British Armor Innovation: From the Armistice to North Africa, 1942

Glasgow Detachment, British Tank Corps, 1921.
After the War the Tank Corps Was Quickly Reduced from 26 Battalions to 4 

By Kendrick Kuo,  Assistant Professor at the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College

In popular imagination, for example, the German blitzkrieg was a revolutionary innovation in World War II that restored the possibility of decisive victory, which had eluded European armies since the Franco-Prussian War. What is less known is that the British also innovated in armored warfare yet performed poorly on the battlefield [in WWII]. While the German Army mechanized its combined-arms tactics developed at the end of World War I, the British deployed armored brigades comprised almost entirely of tanks and expected them to fight with virtually no help from supporting arms. . .  In reality, rather than being a drastic departure from the past, German tactics and operations in World War II were an extension of the infiltration tactics that it developed to restore mobile warfare on the Western Front . . . 

My central claim is that innovation is more likely to weaken a service's effectiveness when growing security commitments outstrip shrinking resources. This wide commitment-resource gap exerts pressures to innovate in ways that cannibalize traditional capabilities before beliefs about the effectiveness of new ones are justified. When wartime comes, not only has the service lost proficiency in those older capabilities, but the new capability underdelivers, thereby creating vulnerabilities for the enemy to exploit.

Editor's Comment: Professor Kuo fully expands this argument in his full article, which is highly recommended and available HERE.

For readers of Roads to the Great War, however, I have excerpted his description of the process and decisions of the postwar British tank innovators, up to the desert campaign of 1942.

The blitzkrieg myth complements another misleading narrative: that British armor innovation failed because conservative army leaders suppressed a small group of prophetic tank enthusiasts, which resulted in weak army performance on the armor-dominated battlefields of World War II. But in reality, Britain's interwar army favored reform and mechanization. Inspired by futuristic visions of mechanical warfare, the British Army relied too heavily on armor organized in tank-only brigades as the decisive arm on the battlefield.

The British Army's size and expenditure experienced unrelenting downward pressure for virtually the entire interwar period, despite a heavy mission burden and growing international threats to its security commitments. To resolve this wicked mismatch, the army innovated all-tank mobile assaults that allegedly improved its effectiveness in assigned missions while also economizing the army's limited budget and personnel. The innovation process was characterized by radicalism, wishful thinking, and rushed development, all of which downplayed criticisms that contemporary tanks were mechanically unreliable and that armored assaults were susceptible to anti-tank countermeasures if they lacked the support traditionally provided by other arms.

The British Army faced the challenge of bridging a wicked mismatch between expanding commitments and shrinking resources—a gap that persisted for most of the interwar period.  The army had expansive imperial, domestic, and continental obligations at this time.  It had to police and defend an empire at its territorial zenith, having grown from one-fifth of the world's landmass before World War I to one-quarter of the globe.  At home, the army had to contain an Irish insurgency movement and quell what were perceived to be coordinated labor strikes that posed a political challenge to the government.  Finally, the army had continuing obligations in Europe, most significant of which was upholding the Locarno Pact to guarantee the common borders between Belgium, France, and Germany.

Royal Tank Corps crew with their Vickers Medium (Interwar)

To meet these wide-ranging security commitments, the army had fewer soldiers and less money than before World War I. . . CIGS, Field Marshal Sir George Milne (1926–1933), described how the army was operating at full capacity, with fewer infantry battalions than before World War I, while trying to match its Locarno obligations and respond to unrest in China, the swaraj movement in India, policing Palestine and Iraq, and an anti-British Egypt.  “The Army is pared to the bone,” Milne warned, and “our army is so small that it is incapable of fulfilling our international obligations.

To resolve the wicked mismatch, the army found an innovative solution in a new capability that I call “armored maneuver.” The idea was that a mobile force, consisting almost entirely of tanks, could maneuver on the future battlefield with impunity and land a decisive blow against the enemy's rear areas. This new capability allegedly solved the army's wicked mismatch by improving combat effectiveness in great wars, small wars, and internal security, while requiring fewer men and less money than the army's existing force structure. But experimentation with prototype forces yielded worrying results, and critics raised plausible concerns about enemy countermeasures and mechanical unreliability. Nonetheless, the army remained wedded to a futuristic vision of armored warfare.

British armor innovators shared an overarching idea of armored warfare as mobile all-tank operations with little need for supporting infantry and conventionally towed artillery.  Maj. Gen. J. F. C. Fuller and Capt. Basil Liddell Hart were the key spokespeople for armored maneuver, though other figures in the Royal Tank Corps—namely, George Lindsay, Charles Broad, and Percy Hobart—were the implementers. Together, they argued that tanks were the optimal combination of protection, mobility, and offensive power.  As such, armored maneuver promised to be a panacea for the army's wide-ranging security commitments and a substitute for the traditional capabilities associated with the combined-arms offensives of the Western Front. Armor radicalism demanded a high degree of creative destruction.

Armored maneuver allegedly increased the army's effectiveness in all its assigned missions, whether it be great wars, small wars, or internal security.  In the next great war in Europe, armored maneuver would prevent another bloody Western Front. Battles would begin with an armored clash for “tank supremacy” in which infantry, artillery, and horsed cavalry would play “the part of interested spectators” and “do next to nothing.”  Fast tanks would exploit into the enemy's rear and paralyze the enemy's communication and command centers, plunging the opposing army into psychological disarray. The traditional arms would come into play only after the battle had been decided: as armored forces moved forward “by a series of bounds,” the traditional arms would occupy conquered territory and garrison “a chain of fortified depots” established behind the advancing tank forces. 

