In the line of duty

Back at church after a few weeks’ absence, I found the vicar in a terrible state. ‘Oh my dear chap, we’ve all been thinking of you. Is it true?’ he said. ‘What?’ I said. ‘What you said in The Spectator about getting divorced,’ he said. ‘You must never take the nonsense I write seriously,’ I said. And all down the aisles, as the news spread (‘We’d been praying for you,’ one woman said), I could see waves of relief spreading through the church, and I thought, ‘How lovely. People actually care!’

But there are some things that are far, far too important to make jokes about, and one of them is England’s dismal performance in the World Cup. So when, in a few paragraphs’ time, I propose that for failing their nation in its hour of need our players and manager should be subject to penalties similar to the ones handed out in the first world war for desertion I don’t want you to laugh. Just nod.

The first world war analogy came to me, as inevitably it would, while I was watching The Somme: From Defeat to Victory (Sunday, BBC1). Though it can’t be more than six months since the last Somme documentary, this one took the counterintuitive line that the battle was in fact an Allied victory.

Yes, yes, of course the first day of the Somme was a hideous rout, with 19,240 British soldiers killed and whole streets in the north of England left with not a man of fighting age alive because of the system of Pals battalions, which encouraged friends and neighbours and work colleagues to join up and serve together. But it was the mistakes of that day, the programme argued, which taught us the vital lessons that would win us the war.

Among these were: when facing enemy machineguns do not advance slowly towards them in line abreast across no man’s land (well, not unless there’s a creeping barrage just ahead of you); don’t employ unimaginative generals who stubbornly insist on sticking to their plans rather than responding to changing events; allow officers in the field the chance to show more initiative; invent the tank.