs towards Betio after most of the LVTs had been blown to pieces by undestroyed Japanese artillery. All this took place during three days but it all occured on less than 600 acres of space or just about 9/10ths of square mile.

On the matter of WWI and the foolishness of the tactics there are a couple misconceptions. First is the matter that everyone should have seen trench warfare coming and planned to do something different. This is completely fallacious in many ways. For starters despite the entrenchments of the American Civil War they wre never stationary objects and proper flanking attacks on may occasions were only stopped by the arrival of reinforcements while the actual line had been carried, moreover the lines NEVER consisted of the kinds of depth and breadth that the Wetern Front gave rise to. NExt in line recent history suggested different trends especially with the 1871 war of German unification (and French humiliation) and a great deal of the lesser fighting in the Balkans. This combined with the advent of modern artillery led most military theorists to posit that determined barrages followed by infantry assault would render static defense useless (as a side note forward lines were relatively easy to carry it was the existence of supporting lines and the rapid counterattack which defeated the attacker, that and the inability to rapidly shift the target of the artillery supporting an attack, the Brits at Chaunce-Neuville(sp?) in 1915 nearly broke through into open terriotry but the inability to rapidly redirect artillery and shift troops so as to exploit gaps stopped the offensive). In addition to all of this it was truly only in the Western Front were trench warfare bogged things down. While trenches were dug in the east and in various other theaters (Iraq for one) the were OFTEN merely used as a device from which to manuever the main force for attacks or counter attacks and the idea of open warfare was still out there as it had been engaged in during essentially the whole of 1914.

Basically my whole point is that the concept of trench warfare as we think of it now had no real opportunity to sink into anyone's mind until at least 1916 and the Germans certainly by late 1917 and early 1918 would learn how to attack and storm fortifications with success despite the above limitations while still relying on Infantry and Artillery. While the casualties were horrendous and many lives were thrown away almost callously neither side was willing to simply give ground and the war became a war of attrition almost from its inception and thus it was a war in which you ahd to grind at the enemy until he was exhausted the technology did not yet exist for true manuever warfare yet the firepower for its devestation did and no amount of generals who understand this coming to post in this era will change the slaughter.

[Stuart Mackey]

What could the politicians do? The means to get past the conditions of WW1 did not mature untill WW2 and were in their infancy in that earlier conflict and were not enough to break things open when they arrived, esp given their primitive nature.

Well for starters they could have devoted far more manpower and resources to opening the Black Sea to troopships and supplies. Germany may have the manpower to fill trenches from Switzerland to the sea, I doubt she could maintain that type of static defense from Black to Baltic. Yes forcing open the straights would lose ships, and it would be a rather bloody operation; however it was also the most strategicly valuable territory in the war.

Thats nice. Now all you need is a time machine to tell the people back then that. Not that they will listen to you because of the political variables of the time.

[CmdrWilkens]

What could the politicians do? The means to get past the conditions of WW1 did not mature untill WW2 and were in their infancy in that earlier conflict and were not enough to break things open when they arrived, esp given their primitive nature.

Well for starters they could have devoted far more manpower and resources to opening the Black Sea to troopships and supplies. Germany may have the manpower to fill trenches from Switzerland to the sea, I doubt she could maintain that type of static defense from Black to Baltic. Yes forcing open the straights would lose ships, and it would be a rather bloody operation; however it was also the most strategicly valuable territory in the war.

Here's the problem...what if you don't win? Hell even if you win then you will have to divert the percentage of the British Fleet neccessarry to succesfully pass the Darnadelles and guess what happens then? That's right you lose the rest of the Grand Fleet to the German High Seas Fleet. Then England is cut off from France and gets starved to dath because you whittled away an enourmous amount of ships trying to penetrate the vitrually impenetrable passage. Wihtout a successful shore invasion to eliminate batteries from either side any fleet sailing through would be cut to pieces by the Turks. You simply cannot divert enough resources there in terms of either ships or manpower to effect any victory without endangering the positions on the mainland.

[Stuart Mackey]

What could the politicians do? The means to get past the conditions of WW1 did not mature untill WW2 and were in their infancy in that earlier conflict and were not enough to break things open when they arrived, esp given their primitive nature.

Well for starters they could have devoted far more manpower and resources to opening the Black Sea to troopships and supplies. Germany may have the manpower to fill trenches from Switzerland to the sea, I doubt she could maintain that type of static defense from Black to Baltic. Yes forcing open the straights would lose ships, and it would be a rather bloody operation; however it was also the most strategicly valuable territory in the war.

