War in graphic detail

THE GREAT WAR
July 1, 1916: The First Day of the
Battle of the Somme
Joe Sacco
W W Norton & Company; $35

When cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco sets out to chronicle something, be sure of the relentless objectivity, wry humour and brevity that tell a story more effectively than a wordy Pulitzer-winning treatise. Like R K Laxman's Common Man, Mr Sacco is usually a bemused participant in the events he records, and the message is always searing - whether it is the Dalit experience in Kushinagar (Caravan, January 2012) or Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel. Given his penchant for conflict zones, The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme is a fitting start to the centennial year of World War I, although here he plays the role of historian rather than journalist.

It would be inaccurate to describe this as an illustrated novel or even a book. It is, in fact, a 24-foot panorama that unfurls accordion-style to illustrate an event that symbolises the appalling human cost of war. A slim accompanying booklet contains an excerpt from Adam Hochschild's readable 2011 book To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion and a miniature of the panorama annotated by Mr Sacco.

The Battle of the Somme was meant to be, as Mr Hochschild writes, "the smashing decisive blow that will pave the way to swift victory" after two years of stalemate along the Western Front. By the end of the first day alone, more than 57,000 of the 120,000 British troops who went into battle lay dead or wounded - "two casualties for every yard of the front", says Mr Hochschild, against 8,000 German casualties.

How did a single day's battle end with such a heavy toll for the attackers? Especially when it was preceded by a bombardment so fierce that 1.5 million shells were fired before the battle even began, and the bigger guns could be heard in England?

Partly because it was conceived by commanders who rarely visited the front line - the infamous "Chateau Generals" who occupied sumptuous homes and revelled in every conceivable luxury while the troops hunkered down in the grim trenches along the Western Front. World War I was the first major conflict in which the fruits of the Industrial Revolution - deadly, modern materiel - clashed with dated military strategy, and nothing illustrated this better than this battle.

The Somme breakthrough was predicated on "softening up" the German lines with sustained bombardment designed to destroy the thickets of barbed wire fronting the trenches and cause the enemy to flee. Then British troops - lads who had cheerfully volunteered in fervid patriotic atmosphere in 1914-15 - were to climb out their trenches and advance across no-man's land in orderly waves. They were to be 100 yards behind each other and advance at 100 yards a minute (note the exactitude) and occupy the enemy trenches. Next, mounted cavalry - a relic of the previous century if there ever was one - would charge through the gaps and vanquish a supposedly terrified enemy.

Let's turn to Mr Sacco's amazingly detailed annotated panorama to live the tragedy. He says he has drawn heavily on Martin Middlebrook's 1971 classic First Day on the Somme and he certainly does it credit. The time scale is slightly more than a day, the better to capture the routine of General Douglas Haig, the British Expeditionary Force's commander-in-chief (whose connections with the British establishment outstripped his skills as a military leader). Here we see him taking a brisk walk around the gorgeous Chateau de Beaurepaire, his headquarters, and going for a ride accompanied by a contingent of the 17th Lancers.

The scene morphs into the battlefront in a 180-degree sweep. Now, we are just behind the trenches with its controlled confusion: troops are unloading shells from horse-drawn carts, howitzers are firing, horses are being fed, men are being issued frugal rations and then marching into the trenches.

Plate 7: smoke from the big guns fills the air and, as night falls, a unit of mounted Indian cavalry, pugreed, putteed and armed with lances, moves closer to the front line.

Darkness falls on the warren of trenches crowded with men, so many that several sleep standing up. At dawn, the men, weighed down with at least 60 pounds of equipment and fortified with rum rations, fix bayonets.

Soon after a series of mines under the German trenches are fired, and at 7.30 a m the attack begins. The soldiers, many of them first-timers in battle, line up and advance in a slow, orderly manner. As they cross no-man's land, they are mowed down by waves of German machine gunners.

How was the enemy still there in force? "The week-long bombardment, it turned out, had been impressive mainly for its noise," writes Mr Hochschild, quite ineffective in destroying the barbed wire fronting the enemy trenches or scaring the Germans away. Instead, they easily pick off men who, following orders, were literally walking to their deaths.

The battle scenes are vintage Sacco, a poignant portrayal of the anonymity of men in fighting formation - indeed, he rarely depicts a full face here. Men lie where they fall and troops have been instructed not to stop to help them as they advance into the hell of battle. Then we move back, behind the front line, to the tragically inadequate field hospitals and makeshift cemeteries.

The illustration contains no text to provide context, but as Mr Sacco explains, "It was a relief not to do these things. All I could do was show what happened between the general and the grave, and hope that even after a hundred years the bad taste has not been washed from our mouths."