In small wars, the main challenges were that military garrisons were usually located far away from disturbances and rebels had growing access to small arms. But tanks could allegedly travel far without relying on supply lines, do so quickly across various terrains, and counter small arms fire.  Mechanization functionally reduced the size of empire. Finally, for policing and internal security, tanks dispensing nonlethal chemical gases offered a discriminating and less escalatory way to disperse riots. 

Armored maneuver could allegedly do these things at cheaper cost than the traditional capabilities developed in World War I. In the final year on the Western Front, the British Army was integrating infantry, artillery, and armor capabilities, with the aid of aerial spotting and surprise, to penetrate German defensive positions held in depth and to do so with acceptable losses.  Heavy counter-battery artillery fire was followed by a tank-supported infantry advance under cover of a creeping artillery barrage that included both high-explosive shells and smoke shells to suppress enemy resistance.  This became the standard way of war enshrined in British doctrine after 1919. 

In contrast, innovators touted armored maneuver as an efficient substitute for the difficult and demanding tasks associated with implementing combined-arms principles.  Fuller and Liddell Hart proposed a “new model army” in which mechanical vehicles performed all primary land combat functions. “The tank is likely to swallow the infantryman, the field artilleryman, the engineer and signaler,” Liddell Hart wrote, “while mechanical cavalry will supersede the horseman.”  Moreover, light tanks, fast cruiser tanks, and heavy tanks could allegedly coordinate better than the current arrangement of inter-arm cooperation.  Conversely, hitching tanks to slower elements such as infantry would be “tantamount to yoking a tractor to a draught-horse” and having them “operate together under fire” would be “equally absurd.” 

By reducing troop requirements and mechanizing the remainder, a remodeled army could “produce, within the limits of the money available, a military organization of the highest efficiency and with powers of efficient development along the economic line.”  With stagnant army budget estimates for the foreseeable future, “new mechanized units” were touted “in place of, not in addition to the old infantry and cavalry units,” or else there would be “no real reduction of cost, nor modern efficiency.”  Substitution was not only economical, it would improve the army's combat power. In a great war, a new model division had equivalent fighting value to four or more current divisions and to “almost any number of present-day divisions” if fighting a small war.

J.F.C. Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart
Revolutionary British Interwar Military Theorists

The British Army experimented with armored maneuver during two training seasons in 1927 and 1928, which featured the world's first fully mechanized combat brigade—the Experimental Mechanized Force, later renamed the Experimental Armored Force. These experiments should have tempered excessive faith in the promises of armored maneuver, but they did not.

First, the experimental force failed to achieve assigned mission objectives despite being organized according to armored-maneuver principles. Col. George Lindsay, inspector of the Royal Tank Corps, actively lobbied for armor-centric formations to economize personnel and money, as opposed to a prototype all-arms mechanized division. CIGS Milne sided with Lindsay (“Colonel Lindsay is on the right lines and we have now to decide how to translate his ideas into action”) and offered command to Fuller (though he declined).  The 1927 and 1928 training seasons culminated in large exercises that pitted the experimental force against a more traditional opponent. In 1927, opposed by an infantry division and a horsed cavalry brigade, the Experimental Mechanized Force failed to take a high-ground location. In 1928, the same infantry division, augmented by a tank company, an armored car company, a cavalry regiment, and an artillery brigade, successfully stalemated a combined force of the Second Cavalry Brigade and the Experimental Armored Force.

Second, given the tight resources, the mechanized formations lacked adequate and appropriate equipment, which limited the reliability of experimental data. Milne recognized that the army wanted “to make certain experiments and we have not had the money to do what we really intended.” The prototype units lacked suitable, reliable, and streamlined vehicles to conduct the desired exercises, and they struggled to field them in adequate numbers. 

Third, the exercises were designed to highlight the vulnerabilities of armor. Maj. Gen. Sir John Burnett-Stuart served as the director of the maneuvers. He openly admitted that the armored force's 1928 exercises were “deliberately planned to bring out its limitations rather than to make a display of its powers.” 

Criticism of armored maneuver centered on enemy anti-tank countermeasures and unreliable tank mobility. Post-exercise assessments repeatedly emphasized the need for greater supporting fire in any tank attack on enemy defenses because armored maneuver was vulnerable to enemy anti-tank weapons and artillery.  Similarly, a general staff memorandum on army training criticized the failure to secure proper fire support to suppress enemy anti-tank fire before assaulting a position, violating the “correct principles” established during World War I.  It warned that mechanized forces must not be allowed to “upset all our preconceived notions of war.” Tank mobility was also a perennial issue. Burnett-Stuart cautioned that tanks could not traverse all terrain and that their mobility was still in the developmental stage.  The experimental force lost many of its medium tanks from breakdowns even on short trips.

These criticisms were highly plausible. In World War I, British tanks were indeed vulnerable to German countermeasures in the form of field guns, anti-tank rifles, armor-piercing machine gun ammunition, and minefields. In the interwar period, British tanks could not survive a direct hit by the shell of even a small-caliber, high-velocity gun (technology that was already available). Moreover, much like the tanks in World War I, interwar models had trouble traversing difficult terrain and often broke down. When the War Office dispatched an armored “Mobile Force” to Egypt during the Abyssinian crisis, it had the newest light tanks, yet struggled with so many broken tracks that it was nicknamed the “Mobile Farce.” 