Here's the problem...what if you don't win? Hell even if you win then you will have to divert the percentage of the British Fleet neccessarry to succesfully pass the Darnadelles and guess what happens then? That's right you lose the rest of the Grand Fleet to the German High Seas Fleet. Then England is cut off from France and gets starved to dath because you whittled away an enourmous amount of ships trying to penetrate the vitrually impenetrable passage. Wihtout a successful shore invasion to eliminate batteries from either side any fleet sailing through would be cut to pieces by the Turks. You simply cannot divert enough resources there in terms of either ships or manpower to effect any victory without endangering the positions on the mainland.

In short: Concentration of effort.

[Sriad]

For personal discomfort and psychological torture, I'd have to say Stalingrad. Days of 60 below 0, snipers, and starvation rations IF you were lucky.

I would have to say the Napoleonic battle, it might have Wagram, where the retreating Russian soldiers drowned as French artillery blasted holes in the frozen lake they retreated across.

Terrible thought that is, it sounds like an incredible scene...

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well for starters they could have devoted far more manpower and resources to opening the Black Sea to troopships and supplies. Germany may have the manpower to fill trenches from Switzerland to the sea, I doubt she could maintain that type of static defense from Black to Baltic. Yes forcing open the straights would lose ships, and it would be a rather bloody operation; however it was also the most strategicly valuable territory in the war.

Here's the problem...what if you don't win? Hell even if you win then you will have to divert the percentage of the British Fleet neccessarry to succesfully pass the Darnadelles and guess what happens then? That's right you lose the rest of the Grand Fleet to the German High Seas Fleet. Then England is cut off from France and gets starved to dath because you whittled away an enourmous amount of ships trying to penetrate the vitrually impenetrable passage. Wihtout a successful shore invasion to eliminate batteries from either side any fleet sailing through would be cut to pieces by the Turks. You simply cannot divert enough resources there in terms of either ships or manpower to effect any victory without endangering the positions on the mainland.

In short: Concentration of effort.

or they tried Galopoli....

ask any of the Aussie or Kiwi denizens left here.....

I mean next to getting blamed for all of the British Atrocities during the Beor war, it was the biggest arse reaming the ANZACs ever had to put up with.

[Stormin]

I am going to have to chime in some of the eastern front city sieges for reasons given. Others might have been worse, but having seen photographs and footage of the conditions, it has more of an impact to me than most of the others mentioned.

[Stuart Mackey]

or they tried Galopoli....

ask any of the Aussie or Kiwi denizens left here.....

I mean next to getting blamed for all of the British Atrocities during the Beor war, it was the biggest arse reaming the ANZACs ever had to put up with.

Oh, I know, being a Kiwi .

[tharkûn]

Here's the problem...what if you don't win? Hell even if you win then you will have to divert the percentage of the British Fleet neccessarry to succesfully pass the Darnadelles and guess what happens then?

Who said anything about diverting any part of the Grand Fleet? You have the French and Italian fleets with little more to do than interdict the Austrian fleet, not to mention the Russian Black Sea fleet with NOTHING more important to do. This is all in addition to the RN Mediterranean fleet and the innummerable number of "obscolescent capital ships" which would be slaughtered against dreadnoughts and modern battlecruisers, but could easily bombard Turkish forts. One could even talk about bringing the IJN into the mix if you really wanted. The ships were there, it was just that no one was willing to accept the losses that would come from forcing your way through.

Then England is cut off from France and gets starved to dath because you whittled away an enourmous amount of ships trying to penetrate the vitrually impenetrable passage. Wihtout a successful shore invasion to eliminate batteries from either side any fleet sailing through would be cut to pieces by the Turks. You simply cannot divert enough resources there in terms of either ships or manpower to effect any victory without endangering the positions on the mainland.

Hardly there are enough Dreadnoughts in the rest of the Allied fleet to open the straights without the RN diverting a capital ship.

Yes one might have to make a landing and knock out the shore batteries (though in reality the Turks had nearly exhausted their ammunition when the attempt to force the straights was called off), however if you had thrown all the weight of Gallipoli (almost a half-million men) early and use a combined arms assault on the Dardanelles at the beginning you most likely could have carried through. As it was the RN and French Navy tried to force the straights through naval power alone, gave away the game to von Sanders, and when they finally got around to landing face an entrenched enemy. Further the means existed for the Russians to to put some form of simultaneous pressure on the Turks. Not to mention the possibilities of bringing in the Greeks and Bulgarians.

The problem was not insufficient resources, it was Kitchener and others feeding men in peicemeal after letting the enemy know the timing and goals of the offensive.

Thats nice. Now all you need is a time machine to tell the people back then that. Not that they will listen to you because of the political variables of the time.

Actually one would just need to find a way to get Kitchener and Carden to listen better to Churchill and Keyes. The point is the means did exist, one which could have been carried had the troops been front loaded and the campaign conducted with a heavy initial blow rather than ponerously slow reinforcement.

