Haig was also completely out of touch with the men he was commanding. Haig never once set foot on the battlefield while he was commanding, "While Haig slept in a cosy bed... and dined on the best food available, his men lived in muddy, noisy trenches sharing their bully beef and buiscuits with rats". Haig could no have possibly really been empathetic with what was going on at the somme, as he was completely out of touch with the men he commanded. He was completely separate from the battle, which can be proven by his account of the battle; "The barbed wire has never been so well cut... the commanders are full of confidence." This completely contradicts the accounts written by soldiers themselves who had actually seen the events; " Our artillery hadn’t made any impact on those barbed-wire entanglements. Our lads were mown down. And those young officers, going ahead, they were picked off like flies. We tried to go over and it was just impossible. We were mown down." This was written by Corporal WH Shaw, and shows the vast difference between haig's account of the battle and what really happened. This proves that Haig was completely out of touch with the men he commanded and this is one of the arguable reasons that so many men were massacred at the Somme.
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