In which the pond is relieved to discover that it can continue to disagree with prattling Polonius ...

(Above: the pond seizes the chance to enhance its swear jar).

The pond was shocked to find itself in the company of prattling Polonius and the likes of Neil James when it came to the matter of the recent campaign regarding the ceremonial elevation of Sir John Monash to Field Marshall.

James ended his piece, here, thusly:

The two most authoritative biographies of Monash by Geoffrey Serle and Peter Pedersen detail his many strengths and achievements, and record his human flaws. They also refute both the themes and claims made by those pushing Monash mythology rather than facts, context or historically informed perspectives. Monash himself specified that his gravestone was to read only ‘John Monash’ with no title, rank or awards.

Indeed. As James notes, Monash didn't serve in what is usually conventionally defined as a field marshall role, though it should be added that the Australian version is a something of a caricature and apart from Blamey, with only a few mainly ceremonial players given the title ...

Monash was an astute general, and so a posthumous appointment to field marshall would also have been a ceremonial gesture, designed to appease the living, because it wouldn't have done much for the dead, and it would have put Monash in the company of the likes of King George VI and the Duke of Edinburgh, appointed in 1954.

Given the Duke's indifferent military record, putting Monash in this sort of company would have been a major demotion and verging on the defamatory - it's bad enough they both share knighthoods, thanks to the onion muncher, with Monash earning his, and the Duke doing sweet fuck all for his.

The pond hesitates to drag Godwin's Law into the conversation but this sort of pomp and pageantry was most loved by the most inept Nazis, as when Hitler promoted the foppish Hermann Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, to the newly created top dog position of Reichsmarschall in 1940 …yet when the title might have counted for something, in 1945 Hitler went with Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor, a classic hospital pass. Hitler had been pandering to Göring's love of fancy batons and dress-up games ...

Monash was of an engineering bent, and was more interested in getting the job done than in baubles and decorations …

Of course it was silly old Tim Fischer who was behind the push that was nobbled by Malware's government, but two wrongs don't provide the justification for putting Monash in such dud company:

Former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer, who led the campaign to promote Monash, urged the Prime Minister to reconsider. "There are no insurmountable reasons as to why you can not proceed with the promotion of John Monash," Mr Fischer said on Wednesday.

"It remains curious in the extreme that Prince Charles, who absolutely deserves to be head of the Commonwealth, will on accession become an Australian field marshal like his father and grandfather, but not John Monash our greatest military leader." The rare title will be bestowed on Prince Charles when he becomes King - a ceremonial honour that irritates Monash backers in Australia. The Queen's husband, Prince Philip, is one of just four Australian Army field marshals. Just one of those four - Sir Thomas Blamey - is an Australian. (here).

Well no Tim, Prince Chuck absolutely doesn't deserve to be head of the Commonwealth, and as with his dad, putting John Monash in Chuck's company verges on the defamatory…

The reptiles' contribution to the discussion was particularly stupid, presenting it as some kind of generational smack down …

Talk about defamatory.

It's bad enough lining Monash up against the Duke, but it's totally dire putting him up against, or wanting him in the same company, as Prince Chuck … what was it Groucho Marx said about clubs?

But enough of all this, the pond almost forgot that prattling Polonius had also offered two bob's worth, and the pond's mission, as it always is, must be to find some way to disagree with Polonius, even when there might appear to be some disagreement …

It's easy to see why the pond's heart sank. Nothing to see here, and the pond had to quickly move on to the next gobbet ...

Thank the long absent lord.

The pond should have known Polonius would have been a Haig supporter, and how about that immortal line, "a few mistakes along the way."

Now it's not just because the pond's grandfather fought in the battle of the Somme that the pond is alone in taking a view about not being vague, and never asking for a Haig …

