Woman in the Ranks: Viktor/Viktoria Savs, 2nd Innsbruck Landsturm Infantry Battalion

While putting together our recent article on the Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Drei Zinnen in German) I discovered the story of an interesting soldier who served in the sector. Viktoria Savs (1899–1979) fought in the Drei Zinnen area disguised as a man, although probably with the knowledge of her superiors. Known as the “Heroine of the Drei Zinnen,” she followed her father, Peter, into the war and fought alongside him under the name Viktor Savs in 1915 and would play a role on the front line under constant danger.

She first served for more than a year as an unarmed trainee. Anxious to serve in combat, Viktoria wrote to the Archduke Eugen of Austria to request a transfer to the Italian front to serve alongside her father, which was granted in December 1916.  On the front lines, she showed talent in guiding pack animals and as a messenger on skis. She was assigned as an orderly to a captain and soon after took part in combat operations at Drei Zinnen. During an attack against Italian positions in the Dolomites on 11 April 1917, she led a group of 20 captured Italians to safety behind the Austrian lines under enemy artillery fire. For her service, Victor/Viktoria would be awarded the Silver Medal for Bravery, First Class, the Bronze Medal for Bravery, and the Karl Troop Cross.

On 27 May 1917, her right leg was crushed in a rockfall and had to be amputated below the knee. It was only in the field hospital at Sillian that it became widely known the 16-year-old Viktor Savs was in fact Viktoria. Her combat service came to an end with the loss of her leg, but her war service was not over. She then served in the Austrian Red Cross during the rest of the war, where she was decorated with the Military Merit Cross (Austria-Hungary). She attracted attention and was hailed as a patriotic war heroine in the aftermath of the Armistice.

Savs at a Nazi Party Event in the 1930s

Her postwar life was eventful, although much written about Viktoria appears highly speculative.** During the 1920s, her war service was forgotten, and she found herself a disabled and homeless veteran in Salzburg sometimes working as a housekeeper. She fell into the Nazi orbit,  eventually joining the party hoping for a better veterans pension. In 1936, Savs moved to Berlin and won a grant for a new prosthetic leg. In 1938, she returned to Salzburg,  where she took up a position with the Wehrmacht's Intelligence Department 70 in Salzburg. From the beginning of 1942 she worked in a microbiology lab in Belgrade. Viktoria Savs died in Salzburg in 1979 at the age of 80.

**Editor's note: Such speculation seems to involve two matters, Savs's degree of dedication to the Nazi cause (e.g. Did she know about the Holocaust while working at that lab in Belgrade?) and her sexuality.

Sources: Habsburger.net; Michael Wachtler's "The First World War in the Alps"; Wikipedia

Prewar Prophesy Literature, Part II — Sci Fi Goes to War

Science fiction, for its serious aficionados, has literary roots back to ancient doomsday works and the later  utopian essays of Thomas More and Francis  Bacon, but the genre—as we recognize it—emerged in the latter  19th century out of the industrial age.  The new technology spawned excited thinking about new  devices and their applications in the future. This era's  science fiction founding figures were Jules Verne and  H.G. Wells. Each had much to say about the future of  warfare in their writings, particularly about weaponry. Both, however, also dabbled in Invasion Lit and wrote  important novels that mixed the genres.  

Verne's 1879 The Begum's Fortune portends a war  instigated by a militaristic German (who is also a  prototype "mad scientist"). It features gigantic cannon (think "Big Bertha") and, possibly, the earliest prediction of chemical warfare—carbon dioxide unleashed to  freeze the opposition in place. The most improbable  element of  Begum is that the fighting takes place in a  French town (colony?) on the coast of Oregon, USA. 

Published two decades later, Wells's 1898 Martian invasion classic, War of the Worlds, was a thinly disguised war premonition. It, too, incorporates fearsome weaponry and gas warfare elements, with a decisive invasion-ending demonstration of biological  warfare. Earth (if you haven't seen either of the movie  versions) is saved because the Martians have no  resistance to earth-borne disease.

The French Contribution

The bigger contribution of science fiction to the body  of premonitions of the First World War involves weaponry, however.  This is not to say all the prognosticators predictions came about  or that many of  their predictions were entirely new thinking. Countless  fulfilled predictions, for example, have been incorrectly attributed to Jules Verne's vivid imagination. Submarines first appeared in the American Revolution, and  the Montgolfier brothers were demonstrating their balloons, antecedents of airships, about that same time, that is, long before Verne was born.  

Nevertheless, he wrote thrilling adventure novels  featuring them and he stirred  imaginations. In a broad  way, as Invasion Lit writers helped generate the war fever of 1914, science fiction writers  got inventors, entrepreneurs, and military staffs thinking about novel ways to fight wars. Jules Verne gets much of the credit for initiating and stimulating this process.  

Of the many imitators of Jules Verne, two, both French, most prominently built on his work by "futurizing" weapons while imaginatively intensifying the combat elements of their writings. Also, they supplemented  their writings with dramatic illustrations.

Albert Robida's View of 20th-Century War

Albert Robida's work appeared in two waves. From 1883 to 1890 he published a remarkable series of  magazine pieces and books that addressed future  wars, the most famous being La Guerre au vingtième siècle (War in the Twentieth Century). His war scenarios are sometimes fantastical—Mozambique takes on Australia in 1975—but his caricature-style drawings capture many aspects of the Great War of the future struggle. Many of his predictions would be validated  during  the  war:

 • Railroads would play a dominant role, used for mobilizing and moving troops, and as mobile artillery platforms. 

