Now all roads lead to France and heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead returning lightly dance.
Edward Thomas, Roads

Monday, May 6, 2024

Musée Jean et Denise Letaille, Bullecourt 1917: Not High-Techy But Top-of-the-Line




Bullecourt 1917  is a French museum located in Bullecourt about 12 miles southeast of Arras. Two major attacks by British and Australian forces were mounted nearby as part of the broader Battle of Arras in the spring of 1917. At the end of the battle, the Allies retained a small part of the Hindenburg Line but it was of no tactical significance. 17,000 Allied soldiers perished in the two Battles of Bullecourt. The British Army subsequently focused its attention on the battles in Flanders for the remainder of 1917.









For more than 30 years the former Mayor of Bullecourt, Mr Jean Letaille OAM, and his wife Denise, collected weapons, machinery and other war relics left behind in nearby fields by Australian, British and German soldiers during the War.While he was Mayor, Jean created a small museum in the Town Hall to display many of these items, before relocating them to his barn and stable in 1995.









For many years Jean and Denise warmly welcomed thousands of visitors, particularly Australians, whose ancestors fought at Bullecourt during the war. Sadly Jean passed away in March 2012 and Denise a few years earlier. Before his death, Jean donated his unique collection and part of his property to the local community to allow for the major redevelopment of the museum in 2011–2012. The project was jointly funded by both the French authority, the Conseil Régional Nord-Pas de Calais, and the Australian Government. The updated museum officially opened on Anzac Day 2012.









The refurbished Museum retains the structural features of the original barn and stable. However, the interior has been converted to accommodate modernized displays.  The current "look", however, is much in the spirit of those old-fashioned types of military museums that prioritized presenting a lot of interesting stuff.  Bullecourt 1917 does provide audio guides in French and English, but generally eschews the interactive stations, multimedia technology, and immersive gadgets embraced by other military museums.


About the Surrounding Battlefields:

Over the years, we have published a number of articles touching on the fighting around Bullecourt.  Click HERE to access those articles.  If you visit Bullecourt, plan on spending the better part of a day visiting the museum, the battlefield sites, the memorials on the battlefield and in-town, and the cemeteries at nearby Écoust-Saint-Mein.


Finding Musée Jean et Denise Letaille, Bullecourt 1917:

Located via rue d’Arras, Bullecourt

Open from Tuesday to Sunday, 1.30pm to 5.30pm

October to March and 10.00am to 12.30pm and

1.30pm to 6.00pm April to September.


Sources:  The Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs; Arras & Artois; Google Maps 

Sunday, May 5, 2024

Working Together: German-Turkish Military Relations During the War


By Col. William T. Anderson, USMCR (Ret.)

I have been translating Col. Friedrich Freiheer Kreß von Kressenstein's (1870–1948) WWI diary, edited by Winfried Baumgart (2004)," as part of my project to write a biography of Lt. Col. (Ret.) Josef Bischoff. Bischoff commanded the Turkish Camel Regiment in the Sinai Campaign of 1916. 



These particular passages of the author’s introduction are very interesting and provide a rare glimpse into coalition warfare in the Great War: 

"Kreß was a member of the German Military Mission in Turkey, which had a total of around forty officers and was involved in the reform of the Turkish army. The number was increased by members of the German Afghan expedition and by German colonial officers. Kreß' judgment of his comrades was scathing, especially of the members of the last two categories. But he also considered the regular cadre to be 'by no means first-class, either socially or in terms of their service'. Many had fallen on hard times and had been deported to Turkey because of their debts, for example. Kreß condemned the officers of the former Afghan expedition, especially because of their alcoholic excesses. 

"In his memoirs, he accuses those who were responsible for sending such elements abroad: They had 'sinned grievously against our cause.' Another category of unpleasant comrades for him were 'the North German brothers'.” Their brusqueness of manner had already made an unpleasant impression on him earlier in southern Germany, and in the Orient, where people are "so terribly sensitive," they would have had an adverse effect.



Kreß (Seated Center) with His Turkish-German
Staff in Gaza, 1916


For Kreß, the prototype of this type of officer was General Erich von Falkenhayn, who was called to the Palestinian theater of war in July 1917. In his book Mit den Türken zum Suezkanal (With the Turks to the Suez Canal), Kreß elegantly ignores the general's "rough edges." In his memoirs presented here, he portrays him as an adventurer and gambler. He was the typical representative of the Prussian general staff school who believed that he could "achieve and enforce everything with a strong will and stubbornness." He had imagined that he had gotten to know the Orient and the Orientals well enough during his stay in China in the Boxer War. When the German officers in Palestine had tried to make it clear to him that "even with the strongest will" one could not stand up to the "Oriental passive resistance," he had described them as "already completely stupid" and simply replied flippantly: "Why haven't you trained them better during the three years you've been here."

