I have never had much time for the cliché, 'lions led by donkeys', so often applied to British soldiers of World War One. It was not coined at the time, but probably originates in a German comment on French generals in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
In any event it is an unhelpful piece of shorthand. It lumps together generals of a wide range of competence who, along with their allies and opponents, most of whom did no better, strove to cope with a terrible war at a time of far-reaching change.
Yet having jettisoned the expression as far as one war is concerned, I am tempted to use it for one aspect of another. Every time I visit the World War Two battlefields near Rome, I am struck by a sense of gloom which even the inspiring landscape fails to lift, and by a conviction that, here at least, some Allied generals failed the men they led.
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