A Gallery of Warriors: Paintings and Photos

 

Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg, Commanded
an Army Group at War's End

Raoul Lufbery Legendary Ace of the Lafayette Escadrille
and U.S. Air Service, by Leroy Baldridge

Soldat Jean-Louis Rouly, 138th Inf. Rgt,
Grandfather of Roads Contributor Olivier Pierrard (Insert)

Cpl. Harold Roberts,  KIA 1918, Argonne Sector, First
U.S. Tank Corps Member to Receive the Medal of Honor

Alan Seeger, French Foreign Legion, KIA 4 July 1916

General Leman, Defender of Liège

Stood and Fought at Le Cateau

Victor Chapman, Lafayette Escadrille

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck,
Lion of Africa

Mustafa Kemal in Janissary Uniform

Adrian Carton de Wiart, Veteran of the Boer War and
Both World Wars

Sergeant Georgiy Zhukov, Future Soviet Marshal

The Restoration of Lafayette’s Memorial Wreath

By James Patton

The Wreaths of Lafayette's Tomb

The wreath shown above was not the one laid by Gen. Pershing on 4 July 1917 at Lafayette's Tomb in Picpus Cemetery, Paris. On that day, on  his behalf, his Chief Disbursing Officer Col. Charles E. Stanton (1858–1933) delivered the stirring "Lafayette we are here!" speech (Nous voilà, Lafayette). A floral wreath was laid that day and Pershing  rendered a salute. 

 

In December, soon after his arrival, President Wilson made a similar visit to Lafayette's Tomb and the Saint Louis Dispatch Journal reported: “Entirely unannounced, the President drove to the old Picpus Cemetery, where the amazed gatekeeper was almost too flustered to unlock the gates when he learned who his caller was.” 

Dr. Cary T. Grayson, who was also present, wrote in his diary: "The President removed his hat, entered the tomb, carrying a large floral wreath composed with oak leaves and laurels which he had arranged for. In the center, he had attached his personal card on the back of which he had written with his own handwriting: “In memory of the Great Lafayette, from a fellow Servant of Liberty, Woodrow Wilson. December 1918.” As the president placed the wreath on the tomb, he bowed his head and stood silent before the resting place of the famous Frenchman who helped America in her fight for liberty.

President Wilson and Premier Clemenceau

In the course of his many months in France, President Wilson decided he wished to make the gesture permanent, and he commissioned French sculptor Auguste Seyesses to create a bronze replica of his wreath, plated in gold. This  metal  wreath was laid in front of Lafayette’s tomb by President Wilson on 8 June 1919, shortly before the conclusion of the Versailles Conference. Wilson paid for the bronze creation himself (“It cost me a pretty penny”).  The inscription reads exactly like that of his earlier wreath: "To the Great Lafayette, from a fellow Servant of Liberty", Woodrow Wilson, December 1918. 

One hundred and three years passed. On a biking excursion in Paris, two members of the Society of Cincinnati, American student John Beall and his host, Yorick de Guichen, visit Picpus Cemetery. They noticed a weathered metal plaque  behind and detached from the tomb, —one part was missing.  They came to  realize it is a wreath and learned its story. They decided they had a mission to restore President Wilson's wreath. Eventually, their organization, the Society of Cincinnati, the Curator of Picpus Cemetery, and the Military Governor of Paris combined resources to restore the wreath, and it was rededicated on 5 July 2022.

Considering the value of the metal content, it’s amazing that it’s still there. It was restored in July 2022 to like-new condition by the Society of the Cincinnati (the oldest hereditary organization in America) to honor the marquis, who was a member.

Lafayette's Tomb without the Wilson Wreath

What Is the Society of the Cincinnati? 

Founded in 1783 by Gen. Henry Knox (1750–1806), the society is named for the Roman soldier and statesman Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519–430 BCE), who is regarded as a model of civic virtue and devotion to duty. The first president was George Washington, and the second was Alexander Hamilton. Full membership was originally restricted to officers who served with the Continental Army or who died while in service (including eligible foreigners), then to their direct male heirs according to primogeniture, or their collateral heirs (if there are no direct heirs), but there can be only one member at a time from a hereditary line, even though there may be more than one eligible heir. 

