Dead Generals

The public's perception has long been that generals don't get killed in modern wars. The implication being that they're not made of the "right stuff" anymore. This, of course, if true, has grave implications for the rank and file.

A Military Expert Begs to Differ - "Well how wrong you can be. 78 British and Dominion officers of the rank of Brigadier General and above died on active service in the First World War while a further 146 were wounded. These figures alone show that, contrary to popular belief, British Generals frequently went close enough to the battle zone to place themselves in considerable danger." (Peter Simkins, Senior Historian, (British) Imperial War Museum.)

Really? Let's analyze what this eminent historian - admittedly from a pro-military background - claims in a BBC article.

In the opening three months of the Boer War three British Major-Generals (Penn-Symons, Wauchope, Woodgate) were killed in direct battlefield action. Out of some 17,000 British soldiers in the war zone at the time - a fatality ratio of .02%, which is huge.

In World War I, Simkins says, some 78 officers of the rank of Brigadier-General and above, are listed as having died, among the 9 million soldiers mobilized by the British Empire - a fatality ratio of .00087%, which is already astronomically smaller to begin with than the Boer War comparison of only a dozen years earlier.

But is 78 "fatalities" a valid number for comparison?

Inflated Statistics - In fact, the comparison ratio is far more wildly varied than even Simkins' figures suggest.

The three Boer War generals died as full major-generals.

But the World War I fatalities Simkins quotes also include many lower ranked Brigadier-Generals, officers who are commonly addressed as Brigadier, because they are not yet real generals. Therefore the number of full ranked Major-Generals among the 78 who "died" (of any cause) in WWI is far smaller, and those "killed," (in battle) smaller yet.

The far reduced fatality ratio of "full generals" is shrinking to insignificance.

All three Boer War Major-Generals died as a result of enemy fire on the front lines of an attack. They had a personal bravery ratio of dying in the face of the enemy of 100%.

Great Canadian Heritage Treasure Celebrities of the Army - General Andrew Wauchope Orig. lithograph - Size - 30 x 40 cm Found - Cambridge, ON General Wauchope was killed in the front line, while leading his men against the Boers at Magersfontein, Dec. 11, 1899. Go to Magersfontein Go to General Wauchope

Again Simpkins' WWI figures distort the manner of death. His 78 officers are listed merely as having "died on active service." Meaning, for a start, it included everyone who wasn't retired...

"Active" service doesn't mean they were manning a gun, or leading a charge, or even anywhere on the battle field; it simply means they were on the payroll in a time of war. Though Simkins is clearly hoping to link the phrase to some kind of "action." An entirely inappropriate connection.

And many of these "generals" were only living in London where the only danger was being hit by a tram... Talk about cooking the books...

And so the fatality figures also includes many who were not "killed" at all.

Simkins' WWI figures do not specify - wonder why? - how the 78 officers died.

So included among the 78 dead "generals" are: those who died far from danger in England, those who were victims of heart attacks from over exertion in Paris brothels, car accidents, liver disease from alcoholism, complications from VD, suicide, and gun shots from angry husbands, or boyfriends, or incensed sheep herders...

Simkins is inflating his data from hospital statistics, not battlefield reports. Clearly many of these deaths were not the result of bravery in the face of the enemy, like those of all three Boer War generals.

Of the 78 "generals" that Simkins references, it seems clear, in spite of his creative marshalling of statistics, only a tiny few, if any, died in charges against the enemy, on the front lines, like their Boer War counterparts. Some of those fatally wounded were found out by long range artillery rounds behind the front lines.

Did any major-general die as in Victorian times? Probably not.

In fact we may very well ask. Did a single one die like Colley (1881), Gordon (1885), Stewart (1885), Penn Symons, Wauchope, or Woodgate?

On the spot bathed by millions of tears and wild lamentations, Canadian historian John Goldi stands where General Wauchope was killed by a swath of rifle fire from trenches among the trees, as he led his men on Magersfontein mountain in the background in the pre-dawn hours of Dec. 11, 1899.