Instead of altering the radical trajectory of British armor innovation, however, the experiments somehow confirmed the theory of armored maneuver. Instead of conceding that traditional capabilities of infantry cooperation and indirect artillery fire support were necessary, armor innovators argued that tank mobility sufficed as a form of protection. First, exercise umpires allegedly overestimated the effectiveness of anti-tank weapons. The representative white and green flags used to fortify defenses in the exercises were “cheap to provide and easy to wave” but “an effective weapon, complete with tractor and ammunition trailer” was “an expensive item,” such that no “infantry division could be provided enough to form the immense circular screen that would be necessary for its protection.” 

Second, European armies in the next great war would allegedly be smaller than in the last one, and therefore would have exposed flanks.  Even if anti-tank weapons were lethal, an armored force could use its incredible mobility to maneuver around obstructions, which in turn precluded the need for infantry cooperation to establish bridgeheads and clear localities.  A few years later, when crystal sets (a rudimentary form of radio) made possible the tactical control of a mobile force, Liddell Hart declared the dawn of new “anti-anti-tank gun” tactics with which a “few scattered guns” could “easily be overrun by a tank force in its onward surge.” 

Vickers Medium Tanks of the Experimental Mechanized Force

Finally, critics simply needed greater faith in the principle that “he who applies a novel device by a novel method has oftenest attained revolutionary results in history.” Liddell Hart attributed the mechanized force's defeat in the 1927 training season to the commander's imprudent fear of enemy attack. The problem was not the enemy, but that the mechanized force was too concerned about security; its maneuvers were not bold enough. The 1928 exercises revealed nothing that reasoning—“the cheapest form of experiment”—had not already made self-evident: “that the present composition of the force is fundamentally unsuitable” and the “obvious truth that armored and unarmored vehicles do not coalesce.”  The solution, Liddell Hart reiterated, was an all-tank force with streamlined vehicles. Whereas concerns about anti-tank weapons and unreliable mobility arose from the army's own practical experiences in World War I, armored maneuver was based primarily on deductive logic and theoretical leaps into an uncertain future.

Armor innovators quickly succeeded in entrenching their mechanizing agenda. Top army officers endorsed the ideas behind armored maneuver and empowered known armor radicals to design and train mechanized formations. The historian David French observes that “by the end of the 1920s the British had virtually abandoned the attempt to create permanent, all-arms formations incorporating a balance of tanks, infantry, and supporting arms.” Attempts to temper armor radicalism in the 1930s failed; and armored maneuver principles guided how British armor organization and doctrine developed in the lead-up to World War II.

In September 1927, Milne praised the Experimental Mechanized Force because he was “perfectly certain that we are working on absolutely the right lines.” At the outbreak of war, a mobile force designed to operate across hundreds of miles could deliver “a swinging blow to come around the flank” and “carry out big operations and big turning movements.” Normally, this force would remain entirely armored because infantry became a liability in combat. Milne later proposed to the Army Council a future armored brigade with essentially the same blueprint as Liddell Hart's all-tank force. He also tasked Col. Charles Broad, a known supporter of armored maneuver, to compile primers on armored warfare. These envisioned tank brigades achieving decisive victory with numerically inferior forces comprised of light tanks for reconnaissance and medium tanks for striking, but they excluded other arms. When Milne's successor, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd, permanently established the First Tank Brigade in 1933, it adhered to an all-tank conception.  The director of staff duties observed that it could “safely be said that the general consensus of Army opinion was in agreement,” that the armored brigade was a commander's “most powerful offensive agent.” 

The 1934 trials with the First Tank Brigade represented the last serious attempt to temper armor radicalism. Hobart, now inspector of the Royal Tank Corps and commander of the First Tank Brigade, preferred an independent tank brigade concept, in which tanks would carry out deep penetrations with only the smallest attachments to avoid logistics problems and coordinating different arms. But Lindsay pushed for a mobile division concept that incorporated the tank brigade into an all-arms mechanized division. The two agreed to temporarily form a Mobile Force comprised of the First Tank Brigade, Seventh Infantry Brigade, a mechanized field artillery brigade, and other supporting arms—an armored division in all but name.  The Mobile Force was defeated by the un-mechanized First Infantry Division, which prepared significant defensive arrangements and used motorized units to block the Mobile Force's retreat with mines and anti-tank guns. Again, a more traditional force defeated the more innovative one. The Royal Tank Corps blamed the Mobile Force's poor performance on Lindsay's command, not on armored maneuver, and, as a result, Hobart's independent tank brigade concept eclipsed Lindsay's mobile division. 

Thereafter, the army designed its armored division for armored maneuver carried out by their main striking element—all-tank armored brigades. Tanks and infantry would be organized separately, cooperating only in particular operations and only at the divisional level. As the armored division evolved over the latter half of the 1930s, the already small representation of supporting arms shrank over time. In the final prewar model, the division contained only one infantry battalion, whereas four battalions eventually became standard in World War II. The Royal Tank Corps “dominated” the armored division, “committed to a machine-age vision that tanks by themselves could win battles.

A13 Cruiser, 5th Royal Tank Regiment, Libyan Border Jan 1941

The Desert Campaign

British armored maneuver and German combined-arms maneuver came head-to-head in the Desert War. Three months after Italy invaded Egypt in September 1940, Britain's Western Desert Force launched Operation Compass, a counterattack that resulted in a complete rout of the Italian Tenth Army as it retreated westward toward Tripolitania. In February 1941, the Afrika Korps under Lt. Gen. Erwin Rommel's command arrived in North Africa to make sure that Tripoli was not abandoned without a fight. Over the next two years, the Desert War unfolded across a 1,200-mile stretch of land between Tripoli in the west and Alexandria in the east.  

