David Broome: Remembering our debt to those who fought

New Zealand forces during World War I. Photo / Supplied

Yesterday, in a low-key fashion, we commemorated the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 - when the guns of the Western Front fell silent. Armistice Day commemorates the war to end all wars. Although, of course, it wasn't.

The reasons for fighting World War II are well understood - Western civilisation versus the genocidal evil of Nazism.

Yet 91 years on, World War I is to modern eyes an enigma. The reason for fighting it elusive. Popular modern perception of the war is defined by Blackadder Goes Forth and the late Alan Clark's characterisation of British generals as "donkeys", who reaped a butcher's bill ensconced in the comfort of a chateau.

That generalisation has been shifting for some time, led by a revision of the revisionist historians. The real shame is that the reason why so many sacrificed themselves in World War I has become lost in a wider sense of loss that envelops the war like fog.

That's down to the scale of the war where the tactical failures far outweigh the strategic victories. As one historian quipped: "If you want to write a history you call it Third Ypres but if you want to sell books, you call it Passchendaele."

It's also due to the fact there is no one left. The last soldier to serve in the trenches, the incomparable Harry Patch, passed away in July, aged 111.

The Allied victory in World War I prevented a military dictatorship controlling much of Europe from Ukraine to the Shetland Islands. If Germany had prevailed, the world as we know it would be unrecognisable.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which brought Bolshevik Russia to heel in March 1918, provides a taste for what Germany would have imposed if it could have. The Treaty of Versailles pales in comparison to how punitive Brest-Litovsk was. This treaty wiped out every Russian territorial gain since the time of Peter the Great. A staggering 780,000 square kilometres of land and much of Russia's industrial and mineral base was surrendered to Germany.

World War I was a throwback to medieval siege warfare. It was a war of immobility due to the co-option of barbed wire from agriculture, the machine gun and reinforced concrete. It bogged down into 800km of static trench lines that ran from the Swiss border to the Belgian coast.

Our visions of trenches, mud and frontal attack colour our view of the war and the calibre of generalship. Were the generals all nincompoops led by the "butcher king", Field Marshal Douglas Haig? Haig was a taciturn Scot whose popular reputation is defined by two battles - the Somme and Passchendaele, where the casualties were enormous on both sides. While he formed the British Legion and the poppy appeal, Haig's reputation was poisoned after his death in 1928 but is now being revisited.

Haig knew the only way to win the war was on the Western Front. This determination saw him cross Britain's Prime Minister David Lloyd-George and Winston Churchill, which explains their post-war denigration.

The British armies, including New Zealand troops, were citizens that had to be moulded by experience. Bitter and harsh, yes, but experience with innovative weaponry and tactics gave the British armies of 1918, in the words of one soldier, the right stuff.

The last "100 days" of the war was an all-arms prototype of a future blitzkrieg, involving tanks, infantry with close artillery and even air support.

Haig's worst attribute, his stubbornness, gave him the fortitude to withstand Germany's last throw of the dice when it hurled everything it had at the British lines from March until July 1918. There's another important marker.

That is the comparative casualty rates for British and Imperial forces. While much higher than World War II at 35.8 per cent of the forces involved, Germany suffered a casualty rate of 64.9 per cent and France, 73.3 per cent.

World War I was a shocking war but a war that had to be fought and won because the alternative is too terrible to countenance, even 91 years on. That is why we need to better commemorate November 11.

Perhaps the simple wearing of a poppy at this time is a good start but remember we must. We owe a huge debt to every soldier, private and general alike, who served in World War I for the freedoms we enjoy today. Time has come to revisit our misconceptions of the war. It is time to remember.

* David Broome, of Wellington, is a member of the Western Front Association, a group which studies World War I.