Once broken down and examined, the initial projected .00087% fatality rate of WWI generals, calculated on Simkins' original 78 officers he says died "on active service," recedes into total meaninglessness, compared to the very real .02% fatality rate of Boer War generals who died facing the enemy.

So, as the public has correctly perceived, for a long time, by World War I, generals were leading charmed lives, compared to their Boer War counterparts of only a dozen years before.

So even top historians, like Professor Peter Simkins, of the British Imperial War Museum, can convince themselves of things that are not in any way borne out, even by their own facts.

The public perception is quite correct. Modern generals are certainly more likely to die in bed - though possibly not their own - than in combat.

Improvements in communication - by telephone, radio, Blackberry - had drastically changed the need for generals to go out and risk their own lives on the battlefield in order to give commands to the fighting troops.

Generals now, no longer needed to be restrained by the fear of personally dying, as a consideration, before ordering grunts to go into harm's way.

With the fear of personal danger removed generals could now order more attacks, more risky attacks, more useless attacks, with complete impunity. After all it was only dumb young kids from the boonies that were dying. And there were lots more where they came from.

In many years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, no British, American, Dutch, or Canadian general of any kind has been killed. Their biggest war injuries - piles from sitting on a bar stool at Tim Horton's behind the wire in Kandahar, from where they tell the corporals and sergeants to "Go out, and get 'em, boys!"

In fact in many years of war in Iraq even lower echelon Colonels rarely get killed.

In the Boer War British colonels died like flies in the front lines facing the enemy, with a fatality rate that exceeded that of the generals. Their personal courage was hardly second to that of the generals, under whom they served, nor the men whom they led.

Great Canadian Heritage Treasure

The Late Earl of Airlie - 1899

Orig. cabinet card - Size - 11 x 17 cm Found - Llanwrtyd Wells, UK

Was killed as Colonel at the head of his regiment the 12th Lancers at Diamond Hill, June 11, 1900. One of scores of British Colonels who died bravely leading their men into the jaws of death for Queen and Country.

Afghanistan - Among the 4,200 US soldier deaths in Iraq, only a tiny handful of colonels have been killed. Not one while facing the enemy on the ground with the grunts; all in aircraft crashes - which are all reported as accidents... - while running from the scene of the crime...

The Conclusion - Common sense; not rocket science. If your life is at risk, you value it dearly, and act accordingly, and take due care.

If your life is not at risk, you act accordingly, and take less care. You start to gamble. And that includes, with the lives of others.

Generals are less willing to order assaults where their own lives are at risk, than when they are not. It has always been so. But since World War I, lives of modern generals are never at risk anymore.

Because that self-preservation factor, that used to restrain generals has been removed, grunts are more at risk than ever before, from bad generalship.

Case in point - General Wauchope thought Lord Methuen's plan ordering him to lead a surprise night march against the Boers at Magersfontein was a bad move - read unnecessarily fatal for many, including possibly himself. Many noted his objections. Wauchope was dead within hours, along with scores of his men in a horrific British defeat.

(We should note though Methuen escaped the carnage that time, he was no shirker from the front line. Two years later, he became the only British general ever captured by the Boers in the war, when he was grievously wounded at Tweefontein, and had his life only saved because of the fast and competent work of Boer doctors.)

Today grunts are more likely to die as a result of Blackberry commanding officers gambling than any grunts in history.

Also common sense; not rocket science.

Grunts are less willing to gamble with their own lives than their generals want them to, expect them to, command them to.

World War I showed the madness of protected commanding generals to its extreme, as millions of grunts died useless deaths on the wire, and in No Man's Land, where no general could ever be found.

Canadian General in Afghanistan - Canadian top General Hillier knew - like all the other European and American generals in Afghanistan and Iraq - that his life, and those of his top fellow officers, would never be in danger from the pajamahadeen.

It made him brave, and he became extremely cavalier with the lives of his Canadian soldiers, who for fifty years had never been in combat, but had developed an expertise and reputation as first class peacekeepers. A job in which very few died, and these mostly in accidents.