Visiting the Somme battlefield in northern France is largely a matter of going from one Commonwealth Graves Commission cemetery to another. The graveyards are everywhere, some of them very small, comprising only a handful of white Portland marble stones, many bearing the inscription, A Soldier of the Great War / Known unto God. One sees so many of these cemeteries and so many stones—along with the vast memorial at Thievpal bearing the names of some 70,000 British soldiers whose bodies were never recovered—that after a few hours of it, you feel numb. Overwhelmed. 
The magnitude of the battle still stuns the imagination. The Somme was an epic of both slaughter and futility; a profligate waste of men and materiel such as the world had never seen. On the morning of July 1, 1916, 110,000 British infantrymen went “over the top.” In a few hours, 60,000 of them were casualties. Nearly 20,000 of these were either dead already or would die of their wounds, many of them lingering for days between the trenches, in no man’s land. The attacking forces did not gain a single one of their objectives. 
Even so, a staff colonel had the cheek to write: “The events of July 1st bore out the conclusions of the British higher command and amply justified the tactical methods employed.” 
Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, chief of staff of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and architect of the battle, evidently agreed. On the day after the debacle, stating that the enemy “has undoubtedly been shaken and has few reserves in hand,” he discussed with subordinates methods for continuing the offensive. Which he did, with a kind of transcendent stubbornness, for another four months, until winter weather forced an end to the campaign, if not the fighting. By then, Haig’s army had suffered more than 400,000 casualties. For the British, in the grave judgment of noted military historian John Keegan, “the battle was the greatest tragedy…of their national military history” and “marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British life that has never been recovered.” 

Indeed, indeed, and that piece contains much more here, as it wrapped up with this:

Early biographies were laudatory, and Haig did his best to ensure that by sending material to the authors. Then came the inevitable reappraisals. B.H. Liddell-Hart, a distinguished military historian who had been wounded on the Western Front, went from admirer to skeptic to unremitting critic. He wrote in his diary: 
He [Haig] was a man of supreme egoism and utter lack of scruple—who, to his overweening ambition, sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men. A man who betrayed even his most devoted assistants as well as the Government which he served. A man who gained his ends by trickery of a kind that was not merely immoral but criminal. 
Haig’s military reputation might even have figured in the prevailing attitude of appeasement. Nothing, the thinking went, was worth another Somme. But of course the world—including the British—did go to war again. For all the slaughter, Haig’s war had been inconclusive and had to be fought again. And after this one, the sea changes set in motion by the first of the world wars became starkly apparent. Britain was no longer an imperial power, and the old Edwardian certainties had crumbled. Like the social class that had produced him, Haig was not so much a figure of controversy as one of contempt. A dull, unfeeling, unimaginative, smug “Colonel Blimp” of the worst sort. Haig was cruelly mocked, first in the satirical musical Oh! What a Lovely War and then in the 1989 television comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth. 
He still had his defenders, but they were in the last trench, barely holding on. Their books argued Haig was a curious, inventive soldier who had, in fact, appreciated the tactical value of machine guns and tanks. Before he died, however, Haig himself gave his critics ammunition by clinging publicly and stubbornly to his outdated certainties. As late as 1926, he was still capable of writing this about the future of warfare: 
I believe that the value of the horse and the opportunity for the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse—the well-bred horse—as you have ever done in the past. 
Astonishing that any man who was there could still believe in cavalry 10 years after the Somme. But it is the bit about “the well-bred horse” that really gives the game away. Haig was undeniably a butcher, as his severest critics have claimed, but he was most of all a pompous fool.

Hmm, well it takes a pompous fool to celebrate the "some mistakes along the way" of a pompous fool …

And then Polonius doubled down for the pond by offering up Gallipoli, as an adventure embarked on with "the best of intentions".

How Monash would have danced with delight at the notion of a campaign embarked on with the "best of intentions", as opposed to a sensible plan well executed.

Even allowing for the all the assorted bungles and incompetent planning and inept tactical implementation, Gallipoli would have still been a hare-brained and delusional scheme, typical of Churchill's off-the-cuff strategies.

It was based on the splendid delusion that the Turks would be easy-beats and the mighty British empire could take them out and stroll up the peninsula, and the war would be over by Xmas.

There was just one problem with this imperial thinking - the Turks were on their home turf and they weren't going anywhere - and even if the incompetent Poms had managed to execute the mission more in the style of a Monash, there would have been no guarantee of an easy victory against a determined Turkish resistance ...

The pond is surprised that Polonius also didn't mention another of his refrains … how we shoulda, coulda, woulda beaten the Vietnamese in Vietnam …and thereby stopped the dominoes falling, though the last time the pond checked, the Vietnamese were still in Vietnam, and Vietnam was still being run by a Communist dictatorship …remarkably enough, with not much love of the domino-playing Chinese …

Never mind, the pond was pleased that at end of day, it could still find things to bicker about with Polonius, whether it be his love of the butcher of the Somme, or his delusional belief that the wretched Gallipoli campaign should be celebrated as a display of good intentions …

… which is why the pond is content that Monash stay a general, and the armchair field marshals can keep on typing their columns for the lizard Oz ...