Later, Baumgart comments on relationships with Turks:

"Kreß described it as a serious mistake that German and Turkish officers were deployed together. The conditions for this were simply not right. It was particularly bad that the German officers emphasized their sense of superiority over their Turkish comrades. The German colonial officers, in particular, let this slip: They regarded the Turks as their coolies. On the other hand, the Germans' service in the Turkish army was made more difficult by the fact that their Turkish superiors were much younger than themselves and had little practical experience and scientific training. Kreß points out that the Turkish Minister of War, Enver, was only 30 years old in 1915 compared to his own 45 years. The two “Djemals” ("the Great" and "the Little"), for whom he was chief of staff, were also several years younger than him.

As for the level of training of Turkish officers, Kreß did not speak well of them at all. The main obstacle to cooperation was the great jealousy of the Turks, with which they resisted any real or imagined interference by the Germans in what they called internal affairs. There was also a widespread rumor that the Germans intended to appropriate Palestine as a German colony after the war. The fact that, in addition to many German colonial officers, the former governor of Togo, Duke Friedrich zu Mecklenburg, was also sent to the Turkish battlefield, fueled the rumor.

(Editor's note: Late in the war, Kreß, in command of a small mission, was sent to Georgia, where he helped resist the Red Army. He retired from the German army in 1929 and died in Munich in 1948.)

Sources: Col. Friedrich Freiheer Kreß von Kressenstein's WW1 Diary, edited by Winfried Baumgart (2004); Library of Congress (photo)


Saturday, May 4, 2024

The Food Was Great on RMS Lusitania, But. . . (Video)


This Video includes a lot of fascinating details about the doomed ship's last voyage. MH

Friday, May 3, 2024

Battlecruisers: A Failed Concept


HMS Hood — The Most Famous Battlecruiser


By John Beatty

The Cruiser Revolution, as I call it, was a misnomer. It’s my term, I can call it what I want. But the cruiser-type warships that are best known today simply fell into a category between the battleships on top and the destroyers on the bottom. They’ve been collectively called “cruisers” frankly out of habit, not any requirement. It’s how our language evolves.

Britain planned and built the first battlecruisers as large armored cruisers.

Built in parallel with Dreadnaught in 1905–06, Inflexible was 20 feet longer, had the same guns, was ten to 15 knots faster, and could cruise farther than Dreadnaught. Her biggest booster, John “Jackie” Fisher, First Lord of the British Admiralty, saw the potential for these big, fast, not-quite battleships, and ordered more.

The term “battlecruiser” was a press invention.

Fisher’s notion was to call the types either “large armored ships” or “Inflexibles.” Once the press got wind of the type, it was only a matter of time—1912 to be precise—before a reporter or editor coined “battle cruiser,” which became “battlecruiser” by 1915. That convenience soon became a problem, because it became hard to distinguish between a battleship and a battlecruiser, which were from the inside very different.


HMS Inflexible — First Battle Cruiser


The reason for the speed and range was less armor.

Inflexible was a little bigger than a contemporary battleship, much lighter, had similar power plants, and similar crew requirements. She would take up the same dockyard space, as much food, and as much anything else as a battleship. Battlecruisers needed the same resources the battleships did, but couldn’t fight with them. But they were faster and had a greater range. Why were they around, then?

The battlecruiser’s primary role was to catch armored cruisers and fast merchant cruisers.

After that, they were to be “cruiser killers,” sweeping before the battle fleet and denying those scouting vessels the chance to observe the main body. All of this, of course, was worked out before any of them fired a shot in anger; before 1914. As the Germans, then the Japanese, then the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians jumped on the battlecruiser bandwagon, the missions became…muddled. While there were still armored cruisers, these were becoming more battleship-like in all but size and name; the American types were the size of Dreadnaught. Furthermore, those fast merchant cruisers had that annoying submarine and mine problem to deal with…and they weren’t faster than warships anymore. By the time WWI began, all the major belligerents had battlecruisers, but few knew exactly what to do with them. There was much speculation, but no practice or doctrine.

Then came Coronel.

As I talked about before, two German armored cruisers and three light cruisers making their way out of the Pacific encountered a British squadron off the coast of Chile on 1 December 1914 and made mincemeat out of it. Word swiftly reached England, and the RN dispatched a small squadron of battlecruisers to the Falklands. They were to intercept the German squadron, which was the first and last time that battlecruiser-specific mission was undertaken. On 8 December 1914, Invincible, Inflexible and their light and armored cruiser consorts caught the German squadron as it was trying to attack Port Stanley. The ensuing battle was as one-sided as Coronel had been the month before, only this time, the Germans got the stick end of the battle. There were 2000 German casualties to Britain’s less than 30. The German armored cruisers sank, as did two of the three light cruisers. The German survivor was scuttled off Chile three months later.

The Falkland Islands battle was the zenith of the battlecruiser concept.