British military performance for the first sixteen months was poor—the army repeatedly failed to achieve mission objectives at acceptable costs—but then noticeably improved at the First Battle of El Alamein, the Battle of Alam el Halfa, and the Second Battle of El Alamein. My theory of harmful innovation expects, and the evidence shows, that British armor innovation helped undermine military effectiveness. When the principles of armored maneuver held sway, British forces were ineffective, but as British commanders gradually unlearned armored maneuver and restored traditional capabilities—specifically those associated with the infantry-artillery team developed on the Western Front—performance improved. . . 

British Army ineffectiveness can be traced to the radicalism of its armor innovation: the new capability failed to deliver on its promises, but the army could not rely on its traditional capabilities either. The central principle of armored maneuver was tank primacy—the mistaken idea that tanks would be war-winning weapons if they were unencumbered by the complicated tasks of cooperating with infantry and artillery. But British armored divisions conducting armored maneuver found that their tank numbers fell at an astonishing rate for the very reasons raised by interwar critics. Tanks' mechanical unreliability was a persistent problem throughout the conflict, as it had been in the interwar period.  The chief culprit, however, was the German use of anti-tank guns—a plausible countermeasure that armor innovators downplayed by appealing to tank mobility and surprise attacks. . .  But German combined-arms maneuver eschewed tank-on-tank engagements and instead emphasized anti-tank guns, as was done in World War I.

Turning Things Around

After the Battle of Gazala, the Axis forces' momentum weakened near a defensive line prepared by the Eighth Army that ran south from El Alamein. It was here that British forces began to show signs of improvement. . . What were the British doing that they had not done before? The evidence suggests that British military effectiveness improved as the army reversed innovation, unlearned armored maneuver, and restored traditional capabilities: an infantry-artillery team supported by tank forces. British commanders first restored traditional capabilities on the defense. The Eighth Army learned to coordinate and concentrate artillery fire to peel apart the all-arms organization of attacking panzer divisions. Infantry learned to defend themselves as they received more anti-tank weapons, and to act as forward infantry observers for artillery fire. And British armor learned to lure the enemy into combined-arms fire delivered by artillery, infantry, and tanks in hull-down position, as opposed to charging forward against attacking panzer formations.

Sources: "Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness," International Security (2022); History of the Royal Tank Regiment; Research Gate

Remembering a Veteran: James Montgomery Flagg, Poster Artist Extraordinaire

Flagg Painting Main Subject for His "Tell It to the Marines" Poster
11 August 1918, NY Times

Noted artist and illustrator James Montgomery Flagg was born on 18 June 1877, in Pelham Manor, New York. He painted dozens of memorable posters, book covers, magazine covers, and more, with the most notable being his interpretation of Uncle Sam. Flagg was a skilled artist from a young age, with his illustrations appearing in national magazines when he was just 12 years old. By the time he was 14 his work appeared in Life magazine.

Flagg went on to attend the Art Students League of New York before studying art in London and Paris. After returning to the U.S. in 1900, Flagg kept busy providing illustrations for many books, magazine covers, political cartoons, and advertisements. Among these works was a comic strip for Judge magazine featuring the character Nervy Nat. At the height of his career, Flagg was the highest-paid magazine illustrator in the country.

Flagg’s great claim to fame, however, came in 1916 when he re-imagined the way we saw Uncle Sam. A popular symbol of America for over a century, Uncle Sam was pictured in a variety of ways—including closely resembling Benjamin Franklin. But in 1916 Flagg illustrated Uncle Sam in a new way—as an elderly man with white hair, goatee, and red, white, and blue top hat. According to Flagg, he didn’t want to bother hiring a model, so instead based Uncle Sam on himself, aging his own  features. Flagg’s illustration was first shown on the cover of Leslie’s Weekly magazine on 6 July 1916, with the caption “What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” The following year the image was printed on thousands of recruiting posters declaring, “I Want You For US Army.”

The poster became the most famous poster in American history and more than four million copies were printed. It inspired countless young men to join the fight and defend America. The image was so popular it was used again during World War II. During  World War I, Flagg produced more than forty posters for the war effort, often carrying positive messages encouraging recruitment, buying war bonds, national unity, or increasing production. He went on to produce several more powerful posters for World War II. In addition to his magazine work and posters, Flagg also painted portraits. Among his subjects were Mark Twain, Ethel Barrymore, and Jack Dempsey. Flagg remained a productive artist up to his death in 1960.

Source: Mysticstamp.com, WikiCommons

Romano's Well, Gallipoli: A Sacred Spot for the Royal Naval Division

Insignia of the 63rd Royal Naval Division

During the Gallipoli Campaign (1915), Romano's Well was a stagnant, mosquito-infested water source in the "W" Beach and Cape Helles sector. It served as a vital but hazardous landmark and logistics point for British forces, particularly the Royal Naval Division (RND), which spent most of the campaign in the vicinity.  Romano's Well was situated between a shallow ravine  and the road running from Helles to Krithia. It was utilized by medical units (such as the 3rd Lowland Field Ambulance) to treat casualties and by water carts supplying nearby artillery batteries. Members of the Royal Naval Division dubbed the spot after a very famous and popular Edwardian-era Italian eating house and restaurant in London (Romano's in the Strand). 

The Well Head Today

Water was one of the greatest logistical challenges of the Gallipoli campaign. Because groundwater was close to the surface at Romano's Well, it provided abundant, naturally cold water even during the driest summer months. As the campaign deteriorated into grueling trench warfare, the well area became a contested, muddy stretch of land behind the front lines, often subjected to Ottoman shrapnel and artillery fire. 

