Essay on The British Army were lions led by donkeys

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The First World War was one of the bloodiest wars that ever happened in human history. This War started in 1914 and ended in 1918. In this war, a lot of horrifying battles took place, for example, the Battle of the Somme. A lot of the decisions the Generals made were then criticized because a lot of people believed the Generals were no good at leading the army, and that the soldiers were really brave and compared them to lions. Using the some primary and secondary sources, several areas will be assessed to determine if the statement is true. In this essay, areas that will be assessed to determine that the leaders were donkeys are: lack of care to the soldiers and its poor tactics. However, some people think they were not donkeys because: they used tactics unwillingly while planning the war carefully. On the other hand, the soldiers did a lot of things to show they are lions like: overcoming their own fears and survived horrible conditions. But were not lions because: they were not proud of themselves and their attempts of running away.

The Generals did not care about their soldiers in the First World War because according to David Lloyd George’s memoirs about the War tactics, he says, “Haig ordered many bloody battles in this War. He only took part in two. He never even saw the ground on which his greatest battles were fought,” This suggests that he treated war like a chess game and did not consider the soldiers as humans as he only waited for the results miles away from the battle field, meaning he was a donkey as he did not think about how the soldiers really felt. However, if he went to the battlefield too many times there is a risk for him to be killed, which will cause a bigger problem if he died. But, this may not be true because a leader should take care of his team. This showed that he was more donkey-like as he was a coward who was scared of death.

Not only he did not care about his soldiers, he also used pointless tactics that killed 420,000 British soldiers in the Battle of the Somme and believed in the “big push” theory and thought that the Germans will be defeated somehow if he continues to send more troops to fight the Germans. This infers the Generals were donkeys as they used tactics that destroyed a huge amount of soldiers but not thinking of alternative ways. Although this is true, but this “big push” strategy worked quite well and killed 500,000 German soldiers, meaning that it worked and helped Britain to win the war as according to a German soldier that it was the “muddy grave of the German Field Army”, which tells us the plan did huge damage to the Germans and a lot of them lost their faith because of it. But winning a war does not mean they were not donkeys because the Generals still butchered a lot of soldiers using these inhumane strategies that created huge damages on themselves.

On the other hand, people think the British Generals were not donkeys because they were forced to use some tactics. Take the Battle of the Somme as an example, this battle was held because the Britain was trying to protect the French army. The French even build a statue to thank the British’s heroic act to save the French, which shows the leaders were not donkeys. Although the Britain helped France, but the Generals surely did not think about the soldiers’ feelings as the soldiers may not want to fight for the French and a lot of them were unhappy about this. But, this act of saving the French helped Britain to win the war and therefore it was a right decision and they were not donkeys.

Besides, the British Generals like Haig prepared ammunition to prepare for the battle and a detailed report was written. This suggests that he actually prepared about how to fight and when to ambush, meaning they were not donkeys. On the other hand, he wasted a lot of bombs by throwing them to the well-defended German trenches and these bombs did nearly no damage to the Germans, suggesting that the British were wasting the government’s
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