After that, there was a great confusion about battlecruisers with pretty much everyone. While the British had used theirs in their unique role once, the other powers would have no such opportunity. The Falklands battle was unique: an isolated squadron of obsolescent warships trying to get home because the mission they were dispatched for vanished with their bases. Their betters outgunned them. But Germany would have no such opportunity. Nor would Japan or Austria-Hungary. And the British? The United States interned most of the fast German merchant ships—that could have become those dreaded merchant cruisers that the RN feared—at the beginning of the war. Now what to do with the battlecruisers?


HMS Invincible
Victor at the Falklands, Victim at Jutland


They joined the fleets.

While at first no one thought much of it—just more hulls roaming the North Sea—at Jutland in May 1916, the phrase “eggshells armed with hammers” came to mind. Three  British battlecruisers—Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Invincible—blew up in succession, and a fourth, Beatty's flagship Lion, was the most damaged ship to survive the battle, causing their admiral (a distant cousin of mine) to grumble, “there’s something wrong with our bloody ships today,” or something like that. Guns they had; speed and range they had, but armor they didn’t have. That afternoon in the North Sea, fate only decided two things: battlecruisers had no place in the battle line, and Russia was doomed to have a revolution (an entirely different discussion).

The Great War didn’t end the battlecruisers…entirely.

The Washington Naval Conference didn’t distinguish between a battlecruiser and a battleship. By then the distinction was minor, for the latest classes of battlecruisers were almost the same as the latest “fast superdreadnought” battleships, the first generation of which appeared at Jutland. Many of the ships sacrificed by the treaties were battlecruisers (two unfinished US battlecruiser hulls became aircraft carriers). The Japanese rebuilt most of their battlecruisers into fast battleships. Great Britain kept several, including HMS Hood, which would fall to Bismarck in May 1941, and Repulse, which would sink with battleship Prince of Wales in December 1941.

The Americans built and deployed the last operational battlecruisers.

The Alaska class of cruisers was an afterthought, sort of. Even during their planning, some people wanted to divert the resources to aircraft carriers. Intended as a “cruiser-killer” in some ways, Alaska and her sister Guam deployed to the Pacific and spent most of their time escorting the fast carriers. Towards the end of the Pacific War, the pair joined other surface units hunting Japanese merchant ships off the China coast. Other than coastal bombardment and antiaircraft fire, neither vessel fired a shot in anger at an enemy combatant. They are mostly known for their controversial designations: large cruiser or battlecruiser? The world may never know. 


USS Guam — American Battlecruiser


But the traditional all-gun heavy cruisers now are mostly obsolescent, replaced by missile cruisers and other types of surface combatants. The Cruiser Revolution ended far from where it started, but with far fewer types, yet having had a role in changing surface naval warfare.  The battlecruiser was obsolete by 1945, though the Americans continued to build “large cruisers” that were easily mistaken for battlecruisers, depending on who you talk to. 


Read John Beatty's latest book The Fire Blitz: Burning Down Japan, the the story of how an unconventional general named Curtis LeMay figured out how to use the B-29 to execute a plan to end a war. Click HERE to order.

Thursday, May 2, 2024

Civilians Escaping from Occupied France


Citizens of Occupied Lille Checking the War News


From James E. Connolly's The Experience of Occupation in the Nord, 1914-1918

The weight of occupation, especially being forced to work against one’s country, was too much to bear for certain individuals. They took evasion a step further and attempted to escape the occupied area entirely, mostly in order to join the Allied armies and aid the war effort. Such a response to occupation was fairly widespread and occurred throughout the conflict. In Douai, in just two months of 1917, about 150–200 men succeeded in crossing the Belgian then Dutch borders, for which the town was punished.  A Jesuit priest allegedly helped these men, giving them false laissez-passer – he was responsible for aiding 500 men to get to Holland before being denounced and imprisoned.  Denunciations of those involved in such resistance were relatively commonplace. 

Occasionally, the Germans used agents-provocateurs who claimed to be passeurs offering safe passage to Holland, only to arrest and imprison the men who took up the offer. This led to the arrest of over seventy Frenchmen in Denain. However impressive such numbers may be, they never reached the heights of the Belgian analogue. About 32,000 Belgians managed to reach the army of the Yser via Holland, despite similar problems of denunciations – although their journey was shorter. 

Priests also played a role in Denain,  and Cambrai, where, in February 1917, ‘lots of young people are trying to reach French lines via Holland; they travel at night. To this end there exists a secret organisation; these young people hide in the day in presbyteries and the priests receive them and help their evasion.’  These clergymen engaged in acts of national solidarity and resistance. Holland was central to any escape – apart from one story of forced labourers at the front making their way towards the British during an advance  – and was also one of the major territories for spies during the war.