• Airships and balloons would be used for bombing, firing specialized artillery, and observation. 

• Chemists would be called on to create asphyxiant gases. 

• Artillery and barbed wire would command the battlefield. 

• Tunneling would be required to attack and advance.  

•  Specific weapons would  include: armored vehicles, bomb-dropping airships, fire and gas projectors, and anti-aircraft artillery. 

Robida examined every dimension of future life, but after the turn of the century he returned to future war as a favorite topic and income producer. In a brilliant series for the magazine La Guerre Infernale he covered the same territory, but this time drawing in a more realistic style, updating the look of his soldiers and their weaponry.  Once again (see above), his work captures the grimness of World War I battlefields, and the use of airships as a terror weapon. 

For some reason, Robida did not seem too interested in other types of aircraft beyond airships. There does not seem to be many fighter or pursuit airplanes in his work. Another Frenchman, who wrote extensively about the future, took up some of the slack for him, preferring the airplane to the airship.  

"Capitaine Danrit" was the pen-name of Émile Driant infantry officer, parliamentary deputy, and novelist. Before the war, he was among the most prolific of all Invasion Lit authors, almost all of his writings pretty bad. His overheated style was probably driven by his hyper-patriotism and by his valid foresight of an era of  terrible wars enabled by the new technologies. Driant's most remembered invasion work was the worst kind of "Yellow Peril" rabble rousing about a Japanese-led invasion of Europe, titled L' invasion  Jaune.   

Émile Driant at Verdun

There are, though, redeeming aspects to Driant's work. He was one of the few science fiction writers of the period, who was also a professional military officer.  From the 1880s up to the war he wrote a series of  novels under the heading The War of Tomorrow and stories for magazines such as the Journal des Voyages. His best predictions came from exploring the operational potential of what we call weapons systems: combat air squadrons, airlift, and (surprisingly) submarines. For an infantryman, he had his eye on the sea, also speculating about naval air operations and transoceanic troop deployments. His most impressive observations may have been about the need for specialized equipment to rescue crews of disabled submarines.   

Driant was unique in World War I futurism in one respect. He saw the future war he had long predicted come to pass, fought in it, and died fighting.  Lt. Col. Émile Driant was in command of two battalions of Chasseur Alpins on the front line at Verdun in February 1916. He and his men, without support, held their  position until the second day of the battle when most of them perished, including Driant. Today, Lt. Col. Émile Driant is better remembered as the first hero of Verdun than as an author. 

H.G. Wells

As an imaginative futurist H.G. Wells stands alone. He has some claim (with a number of others) to predicting the battlefield power of the machine gun, modern artillery, and chemical agents. Two imaginative works, though, are his unique predictors of war to come. In 1903 he wrote a short story for The Strand magazine titled "The Land Ironclads," that described in  their  function  and  general design. Though his version was unrealistically large (100-foot long), they were armored, had specialized treads (modeled on elephant's feet) and carried lots of guns and soldiers. These "Land Ironclads" had the ability to crash through trench defenses and barricades. Many parties are given credit for advocating the British tanks that first appeared on the Somme in September 1916, but Wells had inspired them all, long before.

In 1908, he subsequently published the novel The War in the Air, which prefigured the role of bombers in both tactical and strategic settings. When Germany and the U.S. find themselves at war, the Germans gain the upper hand by building an air fleet with zeppelins and flying machines called Drachenflieger.  They first destroy the American dreadnoughts in the North Atlantic and then level New York, leaving it a “furnace of crimson flames, from which there was no escape.” Of course, we see now that these predictions worked out in greater detail during the Second World War, with Germany and her allies on the receiving end, but it was not for lack of trying that the results were not as severe in the Great War.  

Wells had many misses in his numerous forecasts, of course. He missed the troop transport function, for example. He believed that after bombing an opponent to smithereens there would be no way to transfer occupying forces, hence, civilization there would simply collapse. He missed submarines, and, as air historian John Morrow points out,  like almost all of his contemporaries, Wells missed "the aspect of the airplane's use for which it became most famous—aerial combat and as the vehicle for the great heroes of the war in general." Nevertheless, even today in the 21st century, H.G. Wells is still regarded as the greatest  predictor of war weaponry.  

Source: Over the Top, November 2013 

Prewar Prophesy Literature, Part I—A Publishing Boom In Invasion Lit

From 1871 to 1914 a lucrative international publishing genre developed featuring fictional invasions by  foreign powers attacking (usually by surprise) and  then  conquering one another. Some of these anticipated the rivalries that led to the events of 1914, some  explicitly, others using surrogate, sometimes imaginary  nations. In Britain such speculative fiction dated back at least to the Napoleonic threat to invade England. But the Prussian success in the war of 1870–71 and the resulting German unification that caught the world's attention happened to coincide with one of  those unanticipated publishing phenomena that today are called "mega-hits."   

The seminal work of pre-Great War imaginative invasion  fiction was  first  published  in 1871 as a short story in Blackwood's Magazine, “The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer," by General  Sir George Tomkyns Chesney.  

