Not only he did not care about his soldiers, he also used pointless tactics that killed 420,000 British soldiers in the Battle of the Somme and believed in the “big push” theory and thought that the Germans will be defeated somehow if he continues to send more troops to fight the Germans. This infers the Generals were donkeys as they used tactics that destroyed a huge amount of soldiers but not thinking of alternative ways. Although this is true, but this “big push” strategy worked quite well and killed 500,000 German soldiers, meaning that it worked and helped Britain to win the war as according to a German soldier that it was the “muddy grave of the German Field Army”, which tells us the plan did huge damage to the Germans and a lot of them lost their faith because of it. But winning a war does not mean they were not donkeys because the Generals still butchered a lot of soldiers using these inhumane strategies that created huge damages on themselves.
On the other hand, people think the British Generals were not donkeys because they were forced to use some tactics. Take the Battle of the Somme as an example, this battle was held because the Britain was trying to protect the French army. The French even build a statue to thank the British’s heroic act to save the French, which shows the leaders were not donkeys. Although the Britain helped France, but the Generals surely did not think about the soldiers’ feelings as the soldiers may not want to fight for the French and a lot of them were unhappy about this. But, this act of saving the French helped Britain to win the war and therefore it was a right decision and they were not donkeys.
Besides, the British Generals like Haig prepared ammunition to prepare for the battle and a detailed report was written. This suggests that he actually prepared about how to fight and when to ambush, meaning they were not donkeys. On the other hand, he wasted a lot of bombs by throwing them to the well-defended German trenches and these bombs did nearly no damage to the Germans, suggesting that the British were wasting the government’s money on something that is useless. However, shooting bombs to such a long distance is really hard and the British really needed to weaken the German armies and this was something was thought about, but not a random attack.
Not only generals, the soldiers are also some really important people in the War. In fact, without them we would not even have war. Therefore the existence of every soldier was significant. They were known as the lions because they survived harsh conditions, for example there were soldiers like Wilfred Owen who describes the terrible truth of War and there were a lot of people still survived from these horrible environments, with trench rats and corpses everywhere, which we should be really proud of the survivors. Some people may think that the ones that the people died in the war were not lions because some of them may get a trench foot infection intentionally and get sent back home, which is a cowardly act. However, not all of them did it that way and a lot of them did survive until the end of the war, which was honorable.
Secondly, the soldiers were lions because they were able to overcome their fear. There were a lot of soldiers that went up the front line knowing they will die, but still went up there and not get killed by the officer. This suggests that the British soldiers were brave and hoped to fight for his own country even if they knew they would die anyway. This let us knew they had true bravery, which is an act of a lion.
But all soldiers are like lions. First, we have to know that lions carry pride in them. There were soldiers like Wilfred Owen who hated the war totally and wished he should not have been there were not acts of a lion. You may argue that there were poets like Rupert Brooke who loved war. But this is only because he only faced the beginnings of the war and did not know how horrible can war be. Therefore they were not lions.
Lastly, there were a lot of soldiers who ran away from war, how could they be considered as lions? Although most of the people stayed and fought, the ones who ran away were undoubtedly cowards.
To conclude, I think that there were a lot of cases to determine whether this statement was true or not. But I think both the generals and soldiers were lions as they fought really hard in the War.