July 2022 Re-dedication Ceremony

U.S. President Franklin Pierce (1804–69) was a direct heir; the British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was a collateral heir through his American mother Jennie (née Jerome) Spencer-Churchill (1854–1921), and Sir Winston’s great-grandson is a current member. 

Twenty-three signers of the U.S. Constitution and five Nobel Peace Prize laureates were hereditary members. Additionally, hundreds of VIPs have been made honorary (non-voting) members, including an additional 15 U.S. presidents, the most recent being George H.W. Bush. 

Lafayette's Tomb Today

Is there a connection between the society and the city in Ohio? Yes. In 1790, a member of the society, Maj. Gen. Arthur St. Clair (1737–1818), the governor of the 1787 Northwest Territory renamed Losantiville, a settlement on the Ohio River, as Cincinnati in honor of the society. 

Source: "What Two Giants of History Say to Each Other in Silence," The Society of the Cincinnati, 2022

Why Was Admiral John Jellicoe Dismissed As First Sea Lord?

Admiral Sir John Jellicoe (1869–1935)

Canadian Naval Historian Robert L. Davison provides some context on the embarrassing Christmas Eve 1917 firing of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe:

Indeed, in the crucial year of 1917 the Admiralty seemed paralysed in the face of unrestricted submarine warfare. . .The experience of the Great War was profoundly traumatic for the RN's executive officer corps. Before 1914, forces associated with the ongoing revolution in naval affairs had exerted considerable pressure on naval officers. Despite these forces that altered, and even challenged, the status of executive officers, self-confident assertions about the corps' fitness to command remained untested. That changed with the outbreak of war in 1914. Professional officers were faced with a conflict dramatically different from what had been expected. The war presented innumerable tasks that did not involve exercising command from the bridge of a man-of-war. For these demands, officers were not well prepared. The result was intense frustration, and the claims made by officers were exposed to searching criticism not merely from outside the profession but also from within.

The incapacity of the Admiralty machinery and the senior executive officers to deal with the reality of industrialized warfare caused a crisis of confidence that was not confined to parliament or public opinion but also extended into the [officer] corps itself.

The loss of confidence in the legitimacy of the [1917] Jellicoe regime resulted in a letter of dismissal from First Lord of the Admiralty Eric Geddes to the first sea lord on Christmas Eve 1917. Vice-Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss replaced Jellicoe as first sea lord. A temporary crisis among the remaining sea lords was averted, and they were persuaded to stay on. Jellicoe went on half pay and was not employed again.

Alarm in the Press

But why, specifically, was one of the world's most notable naval leaders chosen to "Walk the Plank"? I've gathered some ideas about this from the sources listed below. In the aggregate, though, they seem to describe a situation in which it was simply time for the good admiral to go.

1.  The most widely stated reason is his reluctance to support the convoy system, which was strongly supported by the Lloyd George government, a large number of proponents within the Royal Navy, and key admirals like the Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet, David Beatty, and the U.S. Navy—as represented by its senior officer in Europe, Admiral William Sims.

Admiral Jellicoe's memoirs make patently clear his very traditional and limited understanding of what exactly “defeating the U-boats” meant. “Our object,” he wrote, …was to destroy submarines at a greater rate than the output of the German shipyards. This was the surest way of counteracting their activities. It was mainly for the purpose of attack on the submarines that I formed the Anti-Submarine Division of the Naval Staff." His thinking about defeating the U-boats was limited to a hunt-and-destroy strategy.

Eric Geddes and David Lloyd George

2.  The admiral had a strained and deteriorating relationship with both Prime Minister David Lloyd George and First Lord of the Admiralty Geddes. His distinguished reputation and the distractions of the 1917 land campaigns for his superiors possibly kept him in office too long. 

