Neutral Switzerland and the Great War

Prewar, This Was the Point Where Switzerland,
Germany, and France Had Their Borders Touch. During Hostilies, the German/French Border Would Move East

As a neutral country, Switzerland was not involved in the devastating military conflicts of 1914–18. Nevertheless, concerning the economy, communications, diplomacy, secret services and war propaganda, it was intensely entangled with the “Great War.” From August 1914 onward, the Swiss authorities governed with extra-constitutional emergency law, which was called a “plenipotentiary regime.” The government, in line with export-oriented companies, was guided by the goal of benefiting from the advantages of a continent at war.

Mobilization

In 1914, Switzerland had a militia army based on the principle of compulsory military service. Members of the liberal middle class and conservative families from central Switzerland dominated the officer corps. At the outbreak of war, some 220,000 men (approximately one eighth of the working population) were conscripted for active service; some 45,000 horses (about a third of the population) were also enlisted. The mobilized men served an average of 500 to 600 days in the army. Receiving little pay, and with no system to compensate for loss of earnings until the start of World War II, it spelled financial crisis for many lower-class families. The labor market struggled with the loss of some 100,000 migrant workers, called up by their national armies when the war broke out. By 1920 migration out of Switzerland had risen to at least 228,000, while the net immigration was 72,000—including 42,000 demobilized soldiers. When the war ended, Switzerland closed its borders to prevent an influx of demobilized soldiers from the Central Powers and to protect the “national workforce.” Swiss men returned straight to their workplaces. In parallel, the women who had been employed during the war to counteract the labor shortage in the war industries were swiftly “phased out,” returning the proportion of women in industry to prewar level by 1920.

Guarding the Borders

A Swiss Outpost Guarding a Pass to Italy

Since Switzerland was a neutral country, its frontiers had to be guarded to prevent the warring armies crossing them, deliberately or accidentally. However there were occasions when the border was crossed. The start of the war was one of the points at which there was the greatest fear amongst the Swiss of invasion, in case the French or Germans tried to gain an advantage by outflanking their enemy through Switzerland. The frontiers were guarded by the Swiss army. Above: the frontier at Basel, blocked at the start of the war.

In places the frontier had considerable defenses, including bunkers and barbed wire, similar to those used by the opposing sides in combat. However as this image shows, in places away from the fighting little separated the Swiss and their neighbors. Although Switzerland is a small country, the frontier was 1,400 km (870 miles) in length and could not be guarded in great strength everywhere! There are said to have been some 1,000 violations of the frontier during the war.

A Swiss Guard and German Soldier Chat at the Border

The Swiss strictly enforced their frontier. Under international law, troops from the belligerents who crossed the Swiss border (for whatever reason) had to be interned. While such internments were perceived as a humanitarian gesture by a strategically important neutral nation, they also helped save the Swiss tourism industry.  Between January 1916 and August 1919, nearly 68,000 wounded or sick officers and men were interned in Switzerland; 37,515 French, 4,326 Belgians, 21,000 Germans and 4,081 British, enlivened otherwise deserted resorts. Germans were interned in German-speaking regions, particularly around Davos. French and Belgians were scattered mainly throughout the francophone areas. When the British soldiers arrived, at the end of May 1916, they were concentrated in areas popular with English speaking tourists before the war, the main centers being Chateau d’Oex and Mürren but with smaller groups in other communities according to employment, education and medical needs.

Switzerland Was the  Place to Be Interned

French, German, Italian, British or American aircraft also sometimes accidentally crossed onto Swiss soil. In certain cases the plane landed because the airmen did not realize they had crossed the frontier, while other times injuries to the crew meant they had to land immediately. Very occasionally, Swiss territory was actually attacked, most frequently through being bombed by aircraft. The town of Porrentruy was bombed several times. It was located in a small section of Swiss territory that projected out into France, and was only about 12 km or 7 miles away from the point where the Western Front (the French and German front lines) met the Swiss frontier. This seems to have meant that there was potential for either side to make a navigational error and drop bombs on Swiss land.    

On 7 October 1918, Swiss neutrality was infringed in an attack that caused great public controversy in Switzerland. An observation balloon tethered between Miécourt and Cornol (near Porrentruy, around 2-3km (1.5 miles) over the border into Switzerland) was shot down by a German aircraft. The burning balloon fell to earth and the Swiss soldier acting as observer, Lieutenant Walter Flury, was killed. Some Swiss newspapers questioned whether the attack was really an error or had been planned, since the balloon was clearly marked as Swiss. Below is a balloon similar ​to the one that was shot down. Such apparently direct attacks were very rare, however.

The Wartime Economy

Switzerland's 1913 GDP per capita was the highest in the world. Its  economy would be strongly affected by the First World War, negatively as well as positively. On the one hand, the import of foodstuff and raw materials deteriorated towards the end of the war and inflation reduced the purchasing power of a large part of the population. Predictably, the important  tourism sector suffered from enormous losses. On the other hand, many exporting industrial firms enjoyed a strong demand for their products during the first half of the war, those selling strategic war material registered profits even until the end of the war. According to one estimate, both real GDP and GDP per capita declined by 11 percent between 1913 and 1918. Real wages deteriorated during the war but caught up in the postwar period.