In  General Chesney's very well written yarn the Royal  Navy is destroyed by a wonder weapon, an invasion is  quickly mounted, and the half-trained defenders of  Britain are defeated in a decisive battle at Dorking in Surrey by vastly superior German troops. The British  Empire is subsequently dismantled.  Its publication  caused an incredible uproar that led to Prime Minister Gladstone to publicly criticize its "alarmism." Most  important for our purposes here, “The Battle of Dorking” fixed attention for the first time on a potential German invasion of England.    

"Dorking" revitalized the English publishing industry,  setting off an avalanche of such cataclysmically titled  best sellers as The  Doom of the Great City (1880), The  Taking of Dover (1888), and The Wreck of a World  (1889). The English phenomenon was paralleled in  other nations, where writers frequently targeted the  British or other rivals as villains of the piece. 

In English-language works Germany did not remain the  sole perpetrator for long. Napoleon was too recent in  memories. The French  at times returned to center  stage, ambushing the Royal Navy in a reverse Trafalgar or invading the British Isles by a secret Channel tunnel that foresaw the more peaceful Chunnel of our days.  Also, this was the age of the "Yellow Peril," a term  extracted from the title of Jack London's Yellow Peril: The Unparalleled Invasion. 

One work from before the turn of the century stands  out as a particularly astute forecast of the war of 1914–1918. In 1892 British admiral Philip Colomb and a supporting committee were asked for a contribution  incorporating the latest strategic thinking. What they  came up with was a gem of premonition, starting with  the title  The  Great War of 189_: A Forecast. In  Colomb's and friends' imaginative treatment, the war  is triggered by the assassination—in a highly volatile   Balkans—of a crown prince (Bulgarian) by a Serb  (actually a Russian). Interlocking treaties (an excellent  extrapolation) lead to mobilizations in which the tsar and kaiser are personally involved, eventually drawing  all the powers of Europe into a war.

Better yet,  The  Great War of  189_ gets both  warring coalitions almost correct. France, Russia, and  Serbia are on one side, while Germany, Austria Hungary, and Bulgaria are against them. On the negative scorecard, Belgium is assigned to the wrong team, while Great Britain stands away from the French/German conflict but fights a naval battle with the  Russians. Like almost the entire future invasion genre,  though, the war the authors see on the battlefield is a short one.  

Still in Print

In the new century, Germany again became almost the  sole candidate for mounting a future invasion of the British Isles. The new tilt was marked by  another  immensely popular work, The Riddle of the Sands (1903)  by Erskine Childers. It is a somewhat low-key description of the discovery of a rehearsal of a German  invasion of England. Riddle was supremely well written, combining mystery and spy adventure with a  love story. Furthermore, it was endorsed (most  tactlessly) by notable British politicians and First Sea Lord Admiral John Fisher. From the moment of this  book's publication to 1914, in English-language works,  Germany was the designated villain.

As the real Great War drew near, though, accurate  prophecy became more elusive for the authors of  Invasion Lit. Like the modern mystery novel, Invasion  Lit had scribblers who regularly returned to the genre. One prolific purveyor of Invasion Lit from this period, deserving particular attention, was the panic-monger  William Le Queux, author of over 100 works. His books  in the run-up to the war were singular in their chauvinism and scaremongering. Especially inflammatory were The Spies of the Kaiser and his masterwork, The  Invasion of 1910 (1906). To the degree the public of 1914 simply accepted that war was necessary,  Invasion Lit authors like Le Queux must bear some of the responsibility. 

From the 1880s on, another literary genre was  dealing with the future and with war. Early science fiction had begun making forecasts about the character  of warfare, and—as we shall see—as the Great War drew closer, its writers' premonitions became closer and  closer to what would soon come to pass. 

Tomorrow: Part II—Sci Fi Goes to War

Anti-Bolshevik Alternative: The White Movement and the Civil War in the Russian North

Click HERE To Order This Book

By  Liudmila Novikova

University of Wisconsin Press, 2018

Andrew Huebner, Reviewer

Originally Presented in H-Net, June 2022

An Anti-Bolshevik Alternative: The White Movement and the Civil War in the Russian North is Liudmila Novikova’s critical analysis on the rise and fall of the White Russian government that occupied Arkhangelsk, the site of the famous joint British-American Allied intervention, from 1918 to 1920. The Arkhangelsk White government often receives little attention as a “backwater” holdout compared to the Allied interventionists. Indeed, Novikova’s study follows other researchers in showing the complexity of the northern White government in the Russian Civil War. However, Novikova stresses that the White movement in Arkhangelsk was not a “counterrevolutionary” government; rather, “the Arkhangelsk government presented an alternative to the Bolsheviks—a less radical, but still revolutionary variant of political development for the country” (p. 153). By presenting a regional case study, Novikova reimagines the Arkhangelsk White government as a separate strain of revolutionary politics arguably more in common with the Bolsheviks than any other White movements.

Novikova’s challenging work, originally published in 2011, has finally reached English-speaking audiences thanks to the translation work of Seth Bernstein. This book is the culmination of Novikova’s work published extensively while acting as deputy director of the International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences. Readers will quickly find that the book has a great deal to contribute toward multiple fields, including political, social, and military history, each given a fair deal of attention.