[thejester]

Here's the problem...what if you don't win? Hell even if you win then you will have to divert the percentage of the British Fleet neccessarry to succesfully pass the Darnadelles and guess what happens then? That's right you lose the rest of the Grand Fleet to the German High Seas Fleet. Then England is cut off from France and gets starved to dath because you whittled away an enourmous amount of ships trying to penetrate the vitrually impenetrable passage. Wihtout a successful shore invasion to eliminate batteries from either side any fleet sailing through would be cut to pieces by the Turks. You simply cannot divert enough resources there in terms of either ships or manpower to effect any victory without endangering the positions on the mainland.

Jackie Fisher assembeled an armada of no less than eighteen capital ships (largely pre-dreadnoughts) that did not seriously take away from Grand Fleet and which would have forced the Dardenelles had it not been for the cowardice of civilian minesweepers. By the end of the 18th of March the Allied force was in the Narrows and the Turkish guns were almost out of ammunition. It was only the mines - and the refusal of civilian minesweepers to work under fire - that defeated the expedition. Any serious land expedition was almost certainly doomed by the terrain alone.

I mean next to getting blamed for all of the British Atrocities during the Beor war, it was the biggest arse reaming the ANZACs ever had to put up with.

Hardly. More Australians died in the first three days of the Somme than had in the entire Gallipoli campaign.

Basically my whole point is that the concept of trench warfare as we think of it now had no real opportunity to sink into anyone's mind until at least 1916 and the Germans certainly by late 1917 and early 1918 would learn how to attack and storm fortifications with success despite the above limitations while still relying on Infantry and Artillery. While the casualties were horrendous and many lives were thrown away almost callously neither side was willing to simply give ground and the war became a war of attrition almost from its inception and thus it was a war in which you ahd to grind at the enemy until he was exhausted the technology did not yet exist for true manuever warfare yet the firepower for its devestation did and no amount of generals who understand this coming to post in this era will change the slaughter.

That's simply not true. Only two generals, Haig and Falkenhayn, can really be seen to have simply believed in attrition as a method winning - and their methods backfired badly. The death of manuevre does not make slaughters like the Somme and Passchendale acceptable. British failures on the first day of the Somme weren't the result of trench warfare full stop, but of numerous tactical failures - a late start time, excessive loads, and a highly ineffective artillery bombardment. When the BEF innovated - as in the night attack on the 15th - they were able to beat the German defences, but the absolute reason for an improvement in casualties was the improving of artillery. Units learned how to use the creeping barrage and benefited immensely. Haig et al simply cannot escape responsibly for the failure of so many offensives when the tactical solutions lay at their feet.

[CarsonPalmer]

Another possibly ugly battle is slightly more obscure. The battle of Yi Ling, during China's Three Kingdoms Period, was decided when a force from the kingdom of Wu set fire to the camps of the kingdom of Shu. The ensuing conflagaration engulfed the Shu army, shattering them.

The battles of Carrhae and the Teutoberg Forest must have been nightmares to be a Roman. At Carrhae, as the Parthians rained down limitless arrows, the legions sweating in the heat, and knowing there was absolutely nothing you could do to stop the slaughter must have been torture. The Teutoberg Forest was just as bad, if only in knowing that seemingly limitless Germans were pouring out of the woods, and there was little to no chance to make it back to your fortified camp.

The Horns of Hattin must have been nasty. The Crusaders, dying of thirst, charged Saladin's line to try and break through to the water. The Muslims parted, then closed ranks around the Crusaders, overwhelming the slow, heavily armored knights at about ten to one odds. To be one of the last Crusaders, throat parched, enemies closing in around you, must have been a nightmare.

[tharkûn]

TJ: You misattributed a quote to me, you were quoting the Cmdr.

[The Yosemite Bear]

my comment is mostly about their own perception. sure more people died in somme, the cultural perception is still dehydrated anzacs charging uphill into machineguns,

[Frank Hipper]

...not to mention the Russian Black Sea fleet with NOTHING more important to do.

That's utterly insane, the approaches to Istanbul from the Black Sea were the most easily and heavily defended stretches of water in the world.
Throwing the Black Sea fleet on Turkish mines would achieve nothing but total, total disaster.

[tharkûn]

That's utterly insane, the approaches to Istanbul from the Black Sea were the most easily and heavily defended stretches of water in the world.
Throwing the Black Sea fleet on Turkish mines would achieve nothing but total, total disaster.

I was thinking more of having the Black sea fleet cruising offshore in order to divert some of von Sanders's troops and ammunition. Remember the Turks must not only defend the straights, but protect communications with the Armenian front as well.

Essentially the allies put togethor a small force, refused to push onward when they had initiative, and then fed their men in peicemeal to be ground up. Far better would have been an initial hammer blow, particularly if the Russians presented a second threat at the other end.