Being neutral and contiguous to both Germany and France and their allies, the Swiss managed to trade with both countries throughout the war, although the balance was much in favor of the Allies. Here's one interesting example. Due to their long experience in precision instrumentation, the Swiss made the world's best artillery fuses. Also, Swiss businessmen were "world class" at evading government attempts to keep the German trade and Allied trade  compartmentalized.  This led to the incongruous situation where German coal and steel helped produce 25 million artillery shell fuses for the British, as well as over 121 million components used in assembling other fuses all used in artillery shells fired at the Germans.  

World War I did cause a general strike in Switzerland, however. See our article HERE.

A Swiss Observation Balloon

Host to a Noted Troublemaker and Some Very Eccentric Artists

Lenin spent the early part of the war in Zurich.  He left Austria for neutral Switzerland in 1914 following the outbreak of the war and remained active in Switzerland until 1917. Following the 1917 February Revolution in Russia and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, he left Switzerland on a sealed train to Petrograd, where he would shortly lead the 1917 October (Boklshevik) Revolution in Russia. 

Meanwhile, in the same neighborhood, a group of politicized artists was founding another radical movement. While the Dada art movement was also an anti-war organization, Dadaists used art to oppose all wars. The founders of the movement had left Germany and Romania to escape the destruction of the war. At the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich they put on performances expressing their disgust with the war and with the interests that inspired it. By some accounts Dada coalesced on 6 October 1916 at the cabaret. When World War I ended in 1918, most of the Zürich Dadaists returned to their home countries, and some began Dada activities in other cities. See our article on DADA HERE.

Sources: The most comprehensive site on Switzerland in the war is Switzerland1914-1918.net (If you are interested in more information on the subject click HERE; 1914-1918 Online; Wikipedia; Global-Geneva

Champion of Unrestricted U-boat Warfare and Early Booster of the Nazis: Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Magnus von Levetzow

Champion of Unrestricted U-boat Warfare and
Early Booster of the Nazis:  Kapitän, later
Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Magnus von Levetzow

Magnus von Levetzow was born on 8 January1871 in Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany to a noble clan that had settled in Mecklenburg around 1300. Levetzow entered the navy in 1889 and attended the War Academy in 1900–1902.

In 1900, he served as Admiralty staff officer during the German blockade of Venezuela, and from 1906 to 1918 he was attached to the High Sea Fleet in various capacities. From 1909 to 1912, Levetzow was first Admiralty officer in the fleet command; in 1912, he commanded the light cruiser Stralsund and the following year in the grade of captain the battle cruiser Moltke.

Captain von Levetzow led the Moltke to the coast of England on December 16, 1914, and bombarded Hartlepool. On 24 January 1915, he stood off the Dogger Bank as the British demolished the armored cruiser Blücher. One year later, Levetzow joined the High Sea Fleet as chief of the Operations Division immediately under Captain Adolf von Trotha; Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer served as fleet commander. This triumvirate directed the fleet at Jutland on 31 May 31/1 June 1916 and inflicted serious material losses upon the British Grand Fleet, while twice facing annihilation by Sir John Jellicoe's dreadnoughts as the latter crossed Scheer's T.

In September 1917, Levetzow was temporarily appointed chief of staff to Vice Admiral Ehrhardt Schmidt's squadron for the conquest of the Baltic islands of Osel, Moon, and Dagö in the Gulf of Riga, which also netted the Russian battleship Slava. Levetzow received the order Pour le mérite in October 1917.

In November 1917, Levetzow returned to the High Sea Fleet, and by January 1918, was promoted commodore and given command of the Second Division, Scouting Forces, under Admiral Franz von Hipper. In August 1918, the restless Levetzow became chief of staff of the new Supreme Command of the navy under Admiral Scheer. In this capacity, he actively planned the fatal Operations Plan No. 19, which called for a suicide sortie against the British Grand Fleet on 30 October 1918. The sailors of the fleet instead rebelled.

Levetzow was a highly political creature. A fanatical follower of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Levetzow had spared no effort to propagate the state secretary's views in the navy and beyond. Levetzow recruited members of the court and of other ruling houses to uphold the Tirpitz line, and he used the same channels to drum up support for a fleet engagement as well as for unrestricted submarine warfare. 

Holger Herwig gives dual credit to the godfather of Germany's modern navy, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, and an influential officer, Captain Magnus von Levetzow, for inspiring the great unrestricted U-boat warfare debate as early as 1914. 

Tirpitz responded to a reporter's question about whether he intended to blockade Britain with its U-boats, "If pressed to the utmost, why not? – England wants to starve us into submission; we can play the same game, blockade England and destroy each and every ship that tries to run the blockade." Captain von Levetzow, apparently a man with a literary bent, sent a 1913 Conan Doyle story, "Danger! A Story of England's Peril," to his commander, Fleet Admiral Reinhard Scheer, and Kaiser Wilhelm. The story told was of an England starved out  in six weeks by a flotilla of U-boats. It must have been  irresistibly seductive to any patriotic German in 1914.  Thanks to these two officers, the idea was planted in  the collective brain of Germany's leadership early in  the war. The German public, the people who would increasingly feel the impact of the Royal Navy's  blockade on the Central Powers, independently came to look to the U-boat as the logical counter response.  Also, some of the early successes, like the achievement  of U-9 in sinking three British cruisers in a single day,  convinced many that Germany had a wonder-weapon that  it should employ to its fullest capability.