German ordinances hint at an authority responding to and attempting to gain control of a genuine problem. In Valenciennes, a poster of October 1915 highlighted cases of attempted escape. The occupiers attributed such attempts to ‘the fear of exposing themselves, at the conclusion of peace, to severe punishments from French authorities for having failed to enter, presently, in the service of the army’. The German authority stated that no military tribunal could legally or morally make such a judgement and that it was ‘persuaded that the intelligence and good sense of the population will energetically oppose these erroneous and unreasonable ideas and serve to prevent any attempt to evade [German] inspection in the interests of those men called up for inspection’.  In reality, attempts to escape were likely motivated more by a genuine desire to join the French army or simply to reach unoccupied France than by a fear of post-war French judicial reprisals. Some men felt it was their duty to at least try to join the army; other occupés occasionally looked down on those who had made no attempt. Rapatriés from Caudry bemoaned that with the number of men of fighting age (mobilisables) remaining there, two whole army divisions could be formed.  Similarly, Blin noted in February 1918:

Too many mobilisables having not succeeded in leaving our region have  accepted too easily a situation that shelters them from the dangers of war […] The duty was to try to reach England via Holland. Cross [the border] or get captured; the means to evade have not been lacking and many ‘decided men’ have done so.


German Occupiers of a Damaged French Village


Further sources suggest that leaving the occupied area was easier than might be expected. The Times reported that its own correspondent left occupied France via Belgium and Holland in December 1914, by bribing Germans.  However, in 1917, rapatriés from Valenciennes, Saint-Saulve and Anzin complained that the copies of Le Petit Journal and Le Matin which occasionally appeared in the occupied area sometimes detailed the ruses people used to escape. These publications implied that doing so was easy, involving (like the Times journalist) a simple bribe to German sentries. The result was an increase in the number of sentries, making escape harder in reality.  Indeed, a clandestine letter sent to London in 1916 stated that although many men attempted to escape to Belgium, only some succeeded – the rest were ‘killed like rabbits’, every week.  Some certainly were: in Douai, a man tried to leave the occupied area by dressing as a woman but was shot dead at Hénin-Liétard.  A handful of people received (sometimes posthumous) honorary compensation from the French Government after the war for such attempts. 

Those wishing to reach unoccupied France were aided by passeurs, who were not always perceived as unequivocal resisters and who were often held in suspicion by the population, like fraudsters – some were fraudsters. This scepticism extended to non-occupied French authorities: M. Aliotte from Vieux-Condé helped young men reach Holland during the occupation and was subsequently nominated for the Médaille de la Reconnaissance Française after the war; his case was rejected, as, despite his courageous conduct concerning such men, he had also been imprisoned for fifteen months for theft!  Others were considerably more respectable, such as Princess Marie de Croÿ of Bellignies.  Whatever their motives, these guides also helped to transport an even more dangerous ‘cargo’: Allied servicemen.

 

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Le monument aux morts de l'Armée d'Orient et des terres lointaines at Marseille




MONUMENT TO THE ARMY DEAD  IN THE EAST AND DISTANT LANDS


The monument to the Army Dead of the Orient and the Distant Lands, or Porte d'Orient, is a First World War memorial located at the Kennedy Corniche on the Marseille shoreline. The Armée d'Orient was the designation of the French force deployed on the Salonika (Macedonian) Front that was the largest component of the multi-national force deployed there. The Allied units eventually came under overall French command. 


Details Viewed from the South

On 29 September 1918, this sector was the location of the first armistice requested by one of the Central Powers—Bulgaria—at the conclusion of the war. At the base of the monument, which was dedicated in 1927, are supplemental plaques that honor France's later fallen in North Africa and Indochina. The French sacrifices in 1915's Gallipoli campaign by the Corps Expeditionnaire d'Orient  don't seem to have a special mention but might be included within the "distant lands" scope of the monument.


Victory


The monument, designed by architect Gaston Castel (1888–1971) and sculptor Antoine Sartorio (1885–1988), features a bronze statue surrounded by a white granite arch. The designers proposed a site on a promontory  overlooking the Mediterranean to remind visitors that Marseille is the gateway to the Orient. The massive arch has a crescent and a star in its center, and the intrados are decorated with stylized palm leaves. It is flanked on either side by full-length figures commemorating the land army and that of the air combatants, while two female figures with massive wings, placed on the fruit of the jambs, represent their heroism. On a base, in the center of the arch, stands the bronze Victory, her arms outstretched toward the sky. On the sides of the arch are inscribed the names and dates of the major campaigns of the First World War. 


