D-day and my dad

On this day 80 years ago, my father Brian Withington was one of the thousands of brave men who stormed the Normandy beaches on D-day.

100 years ago today - the last day of the Somme

A service of remembrance is being held today at Thiepval in northern France to commemorate the last day of the Battle of the Somme. (Though the historian Martin Gilbert in his Somme: The Heroism and Horror of War, puts the final action on November 19.) Thiepval’s Memorial to the Missing lists the names of more than 72,000 soldiers whose bodies were never found.

I wrote about the Somme in my book Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters, noting that every other battle I featured was clearly a defeat, while the Somme is sometimes seen as a victory.

The ground gained was negligible. Nowhere did the Allied line advance more than six miles, and many objectives due to be taken on the first day were never captured, nor did the Allies liberate a single town or gain a single strategically significant point. But it is said that the bloody attrition fatally drained German resources and paved the way for the Allied victory two years later.

The offensive involving British, British Empire and French soldiers had begun on 1 July, 1916. By the end of that day, nearly 20,000 British soldiers were dead, and 36,000 wounded – the worst toll for a single day in the history of the British Army.

When rotten weather and cloying mud finally brought an end to the battle, Britain and the British Empire had suffered an almost unimaginable 400,000 casualties, the French had lost about 200,000, and the Germans perhaps 450,000.

Tristan da Cunha - the volcano that emptied an island

On holiday, I read Hervé Bazin’s Les bienheureux de la desolation (which appeared in English as Tristan) – his novel about the volcanic eruption on the island of Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, in 1961 and its aftermath.

It tells of how a violent eruption of Queen Mary’s Peak at the centre of the island forced the entire population of 264 to flee to the UK.

There was a strong collective spirit on Tristan, with a belief that no one should raise himself up above anyone else, but life was hard, and the British authorities thought that once the islanders experienced the greater comforts of life in England, they would want to stay.

In fact, many rejected what they saw as the materialism and emptiness of modern British life, and when the government held a ballot a couple of years later, the islanders voted 148 to 5 to return. Most of them did.

They adopted some of the new things they had seen in England, but live television did not arrive until 2001, and there is still no mobile phone coverage. Tristan’s population has barely grown, now standing at 266.

Bazin’s book appeared in 1970, and is seen by some as a comment on the misgivings about ‘progress’ which had helped to foment the French riots of 1968.

Europe: stay or leave. Focus on fact - 7

Vote Leave, get Stay - on worse terms. Why Brexit is doomed to failure even if the anti-Europeans win the referendum.

Today's fact: Any trading agreement that the UK makes with Europe post-Brexit requires the agreement of the 27 EU countries.

Boris, Gove and co claim that because German car makers and French cheese and wine makers will want to go on selling goods to us, they will give us whatever we want. Even if that is true, and there is no evidence, there is no evidence that they can compel their own governments, let alone those of another 25 countries to agree.

Boris Johnson's own newspaper, the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph, has to admit that the best we will be offered is membership of the EEA - the same deal as Norway - having to allow free movement of people from the EU, paying into the EU budget (rather more per person than we do now), and having to obey EU rules. The only difference being that we will no longer have any say on what those rules are:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/19/the-eu-will-play-hardball-with-post-brexit-britain/

*Because of the urgent task of getting some facts into the UK's Europe referendum debate, for the next couple of weeks I am going to be concentrating on that issue on this blog. Normal disaster history service will be resumed after June 23.

The Lancastria - a forgotten disaster

On May 19, I blogged about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff during World War Two, which resulted in the deaths of around 9,000 German civilians, soldiers and sailors. Now a campaign has been launched in the UK to properly commemorate the sinking of the British liner, Lancastria (pictured) off the French port of St Nazaire in June 1940.

The ship was carrying up to 9,000 British soldiers and French and Belgian refugees when it was attacked by German bombers the day before France surrendered to the Nazis. It is thought that about 4,000 drowned.

Today people such as General Lord Dannatt, former head of the British army, the actress Joanna Lumley and the author Louis de Bernieres say the British government should do more to preserve their memory, describing the loss of the Lancastria as a ‘forgotten disaster’.

They want the government to designate the wreck an official war grave, and they refer to reports that some documents relating to the disaster are still being kept secret. The government says the wreck is already protected under French law, and that all ‘contemporary’ documents have been released. 

200 years ago today - the biggest volcanic eruption of modern history

200 years ago today, the Indonesian volcano of Tambora was spewing molten rock nearly 30 miles up into the atmosphere. It is a less famous disaster than Krakatoa, also in modern-day Indonesia 68 years later, but this was the most powerful eruption of at least the last 500 years.

