A century after the First World War began, its legacy remains with us.
Tameside’s towns and villages are still dotted with the many memorials erected in its wake.
Yet what do we really know about the conflict?
What we accept as fact owes more to poets, or Oh! What a Lovely War, than to historians.
The popular view is that British officers were bungling butchers such as Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth, happily sitting down to a hearty lunch after glibly ordering several thousand men to certain death. We do the fallen a huge disservice by allowing such myths to endure.
Official figures show more than 200 British generals were killed, wounded or captured.
Relatively few troops were blinded by gas, and of the 2,300 sentenced to death, 90 per cent were pardoned.
Britain was a colonial power and had not fought another European country since the Crimea in the 1850s.
Whereas an army had traditionally been constrained by how far it could march, and how many supplies it could carry, by 1914 railways had made it possible to move and feed millions of men while factories pounded out weapons of unprecedented destructive capability.
The First World War was hell on earth. It took time, mistakes and millions of casualties, to learn the lessons needed for victory.
By the end, Britain was the most potent military power on the planet.
Through its sacrifices on the Western Front it broke the German army just as the Russians were to do in the east 25 years later.
This was only possible because of communities such as those that make up Tameside. In the first total war, the future borough’s workshops, factories and mills put it at the heart of the war effort. Its servicemen showed immense bravery and won three Victoria Crosses.
The best way we can pay tribute to this generation is to stop demeaning their achievements and to recognise their sacrifice and commitment.
Officers such as the Nicholson brothers – heirs to the Dukinfield estates who were both dead by February, 1915 – were not privileged incompetents. Neither can the Tommies of the Manchester, Cheshire and Duke of Wellington’s regiments be dismissed as unthinking cannon fodder.
British forces were heroes who fought courageously for a cause in which they fully believed. At this time of remembrance we should not forget that.
‘Men of Dukinfield – a history of Dukinfield during the Great War’ is available to buy from Tameside’s libraries and museums.
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