Novikova begins her work by demonstrating how the political landscape of northern Russia paved the way for a uniquely moderate government. Arkhangelsk’s position on the far peripheries of the Russian Empire made it a weak bastion for monarchial influence yet paradoxically fertile ground for centralization and political bipartisanship. Throughout the First World War and the February Revolution, Arkhangelsk was mostly shielded from the systematic destruction witnessed in other regions. Neither tsarist nor early Bolshevik politicians managed to hold onto the region as citizens politically leaned toward a middle-ground, liberal representative government. In this view, the regional political movements play a greater role as the driving force of the local White movement, contesting pro-Allied or anti-Bolshevik perspectives. Socialists, specifically Social Revolutionaries and Social Democrats (Mensheviks), remained a key part of the White Russian North’s war effort both in the beginning and even into its final twilight.

Novikova’s emphasis on the sociopolitical lens redefines for scholars how we are to view the northern Russian government. Though the region had a great deal of political heterogeneity, its turn toward military dictatorship reflects concerns of regional stability over grander national aims. Indeed, the eventual dictator of the government, General Evgenii Miller, was the result of considerable compromises. Miller is portrayed as a pragmatic anti-Bolshevik who emphasized a unified, strong government to contest Bolshevik threats. Many Whites believed that only under a military regime could the region survive the conflict while promoting the growth of a uniquely socialist political culture. Though discordant early government politics and the promises of the Allied intervention support play a role in the foundation of Miller’s regime, Novikova asserts it was for all northerners “a dictatorship by consent” (p. 92).

Officers and Men of the White Forces

Prudently, Novikova examines the relationship between the northern White Russian movement and the Entente powers, though little new is revealed in her assessment. What is novel is how she views the tensions between the Entente intervention forces and the northern government. For the White government, the Allied presence was a double-edged sword; they craved foreign support but feared becoming victims of Entente colonialism. For the Allies, the intervention was an indecisive move that ultimately was voided by the end of the Great War and plummeting morale among Allied soldiers. The inevitability of Allied withdrawal exacerbated but did not completely spell the end for the northern government.

Novikova’s argumentative cornerstone points to one of the successes of the northern government as a socialist-driven political movement. The northern White government, after military expenditures, spent the most financial and legislative efforts on education and land redistribution initiatives. Indeed, she argues that the land policies in the northern region were “the most radical of all the White governments” (p. 141). Miller’s government intentionally catered to issues over welfare, separation of church and state, and representation. However, a desire for a unified front among White governments did affect such policies. In one notable case, northern White negotiations with Finland to hand over the Karelian territory in exchange for military support were rescinded due to the protests of the White Siberians. Despite such interferences, Novikova asserts, socialist policies contributed to the brief survival of the White government and gave cause for many to fight.

Indeed, the strength of the northern government’s politics naturally feeds into Novikova’s argument of the northern White movement as a true “people’s war.” The surveillance state of the Whites operated in a similar manner to other White governments, though not as brutally, compared to other White factions. The militia conscription and partisan efforts of the Whites demonstrated the limits and strengths of both government policies. Militia units, though militarily insufficient, were highly motivated with a peak of almost ten percent of the regional population serving under arms. Partisan bands, however, were incredibly effective fighting units within the regions under White control—but only in home territories. Partisans likewise tended to fight for self-preservation and personal grudges over political allegiance. As a result, brutal killings of prisoners can be hardly defined as true examples of northern “White terror” policies as much as settling scores (p. 183). For all of its political strengths, the short-lived northern government was trampled by military realities. As the campaigns of 1919 shifted in favor of the Red Army and Allied support withdrew, the unsustainable northern movement collapsed under its own weight. Indeed, geography and a lack of military strength, not political weakness, destroyed the northern government.

An Anti-Bolshevik Alternative is a much-needed work in Western historiography. The Arkhangelsk government has finally received the attention it deserves thanks to Novikova’s multilayered analysis. Readers will find that her thesis confirms the findings of scholars like Peter Holquist, who view the White movement as a continuation of revolutionary policies. Militarily, the book challenges historians to reevaluate the Whites’ military effectiveness and adds a different dimension to the Allied interventions in the Russian Civil War. Military historians will do good to pay attention to the importance of partisan units in this crucial conflict. Any scholar studying this period of revolution, civil war, and crisis should add this book to their repertoire.

Benjamin Foulois Was Keeping Track of German Aviation After the Armistice

Benjamin Foulois, the Army's First Pilot

Aviation pioneer Benjamin Delahauf Foulois (1879–1967) had an amazing number of "firsts" in his long career.  A nice summary of his achievement can be found at the USAF site HERE. In this article, though, we are going to address one of his missions carried out under his air intelligence specialty.

Apart from his pioneering efforts in aerial reconnaissance during the World War, Foulois made another significant, if unheralded, contribution to U.S. Army intelligence. In 1920 he volunteered to become military air attaché  to post-World War I Germany. While in that post he employed considerable ingenuity to gather important intelligence on the advances of German aviation technology, sending back his findings to the Military Intelligence Division.

Because the U.S. had not ratified the Treaty of Versailles and was therefore technically seen to be still at war with Germany, the other Allies in the Aeronautical Inter-Allied Commission of Control refused to share any information with the U.S., a non-member of the commission. When he approached the chief of the commission, an RAF general told him that he would  get nothing through his office.  

Foulois explained how he got around this lack of sources:

This rebuff concerned me, but I had a job to do for my government and I felt there were other ways to get information. I found out that the place in Berlin where many of the German Luftwaffe pilots congregated was the bar of the Adlon Hotel. For the good of my country, I made that bar my headquarters for almost a year and found there the best sources of aviation information in all Germany. . .  I  introduced them to good Allied whisky. . . Their tongues gradually loosened to repay me for my generosity.