The immediate death toll on the island of Sumbawa, where the volcano is located, was perhaps 12,000, but across the world, hundreds of thousands may have perished in the volcanic winter that came after the eruption, as ash blotted out the sun.

It brought starvation to China's Yunnan province, hunger and disease to India, while the great chill killed many across Europe as global temperatures fell by perhaps three degrees, with the effect persisting into the following summer. There were food riots in Britain and France, while soup kitchens had to be opened in Manhattan.

The ash meant many countries experienced strange, dramatic sunsets, some of which inspired the great painter, J.M.W. Turner, while the 'wet, ungenial summer' in Switzerland confined Mary Shelley and her friends indoors. For entertainment, they had a story competition. Mary's entry was Frankenstein. The rotten weather was even thought to have contributed to Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.

For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Disasters: a warning from a historian

Just started reading Barbara Tuchman's portrayal of the 'calamitous' 14th century, A Distant Mirror. The century began with unusually cold weather and devastating famines, the Hundred Years War between England and France kicked off, and then came possibly the worst disaster in history, the Black Death, which carried off perhaps one person in three.

But Tuchman warns us that one of the dangers of writing history is that the 'bad side - evil, misery, contention, harm' tends to get recorded more than the good: 'In history this is exactly the same as in the daily newspaper. The normal does not make news.'

The author goes on: 'Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts.' Yes, lots of disasters happen, but most of us will be lucky enough never to experience one. So a sense of proportion is important.

Governments need to take note too. By trying to prevent anything bad happening (which cannot, anyway, be achieved), they often pursue policies that are in themselves damaging - something we often see in the field of 'security' - http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/19/gchq-intercepted-emails-journalists-ny-times-bbc-guardian-le-monde-reuters-nbc-washington-post

Incidentally, so far A Distant Mirror is a great read. 

Remembering World War One

Went to the Tower of London yesterday to see the 888,246 ceramic poppies planted in the moat - each one representing a British military death in World War One. Although I arrived early, there were already hundreds of people there.

In spite of the precision on British losses implied by the number of poppies at the Tower, there is much less certainty about overall casualties in the Great War, partly because of the immense social dislocation the conflict brought, with four of the combatants facing revolutions around its end.

Estimates put the total number of military deaths at more than 8 and a half million, with Germany and Russia each suffering about one and three quarter million, and Austria-Hungary and France each losing well over a million.

Coming up with an authoritative figure for the civilians who perished through massacre, accident, disease, hunger, exposure and hardship is even more difficult, but some estimates put the number even higher than that for military casualties, at around 13 million.

Rwanda + 20

This week Rwanda has been marking the 20^th anniversary of the genocide of 1994, in which 800,000 people were murdered in just 100 days – the fastest mass murder in history.

While the Nazis favoured industrial methods of extermination, this one was carried out with low-tech weapons, notably the machete, though some victims were allowed to be shot instead, if they paid. The murderers were Hutu supremacists; their victims Tutsis and sometimes moderate Hutus.

A United Nations international tribunal based in Tanzania has tried more than 70 people in connection with the events of 1994. So far, 29 have been convicted. Another 11 trials are in progress, and 14 people are in detention awaiting trial, while 13 suspects are still at large.

Although last month, a French court sent Rwanda’s former spy chief to gaol for 25 years for his part in the genocide, the Rwandan government still accuses France of complicity in the killings, and France’s Justice Minister cancelled her plans to attend the commemorations in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Rwanda genocide - first conviction in France

For the first time, a French court has handed down a prison sentence for involvement in the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Former spy chief Pascal Simbikangwa, aged 54, has been sent to gaol for 25 years.

He was found guilty of being involved in genocide and crimes against humanity. Simbikangwa, who was paralysed in a car crash, was arrested in 2008 while living under an alias on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte.

The convicted man, who rose to be third in command of Rwanda's intelligence services, was accused of supplying arms and issuing instructions to Hutu militia who were manning road blocks and killing Tutsi men, women and children as well as moderate Hutus. At least 800,000 people perished in just 100 days.

Rwanda’s current government has long accused France of helping in the genocide. (It was an ally of the Rwandan regime at the time.) But now the French are investigating another two dozen cases linked to the genocide.

Floods in deserts

That’s me in the Lower Antelope Canyon near Page in the deserts of Arizona, USA,  which I visited last month.  It’s place of bizarre, fascinating rock formations, but also a reminder that disastrous floods can strike almost anywhere, even in deserts.

On August 12, 1997, 11 tourists, including 7 from France, were walking through the long narrow, ‘slot’ canyon.   There had been little rain close to the site, but a thunderstorm had dumped a lot of water into the canyon basin seven miles upstream.

