Investigations of a Dog

On 5th December 1916, 1/5th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment moved into the front line near Gommecourt to relieve 8th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment. The previous month had been spent training behind the lines, even though it was officially a rest period. After this exhausting “rest”, and a parade and inspection in very cold weather, the battalion marched on foot from Halloy to Bienvillers. Battalion HQ and one company were placed at Foncquevillers, and the other three companies went into the wet, muddy trenches between La Brayelle and the Hannescamps to Essarts road (you can see the Foncquevillers area on Google Maps).

At about 9.00pm on 6th December, Lieutenant R. E. W. Sandall led a reconnaissance patrol into No Man’s Land. Somewhere on the road between Hannescamps and Essarts, they were ambushed by a group of Germans (probably from 77th Reserve Infantry Regiment). The patrol fell back to the British trenches under heavy fire from small arms and hand grenades. Lieutenant Sandall was wounded, and one man was missing. A bigger patrol was sent out straight away, but the Germans had gone and there was no sign of the missing man. That man was almost certainly 2683 Lance Corporal William A. Wenham, my great-grandfather.

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History Carnival XLIV is up at Barista. The next one will be hosted by Scott Eric Kaufman at Acephalous on 15 December. You can submit posts about any kind of history using the submission form.

A link posted at Cliopatria by Oscar Chamberlain led me to an article by Larry Kahaner, promoting his new book about the AK-47 assault rifle. In order to dispel the myth of objectivity and neutrality, I have to make it clear that I’m prejudiced against journalists (Natalie Bennett is a notable exception, who couldn’t ever be accused of being lazy), and even more prejudiced against management consultants. Also much of the evidence I present here is based on things that I studied 10 years ago, so the details might be vague or wrong. The first point I want to make is that the AK-47 was not the first assault rifle, because the Germans got there first with the SturmGewehr 44. This isn’t a major point. “First in the world ever” is one of the genre conventions of popular history, which helps to draw people in so that you can make them read what you really have to say. What Kahaner really has to say is convincing: that the AK-47′s cheapness, reliability, and ease of use changed warfare in a way that more temperamental weapons like the StG 44 or M-16 couldn’t have done. You can read all about the strengths and weaknesses of the StG 44 in this Wikipedia article, which seems to be mostly reliable. Both the Wikipedia article and Kahaner’s article refer to something called “Blitzkrieg”. This is even more tangential to Kahaner’s argument, but it’s something I want to take issue with as it leads into some wider points about a disparity between popular and academic military history, and about popular perceptions of war.

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