Among these drinking acquaintances were Ernst Udet and Hermann Goering. They nominated him for membership in the two leading aviation organizations in Germany, and he attended all their lectures and functions. He toured German factories, talked to engineers, and even flew their planes. Foulois realized that they were still so far ahead of the rest of the world that he was genuinely shocked. He approached the Germans openly and offered to pay for their inventions. They agreed to do so if he did not pass any information on to the other Allies. 

Three Aircraft Designers Foulois Cultivated 
Hugo Junkers, Ernst Heinkel, Tony Fokker

He explained:

From the moment I agreed to this condition the United States leaped ahead two decades in aeronautical progress. Using military intelligence funds, I started shipping German studies, plans, blueprints, and reports home by the ream. I was taken into the innermost recesses of aircraft, armament, and instrument factories and shown exactly how far ahead the Germans were in aeronautics. They had been experimenting with new aircraft and weapon designs that were so far ahead of the times that it wasn't until more than forty years later that I fully realized how advanced they were. ...I started shipping all sorts of aeronautical material out of Germany to the States right under the noses of the Allies. At one point I had accumulated enough to fill a boxcar.

Additional avenues of information Foulois pursued were the memoirs of German scientists whose vanity, he reported, was a goldmine. In a report to the Military Intelligence Division he listed 180 contacts who were his sources of information. He said, "They represented the entire spectrum of the aeronautical sciences and were all in the top echelons of their professions." By the end of his tour in 1924, he had amassed an impressive list of contacts, including Dr. Hugo Junkers, Gustav Krupp, Dr. Theodore von Kármán, Claudius Dornier, Ernst Heinkel, and Anthony W. Fokker.

Summing up his four years in Germany, Foulois wrote, "I felt an honest sense of accomplishment... My policies of playing fair with our former enemies and paying for what we got netted millions dollars worth of advanced aeronautical data for the United States. I only hoped that it was being put to good use in America."

But this was not the case. Foulois wrote unhappily, "The lack of an air intelligence collection system, inexperience on the part of the military intelligence officers in regard to aeronautics, and a lack of appreciation for the potential value of the fruits of German genius caused much of the material I sent to end up unopened in a warehouse and later sent to the trash heap."

A high-ranking member of the general staff told Foulois when he returned from Germany,  "This is peacetime and the war has been over for more than five years. Most of that junk you sent was either so old or so farfetched that not even a museum would be interested in it. If we ever go to war again, none of that stuff will ever be of any value." This shortsighted view of military intelligence may have been all too common in the U.S. Army between world wars. Nevertheless, his work was appreciated at the highest levels and his responsibilities would grow through the interwar period.

Before Retirement

Foulois had been a brigadier general during World War I,  serving as the first chief of the Air Service, American Expeditionary Force, and reverting to the rank of major at war's end. He held a number of important positions within the U.S. Army Air Corps, eventually holding the top post in the corps. Foulois became Chief of the Army Air Corps from 1931 to 1935 when he retired. He devoted the remaining years of his life to the military aviation cause, speaking around the country and writing, as he did as a student in 1907, about the potential of airpower. He died at Andrews Air Force Base on 25 April 1967.

Source: "Benjamin D. Foulois and the Beginnings of Aerial Reconnaissance," Masters of the  Intelligence Art,  US Army, Intelligence Center

Source: "Benjamin D. Foulois and the Beginnings of Aerial Reconnaissance," Masters of the  Intelligence Art,  US Army, Intelligence Center

What Happened at Black Watch Corner?

Guarding Black Watch Corner

The Black Watch Corner sculpture at the southwestern tip of Polygon Wood was unveiled 100 years after the fighting it commemorates. The memorial, created by Edinburgh sculptor Alan Herriot, quickly became an essential photo-op for visitors to the battlefield. [Consequently, it does not qualify for our "Lonesome Memorial" series]. The work, showing a kilted Black Watch sergeant with a Lee-Enfield rifle and fixed bayonet, honors the 8,000 Scottish officers and soldiers from the regiment who were killed during the Great War. A further 20,000 were wounded between 1914 and 1918.

Monument Plaque

Near this position  men of the Black Watch (the Royal Highlander Regiment)  helped stopped the last effective attack of the First Battle of Ypres mounted by the elite Prussian Imperial Guards Regiment. The battle known as "Nonne Boschen" (Nun’s Wood) was fought on 11 November 1914. The Prussian Guard together with the 54th Reserve Division had been ordered to take Polygon Wood. The barrage began at 0630. At 0900, German troops advanced on a nine-mile front in mist and rain. 

Across the line the attack faltered apart from a gap between the southern end of Polygon Wood and Nun’s Wood. A company of Royal Engineers with 40 members of the Black Watch had just completed a strong point here. This was merely a trench inside a cottage garden with a few strands of barbed wire. When the Guards attacked, the British troops opened up such an effective fire that the Germans broke formation. With the help of divisional artillery they were stopped and eventually beaten back. 

Polygon Wood in the Background

In researching this article I found a couple of interesting Black Watch trivia facts.

Why was the regiment known as the Black Watch?

Theory 1:  Highlander cattle rustlers often demanded extortion payments to spare cattle herds, so the Watch was known for combating “black mail”.