3.  Jellicoe's pessimistic and somewhat contagious frame of mind made it across the Atlantic and into history books when after his first meeting with Sims, the American cabled to Washington, “Briefly stated, I consider that at the present moment we are losing the war.”

4.  Neither a bureaucratic in-fighter nor a visionary

The British Admiralty of World War I was, to expand on Professor Davison's point above, and to use fellow naval historian Michael Simpson’s phrase, a “creaking giant” that was organizationally incapable of visualizing the U-boat problem. A report by the American novelist Winston Churchill (no relation to the prime minister) to President Wilson on the state of the Admiralty cited by Simpson was scathing on this score:

I have become convinced that the criticism of the British Admiralty to the effect that it has been living from day to day, that it has been making no plans ahead, is justified. The several Sea Lords are of the conservative school, and they have been so encumbered by administrative and bureaucratic duties that they have found insufficient time to decide upon a future strategy. The younger and more imaginative element of that service has not been given a chance to show its powers, nor has it been consulted in matters of strategy. . . . [T]he Admiralty is still suffering from the inertia of a tradition that clings to the belief that the British navy still controls the seas, and can be made to move but slowly in a new direction.

Sadly, the man whose strategic command at Jutland ensured surface dominance for the remainder of the war was the wrong man to take on the novel U-boat threat when it emerged.

Sources: "Jellicoe: Controversy and Dismissal", The Dreadnought Project; "The Royal Navy Executive Branch and the Experience of War", Robert L. Davison, The Northern Mariner, July 2005;  "U-boat Challenge—Convoy Solution", Jan S. Breemer, Over the Top, August 2017

Poilu Léopold Jules Maréchal's Book of Hours of the Great War, Part II: Maréchal’s War

Le Journal des Tranchées 

Working on Trench Defenses

By John Anzalone

French historian Laurent Gervereau notes the paradox inherent in the fact that soldier-artists seeking to bear witness to their war service often resorted to images that represented a quiet, humdrum war, without reference to real combat. In his record of his year and a half of front line service, Maréchal most frequently refers to simple experiences that readers of soldier memoirs will quickly recognize. He is hungry, always. He sleeps poorly and never enough. When not bored by the tedium of war, he confronts grave danger and fear, always with a quiet stoicism. Rarely moved to high emotion he speaks about violence and death in the matter of fact way of those for whom it has become a fact of life, and his text is accordingly discrete. 

But violence and death loom large and when they do appear in the narrative, Maréchal’s very reticence rises to an unusually resonant form of understatement. Here are two examples. In his first encounter with the enemy, there is the terse account of the cadaver of a dead soldier (identified as Old Mayer in the watercolor's inscription below) first seen under a walnut tree then buried the next day. 

The Corpse Under the Old Walnut Tree

 

The ruins give off a charred odor. And there’s another, more horrid smell, that of the corpses of those who were the first to fall, the soldiers of the 92nd. They are all around us, one in particular near the great walnut tree at the farm near Carmoye: he must have been on lookout behind that tree, but a bullet took him down. He fell with his backpack still on and his rifle in his convulsed hands. The poor devil is swollen and blue, with flies buzzing around him. In the fields that spread out behind us, we can see here and there splotches as red as poppies: the bodies of the dead, in their red trousers.

9th October, Friday night—at nightfall we are ordered to collect the bodies of two soldiers of the 92nd. One is the man under the big walnut tree, the other lies in the road just out in front of our trench. This is one of the most unpleasant chores. … We take all the pains in the world to load the bodies onto the stretchers using poles; given their advanced state of decay nobody wants to touch the corpses with their hands. Burial pits dug ahead of time receive the dead, all of them fully equipped—backpack, bayonet, cartridge belt around their mid-sections. We couldn’t take anything off of them because they were so bloated. I can still hear the sound—the metallic clatter—they made when they landed in their final resting place. 