Trenches of the Royal Naval Division, Cape Helles

Due to the brutal summer conditions on the peninsula, stagnant pools like Romano's Well quickly turned into breeding grounds for disease. Many soldiers in the RND sector fell ill due to the polluted water and the swarms of mosquitoes. As the campaign dragged into late summer, the risk of disease forced the Allies to chemically treat the well, causing it to lose its "charm."

One of the Original Romano's Well Cemeteries,
Well Visible on the Left

Nearby was once located two Romano's Well cemeteries, established for the fallen Allied soldiers of the campaign, including men from the Hood and Howe Battalions. Those graves have since been moved to the nearby Skew Bridge Cemetery, three quarters of mile to the south of the well.

Sources:  The Great War Forum; Thebignote.com; CWGC

Paths of Glory and Fear: Kubrick's Film and Chevallier's Novel Both Censored in France

 

Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory

By Jennifer Orthveillon

Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick. Two American names that have meant worldwide stardom and cinematic virtuosity across decades. But in France, the award-winning actor and director faced the opposite for almost twenty years. Made in 1957, Paths of Glory (adapted from the novel by Humphrey Cobb), the WWI film that chronicles the unjust deaths of three innocent soldiers accused of battlefield cowardice by corrupt leaders, was censored in France until 1975 due to its anti-war stance and criticism of France's military leadership. The film was also banned from American military bases in Europe. 

The title of the novel and film comes from a stanza from the 1751 poem by Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike th'inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Watch the film. It is stunning.

Order Here

We might guess that France didn't want Americans taking cinematic ownership of their role in the Great War. The film's events happen well before America's official entry. However, the French also censored their own WWI authors at different periods in history. For example, Gabriel Chevallier's book Fear, published in 1930, was censored in 1939 during WWII because it lacked the warring idealism that France needed to fight off the Germans. . . one more time. In a world where explicit combat violence can be viewed on T.V., Chevallier's descriptions of wounded and dead bodies do not fail to shock. “In 1939,” Chevallier wrote in his preface to a 1951 edition, “its author and publisher agreed to suspend sales. Once war has come, the time has passed for warning that it is a disastrous venture.” Critics today herald the book as one of the most accurate depictions of a WWI French soldier's experience. The book made its way onto American soil only recently—the first English translation appeared in 2014.

Read the book. It's eloquently stupefying.

While some works of art are quietly swept away by cultures over time, many WWI works were forced to disappear. In the next installment of this series in a few weeks, we will look at the ways the forced disappearance of certain WWI artistic works help us understand not just the real, horrifying backdrop of combat, but also something about the corrupt politics of commemoration and monument building following Armistice.

If you happen to watch the film or read the book, I would love to hear your comments. Why do you think these were censored?  Contact me HERE please.

Source: Originally presented at the World War One Centennial Commission's Website

Eyewitnesses: First Combat of Four Eloquent French Soldiers

French Bivouac During the First Battle of the Marne

Marc Bloch, Infantry

It is likely that as long as I live, at least if I do not become senile in my last days, I shall never forget the 10th of September, 1914. Even so, my recollections of that day are not altogether precise. Above all they are poorly articulated, a discontinuous series of images, vivid in themselves but badly arranged like a reel of movie film that showed here and there large gaps and the unintended reversal of certain scenes. . .

Despite so many painful sights, it does not seem to me that I was sad on that morning of September 11. Needless to say, I did not feel like laughing. I was serious, but my solemnity was without melancholy, as befitted a satisfied soul; and I believe that my comrades felt the same. I recall their faces, grave yet content. Content with what? Well, first content to be alive. It was not with-out a secret pleasure that I contemplated the large gash in my canteen, the three holes in my coat made by bullets that had not injured me, and my painful arm, which, on inspection, was still intact. On days after great carnage, except for particularly painful personal grief, life appears sweet. Let those who will condemn this self-centered pleasure. Such feelings are all the more solidly rooted in individuals who are ordinarily only half aware of their existence. (Later, a notable historian.  Executed as member of the Resistance, 1944.)

Jean Galtier-Boissière, Hussar

All of us, we believed in the story of the Alboches who would surrender for a tartine [a slice of bread with butter]. Persuaded of the crushing superiority of our artillery and our aircraft, we imagined the war naively as something of a military parade, a rapid succession of easy and brilliant victories. The thunderclap that followed, in showing us the terrifying disproportion be-tween the engines of death and the tiny soldiers, whose nervous systems were not up to such a shock, abruptly made us understand that the struggle then beginning would be a terrible ordeal. (Later, journalist and satirist.  Survived until 1966.)

Jacques Brunel de Pérard, Artilleryman

In some sense, and from a strictly personal point of view, I will regret these two months that I have just lived through which, alongside very difficult privations, have carried with them emotions of marvelous richness and variety. Although I do not have the slightest fear of death, it would be a shame if I do not return. Up to now, I have known how to make war. (Last diary entry.  The journalist and literary critic was KIA 27 September 1914)

Abbé Eugène Evrard, Medic and Chaplain

I have been wounded twice within fifteen days, and the shock was so violent and the part of my body struck so crucial, that both times I believed I was only a few moments from death. And, you see, I keep an ineffaceable memory of these moments. In full conscience, I have made the sacrifice of my life, with joy, for the re-christianization of our country, for the greater love of God on the part of my parents and my friends, and I do not feel the least bitter-ness. This sacrifice will be even more easy and joyful now, because I have reflected a great deal on it since then. (Notable Catholic journalist and editor. Died during the WWII occupation.)

Source: The Embattled Self: French Soldiers’ Testimony of the Great War by Leonard V. Smith; order HERE.

The Milwaukee Germania-Herold Gave America a View of the German and Austrian Side of the War

Click on any of the images to enlarge.