Theory 2: The designation came from the Black Cockade of the House of Hanover (as opposed to the White Cockade of the Jacobites)

Does the regiment still exist today?

In 2006, the Royal Scots & King's Own Scottish Borderers, Royal Highland Fusiliers, Black Watch, Highlanders, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, and Territorial Army (Scotland) amalgamated to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland. The Black Watch tartan (with slightly lighter shades) was chosen for the new regiment and is still worn today. 

 

Sources: Paul Harris Website; TheBlackWatch.co.uk; MacGregor, MacDuff Website

The Stretcher-Bearer by Robert Service — A Roads Classic

Poet Robert Service ("Shooting of Dan McGrew") made his way to the Western Front as a Red Cross ambulance driver. During his service he continued to write poems, which were later gathered in the volume, titled Rhymes of a Red Cross Man. From which this work, I've selected "The Stretcher-Bearer". Robert Service dedicated the collection to his brother, Lt. Albert Service, who was killed in Flanders in August 1916.

Remembering a Veteran—Lt. Clarence Palmer, Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve: Mystery Man of Gallipoli

The Distinguished Service Cross of the Great War,
Similar to That Awarded to the Subject of this Article,
Who–Being a Spy–Was Extraordinarily Camera Shy

India born Clarence Edward Stanhope Palmer was a Cambridge-educated reserve Naval officer, who was serving as a diplomatic vice-consul  in Çanakkale, Turkey, on the Dardanelles, as it became evident that Turkey intended to join the war on the side of the Central Powers. He unobtrusively transformed into an undercover operative and plotted the location of the minefields protecting the Narrows of the Dardanelles. When Turkey joined the war, Palmer was able to escape and deliver the map of the mines to the Royal Navy. His career as a spy, however, was not yet done.

After the unsuccessful naval attack of the Allied fleet on 18 March 1915, the Australian submarine E-15 was through the minefields at Dardanelles to attack the enemy's shipping.  Aboard, presumably, to help with navigating the straits–and apparently now on active duty with the Royal Navy–was Lt. Clarence Palmer. However, he was reportedly never in uniform, which suggests he was aboard for some unconventional mission. What that might have been is lost to the ages, because the E-15 ran aground. The boat was quickly attacked and disabled, and the crew captured. The Turks were surprised to discover one the men wasn't wearing a uniform or naval gear—Clarence Palmer.

The Damaged E-15 in Turkish Custody

Furthermore, they somehow found that Palmer could speak fluent Turkish. The Turks quite reasonable concluded that he was a spy and threatened him with execution. Things get a little cloudy from this point. Some sources, including a TV documentary, cite this account of what followed, although I cannot find any authoritative confirmation of it.  

Palmer then offered to give the Turks the details of the expected landing plan in exchange for his life, but he gave a misleading version of the plan. He told the Turks the main landing was going to be far to the north of Anzac Cove and Helles near a tiny village named Bulair. As the story goes, the German commander in charge of the Turkish forces, General Otto Liman von Sanders, kept 20,000 men in the north because he felt that is where the main landing would be  because he believed Palmer. [There are other good reasons why the main Allied landing would be in this area.]

Palmer survived the war in a Turkish prison camp. One confirmable detail supportive of the above account took place after his return to civilian life. In 1921, Palmer was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his role with submarine E-15, although there does not seem to be any citation with the specifics behind the award.

After the war, Palmer held a variety of diplomatic positions, including a special mission to Asia Minor in 1919, and service in the Department of Overseas Trade. He was appointed consul at Damascus in 1920 and transferred to Port Said in July 1924 until 1926, when he left to take up successive consularships at Benghazi, Tripoli, Tabriz, and Sarajevo, where he died on 16 May 1936. He was decorated for his role on E-15. His precise role regarding the Gallipoli landing went to the grave with him.

Tre Cime di Lavaredo—The Three Peaks of Lavaredo—at War

Tre Cime di Lavaredo

By Richard Galli

Situated northeast of Cortina D'Ampezzo, the Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Drei Zinnen in German) are three enormous freestanding limestone towers. This trio of peaks are amongst the most beautiful and recognizable mountains in the Dolomites, the Alps, and the world. Tre Cime's three peaks almost resemble three fingers pointing toward the sky, thus offering many tourists a natural spectacle of shapes and colors. The Tre Cime are made up of the 2,857 meters Cima Piccola, the 2,973 meters Cima Ovest, and the Cima Grande, the central one, of 3,003 meters. Between 1915 and 1917, these peaks formed a front of the Great War; the remains of trenches, tunnels, equipped paths and barracks on the massif and on the nearby Paterno Mount still remain evident.

Location

In the half century before World War I, the Tre Cime or Drei Zinnen Group [of surrounding peaks] were unique for their advanced vertical rock climbing, which was an exciting new aspect of alpinism. Most climbing in the Alps had been mountaineering, to the summit on steep glaciers with the occasional rock outcropping or ridge. Local mountain guides developed techniques and gear for 90-degree rock face, chimney, and crack. The clear dry air and spectacular sunlit golden rock that had attracted the aristocracy and upper classes for decades now saw the arrival of a growing middle class of Europe for both exercise and relaxation. A new school of painters, writers, and naturalists also came to the Dolomites to record what seemed lost in the Industrial Age. Today the challenge of the great rock faces continues to make the area as well known to climbers as Yosemite or Patagonia.