With the wily Trotha, Levetzow worked diligently to undermine the positions of Georg A. von Müller of the Navy Cabinet, Henning von Holtzendorff of the Admiralty Staff, and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg with the kaiser, the politicians, and the nation. 

Levetzow favored sweeping territorial annexations by Germany in Europe, Asia Minor, and Africa as late as September 1918, and he encouraged fellow naval officers to pursue these aims through Tirpitz's right-wing Fatherland party.

Von Levetzow with Fellow Admirals Raeder and
von Trotha at a Commemoration of the
Battle of Skagerraktag (Jutland)

Levetzow survived the reduction of the German navy to 10,000 officers and men under the Versailles Treaty and in January 1920 was promoted rear admiral and given command of the Baltic Sea naval station at Kiel. In this capacity he supported the Kapp Putsch in March 1920 and was forced to resign from the service. For a time, Levetzow hoped to establish close contacts between the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II in Doorn, as well as Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler of the NSDAP; however, by 1932 Levetzow accepted the kaiser's refusal to become embroiled with the Nazis and was elected an NSDAP member of parliament. 

Von Levetzow, President of the Berlin Police with 
Hermann Göring, Founder of the Gestapo, 1933

Hitler rewarded the admiral, who had helped to bring naval support to the Nazis, by appointing him police president of Berlin on 15 February 1933. For the next two years Levetzow energetically purged the Ministry of the Interior of republicans. Levetzow was an opponent of lawless violence and antisemitism and often came into conflict with the more radical Berlin Sturmabteilung (SA) leadership, as well as with Berlin Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels, who had been trying to have him replaced since from at least November 1934.  He was forced to withdraw from politics in July 1935 and died in Berlin on 13 March 1939.  He did not live to see the impact of unrestricted U-boat warfare on the course of the Second World War. 

Source: The World Biographical Encyclopedia; Over the Top, November 2016;  "Total Rhetoric, Limited War: Germany's U-Boat Campaign 1917 -1918," Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, May 1998, by Holger Herwig; Bundesarchiv 

Recommended: A "Gentleman’s Rifle" in the Trenches of WWI

 

A single Holland & Holland weaves together a story of the Great War’s trenches, one of the world’s best gun makers, Britain’s greatest 20th-century soldier, and the author of Gunga Din.

Originally Presented in American Rifleman, 10 April 2022

By Terry Wieland

It was London, it was September, it was raining.

Outside the Brigade of Guards Museum, near Buckingham Palace, the statue of Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis stands 15 ft high—a tribute to Britain’s greatest field commander of the 20th century. His trademark sheepskin is faithfully reproduced in a half-ton of bronze, and even here he manages to wear it like a dinner jacket. England’s greatest combat soldier was also known as the best-dressed man in the regiment.

As the rain pelted harder, plastering the brown beech leaves to the paving stones and forming tiny waterfalls in the creases of the jacket, Alexander—or “Alex,” as he was known to all—took no notice. He kept his eye fixed firmly on the entrance to the museum, and suddenly that seemed like a heck of a good idea as the sky opened up and the cold rain came down in sheets.

The Guards regiments are among Britain’s most famous icons. They are the soldiers in red tunics and black bearskins who mount the guard on Buckingham Palace, among other places. What is less well known is that they are also elite soldiers who have fought the king’s wars around the world for centuries. The oldest regiment is the Scots Guards, followed by the Grenadiers and the Coldstreams. The Irish Guards—Alexander’s regiment—and the Welsh are the youngest.

Guardsman with an H&H Rifle

Inside the museum, one tableau after another depicts their exploits at Waterloo, Dunkirk, South Africa, Flanders. The displays, colorful at first, turn slowly sodden and muddy as all the gentility was wrung out of warfare, and red tunics were replaced by khaki (in South Africa) and brown service dress in the mud of Flanders. The display from the First World War includes bits of webbing, barbed wire, grenades, a bayonet. The stuff looks muddy even when it isn’t.

There is also a rifle. Not a Lee-Enfield, No. 1 Mk III, as might be expected, but a classic single-shot, break-action rifle of the type favored, before the war, for stalking stag in Scotland. It is of obviously fine pedigree but has seen much hard use. The bluing is worn to a silver sheen and the stock is scratched and battered.

If you crouch down and peer closely, with the light exactly right, you can still read on the receiver “Holland & Holland.” It is an aristocrat among firearms, a “gentleman’s rifle”—a Royal Grade single-shot stocked in English walnut and finely checkered. At one time, the receiver displayed graceful engraving, although it is now worn almost completely away. Four years of trench warfare will do that.

The story of how H&H rifle No. 26069 journeyed from the Bruton Street showroom to the Guards Museum is really one of convergence of the great names in prewar England, in the military, in literature, and in gun making. It involves Harold Alexander, Britain’s greatest soldier of the 20th century, and Field Marshal Lord Roberts, one of its greatest of the 19th; it involves Rudyard Kipling, Poet Laureate of the Empire and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature; and of course Holland & Holland, England’s greatest rifle maker.