First, General Hillier demanded Canada's peacekeeping role be changed to the role of a combat army, in which he was encouraged by his American colleagues, with whom he had trained. To put his men into harm's way, where they were sure to die - but not of course, he.

Second, he demanded that they be pushed into an actual theatre of war, in Afghanistan, where American colleagues had already invaded, and where many of his men were sure to die - but not, of course, he.

Third, totally unlike generals from most of the other NATO countries, he insisted his troops be sent into the most dangerous part of Afghanistan, the southern Taliban area, which other NATO generals deliberately avoided, and where consequently, he knew many of his men were sure to die - but not, of course, he...

By January 2009, General Hillier's gung ho bravado had killed 127 Canadian boys and two gals so far - almost all privates, corporals, or sergeants; no generals or colonels - who paid with their lives to make their general's reputation, on which he is now trading for big bucks, in his retirement.

In fact Canada's soldiers have paid, for their general's bravado, with the highest fatality rate of any other army fighting in Afghanistan - a higher proportion of boys and girls killed than the Americans have sustained, the British, and the Dutch, the other three main combating forces there. All the while while Canadians have been losing ground to the enemy...

It's far worse than that.

In no previous war in Canadian history has the proportion of officers killed, compared to privates and non-coms been so astronomically low.

Now if that doesn't constitute bad generalship, what does?

Canadian grunts continue to pay dearly for being saddled with a gung ho, First World War general, who was born a century too late. In the Boer War he could have convinced us of his willingness to die for his country, instead of merely sending others to do it for him. It takes no courage to be a "Blackberry General."

Leaders from other NATO countries, and their generals, have repeatedly refused to send their soldiers into General Hillier's area to help because they value the lives of their soldiers too much, and wouldn't dream of sending them into a region where they would get killed for nothing, which is what is happening to the Canadians.

Exactly the sentiments of the Home Front.

Back home the Canadian population as a whole has opposed the use of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, from the beginning, and has demanded that their politicians bring them back ever since.

They believe there is no good reason, whatsoever, that the Canadian Forces should be in Afghanistan to fight a war that George Bush - the most malevolent and disgraced President in world history - started all by himself, with his business cronies - but with no United Nations, no NATO, and no Canada involved on any level whatsoever.

In short well over 100 young Canadian men and women's lives have been snuffed out only to please Americans and a general out to make a reputation. Their deaths accomplished absolutely nothing for Canada, except, the Canadian police report, to stir up a local terrorist cell in Ontario.

And they accomplished nothing but destruction in Afghanistan under a general who boasted that that was his purpose when he started. "Our job is to be able to kill people," he bragged, specifically "the detestable murderers and scumbags," - his way of referring to the non-white Muslims who opposed his group of entirely white European Christian foreign invaders.

How utterly criminal that the Canadian dead in Afghanistan are totally wasted lives, every bit as much as the futile war dead of World War I.

And now, to Canada's great embarrassment, the Canadian generals also have been demoted, by US Secretary Gates, who has announced he intends to reverse the poor and failing Canadian results in their sector - in spite of their huge fatality rate - by having American generals and troops replace the Canadians as overseers of the southern Kandahar region. Canadians will be sent to look after tourists in Kandahar city itself...

But in the military the generals are the boss and give the orders to grunts...

Yours is not to reason why; yours is but to do and die.

That is still as true of the military today as when it was written almost two hundred years ago.

The big difference is that, then, it also applied, equally, and actually, to generals and colonels, many of whom died alongside the men they led.

But they don't anymore; and haven't for a long time. And grunts have paid for it, big time, ever since.

Better ask for a promotion... quick...

Or pick out a plot...

Below the last view of Canada many Canadian servicemen and women see before the bomb goes off...

Great Canadian Heritage Treasure

Command and Control, The Field Marshall's Baton in Every Canadian Pack

Orig. blackberry - Size - 6 x 9 cm Found - in every Canadian private's belt pouch

How Canadian generals lead their guys and gals in 2009... And how they insure a healthy and wealthy retirement and comfortable old age for themselves, their wives, and their children... oh, and their mistresses and boyfriends...