The Germania-Herold was a major, widely circulated German-language daily newspaper published in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 1913 and 1918. It was formed by the merger of the city's two prominent German papers—the Germania and the Milwaukee Herold. The publication was part of the media empire built by George Brumder, a German immigrant who turned his publishing company into the largest producer of German-language materials in the United States. Aside from daily news, the company also published annual almanacs (the Germania Kalender) and photo-journalistic magazines such as the Kriegs-Album, which covered World War I events.

Once America entered the war, intense anti-German sentiment in the U.S. forced the company to drop "Germania" from its title and strip the word from its historic downtown Milwaukee headquarters. To mitigate anti-German sentiment, the Germania-Herold (formed from a 1913 merger) was renamed simply the Milwaukee Herold in 1918, toning down overt expressions of German nationalism in favor of patriotic assimilation messaging.  It continued to publish until 1982

What is of particular interest to the editors of Roads to the Great War is the unique photos the Herold published during the war in their Kriegs-Album. They are not especially dramatic, but they do a good job of presenting a sympathetic and human look at the Central Powers side of things. Here is a sampler from Tony Langley's collection.

Three Memorable Days for WWI Destroyer USS Ward

 

USS Ward Underway

The USS Ward (DD-139) was a U.S. Navy Wickes-class 4-stack, flush-deck destroyer built at Mare Island shipyard in California. Ward was named in honor of Commander James Harmon Ward, USN, (1806–1861), the first U.S. Navy officer to be killed in action during the American Civil War.

1 June 1918 — Record-Setting Launch Day

The Ward was laid down at Mare Island on 15 May 1918 and built in a record of 17½ days. (Some sources claim 15 days.)  Under the pressure of urgent World War I needs for destroyers, her construction was pushed rapidly from keel laying on 15 May 1918 to launching on 1 June. Ward transferred to the Atlantic late in the year and helped support the trans-Atlantic flight of the Curtiss NC flying boats in May 1919. She came back to the Pacific a few months later, and remained there until she was decommissioned in July 1921. The outbreak of World War II in Europe brought Ward back into active service. She was recommissioned in January 1941 and sent to Pearl Harbor shortly after. Throughout 1941, Ward conducted routine antisubmarine patrols in the Hawaiian area.

        

Launching Day at Mare Island

7 December 1941 — WWII Firsts

At 0408 on 7 December, while on weekend submarine patrol the old destroyer went to general quarters to search for a suspected submarine detected by the minesweeper Condor , but came up with nothing. Ward continued her early morning vigil until lookouts on the destroyer’s bridge noticed a small feather wake astern of the auxiliary tow-ship Antares and a target raft. Within moments, Ward went to general quarters.  The first shot of the Pacific war was fired by a Ward’s gun at 0645 and splashed harmlessly beyond the submarine's small conning tower. As Ward pounded past at 25 knots, number three gun atop the galley deckhouse amidships commenced fire—its round passed squarely through the submersible’s conning tower. As the Japanese midget wallowed lower in the water and started to sink, the destroyer swiftly dropped four depth charges—signaled by four blasts on the ship’s whistle. Black water gushed upwards in the ship’s boiling wake as the bombs went off—sealing the submarine’s doom.  On that Sunday morning, Ward had the distinction of firing the first American gun in anger during the Pacific war.  Shaw continued her patrolling duties until ordered to Bremerton, Washington, for conversion into a high-speed transport.  In February 1943 she was detailed to the South Pacific in support of the island-hopping campaign of Douglas MacArthur. 

Depiction of the Midget Submarine Under Fire
(From Tora, Tora, Tora)

For decades after the incident there was some doubt, about whether this sinking had actually occurred. In 2002, however,  a team from the University of Hawaii’s Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) discovered the submarine sunk by the USS Ward on the morning of 7 December 1941. Intact, the sub lies in 1100 feet of water just a few miles from where Ward’s captain reported their brief encounter had taken place. A single four-inch diameter hole in the hull, just below the conning tower, marks the first shot fired in the Pacific War. 

USS Ward (APD-16) Afire on Its Final Day

7 December 1944 

Ward would earn eight Battle Stars for its service in the South Pacific.  The last for the  Battle of Ormoc Bay, Leyte Island, during which the transport Ward and destroyer USS Mahan were both disabled by Japanese kamikazes and had to be destroyed by U.S. gunfire. One bomber hit the Ward's hull amidships, bringing her to a dead stop. When the resulting fires could not be controlled, Ward's crew was ordered to abandon ship, and she was sunk by gunfire from the USS O'Brien, whose commanding officer, William W. Outerbridge, had been in command of Ward during her action in Hawaii three years before.   

A Postscript:  The Ward's wreckage was discovered on 1 December 2017, in Ormoc Bay by the research vessel Petrel.

Weapons of War: Barbed Wire Made in Allentown, Pennsylvania

132nd Infantry Firing from Behind a Barbed Wire Barricade, 3 October 1918

James Patton

The Early Days of Barbed Wire

Barbed wire consists of a twisted pair of thin solid steel wires with slightly smaller gauge steel wire "barbs," short lengths spaced at regular intervals and wound a few times between the twisted pair. The use of the terms “barbed” and “barb” are commonly used interchangeably, but "barbed wire" is a descriptor, whereas "barb wire" is a label, originally a brand name. 

Just as the wire is twisted, so is the history. Although the original patent was granted in France in 1860,  there is evidence that barbed wire was in use on the North American Great Plains well before that. Due to the astronomical growth of livestock grazing there was a huge need for effective fencing. In the more Eastern parts of the continent they had been building walls and planting hedge rows for hundreds of years, plus they had abundant sources of wood, too. 