The text relies for its evocative effect on color and sound: first the touches of red—that of the traditional “rouge garance” trousers—that help Maréchal discern the location of many more dead soldiers strewn across the fields; and then the metallic clatter the still fully equipped, bloated body makes as it is dropped into the makeshift grave. 

A second episode recounts the death during an artillery bombardment of a soldier named Salomon: 

         

Site of Salomon's Death

Once the bombardment is over, after 24 blasts and two double-blasts (I had time to count them), Boudon arrives; on his way to us he noticed the body of a comrade killed in a small dugout that had been gutted by a shell. He goes back to get a few men to help free the body of the unfortunate Salomon. The somber procession arrives, advancing clumsily down the narrow trench.

From far away I see a big red stain; the closer they get, the more the dreadful spectacle becomes clear. As they crowd in I manage to see the appalling scene close up. The whole top of the head has been sliced off horizontally just at the level of the eyebrows and the ears, as if with a saw. The inside of this poor head is completely empty and looks like the bottom of a red bowl! The face is completely blue, its deep creases filled with dust. The eyes are closed from the explosion.

I will never forget this spectacle, this poor face masking such emptiness…a pitiful mask and a gruesome image of war.

My comrade Wasseux, one of those who bore his body back, did something remarkably sensitive. He removed his long blue scarf and wrapped Salomon’s head in it, an act of decency to hide the horror.

 

Never Pass—Engraving at the Quarry by a French Soldier

This account too concludes with the similarly vivid details of a long blue scarf used to hide the horrific spectacle of the blood-stained, empty skull. Poignant details of this kind are scattered throughout the text; like shrapnel fragments, they tear holes in the “relative quiet” of quotidian routine.  Maréchal possesses above all the ability to bring his written narrative alive in the interplay of the narrative and the watercolors. These were executed on the spot fulfilling a goal he had set himself when he was mobilized: 

Compelled by the urge to draw, I brought along a small box of watercolors, pencils and a paintbrush. They made the entire Campaign with me and I never regretted having taken them; they allowed me to record my memories and gave substance to my notes by more accurately translating their spirit. What little I saw I described in writing, then I drew what I saw.

Sentry

Images then, are no mere accompaniment to the journal—they are its raison d’être. Maréchal sees his war as a series of pictures, in terms of colors, of moments, and especially of place, space and volume. Except for one extraordinary page in the manuscript devoted to mates from his unit, of whom he provides a set of expressive vignette portraits, individuals are usually seen from a distance, without identifiable physical or facial traits. 

Nor are there depictions of actual combat: the closest we come to a scene of warfare is in one of the nocturnal scenes at which Maréchal excels: the posing of a defensive wire structure known as a cheval de frise athwart a trench at the dramatic moment when a German flare has gone up. 

The majority of the drawings are of places, and these are rendered with such fidelity that local historians in the region of Montigny have been able to identify their exact locations, and to reconstruct from them Maréchal’s precise itinerary across the Oise sector until early 1916 when the manuscript abruptly comes to an end. The Machemontoise society now offers tours of that itinerary. 

Next:  In Part III of this series, to be presented on 4 April 2025, the aftermath of Maréchal's war service will be examined.

Part I of this series can be found HERE. 

3 April 25 NEWS!  The entire manuscript of Journal Des Tranchées  can now be viewed online HERE (in 4 sections) thanks to JSTOR.org.

About Our Contributor

John Anzalone is Professor of French and Media/Film Studies, Emeritus, at the Department of World Languages and Literatures, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY

Contact John at: janzalon@skidmore.edu

 

How Many Men, Animals, Guns and Vehicles Did an AEF Infantry Regiment Have?

78th Division Insignia

 

Statistical Summary: Maximum Strength

A Typical AEF Infantry Regiment

310th Infantry, 78th Division

Colonel Walter Babcock,
Commander, 310th Infantry

Every AEF Division had four infantry regiments. These divisions are referred to as "Square Divisions" in contrast to the smaller U.S. divisions of World War II that had three infantry regiments. This summary shows the staffing and equipment allocated to a typical infantry regiment of the AEF.