In May of 1915, war came to the Dolomites. Italian Alpini raced Austrian Kaiseräger for control of summit and pass. The names of these natural citadels would become synonymous in history with alpine warfare—Marmolatta, Tofane, Monte Piano, Col di Lana, and the Tre Cime. Each great mountain was the linch pin of their sector, serving a purpose similar to today's reconnaissance satellites. From their outposts, enemy movement could be observed and attacks directed. Possession of these summits became a priority mission. 

Wartime Shelters at the Base of the Peaks

The first summer of war saw several Italian successes in the capture of major peaks and in withstanding Austro-Hungarian counterattacks. The Deutsches Alpenkorps sent several battalions to assist their Austrian allies. Enemy gunfire might be deadly, but the logistics of transport and supply in these mountains was the ultimate challenge of any nation's army. Supplies were carried on the backs of troops and mules, with loads averaging 25 and 100 kilograms, respectively. Entering "leeward" cliff faces into a labyrinth of tunnels, cable cars known as teleferiques were built to supply the growing forces of both sides. 

On the other side of the mountain or ridge was the battle zone. Iron ladders led to the highest positions. The snout of cannon and machine gun poked from concealed openings called galleria, often with hundreds of meters of vertical rock face below them and an unlimited view. [Or zero visibility if clouds were present.] Cheap, portable, and easy to conceal, the machine gun was the most effective weapon in mountain warfare. In the hands of a well-trained gunner, it was able to control an entire pass, mountainside, or valley.

Gallery Entrance Higher Up

The Tre Cime became an Italian fortress of cannons, spotlights, and a hornet's nest of machineguns. Nearby Austrian forces reciprocated with their own defenses at the Schwabenalpenkopf (2,685 m.) and Raut Kofel (2,607 m.) also known as Monte Rudo. Here were found similar batteries of cannon and mortars, trenches connected by deep tunnels, and fields of barbed wire. The Austrians' forward observation post was atop Torre di Toblin (2,613 m.). To the front of the Tre Cime was the most advanced Italian outpost, atop nearby Monte Paterno (2,746 m.). All Austrian forces lay below the Alpini forward observers, and the results were deadly. To capture or neutralize this post would take extraordinary climbing skills.

The Austrian Army had one such man, the master of the cliffs around the Tre Cime, the renowned guide Sepp Innerkofler, then a sergeant in the Standschutzen mountain militia. The climb and battle of Monte Paterno on 4 July 1915 is perhaps the greatest legend of alpine warfare. [See article on Sepp Innerkofler on Roads HERE.]  As thousands of men watched, in a storm of mortar, cannon and machine gun fire, Sepp Innerkofler died—killed by an Alpini-thrown boulder.

Austian Troops Bearing the Remains of Sepp Innerkofler

The alpine winter arrived in September, and tactical operations in the Dolomites shut down. For both sides, simple survival from the wrath of the mountains' two great killers, avalanches and cold, became an endless, unforgiving occupation. The summer of 1916 saw several pitched battles around the peaks, ridges, and valleys of the Tre Cime group and neighboring ranges, but the shooting soon subsided. Both sides' mountain fortresses eventually resulted in an impenetrable, deadly stalemate. In addition, the attrition of other battles and fronts became a steady drain of both sides' troops. 

Battles for outposts, raids, patrols, and underground mines continued to take their toll, as did all the natural dangers of the high peaks. The winter of 1916/17 and its avalanches was the deadliest in history. During one 48-hour period in December of 1916, 10,000 men from both sides would die as a result of avalanches in the Dolomites. At first, regular troops were replaced by reservists, but the meat grinders of Ortigara or Bainsizza demanded their presence as well. By 1917, the Isonzo or Altipiano [or Russia] had siphoned all but the minimum needed to control the area. In November of 1917 the Italians abandoned the Dolomite front they had fought so fiercely for, as their armies collapsed or retreated from Caporetto to the Piave River and Monte Grappa. Austrian troops followed to their fate on these lower peaks and plains. The Dolomites returned to nature's silence.

Alpini at Tre Cime with Their Mascot

To this day, around Tre Cime the trenches, tunnels, and iron ladders remind visitors of the fierce fighting witnessed by these peaks during three summers. The entire Dolomites, as well as ranges to the north, became Italian territory. Climbing, hiking, and skiing are once again the reasons to experience the Tre Cime.

 

This is a slightly update version of Richard Galli's article that originally appeared at our La Grande Guerra website.

Ten French Photos of the Yanks in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive

Click on Images to Enlarge 

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Sources:  Americans in the Great War, Vol. III, The Meuse-Argonne Battle, Michelin

What They Are Saying About Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd

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Waiting for Sunrise

By William Boyd

Harper/HarperCollins, 2011 

[In Vienna, Actor Lysander Rief] enjoys trysts with the volatile Hettie, an English sculptor, until one day, to his astonishment, he is arrested on rape charges; Hettie has betrayed him to her menacing common-law husband. Military attachés at the British embassy bail him out, sheltering him and devising his escape. The actor improvises a disguise to leave Vienna which so impresses the attachés that a year later, now the Great War has begun, they recruit him to track down a high-placed traitor in the British war machine. . .   Kirkus Review

Lysander must now discover the key to a secret code which is threatening Britain’s safety, and use all his skills to keep the murky world of suspicion and betrayal from invading every corner of his life. . . Moving from Vienna to London’s west end, the battlefields of France and hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a feverish and mesmerising journey into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller. . .         Goodreads

