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General Haig Deserve To Be Remembered As The Butcher Of The Somme Analysis

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Does General Haig deserve to be remembered as the "Butcher of the Somme"?
By Joshua Lawrence

Early life
Douglas Haig was born on 19 June 1861 in a house on Charlotte Square, Edinburgh. His father, John Richard Haig, was an alcoholic and owned Haig & Haig whisky distillery. His mother’s name was Rachel and she was the daughter of Hugh Veitch of Stewartfield.

Marriage
Haig married a woman named Dorothy Maud Vivian on 11 July 1905. Dorothy was a daughter of Hussey Crespigny Vivian and Louisa Duff. The couple then went on to have four children: Alexandra Haig, Victoria Haig, George Haig and Irene Haig.

The Battle Of The Somme
In 1916, Haig had decided that at Verdun, the Germans had been worn down enough and so Haig thought that they could …show more content…

Haig's plan was to fire 1 723 873 shells out of 1537 artillery over a period of 8 days. Although many shells were used in the bombardment, they only made the battlefield full of hard to navigate holes, unexploded shells and instead of destroying the barbed wire, like Haig thought it would, they just made the barbed wire go all over the place, making it impossible to navigate no-man's land. After the bombardment however, Haig made his troops climb “over-the-top” and simply walk over on-man’s land. Haig said that he made his soldiers walk so that they could stay uniform. The Germans however, expected an attack after an 8 day artillery barrage and so they set up their machine guns and rifles and they hid in their extremely well made dugouts. And as soon as the bombardment stopped, they knew to come out of their holes and mow down the British who were at that point walking across no-man’s land. And by the time Haig called off the push, more than 450 000 British and 200 000 French troops had been slaughtered. Haig however, was not completely to blame for this massacre. I say this because Haig had been showed by the effectiveness of High Explosive shells and he used them in the battle. What he didn’t know, was that the shells were not as effective as he first

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