            Plaques Remembering the 1918 Armistice and Later Additions for                           North Africa  and Indochina


The name Armée d'Orient has a long historic pedigree for France, applied to three expeditionary forces:

  • Armée d'Orient (1798), the French task force sent by the French Directory under Bonaparte for an invasion of Egypt in 1798
  • Armée d'Orient (1853), the unit sent by Napoleon III to the Crimean War
  • Armée d'Orient (1915–19), the French-led field army fighting in the Balkans during World War I




Tuesday, April 30, 2024

America Arms for a New Century: The Making of a Great Military Power


Click HERE to Order This Title


By James L. Abrahamson

Free Press, 1981

Reviewed by E.M.  Coffman


Originally Presented in the Journal of American History, March 1982

This author traces the modernization of America's armed forces between the Civil War and World War I, and focuses on technological and administrative innovations  In keeping with the American anti-military tradition, there is a stereotype of military men as self-interested, warmongering, altogether dangerous, and perhaps not quite sane people. They are, in a sense, aliens among us.  Another stereotype, much more rare these days, is that military leaders are heroes, towering on pedestals, impervious of the hopes and fears that make the rest of us normal. Both stereotypes enable their holders to avoid any serious effort to understand professional officers and their place in society.  While there are books written to sustain such beliefs, other writers have recognized military men as individuals who were not immune to the currents of their time. 

In America Arms for a New Century, James L. Abrahamson attempts to place the professional officers of the crucial 1880–1920 era in their proper context. Others have dealt with parts of this subject, but this scholarly soldier's approach is more comprehensive as he encompasses both the army and navy throughout the entire period in his study.


Elihu Root—Civilian Reformer of America's Military


During those four decades, the end of the frontier, the accelerating population shift from the farm and village to the city, and ventures into imperialism and European affairs brought about momentous changes in the American scene. Abrahamson argues that articulate officers were aware of what was going on and sought to change their institutions in order to meet properly the demands of these new situations. The reforms they recommended, he believes, were modest and based on realistic analyses of the circumstances until the very end of this period. 

Immediately after World War I, military leaders, caught up in the euphoria of victory, tried to float large, ambitious programs. They failed (deservedly so, the author says) because they misread not only the political temper but also the military situation of the nation.


General Emory Upton—Early Military Reformer


James L. Abrahamson (1937–2020) was an army colonel and professor of history at West Point.  As one might expect this book is sympathetic to the military, though it is by no means an apology.

E.M. Coffman

Monday, April 29, 2024

Another Time When the Ukraine Faced Occupation


Polish-Ukrainian Forces Parade in Kiev, 9 May 1920

After Germany's collapse, a national uprising broke out in Ukraine in November 1918. The National Directory, which took over Ukraine after a victorious uprising immediately understood the danger of the Bolshevik Revolution to its independence. War broke out when Lenin sent Red forces into Ukraine and southern Russia. Left alone as the Russian Civil War intensified on other fronts toward the end of 1919, the Nationalists sought an alliance with the newly created state of Poland, whose head, Marshal Józef Piłsudski also opposed the Bolsheviks' expansionist aims. Ukraine was also a tantalizing prize; its grain, coal, and industry would drive a Polish economic revival as part of an intended borderland federation; once again Poland would re-govern the vast lands once ruled by their powerful szlachta, or landed gentry.

In April 1920, Poland and Ukraine concluded a treaty in conjunction with a military convention. Piłsudski signed an agreement recognizing the Directory, headed by Semyon Petliura, as the legitimate authority of an independent Ukraine, in exchange for the return of eastern Galicia to Poland. Later conventions provided for combined military operations and the eventual withdrawal of Polish troops. Though operating at cross purposes, they were united in their goal of driving the Russians from Kiev, with their mutual obstacle being the Red Army.


The Red Army Recaptures Kiev, 13 June 1920

Two longstanding considerations drove Piłsudski's Ukrainian policy. First and foremost, no true state of Poland had existed from 1795 to 1918–the year Poland regained its independence at the end of the war. And second, as a consequence of the first issue, no legitimate frontier had separated the Russian-Polish borderlands for 123 years. Piłsudski was compelled to regain the Polish frontier territory lost to earlier partitions and wished to secure his new border with a Polish-dominated federation of states, which included Lithuania, Belarus, and an independent, though truncated, Ukraine. The coveted territory also included thousands of Jewish villages, known as shtetls, within a region that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea up to a depth of about 300 miles.

Suspecting a prompt Soviet attack on Poland, Piłsudski quickly organized and launched a preemptive strike into Ukraine on 25 April 1920. While pretending to entertain generous terms from the Soviets for settling the frontier dispute, Piłsudski gathered an army of roughly 300,000 soldiers along the eastern front and struck the Ukrainian capital with around 50,000 troops. His success in capturing Kiev was short-lived, though, as the invasion incited feelings of patriotism among Russian communists, liberals, conservatives, and ex-tsarist officers, who were willing to unite behind the Bolsheviks to drive their enemy from lands considered traditionally Russian. In early June, Semyon Budyonny's Red Cavalry penetrated the Polish lines, driving the Poles and Ukrainians from Kiev and eventually back to Polish territory toward Warsaw. The Ukrainian Nationalists resisted the expanding control by the Red Army until November 1921 when they were routed in a final action at Bazar. A new Polish government, without Piłsudski as head of state, abandoned its dream of an eastern buffer federation and the Ukrainian nationists.

