‘There were no stragglers’: The Spectator reports from the Somme, July 1916

This piece first appeared in the Spectator in July 1916:

Our men have advanced with an elan and a spirit to which the history of war affords no parallel. It is a commonplace of esoteric military history that there is a very seamy side to those glories of the assault upon which the ordinary describer of battles loves to dwell. We hear of the rush of the charge, of the cheers, of the officers pressing forward to lead their men and of the men following them to the death. What we seldom hear about is what Milton called the ‘raw edge of war’, of the ten or fifteen per cent. Or more of stragglers who fail to go on—men who do not show anything which can be reasonably called ‘cowardice in face of the enemy,’ but who seize with great alacrity various forms of excuse, legitimate or semi-legitimate, for not advancing.