Total Manpower 

Officers of the 310th Infantry Regiment

Company K of the Regiment

      All Categories  3822

Total Officers    112

               Enlisted, All Ranks  3720

  Sergeants, All Ranks 179

   Corporals 453

      Cooks      64

Band 49

Blacksmiths, Mechanics, Saddlers, Waggoneers 161

   Buglers     26

Privates & PFCs 2725

Animals

Army Mules, Ready for Gas

     Horses      65

Mules 325

Arms and Equipment

Machine Gun Team

Wagons, All Types      118

    Bicycles     42

  Cars, Motor       1

    Gun, 1 pounder         3

  Guns, Machine, Heavy     16

   Mortars, Stokes       6

 Rifles 3200

    Rifles, Automatic     192

Sources and Thanks: This information found at DistantCousins.com a genealogical site with much help for researchers interested in military matters.

Recommended: Bruce Charlton Asks: How Great Was the Red Baron?

Richthofen in the Cockpit of an Albatross D.III with
His Squadron Mates

One of my favorite bloggers, Dr. Bruce Charlton, who writes on an amazing variety of topics, is also an aviation buff with a particular interest in the 1914–18 period. Three years ago, I presented his delightful article on Biggles. (HERE)

Recently, he explored the Richthofen legend and, as usual, has some interesting insights I hadn't previously thought about. These views and opinions, of course, are his. (I've have added some photos from my own collection, though.) MH

By Dr. Bruce Charlton

Manfred von Richthofen—the Red Baron—was the top-scoring ace in World War I, with 80 confirmed kills, a number that seems likely to be essentially valid.*  

The greatness of the Red Baron was always contested (or, at least, ambivalent) in the British air force—Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force*—both at the time and since, with people on both sides.

On the one side, Manfred von R was proven as a very good pilot and (perhaps even more important) an excellent marksman. 

On the other side, once he had become a German national hero, he fought with tremendous advantages that were not available to anybody else—especially not on the Allied side. 

The Red Baron was a combat theoretician and inspiring leader who devised methods for achieving successful results in combat under the most favorable conditions, with the minimum losses on his side. 

He would fly at high altitude with a very large "circus" of other scout (i.e. fighter) pilots—larger than any groupings that the Allies were using, so that von Richthofen would nearly always have the vital air combat advantages of height and outnumbering. 

As leader of this circus, MvR had several (not just one) other pilots "covering his tail," so he could concentrate on downing his chosen victim, without the usual (for the Allies) need to be vigilant. 

Furthermore, the Baron benefited from the usual German strategy of staying on the German side of the lines and waiting for the Allies to come to him. 

Also, he would usually avoid combat unless under favorable conditions (especially altitude advantage and numerical superiority). There was a relatively low threshold for breaking off an engagement if it was not going well or when altitude superiority had been lost, rather than fighting it out from a position of mere parity. 

Richthofen from Youth to Legend

What this amounted to is that the Red Baron was certainly an excellent fighter pilot and that his supremacy in numbers of kills was attained substantially because of his prolonged survival—and this was due to the unique advantages he fought under.

These advantages were necessarily obtained at the cost of limiting and reducing the combat effectiveness of the German air force in general and Richthofen's circus in particular. 

By contrast, the RFC (under the aggressive leadership of Hugh Trenchard) had a much higher-risk "offensive" strategy of seeking out the enemy and taking on other formations even when disadvantaged by being over enemy lines, at lower altitudes, and with fewer numbers. 

The Allied air forces were used primarily in support of the army (their primary role was reconnaissance and artillery ranging) and were often sacrificed to the needs on the ground. For example the RFC/RAF played a decisive role in containing the massive German counter-attack of March 1918 by close infantry support, bombing and strafing throughout daylight hours—at the cost of very heavy losses of men and machines, mainly to ground fire. 

In contrast, the German command seem to have regarded the Red Baron as providing most value to the war effort, as a national symbol of heroic individual prowess—his personal survival was therefore important, so he was undoubtedly protected.    