The end of the Ukrainian-Soviet war saw the incorporation of most of the territories of Ukraine into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic which, on 30 December 1922, became one of the founding members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Sources: Library of Congress, CIA, and Wikipedia


Sunday, April 28, 2024

Where All Roads Led in October 1914





In the fall of 1914, the new German chief of staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, decided to make a major push to capture the Channel ports, since without them the British Army could neither be supplied nor evacuated, if that proved necessary. To accomplish, he directed two armies, his Fourth and Sixth, to Flanders. The Allies, still thinking on the scale of the Race to the Sea to date, were late in appreciating the size of this approaching German steamroller. They would find themselves outnumbered in the sector through the end of the year. The Allies, though, were able to improvise a mixed defending force of Belgian, French, British, and Indian Army troops. Their decisive action to foil the enemy's plan would be known at the "First Battle of Ypres," which, for our purposes here, excludes the fighting to the north along the Yser section, and to the south from around Armentiéres to the La Bassée Canal. The area would prove to be a unique and challenging battlefield.

Maj and Mrs. Holt's Battlefield Guide, Ypres Salient describes peculiar terrain around Ypres:

The area in which the British found themselves was known as "Flanders," a centuries-old word meaning "flooded land." The town itself sits on a wet plain astride a complex of waterways designed to drain the surrounding land. Beyond that, running in a broad sweep clockwise around Ypres from Passchendaele in the northeast via Messines in the south to beyond Kemmel in the southwest is a low ridge that puts the town at the centre of a natural amphitheatre.

After the desperate struggle of 1914, while the British Army held the town and some variable amount of the surrounding countryside, the Germans occupied the heights, which defined and constrained the "salient" surrounding Ypres and from which they would observe everything that moved in the Salient for much of the next four years.

In mid-October, it was the British cavalry that first saw the importance of the terrain around Ypres when they occupied the high ground to the south of the town. Shortly after, one of the newly arrived British divisions, the 7th, commanded by General Henry Rawlinson, was sent to join the British 3rd Infantry and 2nd Cavalry Divisions blocking the strategic Menin Road east of Ypres and found themselves looking at Passchendaele Ridge. Meanwhile, the Allies along the coast to the north fought off the German Fourth Army, commanded by the determined Duke of Württemberg. Suddenly, this most northern section of the Western Front was effectively shut down when the coastal area of Belgium was flooded. Deflected to the south, the Fourth Army would attack the British forces north of Ypres around a village called Langemark on 21 October. The Fourth Army, however, was made up of older reservists and a few battalions of youthful barely trained "student" battalions, who were ill prepared to go against entrenched British Regulars. In the latter part of the battle, the decisive moments would come farther south, in the center of the salient on either side of the Menin-Ypres Road.


The BEF Heading for Ypres

For this presentation, we will be focusing at the fighting in three key locations: Langemark in the north, Messines Ridge south of town, and east of Ypres, centering on the Menin Road. These dimensions of the battle overlap in both time and space, so our explanations here will necessarily be simplified to cover the big picture. The First Battle of Ypres seems maddeningly complex and chaotic to understand, filled with bad luck, missed opportunities, and startling heroics.

Source: St. Mihiel Trip-Wire, July 2021

Saturday, April 27, 2024

Remembering a Veteran: Volunteer James Rogers McConnell, Ambulance Driver & Aviator



McConnell, American Field Service Driver


James Rogers McConnell was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a prominent judge, in 1887. The family later moved to North Carolina. McConnell attended private schools throughout his childhood and went to college at the University of Virginia. He attended law school briefly and then worked in several business ventures back home in North Carolina.

A family friend described McConnell’s “adventurous spirit,” which led him to volunteer in 1915 for the American Ambulance Field Service, a volunteer ambulance corps newly founded by Americans in Paris that same year (later called the American Field Service or AFS). As an ambulance driver, McConnell gathered injured men from the battlefield and brought them for treatment to military field hospitals. After bravely serving for a year, he earned the distinguished Croix de Guerre medal from the French government for courage under fire.

Increasingly passionate about defending France, however, McConnell had begun to consider leaving the noncombatant ambulance service to enlist as a volunteer with the French military. The newly created Lafayette Escadrille provided him the opportunity to do so.


McConnell, Lafayette Escadrille


The Lafayette Escadrille was a group of American pilots serving with the French Air Service (Aéronautique Militaire) prior to the entry of the United States into the war. Authorized by the French government in the spring of 1916, the group was named in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, considered by many to be a French hero, who helped win the war for the American colonists during the American Revolution. The pilots wore fur-lined uniforms to keep them warm in the fragile planes, often going out on two-hour patrols.

Thirty-eight Americans served in the Lafayette Escadrille, many of whom became famous on the home front for their dangerous volunteer service. McConnell wrote a book about his experiences during the war titled Flying for France (1916); it helped Americans at home understand the kind of service they were doing overseas on the side of France and built support for the U.S. to enter the war.