Many Midwestern farmers and ranchers recognized the value of adding sharp points to their otherwise flimsy wire fences. Over 500 patents were applied for, covering over 2,000 distinct barb variants, as well as production machinery. Although it is possible to make barbed wire by hand, relatively simple machines can do it better, and at high speed as well.

There were many lawsuits and judgements that were evaded; at least two of the cases went to the Supreme Court. Needless to say, the barbed wire industry was in a state of flux, made up of large number of small producers, and since barbed wire was relatively simple to make, competition was intense, and prices were cheap. Attempts at forming cartels failed, and there were two attempts to corner the market. The second one succeeded.

The Iowa-Type Barbed Wire

Warfare Finds Barbed Wire

Agricultural use was not the only market for barbed wire. Military usage of barbed wire formally dates to 1888, when British field manuals first encouraged its use. During the Spanish American War (1898), it is said that Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt’s 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry (the “Rough Riders”), most of whom were westerners and quite familiar with barbed wire fences, chose to encircle their camps with them. 

During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), the British force built over 8,000 small forts and blockhouses, which were protected by five-strand barbed wire fences. Additionally,  about  4,000 miles of barbed wire fencing restricted the mobility of the Boer’s mounted commandos. Barbed wire also protected British  camps and supply lines from surprise attacks, and was also used to enclose the concentration camps where Boer civilians (26,000 of whom) and ‘hostile’ native Africans (20,000 deaths) were forcibly detained.

A few years later, during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), the Russian defenders of the Chinese territorial concession at Port Arthur lacked sufficient time to build moats and fortifications, so they installed complex, often electrified, barbed wire belts in front of their positions that slowed down, and even stopped Japanese assaults. The wire was so dense that the Japanese had to use wire cutters to create gaps, all the while under fire. The attackers shifted to siege warfare, using saps, tunnels, mines and heavy artillery barrages. The campaign lasted for 155 days and cost the victors over 57,000 casualties. 

Defensive Barbed Wire Entanglements, Russo-Japanese War, 1905

The Business of Barbed Wire

A few years ago, WFMZ-TV in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania reported that, when interviewed back in the 1980s, several elderly Doughboys then living at Allentown’s Phoebe Home, were asked to share their experience of service on the Western Front. One man had a particularly interesting memory. He said that, attached to the barbed wire in front of German trenches, he saw a small metal tag which was stamped with the words, in English: “Barb Wire Works Allentown Pa.”  

The Allentown Barb Wire Works, by then part of U.S. Steel, had sold an awful lot of barbed wire to both sides in World War I. The plant was known locally as simply “the Wire Mill”,  and I will continue to use this term.

The Wire Mill’s story began in 1879 with the founding of the Iowa Barb Wire Company in Johnstown PA, near America’s largest steel wire mill, the Gautier Works, founded in 1852.  Originally the Wire Mill was a branch of the Iowa Barb Steel Wire  Company of Marshalltown, Iowa (founded in 1877). After a couple of difficult years, the Iowa owners sold the works to Charles and George Douglass. Shortly thereafter, in 1881 the Gautier Mill was acquired by the Cambria Iron Co., who expanded it to make their own barbed wire, so in 1884 the Douglass brothers moved their Wire Mill to  Easton, PA, where nearby Bethlehem Steel Co. could supply the wire stock. This turned out to be a fortuitous move for the Douglass brothers, as the Gautier Mill was destroyed by the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889. Just before that the Easton site had proven to be unworkable, and in 1888 the Wire Mill was moved twenty miles west to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where they raised $75,000 from the community by selling collateral bonds, and built a new works from the ground up. 

The disorganized barbed wire industry had attracted a flamboyant promoter,  John W. “Bet-a-Million” Gates (1855–1911), who with the help of Chicago mogul Elbert Gary (1846–1927)  set out to corner the market through mergers, acquisitions, law suits and price wars. Gates earned his sobriquet in 1890 by winning about $600,000  against a $70,000 bet, on a horse race in England. A news editor’s headline rounded up the winnings amount to a million dollars, maybe misunderstanding the exchange rate. 

Million Dollar Gates & Elbert Gary
Barbed Wire Monopolists

Beginning in 1890, Gates and Gary began their quest, and by 1899 they had done it. One of the companies that Gates and Gary acquired in 1892 was the Allentown Wire Mill, which had been renamed the Consolidated Steel & Wire Co. 

Gates attributed their success to his gambler’s instincts. In 1899 all of their operations  became the American Steel and Wire Co. Later, when asked by a Congressional committee what his goal was, Gates replied, “We wanted to be the wire manufacturers of the world.” 

Gates also attracted the attention of J.P. Morgan, who was a crony of Gates’s partner Gary. In business,  Morgan was like Gates in only one way: they both liked monopolies. In 1901 Morgan acquired American Steel and Wire, with the specific proviso that Gates would have no role in operating the business. It became a subsidiary of Morgan’s U.S. Steel Corp., which he had previously formed  by buying out Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919). Miffed, Gates then spent a good deal of his considerable proceeds from the sale on attempts to make Morgan lose money, continuing right up to Gates’s death in Paris in 1911. Gates is still commemorated in Port Arthur, Texas, for his many contributions to that city, which is another story entirely.

U.S. Steel didn’t want to buy wire stock from Bethlehem, so the  Wire Mill was expanded to roll its own wire stock, using re-melted billet steel from U.S. Steel’s Monessen, Pennsylvania, works. In peak years, the Wire Mill produced more than 100,000 tons of barbed wire (for perspective, a ton of barbed wire makes a bit over six miles of single-strand fence).  

