Soil and War
My first visit to a battleground was during a family holiday to Scotland. We were staying in Applecross, a small, isolated village on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands that looks over the sea towards the Island of Raasay. On the way back we passed through Inverness, the most northerly city in Scotland. To break the long journey we decided to stop off at Culloden Moor, the site of the Battle of Culloden in 1746, between the Government forces, which were mainly English, and the Jacobite army, made up of Scottish Highlanders led by Bonnie Prince Charlie. I had never visited the site before, but I recall thinking that it was an odd place for a battle; it is exposed moorland and the ground is rough and boggy, which would be difficult ground on which to go to war. I later learned that Bonnie Prince Charlie’s choice of this site for battle was catastrophic; not only did the exposed ground leave the Jacobite forces vulnerable to the superior artillery of the Government forces, but also the boggy soil hampered their attack, rendering them even more exposed. These factors led to the slaughter of the Jacobite forces and the collapse of the Jacobite campaign. I don’t know exactly how much the boggy soil contributed to the outcome of this war but it certainly played a part. For centuries, soil has played an enormous, and often unexpected, role in the outcome of war. War can also leave lasting and often irreversible scars on soil, leaving it churned, riddled with battle debris and bodies, polluted with heavy metals, toxic dioxins, oil and radioactivity. In many cases, it is left unusable. War can also indirectly affect the soil, for example through the need in Britain, during the Second World War, to cultivate gardens and city parkland for food. And the current growing demand for food, coupled with environmental pressures related to climate change, will place increasing pressure on soil, potentially leading to future wars. This chapter will look at how war is affected by and how it affects soil.