Volunteering as a military pilot for France allowed McConnell to take sides in what he saw as a righteous cause. It also gave him the privilege of learning to fly. As he wrote about flying for the French Air Service in his book, “It was the beginning of a new existence, the entry into an unknown world. . . For us all it contained unlimited possibilities for initiative and service to France.”

Casualties in this type of volunteer service skyrocketed during the war, as air-to-air combat increased. McConnell’s plane was shot down on 19 March 1917, during aerial combat with two German planes. McConnell was killed just weeks before his government joined the Allied cause in Europe as a combatant nation.

Source: The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I, 1914-1919, AFS International

Friday, April 26, 2024

A Kansas World War I Memorial: The Rosedale Memorial Arch



By James Patton

The Kansas City metro area is justly famous for the magnificent Liberty Memorial and Tower, which sits on the Missouri side and includes the National World War I Museum. However, within sight of the Liberty Memorial there is another significant monument, this one to the Kansans who served in that war. The Rosedale Memorial Arch is a scaled-down copy of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. Although many such Romanesque victory arches were put up around the country after the war, most were temporary, made of plaster, but not this one. Today Rosedale is known as the home of the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC). It’s only a neighborhood in Kansas City, KS, now,  but it was an independent city from 1877 to 1922.

Shortly after the U.S. entered the war the various state units were reorganized into divisions made up of two infantry brigades, one artillery brigade and support troops. Although the final numbering scheme allotted to the National Guard was Divisions 26 through 75, there were only enough troops to staff 17, and the 42nd was made up of "leftover" units from 26 different states. At the urging of then-Major Douglas MacArthur, the 42nd was called the "Rainbow Division." The Kansas and Missouri National Guards were amalgamated into the 35th Division, but both states had an ammunition train, so the Rainbow Division got the 117th (ex-1st Kansas). Like many National Guard units, the 117th was under strength, so its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Frank L. Travis, placed "Men Wanted" ads in local newspapers and netted 375 volunteers that were sworn in on Mount Marty in Rosedale. 

The Rainbow Division came into existence in August 1917 with an authorized strength of 28,105 men and officers. In France they proved to be a first-class fighting division, ready for the toughest jobs, and they sustained 16,242 casualties. They came home in April 1919. 



On 12 May 1919, the city of Rosedale held a "Welcome Home" celebration for returning veterans. The streets were decorated with rainbow colored bunting, and Hudson Road was officially renamed Rainbow Boulevard (still is) in their honor. In 1921 the Kansas Legislature passed an authorization for municipalities to expend public funds, issue bonds, and levy taxes for the erection of permanent war memorials. Accordingly, a special election was held in Rosedale on 21 June 1921 seeking approval for “the establishment of a memorial park and the erection of an Arch at its entrance...The improvement will cost $25,000 for which bonds are to be issued..." The proposal carried by a vote of 129 to 77. John Leroy Marshall, a local architect and veteran, was engaged to design the memorial, and a tract of land on Mount Marty was selected. Also proposed was an athletic field 290 by 150 feet. Marshall's plans were quickly approved, and on 24 April 1922, condemnation was initiated for 5.2 acres of land to be acquired for $10,000. The Rosedale city council then passed an ordinance under the new law for the issuance of $25,000 of special improvement bonds. However, a back story was running concurrently: in 1913 a small majority in Rosedale had voted for consolidation with Kansas City, but the Rosedale city council had consistently refused to certify the results. However, in a surprise vote on 5 April 1922, the council did certify—Rosedale had 21 days before becoming part of Kansas City. The bond issue was rushed through and authorized one day before consolidation, but action by the state legislature on 24 February 1923 was still necessary to enable the city of Kansas City, KS, to issue the bonds.

The "groundbreaking" was held on 20 July 1923 to accommodate the schedule of French General Henri Gouraud (1867–1946), who was touring the country. The parade order was Gouraud and the VIPs first, followed by Ft. Leavenworth’s 17th Infantry (including band), an American Legion color guard carrying the standard of the 117th Ammunition Train, 200 or so 117th veterans and the color guards of area Legion posts. The route was decorated and the crowd numbered about 6,000. Many speeches followed a salute of 21 guns and the playing of the Marseillaise, then Gouraud’s address, through an interpreter, and he turned some dirt with a golden spade.