A Zeppelin Raid on London Is a Key Episode in the Book

Boyd show[s] a marked gift for getting and holding a reader’s attention — particularly a reader intrigued by his unmistakable respect for, and admiration of, the female sex. . . Reading this beguiling, suspenseful book, I began thinking of another memorable spy novel, written by John Buchan back in 1915 — “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” which was indelibly brought to the screen by Alfred Hitchcock. The loosening of social mores over the intervening century has granted Boyd the liberty of injecting more overt sexuality into the clinches than Buchan could have respectably permitted Richard Hannay . . . NY Times

Waiting for Sunrise is a thriller, with all manner of suspicious occurrences and characters, with Lysander never sure whom or what to trust or believe; few tell him the whole truth, and many tell him outright lies — but he gets caught up in this game as well. . . Along the way, Lysander frequently resorts to disguises and role-playing; at one point he notes: 

I felt envious, experiencing a sudden urge to rejoin my old life, to be back on the stage, acting, pretending. Then it struck me that this was precisely what I was about to do. . .  

Along the way, Lysander frequently resorts to disguises and role-playing; at one point he notes: "I felt envious, experiencing a sudden urge to rejoin my old life, to be back on the stage, acting, pretending. Then it struck me that this was precisely what I was about to do." . . . The Complete Review

When Tommy First Met the Mademoiselle from Armentières During the Race to the Sea

 

The BEF Moving North, October 1914

The great chase, known as the "Race to the Sea" with its numerous lost opportunities for decisive action was winding down in the fall of 1914. The increasingly desperate German High Command realized the better strategic move was to leapfrog their opponents rather than race along them side by side. Their attention and energies were now refocused toward the Channel coast itself and Flanders. But in mid-October, a gap existed in northern France between the French and German forces still attempting to move up from the south and the Allied and German forces being pumped into Flanders. Sir John French was planning a general offensive in this area aimed at recapturing the important city of Lille which the Germans had taken.

On 10–11 October, transported by bus from Abbeville, the British troops took up position on the front line between Béthune and Ypres, and reinforcements from Saint-Omer and Antwerp soon joined them. The British Army set about establishing a front to Armentières with the French cavalry filling the farther gap between two army corps positioned farther south. On 12 October, however, the French lost control of Vermelles, a small town on the edge of the Pas-de-Calais coal basin, and this forced the British to make a move southward in an attempt to fill the breach. On 13 October, fierce fighting erupted between the British and Germans at Givenchy-lès-La Bassée and Cuinchy, on both sides of the La Bassée canal, and continued for four days. Decisively, German reinforcements had begun arriving in the midst of the fighting. The British managed to advance ten kilometers to the east until they came up against Aubers Ridge, where German counterattacks forced them to fall back. By its conclusion, Givenchy had been captured, lost, and recaptured, the town of La Bassée would be secured by German forces (and held for the next four years), and II Corps had suffered 3,000 casualties.

The La Bassée Canal Split the New British Sector, Armentières to the North and Notre Dame de Lorette in the South

Another Allied attack was planned for 19 October. The only success during this attack would lead to tragedy. The 2nd battalion of the Royal Irish captured Le Pilly, a village on Aubers Ridge, but the rest of the advance failed. On 20 October the Germans went on the attack. A major offensive was launched all along the German line from Arras to the sea. Fortunately, that day II corps had halted their offensive and been ordered to hold their line. German attacks on 20 and 21 October were repulsed, but General Smith-Dorrien decided to retreat to a stronger defensive line that had been prepared behind the front line.

The new line began close to the right wing of II corps, but as it ran north the gap increased until at its northern end it was two miles behind the most advanced portions of the line. The retreat was carried out over the night of 22–23 October and caught the Germans by surprise. 23 October was thus a quiet day. The German attack was renewed on 24 October along the entire Sixth Army front. A daylight attack failed to make any headway. It was followed by an attack at dusk, which did break into the British trenches at two places, but local counter-attacks restored the situation. During this period, the Lahore Division of the Indian Corps arrived, and Indian troops would subsequently play an increasingly important role in the fighting.

Late War Posed Photos of the
Mademoiselle from Armentières

A second night attack, on 26–27 October, caused more problems. Part of the British line was broken and the village of Neuve Chapelle captured. This created a shallow salient in the British line. At this early period in the war, the buildings of Neuve Chapelle still survived, making the village a dangerous strongpoint that threatened the British lines. A major counterattack was launched on 28 October but failed to retake the village. On 29 October the village was reported to have been evacuated, but later in the day German troops used the ruins as cover for their last major attack of the battle. After the failure of the attack on 29 October, the Germans moved much of their heavy artillery north towards Ypres, where it took part in the battle of Gheluvelt. This marked the end of the serious fighting around La Bassée. On 30 October the Indian Corps would relieve II corps.

After its occupation by the British Army,  Armentières—located just 2 km behind the front—would remain fairly quiet until the German Offensive of April 1918.  During the intervening time the nearby trenches were used to rest exhausted units. When the Germans finally assault the area, the town was drenched with a tremendous mustard gas bombardment that made it uninhabitable for several weeks before the enemy could occupy it.

Sources: Historyofwar.org; Remembrance Trails; St. Mihiel Tripwire, March 2021