It is unsurprising that some RFC/RAF regarded von Richthofen's supreme numerical success as significantly "manufactured" and therefore artificial—despite his undoubted excellence as a fighting flyer. 

Kiosk at the Fatal Crash Site

This must have seemed confirmed when the Red Baron's death was caused by breaking his own rules of engagement (perhaps due to combat fatigue?) when he followed his intended victim across to the British side of the lines, alone, without anyone to guard his tail, down to a very low level, where he became vulnerable to rifle and machine gun fire. 

Yet these were fighting conditions that most RFC/RAF pilots were compelled to endure on a daily basis. 

In the event, it was some unclear combination of being attacked from behind by an Allied fighter, and/or ground fire, that led to the Red Baron's demise.  

The distinctive red Fokker Triplane came down on the Allied side of the lines, with Baron von Richthofen already dead (probably from a single bullet)—where his body was treated with respect by the RAF and accorded a full military funeral.

That night, some British pilots held a party in honor of the Red Baron and toasted his health. Others refused to participate—including the great Irish ace Mick Mannock, who was made very angry by his squadron's celebration.

In conclusion, I think both sides were correct. Manfred von Richthofen was a great leader, tactician, and ace. Also, the magnitude of his achievement was significantly manufactured and the result of unique privileges. 

BC Notes: 

*This post was stimulated by reading Aces Falling: War Above the Trenches, 1918 by Peter Hart (2008).

**The Royal Flying Corps was part of the British Army. Combined with the smaller Royal Naval Air Service, it became the first independent air military, the Royal Air Force, on 1April 1918—smack in the middle of the first massive German attack of that year.

Remembering a Veteran: Pvt. John DeWitt, 168th Infantry, 42nd Rainbow Division

Pvt. John DeWitt, Rainbow Division

Background

One day in 2020 Dr. John Chase was called to Lincoln, NE,  to help sort through his  grandfather's recently discovered wartime letters. His grandfather, John Dewitt, was a World War I veteran, and John's sister Abby had discovered the 80 long-forgotten letters written from various military posts and the battlefields of France. 

Reading them, Dr. Chase came to realize he did not know much about the nature of his grandfather's service — that he had the dangerous job of battalion runner, and that he had been gassed and wounded in one of the most dramatic moments of the war in the Second Battle of the Marne. He was floored, and he resolved to learn as much as he could about John Dewitt and his comrades, what they fought for, and what they had gone through. The result of his effort had been the recent publication of the a 255-page book titled Searching for John Dewitt.  The volume combines excerpts from the letters with commentary with fresh insights and discoveries from his grandson.

 

John Dewitt, American Soldier

John Dewitt  was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on 30 August 1896,  the first of seven children. Three of his brothers would die  in childhood. His surviving three sisters, Anne, Mary Clare, and Helen, we addressed in his letters home as “the girls.” His father, also named John, worked as a brakeman on the C.G. and W. railway. When the future Doughboy was around ten years old, he moved with the family 400 miles southwest from the Minneapolis St. Paul area to Council Bluffs, Iowa. As a young boy in Council Bluffs, John Dewitt got a job at a local firehouse caring for its horses.   

When America joined the World War, he entered the service and became part of the 42nd Rainbow Division's  168th Infantry—made up mainly of Iowa National Guardsmen—and was sent to France. Since his division was one of the earliest  to arrive in France, John saw a lot of action and had a very dangerous job.  He  was a runner in the front line, tasked with carrying messages from his command post, through and over the trenches.

He would be awarded a Purple Heart for getting gassed by chemical weapons and being shot in the leg in August 1918 helping to stop the last German offensive of the war. When he returned to Iowa, he helped form an American Legion post, a group in which he remained active for the rest of his life.