All this notwithstanding, the property purchase was not finalized until August, and construction not put out to bid until 15 March 1924. The arch was completed by September. It is 34' 6" high, 25' 5" wide, and 10' 5" deep at the base, each pillar is 10' 5" deep by 8' 3" wide. This is about one-fifth the size of the Paris arch. The arch opening is just under 10 ft. in width and 20 feet high. Each pillar rests on a separate concrete foundation extending down to solid rock. It is made of brick with a four-inch limestone facing, the brickwork varying in thickness from 21 inches at the base to nine inches at the top. The roof beneath the parapet is a reinforced concrete slab, and a drain pipe leads down the inside of one pillar to a tile pipe emptying out on the hillside below. A hatch in the roof allows interior access. Other than the moldings and entablature, decoration is minimal: each of the four spandrel panels of the arch contain a bas relief carving of a laurel branch surmounted by a shield of Columbia. There is a carved inscription repeated on both the north and south faces of the parapet, which reads as follows: 

ERECTED BY THE PEOPLE OF ROSEDALE IN HONOR OF ITS CITIZENS WHO ANSWERED THEIR COUNTRY'S CALL AND SERVED UNDER ARMS FOR THE TRIUMPH OF RIGHT OVER MIGHT IN THE WORLD WAR



The construction cost was $12,179, which with the land yielded a final cost well below the bond amount. The arch was finally dedicated on 7 September 1924, in a simple ceremony, and began a slow descent into obscurity. A football field was built south of the arch, then a stands (since demolished) in 1929. In 1935 the W.P.A. built a 750-ft. retaining wall around the stadium.  At a point just 82 ft. south of the arch this wall was nearly 22 ft. high. 

Access to the monument was restricted, and the city refused to maintain the property. For the next 30 years a jungle grew up around the arch. In 1962, civic groups cleared the site and had it rededicated to the veterans of all wars. Eventually a tablet with names inscribed was added to the site. In 1968, an urban renewal agency proposal to move the arch was blocked, flood lights were installed by the Rosedale Business Association, and the city built a road up to the arch, at last an acknowledgement of city responsibility. In 1976, the city paved the road and added a small parking area, a walk and steps to a circular plaza built around the base of the arch, two overlooks, and a professional lighting system.



Recently, the 42nd Division Veteran’s Association has taken an interest in the site, and the city has installed ornamental lights along the access road. Due to vandalism, the site is gated and closed at night.

The Rosedale Memorial Arch was entered in the Register of Historic Kansas Places on 1 July 1977, the National Register of Historic Places on 2 August 1977, and as a Historic Landmark: 28 July 1982. At last, the arch has gained the dignity and prominence originally hoped for, visible by day and by night to the thousands of vehicles that travel along I-35 in the valley below, a source of pride rather than of shame. 

Sources: The Kansas Historical Society, the Kansas City, KS, Planning and Zoning Division, and the City of Westwood


Thursday, April 25, 2024

Remembrance: It's ANZAC Day Round the World



Brisbane, Australia, 25 April 1916


Thousands lost their lives during the Gallipoli campaign: 87,000 Ottoman Turks, 44,000 men from France and the British Empire, including 8500 Australians. Among the dead were 2779 New Zealanders, about one in six of those who served on Gallipoli.  Citizens of the two nations, at home and abroad, gather to remember the fallen on ANZAC Day,  the anniversary of the initial landings at  Gallipoli, 25 April 1915.  and thousands make a pilgrimage to the site of the original landings at ANZAC Cove for a sunrise service each year.


New Zealanders Parade in London, 25 April 1916


On its first anniversary in 1916, Anzac Day was commemorated in different ways around Australia. All states held a commemorative service, after which Gallipoli veterans and new enlistees (volunteers for the war) would march down the streets of their town or city. Most states then held festivities of some kind in the evening. In Victoria Anzac Day focused on raising money for soldiers through big celebrations.

Anzac Sunrise Ceremony, U.S. WWI Memorial, 2022


In New South Wales the Lord Mayor of Sydney spent £1000 on lighting public buildings but was criticised by families of soldiers who had died. However, many returned soldiers wanted the day to be as happy as possible, as they felt that this was what the Anzacs who died would have wanted.


Berlin, Germany, 2023


In London 2000 Anzacs marched through the streets and were cheered by the locals, before attending a commemorative service. Anzacs in Egypt attended a morning commemoration and then played cricket, swam in ‘a great Aquatic (swimming) Carnival’, attended a concert and watched a play about the ANZAC landing.


Dawn Service, North Beach at Anzac, 2018


In 1927 Anzac Day became a public holiday in every Australian state for the first time. By the mid-1930s many of the rituals that are now practiced on Anzac Day were created. These included dawn vigils, marches, two minutes’ silence, memorial services, wreath-laying ceremonies and reunions. The most sombre (serious and sad) ceremonies took place in Queensland, under the leadership of military Chaplain David Garland. Garland’s sombre forms of commemoration would become the most common by the 1930s.


Sydney, Australia, 2023


New Zealanders also demanded some form of remembrance on the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. This became both a means of rallying support for the war effort and a public expression of grief – for no bodies were brought home. On 5 April 1916 a half-day holiday for 25 April was gazetted, and church services and recruiting meetings were proposed. The New Zealand Returned Soldiers' (later Services') Association, in cooperation with local authorities, took a key role on the day, organising processions of servicemen, church services and public meetings. The form of the ceremony on 25 April was gradually standardized.


Auckland, New Zealand, 2023


Sources:  Numerous Australian and New Zealand historic and news sites were drawn on for this article.