By the time it swept into the slot canyon, this flash flood was swelled by logs and stones.    The tourists’  guide managed to wedge himself behind an outcrop, and for a time he held on to two of his party, but eventually the careering waters dragged them from his grasp.

Then he too was swept downstream.   He was found alive on a ledge – the only survivor.   Two of the victims’ bodies have never been found.     You can find more detail here - http://climb-utah.com/Powell/flash_antelope.htm

Picture by Anne Clements http://www.anneclements.com/

Britain's deadliest earthquake

This day 432 years ago saw perhaps the deadliest earthquake Britain has ever known.    Just over a decade later, it was still significant enough to get a mention in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with the bard noting it was 11 years ‘since the earthquake’.

On April 6, 1580, people in Kent said they heard a ‘marvellous great noise’ apparently from the Channel, followed by a ‘fierce and terrible’ shaking.    A passenger on a boat reported seeing a wave 50 feet high, and up to 30 vessels were sunk.

Parts of the White Cliffs of Dover collapsed, as did sections of the wall at Dover Castle, while there was damage to churches at Broadstairs and Sandwich.   Across the Channel, Calais, Boulogne and Lille also suffered structural damage, while at Oudenaarde in Belgium, people were killed and injured by falling chimneys and tiles.

There was also flooding at Boulogne and Calais, where a number of people drowned.   The total death toll was said to have run into hundreds.

Rwanda genocide - more extraditions

For the first time, a French court has agreed to extradite a suspect facing charges relating to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.     51 year old Claude Muhayimana is accused of taking part in genocide and crimes against humanity.     Mr Muhayimana, a local government worker, denies the charges, and the French government could still block his removal.

At least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by Hutu extremists in just 100 days – the fastest mass murder in history.     France was heavily criticised at the time for trying to prop up the Rwandan government that had encouraged the killings.

Earlier this month Leon Mugesera arrived in Rwanda to face charges stemming from a rabble-rousing anti-Tutsi speech he made in 1992.   The former university don had been resisting extradition from Canada for the last 16 years.

Mugesera had referred to Tutsis as cockroaches, and said they should be exterminated, adding: ‘Know that the person whose throat you do not cut now will be the one who will cut yours.’

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 18 - the Somme

On Saturday, 1 July, 1916, British, British Empire and French soldiers launched a huge offensive on the Somme.    By the end of that day, nearly 20,000 British soldiers were dead, and 36,000 wounded – the worst toll for a single day in the history of the British Army.

When rotten weather and cloying mud finally brought an end to the Battle of the Somme in November, Britain and the British Empire had suffered an almost unimaginable 400,000 casualties, the French had lost about 200,000, and the Germans perhaps 450,000.

Of all the disasters featured in this series, this is the only one sometimes claimed as a victory.   It is said that this bloody attrition fatally drained German resources and paved the way for the Allies to finally win the war two years later.

The ground gained was negligible.   Nowhere did the Allied line advance more than six miles, and many objectives due to be taken on the first day were never captured, nor did the Allies liberate a single town or gain a single strategically significant point.

For the full story, see Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters from the Roman Conquest to the Fall of Singapore.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 9 - Surrender at Yorktown 1781

By the summer of 1781, the British were confident of winning the American War of Independence.   George Washington’s rebel army was in a state of mutiny, and it was only thanks to his French allies, that he had been able to keep hostilities going.    Now the French were saying they would be pulling out at the end of the year.

The British had two armies, one in the north and one in the south.    The southern force under Lord Cornwallis had been given the job of fortifying a base for the Royal Navy at Yorktown in Virginia.

By accident or design, the rebels had led the British commander-in-chief, Sir Henry Clinton, to believe that they were going to attack the northern army in New York.   Instead, on September 28, they moved 16,000 men to Virginia, trapping Cornwallis at Yorktown.

For three weeks, the British commander held out, but by then with sickness reducing his effective strength to just over 3,000, and enemy artillery flattening his defences, Cornwallis surrendered, and four months later the House of Commons voted to abandon the war.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 6 - the Battle of Castillon 1453

The Hundred Years War had been going on since 1337.   It is often described as a conflict between England and France, but that is not quite true.    In fact, the English kings ruled a lot of France when the war began, including Aquitaine in the south, and Ponthieu in the north, and many ‘Frenchmen’ served in ‘English’ armies.

By 1453, the French king Charles VII had virtually driven the English out, but many people in Aquitaine wanted them back, and so an army under England’s best general, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury – the ‘English Achilles’, went out to try to exploit their discontent.