Back stateside, he became a traveling salesman, with a long route through Texas and Oklahoma, but his heart was not in it. He decided to take advantage of the small funds available to  returning veterans and enrolled in Creighton University Law School in Omaha. He took the Iowa State Bar Exam and passed without needing to graduate. In 1927 he would meet, court, and marry Helen Brennan, a city  girl from Omaha. John and Helen moved to Griswold, Iowa, in 1932, where he practiced law and the couple raised their children, Maribeth and Jack. Doughboy John Dewitt died on 1 December 1975.

John Dewitt Reading a Burial Tribute to a Fellow Doughboy

A Selection from Searching for John Dewitt

May 1918 was unlike anything John Dewitt and the rest of the Iowa 168th had experienced —four turbulent weeks of continuous raids into no-man’s-land bookended by two memorable events. The month began with an unrelenting American bombardment of the German lines that started in the early morning hours of 1 May 1. It ended with an ominous and lethal phosgene gas attack on the Americans that killed or maimed scores of men.

Still, despite the clamor, things were beginning to look up. The Americans were starting to make a difference in the four-year-old war, though the advances came at a great price. Patrols left the safety of the American lines to the point where they seemed nonstop. The Americans began to feel they dominated no-man’s-land. If he did not already know  by then, weeks into his job as a battalion runner, John Ryder  Dewitt had learned that war was a serious and unforgiving enterprise.

The phosgene attack at the end of the month, besides  offering a taste of the depths to which both the Germans  and Allies had sunk, prompted my grandfather to mention  the possibility of his own demise to his mother, which of course he shrugged off. In his letter home, he only hinted at the gas attack that caused his introspection— dancing, I suppose, with the censors about how much he could reveal. The attack had left him uncharacteristically pensive, when he wrote home:

May 28, 1918

At the Front

Well Mother dear, this is about all the news here I am able to tell. I think the people of Iowa will get quite a  shock between now and when you get this letter.

Don’t ever worry about me when you hear rumors, which I suppose circulate around. Wait until you get official  notification from Washington. If I am called, you may  rest assured I am not afraid to go to the Maker and that I  am better off. There is no reason to be alarmed. I just thought this was as good a time as any to write it. 

That gas is certainly awful stuff. I fear that more than anything else.

John

May was a month of heated battles, and for battalion runners, an abundance of chances to tease fate, or as my  grandfather phrased it, opportunities to meet his Maker. The momentum for the war had turned in favor of the Americans and Allies and he was swept up in the current.

In his dedication, Dr. John Chase wrote: "I hope this book will encourage families to ask their veteran relatives about their military service and not have to learn about it by reading long-lost letters 100 years later."

Order Online HERE

Lonesome Memorials #12: The Ulverston Street Trench Memorial

This 21st-century memorial on the Somme battlefield, located just west of the village of Ovillers, is one of the more recently dedicated monuments on the Western Front.

Blue Tabs Show Location; Village of Orvillers on Right

The King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment (from NW England) was in action in this area during the autumn-winter period of 1915. The trenches in this sector were undoubtedly given their names by soldiers who came from Lancashire and Cumbria, some hailing from Ulverston, which later became Albert's twin town in 1976. Long after the "twinning" of the two communities, the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme came along and researchers came across trench maps that clearly showed the location of Ulverston Street Trench. Once the significance of the discovery was recognized, the town of Albert erected a memorial with a plaque on the site of the trench. The plaque is inscribed in English, French, and German. The stone memorial and plaque was unveiled by the then Ulverston Town Mayor Elect, Mrs. Brenda Marr in 2006.

Men of the 2nd Berks Prior to the Somme

On the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, the Ulverston Street Trench was occupied by the 2nd Royal Berkshire Regiment of the 8th Division, whose men left the trench at 7:30 a.m. to attack. No significant advance was made. The German 180th Infantry Regiment was well prepared. Ovillers proved impossible to take. By nightfall of 1 July, the 2nd Berkshires had 437 dead, wounded or missing out a total of 5,121 for the 8th Division.

Present Day View from the Trench Site Showing Enemy Dispositions (Click Multiple Times to Enlarge Fully)

Getting There

Since some of these roads are unsigned, these directions are best given with a map.