The story begins with Lord Roberts in South Africa, fighting the Afrikaaners in Britain’s first, and one of its bloodiest, military campaigns of the 20th century. There, Roberts renewed his acquaintance with Rudyard Kipling, an old friend from India.

Roberts was an Ulsterman, a gentleman of Anglo-Irish descent. For reasons no one has adequately explained, Ulster (Northern Ireland) has produced a disproportionate number of great British generals. The Duke of Wellington was an Ulsterman, as was Montgomery, among many others. In the South African campaign, the army’s Irish regiments performed spectacularly. To recognize their contribution, Queen Victoria ordered—on Roberts’s advice—the formation of a regiment of Irish Guards to join the Scots, Grenadiers, and Coldstreams.

When he heard the news, Harold Alexander (also from Ulster) was nine years old. He immediately decided that his future would lie with the Irish Guards. The son of the Earl of Caledon, he attended school at Harrow, went on to the military academy at Sandhurst, and joined his new regiment in London in 1911. He was a 22-year-old first lieutenant when the war broke out in 1914.

One of his fellow officers was the Earl of Kingston, and they shipped off to France together. In the Earl’s kit was the H&H rifle. It came to be there in a rather convoluted way.

Continue this article:

HERE

How Did the Schlieffen Plan Work on the Eastern Front?

Cosssacks Arriving in East Prussia

The Plans for East Prussian and Galicia

Under the Eastern dimension of Germany's Schlieffen Plan a single army (the Eighth), made up primarily of territorial forces, was to be deployed  against the slow-moving Russian goliath and defend the homeland. Later, after France had been disposed of, the  entire German Army would be shifted to the east to  confront the tsar's forces. 

The opposing Russian War Plan XIX featured an ambitious double offensive. In the north, anticipating that France would be the initial focus of attention for the German Army, a two-army converging drive into East Prussia to threaten the Germans and relieve pressure on  the French was to be executed. Not to be neglected,  because its posture toward the Slavs of Serbia had  brought Russia into the war, was the old enemy Austria Hungary. Four armies would mount a second invasion  into Galicia, the empire's northernmost province with  the goal of destroying the Austro-Hungarian Army.  

Early Deployments in the East

What Happened

In the north, Russia—responding to  French appeals for alacrity—moved more quickly than  anyone thought possible and crossed into German  territory on August 17th. After being bloodied in the  small-scale Battle of Gumbinnen the commander of the  German Eighth Army Maximilian von Prittwitz  proposed, then withdrew, a panicky request to abandon East Prussia. The decision to replace him had already been made, however. A new team, Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff, had been dispatched to restore control. 

Meanwhile, the Russian advance in East Prussia was developing its own problems. Initiated prematurely, the two armies found they were short of both  manpower and ordnance. The greatest deficiency for the  Russian forces, though, was in what is now called  "command and control." The two Russian armies operated as though they were oblivious to one another's  movements. Battlefield radio communication was also  in the clear and unciphered, allowing German  intelligence to deduce the southernmost Russian army  (the Second) could be isolated and destroyed before the  northernmost (the First) could come to its assistance. 

The Battle of Tannenberg and the envelopment and  destruction of the Second Army followed. Another setback, albeit less catastrophic, came for the First Army  at the Masurian Lakes in September. Russia was driven  out of East Prussia and would never regain the initiative  in the war. The key element of Plan XIX had failed. 

The 1914 campaign to the south in Galicia is one of the lesser-told tales of the Great War. After much pushing and shoving, though, the Russian steamroller proved too much for the Austro-Hungarian Army. By the end of the year, they had repelled an Austrian incursion into Poland, occupied the province of Galicia, and were threatening the passes across the Carpathian Mountains, gateway to Hungary. The first year of the war was an utter disaster for the empire that had wanted it most. 

The Eastern Front never was quite as deadlocked as the West, but the sheer size of Russia and the sub-par leadership of the Austro-Hungarian command doomed it to be just as costly in human suffering.

Source:  Over the Top, March 2009

The Unforgettable Monument at Mort Homme—A Roads Classic

Depiction of the Fighting
at Mort Homme

The famous Mort Homme Skeleton Memorial commemorates those of the French 69th Division, who bore the brunt of much of the fighting during the critical period. The monument, by Froment-Meurice, was unveiled in 1922. It bears the famous words Ils N'ont Pas Passe ("They Did Not Pass") in response to the rallying cry Ils Ne Passeront Pas! ("They Shall Not Pass!) of General Robert Nivelle's Order of the Day for 23 June 1916.

Atop Mort Homme is also a memorial to the men of the French 40th Division, in the form of a tall obelisk with a sword engraved on the front and the words Mort Homme inscribed on the top. There is no commemorative for the thousands of Germans who also fell on the hill.

After three months of ferocious fighting, Mort Homme was secured by German forces on 29 May 1916. The hill was the site of further back and forth action after the official end of the Battle of Verdun.  French forces finally secured the hill on 20 August 1917. A year later it would be immediately behind the jump-off line for the American Meuse-Argonne Offensive. During the 1916 fighting, American Field Service ambulances had helped evacuate wounded from the Mort Homme and Cote 304 sector on the left bank.