On July 16, he set off to relieve the town of Castillon to which the French were laying siege.   He came upon a small French force and routed them.  Then a messenger from Castillon told him they had seen clouds of dust coming from the main French camp.

Thinking the enemy were beating a hasty retreat, Talbot launched an attack even though many of his troops had not yet arrived.    In fact, only the camp followers had been leaving, and French artillery cut down the English mercilessly, inflicting a decisive defeat and virtually ending the war.

*There’s much more on Castillon in my BFBS interview:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIpb64ZpBno

The Aberdeen Press and Journal published a piece on Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters on November 16, and the Tamworth Herald on November 17.

Black Death WAS plague - official

When I was at school, there was no doubt about it.   We were taught that the Black Death – perhaps the most lethal disease ever to afflict humanity – was bubonic plague.    Then some scientists came up with revisionist theories that it might have been an ebola-type virus, or anthrax, or some combination of infections.

Well now a group of Canadian researchers from McMaster University in Toronto believe they have proved the epidemic really was bubonic plague.   They analysed bones from the 14^th century, and were able to extract the plague bacterium, though in a different form from the one we know today.

They hope also to throw light on why the disease carried off so many.    From its first appearance in Central Asia in the 1330’s, it spread right across Europe and Asia, killing perhaps a third of the population.   In some places it was even more deadly.    Siena in Italy was said to have lost half of its people.  Nearby San Gimignano, with its famous towers, even more.

The Black Death was a dreadful blow to the prestige of the Church which had failed to warn the faithful that God was about to inflict this dreadful punishment on them.   It also produced a labour shortage, and as wages for the working class rose, the kings of England and France quickly imposed a wage freeze.

The massacred village

On this day…….67 years ago, the SS murdered 642 men, women and children at the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane.    The victims ranged in age from one week to 90 years.    Most were inhabitants, but a few just happened to be seized as they were cycling through the village.

Soldiers from the 4^th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment were on their way to confront the allies who had landed in Normandy four days earlier, when they were approached by members of the Milice, the French secret police who worked with the Gestapo, to say the Resistance were holding an SS officer hostage in the village of Oradour-sur-Vayres, about 15 miles from Oradour-sur-Glane.   

It seems the SS got the wrong village.    At Oradour-sur-Glane, they herded the men into barns, shot them, then burned down the barns.    Then they locked the women and children in the church, set it on fire, and shot down any who managed to get out.    Just one woman survived.    Finally the village was destroyed.

Today its ruins are still preserved as a monument.

*Something more cheerful.   My friend Johnny Bull’s wonderful picture of the Queen Mary, The Return of the Native, has been selling like hot cakes at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in London.     Get along to see it while stocks last!

http://johnnybulletins.blogspot.com/2011/01/work-in-progress-return-of-native.html

The Great Fire of Moscow

On this day…..198 years ago, Napoleon entered Moscow. It was virtually deserted, and the French army was unnerved by the eerie silence. In some parts of the city, fires were burning.

The next day, a strong wind began whipping up the flames, setting ablaze the stores on Red Square and soon burning debris had spread the fire to the Kremlin where the emperor had set up his headquarters. French soldiers interrupted their looting to help him out of the city.

By the following day, the whole of Moscow was ablaze, and many of the French army decided to follow their leader and get the hell out. Eventually rain put the flames out, but not before three-quarters of the city had gone up in smoke. An estimated 2,000 wounded Russians and up to 20,000 wounded French soldiers perished, plus an unknown number of Russian civilians.

Who started the fire? The Russians blamed the French, and the French blamed the Russians. Certainly the Russians had burned down depots holding ammunition, food and forage to deny them to the invaders. On the other hand, the French had been plundering and fires they started may have got out of control. For the story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Mining disaster survivors

After the scenes of wild celebration in Chile when it was revealed that 33 men trapped on August 5^th by a tunnel collapse at the San Jose copper and gold mine are still alive, comes the sober realisation that it may take four more months to free them.

They do have access to some water, but they have been living on two spoonfuls of tuna, a sip of milk and a biscuit every 48 hours. They are in a shelter, said to be about the size of a one-bedroom flat, though some argue they have about a mile of space to move around in.

There have been other extraordinary escapes after mining accidents. Europe’s worst was at Courrieres in northern France in 1906, when nearly 1,100 were killed. Twenty days after the explosion, to general astonishment, 13 survivors emerged from the pit. They had lost all sense of time, and believed they had been trapped for only four or five days.

After China’s Tangshan earthquake of 1976, some coalminers survived for 15 days below ground without food or clean water. They too believed they had been trapped for only a few days, but their bodies told the true story. They had each lost up to three stones. For more details, see A Disastrous History of the World.