From Albert:  Drive East on the Albert-Bapaume Highway (Rt. D929) to the turn off for the La Bosselle Mine. The map begins there. (Don't turn off Rt. yet.), follow the dark blue.  An alternate route, in blue-grey,  if you are coming from Bapaume can also be seen on the Google map.

Sources: Panorama by Jolyon Fenwick for a 2016 exhibition of Zero Hour Panorama; The Rifles Berkshire and Wiltshire Museum; Ulverston Town Council

The Worst Industrial Accident of the War—The Chilwell National Shell Filling Factory Explosion

On 1 July 1918, at 7:10 p.m., a catastrophic explosion tore through the National Shell Filling Factory at Chilwell, Nottinghamshire. The blast killed 134 workers and injured 250—the biggest loss of life from a single accidental explosion during the First World War. [This comment overlooks the Halifax ship explosion of 1917 in which nearly 2,000 died.]  Eight tons of TNT had detonated without warning, flattening large parts of the plant and damaging properties within a three mile area. The colossal blast was heard 30 miles away. Eyewitness, Lottie Martin, a worker at the factory, later recalled: "…Men, women and young people burnt, practically all their clothing burnt, torn and disheveled. Their faces black and charred, some bleeding with limbs torn off, eyes, and hair literally gone…" Rapid action by the Works Manager, Arthur Bristowe—who tipped burning TNT from conveyor belt trays—prevented a further 15 tons of TNT being detonated by the spreading fires. In under half an hour, the fires were under control and emergency services from across the region were arriving.

Despite the workers’ extreme shock and the terrible destruction, repairs were swiftly carried out overnight enabling some of the next morning’s day-shift to start work again. The Home Office Committee of Enquiry published its report into the explosion on 7 August 1918. The police undertook a separate investigation into suspected sabotage. Neither enquiry could conclusively identify the cause of the explosion. The vast factory, which covered 194 acres (78 hectares), and eventually had 7,500 workers, was set up by Viscount Godfrey Chetwynd at the instigation of David Lloyd George, then head of the newly formed Ministry of Munitions.

Chetwynd, who came from the automobile industry, had no prior experience of explosives production. He was a maverick and self-publicist who loathed red tape. He demanded, and got, a free hand to design and create the factory without bureaucratic interference. Chetwynd chose the site at Chilwell because it had good rail and road links, was conveniently located between the raw material producers of the north and the supply ports of the south and could draw on the under-employed workers of the local textile industries.

Against convention, he adapted existing machinery—for coal crushing, stone pulverising, sugar sifting—to prepare the ingredients for making TNT. In keeping with his individualist nature, Chetwynd literally stamped his mark on the factory with the distinctive, self-devised crossed Cs of the Chilwell crest, adding the Royal Crown to imply a royal association with the government-owned factory. Within a few months of the factory’s opening, it had filled a major proportion of the large-calibre shells used during the Battle of the Somme (1 July to 18 November 1916). On the first day alone 250,000 shells were fired by British guns. Women made up a large part of the workforce at the Chilwell factory. They were nicknamed "canaries", as handling TNT could stain skin yellow. Some even gave birth to yellow babies.

Toxic jaundice was dangerous, and 106 women died from it during the course of the war. As the potentially lethal effects of filling high-explosive shells became better understood, munitions workers were issued with overalls, masks and caps to mitigate the dangers, along with washing facilities and good food Despite the devastation of the explosion, the Chilwell factory became the most productive shell filling factory of the war. Just two months after the fatal blast, the factory filled 275,327 shells in one week,—a record number. By the end of the war it had produced more than 19 million shells—over half the total British shells fired on the Western Front—along with thousands of mines and bombs.

Memorial at the Site of the Detonation

Of the 134 dead, 25 were women. Only 32 of the fatalities could be positively identified. The victims were buried in a series of mass graves at the parish church, a short distance from the factory complex.

Source: Historic England, June 2018; British War Works Tokens