Remembering a Veteran: War Artist Maurice Busset, French Aéronautique Militaire

Self Portrait

Maurice Busset (1879–1936) was a French painter and woodcut engraver. During World War I he was an airman and an official war artist, and a significant number of his works relate to aviation during the war. He later became an art teacher back in Clermont-Ferrand and was at the forefront of Auvergne regional art. During WWI he was a painter in the archives of military aviation. From 1929, he moved full time to a large studio in Clermont-Ferrand and became assistant curator at the City Museum. He also had a passion for archaeology and claimed to have discovered the true site of the Battle of Gergovie on the coast of Clermont-Ferrand, a theory still debated today.

Click on Images to Enlarge

(Display=580px,  Large=800px)

The Siren of  Notre-Dame and Skylights of Paris, 1918

Roland Garros Book Poster

Air Combat

Paris Bombarded

An Accident

Guynemer Attacking a Fokker, Detail

The Major Aces:
Fonck, Guynemer, Madon, Nungesser, Heurtaux

Bombardment of Ludwishafen

Air Combat

What They Are Saying About: Laugh or Cry: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914–1918

Click HERE to Order This Book

By Peter Hart and Gary Bain 

Pen and Sword Military, 2022

Publisher's Synopsis:

Humour helped the British soldier survive the terrible experiences they faced in the trenches of the Western Front during the Great War. Human beings are complicated, and there is no set pattern as to how they react to the outrageous stresses of war. But humour, often dark and representative of the horrors around them could and often did help. They may have been up to their knees in mud and blood, soaking wet and shot at from all sides, but many were still determined to see the ‘funny side’, rather than surrender to utter misery. . . You have to laugh or cry.

From Readers and Reviewers:

If you’ve ever read a “Forgotten Voices of…” book, the format will be familiar; short passages of explanatory prose make points or assertions which are interspersed by illustrative quotes from a veteran or other contemporaneous source. The difference is that the subject matter here revolves around the morale and the antics of soldiers and officers in the British and Commonwealth Armies. Hart’s previous job plays strongly into this, for many years he gathered oral testimony from veterans of the First World War for the IWM archives. There are also copious excerpts from personal memoirs, letters home, Regimental diaries and the like. Themes are varied in chapters, covering the human farces, tragedies and pranks experienced in training, trench life, fighting, officers and NCOs, interactions with the enemy, life behind the line and so on. Two chapters stand out for me: the first, “Gunners”, highlights the life, horrors, frustrations and small joys of those manning the guns (often overlooked in favour of the infantry’s lot in the trenches). The second, “Advance to Victory, 1918” relates the change in warfare in the last hundred days, relating the strains and freedoms this placed on the advancing troops. 

ARMY RUMOUR SERVICE

Humor helped the British soldier survive the terrible experiences they faced in the trenches of the Western Front during the Great War. Human beings are complicated, and there is no set pattern as to how they react to the outrageous stresses of war.

"Awakened by great shouted oaths below. Peeped over the side of the manger and saw a Belgian lass milking and addressing a cow with a comprehensive luridness that left no doubt in my mind that British soldiers had been billeted here before." — Private Norman Ellison, 1/6th King’s Liverpool Regiment 

GOODREADS

Lively and supremely well informed, Peter Hart is a military historian specialising in the Great War. He was the Oral Historian at the Imperial War Museum from 1981 until his retirement and is the author of many Great War books. Here he is teamed up with his irrepressible collaborator, Gary Bain.

 WESTERN FRONT ASSOCIATION

A New Collection of Eleven World War One Quotes

If there is a war between France and Germany, it will be very difficult for us to keep out of it. . .On the other hand the prospect of a European war and of our being involved in it is horrible. 

Sir Edward Grey, 1906

The Tsar thinks I'm Christ incarnate. The Tsar and Tsarina bow down to me, kneel to me, kiss my hands.   

Rasputin

I recommend that you and the Minister of War leave for your vacation so as to keep up the appearance that nothing is going on.

Von Berchtold to Conrad von Hötzendorff, 8 July 1914

When the English started advancing we were very concerned: they looked as though they must soon occupy our trenches. We were amazed to see them walking, we had never seen that before. . .The officers were at the front. I noticed one of them was strolling calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down in their hundreds. We didn't have to aim, we just fired into them. 

Karl Blenk, German Machine Gunner on the First Day of the Somme

Can the Army win the war before the Navy loses it?  

Admiral Lord Fisher, Spring 1917

The notion that a soldier becomes hardier and bolder as war proceeds is mistaken. What he gains in the science and art of attacking his enemy he loses in strength of nerve. The only dam against this loss is a sense of honour so resolute that few attain to it. For this reason I consider that troops composed of boys of twenty under experienced leadership are the most formidable. 

Ernst Jünger

I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war. 

Georges Clemenceau

I stood by myself for a minute, saying, "Dear God, I'm going into great danger. Would you please guard me and help me to act like a man. Please bring me back safe". . . I used to go out there without a fear, and here I am. I didn't say it out loud. My pals got to know, and they did all sorts of daft stuff to get drunk. Well, I didn't need it because I trusted, you know, in my prayers.  

