If you learn anything from this book it will be that had General Douglas Haig been relieved of command in 1916, close to half a million English Commonwealth soldiers would have not been casualties in 1917, and the Royal Cavalry would not have been destroyed. Having killed of so many troops by continuing the Battle of the Somme you would have thought he had learned a lesson, but no.

In 1917, he continued to plan wasteful frontal assaults on the German lines after intolerably long artillery barrages (some as long as four days) that destroyed the front lines but not the German troops who were mostly placed in the second line of trenches. Though he used them he never understood the use of Tanks (except to crush barbed wire entanglements).

He twice attacked the German lines so as to drive an opening through which the Cavalry could into the rear areas of the German defenses and raise havoc with their logistics. The problem was that the Cavalry had NO strategy for dealing with machine guns emplacements or long range artillery. When he sent the Cavalry forward from the advance against the Germans at Cambrai, they were killed like ducks in a shooting gallery while they clogged up the road and prevented reinforcements from making up to the new trench lines.

The British GHQ in WW1 was an old boys network that depended more on old school ties and the aristocracy (whether they were trained in military strategy) then on experience. The rate of loss for officers was based on the insane idea that only the upper class was qualified to lead. With the constant loss of Officers, there was no continuous experience to be passed down to new leaders. So each new group had to learn combat the hard way, killing off thousands of troops in the ignorance.

Anyone reading the war diaries for the British troops will notice multiple officers in short periods of time and the constant involvement with new troops with few experienced veterans to help them.