The Allentown Plant in All Its Glory

The First World War and Barbed Wire

During World War I, the Wire Mill operated continuously, selling most of its output to the Allies, but apparently some got to the Germans as well, possibly shipped through neutral countries. The 13-acre facility employed 1,200 men working 12-hour shifts, had its own police and fire departments and even a hospital. Orders were received by telegraph and telephone and shipments left by rail round the clock. The employees, many of whom were immigrants, mostly lived in the neighborhood focused around Wire Street, near the Wire Mill. All of Allentown kept track of time by the Wire Mill’s whistle.

Although no longer operating non-stop, the Wire Mill continued to prosper through the 1920s, but during the Great Depression it slid into a long decline. During World War II, most tonnages of steel went for ships, tanks and the like, and barbed wire was a low priority. Like much of American industry, to use idled capacity the Wire Mill tried its hand at other defense contracts, but in the summer of 1943, U.S. Steel decided to consolidate its wire operations in a Youngstown, Ohio, facility, where they were already making wire rope and steel cable. That December, the Wire Mill was closed for good. Later completely demolished, today the site is the park-like Wire Mill Arboretum.Sources include

WFMZ TV, The Morning Call, CherylMullenbachInk.com, the National Archives,  the National Park Service, and InvestigateMidwest (Link)

AEF Veteran Perry Mason and the Great War’s Blue Ticket Discharge

Captain Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys), 79th Division, AEF

 

By Kimball Worcester, Assistant Editor

Matthew Rhys plays the young Perry Mason, a troubled, down-on-his-luck, private investigator (and nascent attorney) in the eponymous HBO television series (2020 to 2023). The show posits some insight into the origins of Mason’s more polished—and graver—persona, the distinguished defense lawyer (played by Raymond Burr) of the first TV series from the 1950s. The viewer hopes that Erle Stanley Gardner would be pleased with this intense and creative origin story for his esteemed character. 

This version of Perry Mason is set in 1932, in Los Angeles, 13 years since the end of the Great War, referred to in the show as “The War.” Mason is still reliving his experiences as a captain in the 79th Division; he responds to the statement "God is with you" with God left me in France. 

Private Eye Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys) and Police Officer Paul Drake (Chris Chalk)

Mason’s postwar discharge status is that of a “blue ticket,” given mostly to black soldiers, or those considered troublesome, queer, or “undesirable” for some unspecified reason. These discharges prevented the veteran from accessing postwar benefits and limited his employment opportunities. The blue ticket was a sad, murky assessment that left open so many interpretations applied to the veteran burdened by this label. Mason is taunted in a conversation with a combative district attorney about his (apparently known) blue ticket status. In a successful attempt to provoke Mason, the DA asks if Mason is a “Negro,” and Mason responds defiantly that he is “one quarter Welsh and queer only once,” a sarcastic retort that expresses his disgust at both racial and social discrimination. Mason is also reminded by the same adversary that he is known as “The Butcher of Montfaucon.” Mason’s actions with the 79th at Montfaucon were those of a horrified soldier in the heat of battle who administers several coups de grace to mortally wounded, suffering soldiers, German and American alike—not a butcher but a thoughtful man in a challenging moral dilemma, a parable for much of any war. This district attorney and Mason are about to face off in a highly charged murder trial. 

A blue discharge, commonly known as a "blue ticket," was a form of administrative military discharge issued by the United States Armed Forces between 1916 and 1947. It was printed on blue paper and classified as neither honorable nor dishonorable. For the First World War it turns out to be impossible to determine how many were issued. The military did not track them as a separate statistical group with the same scrutiny it did later in the next war. Furthermore, a massive 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center destroyed roughly 80 percent of Army personnel records for those who served between 1912 and 1960, making exact data retrieval virtually impossible.  However, for the Second World War, during which about 16 million Americans were mobilized, the records have survived, so a precise total of 48,603 is available.

WWII-Era Blue Ticket Form

Blue tickets were used to separate service members who were simply incapable of exercising their duties, troublemakers, or individuals deemed to have "undesirable habits and traits of character" without subjecting them to a formal court-martial, which would necessitate charging them with a specific offense contrary to the Articles of War. In Perry Mason, it seems to be implied that it is Captain Mason’s unconventional world view and his expressed moral outrage that prompted his nebulous discharge; military decisions have been based on even thinner grounds. Given that interpretation, we can only guess that it may have been more politic to give this officer a blue discharge rather than a dishonorable one. The viewer can easily see how Mason’s subsequent legal work defending the underdog could reflect on a grander scale the injustice of his army discharge. We may surmise that Mason was discharged after the Armistice, given that his Montfaucon service was in late September 1918 and the army’s bureaucracy may not have proceeded efficiently before 11 November to be rid of him before then.

In both World Wars, black soldiers received blue tickets at a higher rate than white troops, and gay men were singled out. Perry Mason (21st century version) accurately brings up these points. In both World Wars, blue ticket recipients lost their veterans benefits, including the famous "Bonus" for the Doughboys (another likely source of Mason’s disaffection).  Post-WWII, with the implementation of the G.I. Bill, these losses were potentially much more substantial.  Also, a blue ticket was detrimental to civilian job prospects and one's reputation back home.  

 

Veterans Bonus March Through Los Angeles from Perry Mason
During Which an Important Trial Witness Is Lost

The unpopular practice came to an end in 1947 after facing organized opposition led by Black newspapers. The category "Other Than Honorable" discharge was introduced in the same year, and that too still has serious long-term consequences for recipients.