Arthur Barraclough, the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, passed away 30 August 2004, age 106.

What's the use of worrying?  

Popular Song Lyric

All these talks and speeches and theories of Wilson's are most dangerous, and more dangerous to England than anyone else and are also dangerous to France. This 'League of Nations'. What folly! 

Ex-Empress Eugénie, Widow of Napoleon III

I am obliged to report that, at the present moment, the Russian Empire is run by lunatics.   

Ambassador Paleologue, 14 January 1917

At Basra: Opening the Great War's Mesopotamia Campaign

The Prewar Peaceful Basra

By LCDR Youssef Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN

Strategic Assessment

In 1914, the Ottoman Empire existed only in name and a group of army officers created the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), which was the real power behind Sultan Mohammed V. Military leaders like Enver Pasha, and Talat Pasha were all products of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II (1876 to 1909) pro-German policies. This culminated in a secret pact signed between the Germans and Ottomans in August 1914. Iraq, at the time was divided into three sanjaks (Ottoman governing regions) of Mosul, Basra, and Baghdad. The British Indian Army auxiliary forces were reorganized in 1904, which left only one Indian Expeditionary Division, dedicated to the protection of Persian Gulf interests. The Sixth “Poona” Expeditionary Division was composed of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Infantry Regiments. A decade later this force would be called upon to defend several key strategic interests:

· The 140-mile Anglo-Persian oil pipeline

· The oil refineries at Abadan

The central debate of the Mesopotamian campaigns was whether to secure Arabstan (roughly Persia) and the British oil interests only or press forward and drive out Ottoman forces from Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in a bold strategy called forward defense.

Key Sites of the Mesopotamian Campaign

Landings in Basra

A British and Indian Expeditionary Force left Bombay (7,000 troops) in mid-October and was positioned in anticipation of the formal Ottoman declaration of war to secure Abadan. Between mid-October and the landing of 600 British/Indian troops on Fao Peninsula on 7 November, the commanding general, Sir Arthur Bennett, used the time to practice to exercise his force in amphibious landings and combined operations with the Royal Navy.

On the evening of 21 November 1914, two gunboats advanced toward Basra with detachments of Indian forces belonging to the 104th Wellesley Rifles and the 117th Mahrattas of 16th Brigade of the Indian Army’s 6th Division. The Ottomans—unused to combined naval and infantry tactics—panicked and ordered the evacuation of  the city. Marsh Arabs from the southern estuaries arrived before the British and began to loot the city. Finally, as the Ottoman forces withdrew, the Turkish commanders scuttled four ships vessels tied together to form a barrier against approaching British gunboats, this action along with mining should’ve been done as the English Expeditionary Force amassed in Bahrain. The current swung one vessel aside and allowed the British flotilla to enter the Shat Al-Arab one at a time. The capture of Basra was among the first major British successes in the Great War then entering its fourth month. On 27 November 1914, the British flag was raised over the town.

The Ottomans had sent two regiments to intercept the British landing force, but it was too little too late.  One of the little known secrets of the success of the British landings is the alliance they had  bought of the Sheikh of Muhamara who provided valuable intelligence on Ottoman movements.

Both Shiekh of Muhamara and the Emir of Kuwait received protection and funds from the British, and their territories bordered one another. This cultivation of tribal fiefdoms enabled British units to be sent prior to the landing to cut the Fao to Basra telegraph wire. The constant information from these tribes is highlighted by  late Iraqi General Shukry Mahmood Nadeem, who wrote the most comprehensive study of the 1914–1918 Mesopotamian campaigns in the Arabic language. This flow of intelligence allowed the attacking infantry units supported by a flotilla of gunboats to envelop four Turkish regiments of 1,500 troops and 2,000 volunteers.

Newspaper Depiction of the Assault on Basra

Occupation of Basra (27 November 1914)

What is extraordinary is the way in which British commanders  reestablished some semblance of order in the town. They quickly brought in members of the revenue service to sort through documents in Basra. The occupying force made distinctions between Turkish combatants, Ottoman administrators and Arab peoples of Iraq. The Turkish subjects were treated as combatants and the Arabs cultivated as allies if possible. This led to discussions among British officers as how to provide benefits to Arabs who were technically “enemy aliens.”  Mesopotamian Arabs were issued papers describing the bearer as subjects of the Occupied Ottoman Territory of Mesopotamia. 

Additional Indian Army Forces Arriving at Basra

Another aspect that was brought to the attention of British military planners in Basra was dealing with the economy. Indian silver rupees and banknotes were brought in and an exchange rate established. Other highlights included cultivating relations and co-opting Shia and Sunni tribes, visits from British officials to tribal leaders that bolstered the sheikh’s standing among his people.

The cultivation of tribes was a risk and a gamble, with examples such as Sayyid Talib Pasha, an influential Sunni who controlled the Muntafiq Shiite Tribal Confederation who coveted autonomous rule over Basra to the exclusion of other tribal unions. This was unacceptable, and Sayyid Talib was marginalized and switched over to the Ottomans and Germans.

