Breaking the Hindenburg Line
90 years ago today 46th Division broke through the Hindenburg Line. You can read about 1/5th Lincolnshire Regiment’s part in the battle in the relevant chapter of Sandall’s history (and if you click linked names in the text you can get to medal citations and an interactive map). Although my great-grandfather served with the battalion he missed this action - by this time he’d been a prisoner in Germany for nearly 2 years.
It’s interesting to note that although people who are down with the revisionist work that’s been done in the last 20 years or so know this as one of the greatest achievements in British military history it still doesn’t seem to have broken into popular awareness in the way that the Somme or Third Ypres have. The coverage in Wikipedia is very poor, with 46th Division’s spectacular success on 29th September given only one sentence! The article gives far more attention to the less successful American and Australian attacks. Is this because people still can’t help thinking about the First World War in terms of failure?
Comment by Tom Elliott — 12:46 pm, 29 September 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
Hi Gavin:
I’ve enjoyed your blog for a long time, and appreciate this piece too. But I can’t help but offer the observation that perhaps part of the problem with the Wikipedia article, so far, is that folks like you who are well-informed about these matters have not had the time to offer the supplements and modifications necessary to produce a more balanced treatment.
Best,
Tom
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 4:10 pm, 29 September 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
I was wondering if I should edit the article, but I actually don’t feel that I know enough about the First World War to do that. I could and probably should edit some of the English Civil War articles - the one on the New Model Army is full of myths and ignores a lot of academic work - but like you say time is an issue, and when some of these articles are such a mess it’s hard to do it incrementally. It would be better to just start the whole page again but that takes a big investment of time. Also it might look a bit arrogant if I edit the New Model Army page as I’d pretty much have to reference my own article in War In History!
I had a look at the Great War Forum today and there’s not much discussion of Breaking the Hindenburg Line there either. The only active thread in the 90th anniversary section to mention 46th Division is about their disastrous attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt in 1915.
Pingback by XVIII Military History Carnival « Chronologi Cogitationes — 7:53 am, 20 October 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
[...] something up for that!), and we’ve got a fair few for the carnival. Gavin Robinson has commemorated breaking the Hindenburg Line, a World War I action that deserves more attention. A new blog in [...]