However with enough money and a demonstration of military might, Sheikh Ibrahim of Zubair and the Sheikh of Hartha cooperated with the British. To the uninitiated these tribal unions could be dismissed but the British having experienced the Indian Sepoy Rebellion and using their long experience in co-opting the sheikhs along the Persian Gulf coast, understood these alliances meant access to land between Basra and Qurna on the way to Baghdad unmolested, conserving British firepower for the Ottomans. The date 13 April 1915 is an example of neglecting tribal co-option a Turkish force augmented with tribes was near Al-Shuayba, and entered into battle with the British who had secured Basra. After the Ottomans were beaten, they retreated through Lake Hammar (Muntafiq territory) where the Muntafiq tribe fell on them, massacring the Turks.

On to Baghdad or Secure Arabstan?

The ease in which the initial attack of Southern Iraq and securing Abadan occurred led to a debate between London and Delhi (the British Indian Administration) over whether to seize the initiative and march on Baghdad. Sir Percy Cox argued for pressing onward to Baghdad, and the field commander in Mesopotamia, General Arthur Barrett, argued that it was 400 miles to Baghdad and even if he had defeated the Ottomans, he had too few troops to secure the city. How the decision came about to fight on the Baghdad will be discussed in future postings on Roads to the Great War.

Source: "The First World War Mesopotamian Campaigns: Military Lessons on Iraqi Ground Warfare," Strategic Insights, Volume IV,  June 2005; Hurst Publishing; the National Army Museum

"Alone (The Death of Poilu Rochard)" by Ellen N. La Motte

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Ellen Newbold La Motte trained as  nurse at Johns Hopkins University at a time when nursing was one of the few professions open to women who wished to pursue careers and independent lives. She became an expert in caring for tuberculosis patients and published The Tuberculosis Nurse (1914). After spending the first winter of the war in Paris, in July 1915 she departed for a French military field hospital run by American heiress Mary Borden in Rousbrugge, Belgium, about six miles behind the front lines. La Motte left the hospital a year later, returning to America, where she published The Backwash of War: The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse in December. In the summer of 1918, her book was withdrawn by the publisher under government pressure. “Truth, it appears,” La Motte later wrote, “has no place in war.”

Alone

By Ellen N. LaMotte

French Nurses Caring for Gas Patients

ROCHARD died to-day. He had gas gangrene. His thigh, from knee to buttock, was torn out by a piece of German shell. It was an interesting case, because the infection had developed so quickly. He had been placed under treatment immediately too, reaching the hospital from the trenches about six hours after  he had been wounded. To have a thigh torn off, and to reach first-class surgical care within six hours, is practically immediately. Still, gas gangrene had developed, which showed that the Germans were using very poisonous shells. .  .

[Editor's Note:  It was later discovered that gas gangrene is caused not by a chemical agent but by infection by Clostridia, a genus of anaerobic bacteria found in farm soil where there is decaying animal and vegetable matter.] 

At that field hospital there had been established a surgical school, to which young men, just graduated from medical schools, or old men, graduated long ago from medical schools, were sent to learn how to take care of the wounded. After they had received a two months’ experience in this sort of war surgery, they were to be placed in other hospitals, where they could do the work themselves. So all those young men who did not know much, and all those old men who had never known much, and had forgotten most of that, were up here at this field hospital, learning. This had to be done, because there were not enough good doctors to go round, so in order to care for the wounded at all, it was necessary to furbish up the immature and the senile. However, the Médecin Chef (Chief Doctor) in charge of the hospital and in charge of the surgical school, was a brilliant surgeon and a good administrator, so he taught the students a good deal.

Therefore, when Rochard came into the operating room, all the young students and the old students crowded round to see the case. It was all torn away, the flesh from that right thigh, from knee to buttock, down to the bone, and the stench was awful. The various students came forward and timidly pressed the upper part of the thigh, the remaining part, all that remained of it, with their fingers, and little crackling noises came forth, like bubbles. Gas gangrene. Very easy to diagnose. Also, the bacteriologist from another hospital in the region happened to be present, and he made a culture of the material discharged from that wound, and afterwards told the Médecin Chef that it was positively and absolutely gas gangrene. But the Médecin Chef had already taught the students that gas gangrene may be recognized by the crackling and the smell, and the fact that the patient, as a rule, dies pretty soon.

They could not operate on Rochard and amputate his leg, as they wanted to do. The infection was so high, into the hip, it could not be done. Moreover, Rochard had a fractured skull as well. Another piece of shell had pierced his ear, and broken into his brain, and lodged there. Either wound would have been fatal, but it was the gas gangrene in his torn-out thigh that would kill him first. The wound stank. It was foul. The Médecin Chef took a curette, a little scoop, and scooped away the dead flesh, the dead muscles, the dead nerves, the dead blood-vessels. And so many blood-vessels being dead, being scooped away by that sharp curette, how could the blood circulate in the top half of that flaccid thigh? It couldn’t. Afterwards, into the deep, yawning wound, they put many compresses of gauze, soaked in carbolic acid, which acid burned deep into the germs of the gas gangrene, and killed them, and killed much good tissue besides. Then they covered the burning, smoking gauze with absorbent cotton, then with clean, neat bandages, after which they called the stretcher bearers, and Rochard was carried from the operating table back to the ward.

The night nurse reported next morning that he had passed a night of agony.

“Cela pique! Cela brule!” (It stings! It burns!) he cried all night, and turned from side to side to find relief. Sometimes he lay on his good side; sometimes he lay on his bad side, and the night nurse turned him from side to side, according to his fancy, because she knew that on neither one side nor the other would he find relief, except such mental relief as he got by turning. She sent one of the orderlies, Fouquet, for the Médecin Chef, and the Médecin Chef came to the ward, and looked at Rochard, and ordered the night nurse to give him morphia, and again morphia, as often as she thought best. For only death could bring relief from such pain as that, and only morphia, a little in advance of death, could bring partial relief.

So the night nurse took care of Rochard all that night, and turned him and turned him, from one side to the other, and gave him morphia, as the Médecin Chef had ordered. She listened to his cries all night, for the morphia brought him no relief. Morphia gives a little relief, at times, from the pain of life, but it is only death that brings absolute relief. When the day nurse came on duty next morning, there was Rochard in agony. “Cela pique! Cela brule!” he cried. And again and again, all the time, “Cela pique! Cela brule!”, meaning the pain in his leg. And because of the piece of shell, which had penetrated his ear and lodged in his brain somewhere, his wits were wandering. No one can be fully conscious with an inch of German shell in his skull. And there was a full inch of German shell in Rochard’s skull, in his brain somewhere, for the radiographist said so. He was a wonderful radiographist and anatomist, and he worked accurately with a beautiful, expensive machine, given him, or given the field hospital, by Madame Curie.

So all night Rochard screamed in agony, and turned and twisted, first on the hip that was there, and then on the hip that was gone, and on neither side, even with many ampoules of morphia, could he find relief. Which shows that morphia, good as it is, is not as good as death. So when the day nurse came on in the morning, there was Rochard strong after a night of agony, strong after many picqures (injections) of strychnia, which kept his heart beating and his lungs breathing, strong after many picqures of morphia which did not relieve his pain. Thus the science of healing stood baffled before the science of destroying.

Rochard died slowly. He stopped struggling. He gave up trying to find relief by lying upon the hip that was there, or the hip that was gone. He ceased to cry. His brain, in which was lodged a piece of German shell, seemed to reason, to become reasonable, with break of day. The evening before, after his return from the operating room, he had been decorated with the Médaille Militaire, conferred upon him, in extremis, by the General of the region. Upon one side of the medal, which was pinned to the wall at the head of the bed, were the words:  "Valeur et Discipline". Discipline had triumphed. He was very good and quiet now, very obedient and disciplined, and no longer disturbed the ward with his moanings.

Little Rochard! Little man, gardener by trade, aged thirty-nine, widower, with one child! The piece of shell in his skull had made one eye blind. There had been a hæmorrhage into the eyeball, which was all red and sunken, and the eyelid would not close over it, so the red eye stared and stared into space. And the other eye drooped and drooped, and the white showed, and the eyelid drooped till nothing but the white showed, and that showed that he was dying. But the blind, red eye stared beyond. It stared fixedly, unwinkingly, into space. So always the nurse watched the dull, white eye, which showed the approach of death.

No one in the ward was fond of Rochard. He had been there only a few hours. He meant nothing to any one there.  He was a dying man, in a field hospital, that was all. Little stranger Rochard, with one blind, red eye that stared into Hell, the Hell he had come from. And one white, dying eye, that showed his hold on life, his brief, short hold. The nurse cared for him very gently, very conscientiously, very skilfully. The surgeon came many times to look at him, but he had done for him all that could be done, so each time he turned away with a shrug. Fouquet, the young orderly, stood at the foot of the bed, his feet far apart, his hands on his hips, and regarded Rochard, and said: “Ah! La la! La la!” And Simon, the other orderly, also stood at the foot of the bed, from time to time, and regarded Rochard, and said: “Ah! C’est triste! C’est bien triste! (It’s sad! It’s very sad!)”

So Rochard died, a stranger among strangers. And there were many people there to wait upon him, but there was no one there to love him. There was no one there to see beyond the horror of the red, blind eye, of the dull, white eye, of the vile, gangrene smell. And it seemed as if the red, staring eye was looking for something the hospital could not give. And it seemed as if the white, glazed eye was indifferent to everything the hospital could give. And all about him was the vile gangrene smell, which made an aura about him, and shut him into himself, very completely. And there was nobody to love him, to forget about that smell.

He sank into a stupor about ten o’clock in the morning, and was unconscious from then till the time the nurse went to lunch. She went to lunch reluctantly, but it is necessary to eat. She instructed Fouquet, the orderly, to watch Rochard carefully, and to call her if there was any change. After a short time she came back from lunch, and hurried to see Rochard, hurried behind the flamboyant, red, cheerful screens that shut him off from the rest of the ward. Rochard was dead.

At the other end of the ward sat the two orderlies, drinking wine.

PARIS,  15 April 1916.

Originally published in The Backwash of War: The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse (1916). It was republished as "Alone" in the Library of America.