The Doughboys Meet Shell Shock—The Context

Two Exhausted Doughboys "Off Duty"
By Harvey Dunn

Almost 70,000 U.S. men in World War One were permanently evacuated from the line [for what was in those times mislabeled as "Shell Shock"].  More than 36,000 of these men were hospitalized for long periods from its effects. All told, 158,994 Doughboys were inactivated for some time for psychiatric reasons, [about 7.5% of all the men deployed to France, or nearly double that percentage for the likely victims, the 1 to 1.2 million troops who got to the front line.]

Veterans of Foreign Wars Magazine, Sept. 1997

Editor's Introduction

When I first ran across the figures quoted above—almost 30 years ago—I was astonished.  I had known, of course, of the phenomenon, but I had no feel for the scale of the damage that had been done to America's forces.  Re-reading the article sourced above in February 2026 has led me into a renewed level of astonishment. Recall that the AEF conducted major combat operations for only five and one-half months. Looking for some explanation for these huge numbers in published sources, I found a very helpful 2002 article on the Doughboy experience, "Americans as Warriors: 'Doughboys' in Battle during the First World War" by Professor Jennifer D. Keene.  In  this excerpt, while not getting into the psychological roots of shell shock or the modern approaches to PTSD, she vividly describes the experience of World War One combat and the battlefield environment into which  inexperienced, under-trained men were thrown in 1918, and the early methods of patient care the injured received.  After reading the selection, I think you will have a better appreciation of why the Doughboys suffered so many shell shock casualties.

The Eyes Have It
Men of the 314th Infantry During the Meuse-Argonne

By Jennifer D. Keene

In the trenches, American soldiers adjusted to living with mud, rats, human waste, and the stench of decomposing bodies. Constant artillery barrages and the ever present threat of an attack frayed the nerves of even the most steadfast. "To be shelled is the worse thing in the world," author Hervy Allen of the 28th Division noted. "It is impossible to adequately imagine it. In absolute darkness we simply lay and trembled from sheer nerve tension". Even if one could ignore the noise, the lice crawling on their skin or rats running over their bodies prevented many men from sleeping while in the front lines. 

Steady shell fire meant constant casual ties, and men on the front lines often had to share their abode with the dead and dying, or the various body parts that remained after a shell explosion. One  lieutenant recalled taking the time to bury an assortment of hands, arms, and legs to clear his trench at Chateau-Thierry of human debris. Mustard gas attacks that blinded and blistered their victims only compounded the physical and psychological misery of a stint in the trenches. "Those that weren't scared, weren't there," Medal of Honor recipient Private Clayton Slack later commented about the experience of trench warfare.

A Volunteer Corpsman Aids a Distressed Soldier

Trying to make sense of their precarious situation, many soldiers developed superstitions or rituals that they felt offered protection at the front. Soldiers often contended that fate had targeted a specific shell expressly for them, a shell with "their name or number on it." One night, Bernard Eubanks recalled in his memoirs, "I had a strange dream or nightmare really. My company number was 84. During an intense bombardment I saw a huge missile coming my way with my number, 84, on it... but it passed over and never touched me." His temperament changed dramatically after this dream, because it "seemed to give me a sense of immunity that stayed with me for quite a while. I lost my jittery feeling." Just as Eubanks's positive vision gave him comfort, others believed that poorly chosen thoughts or conversations jinxed them. Corporal Ernie Hilton recalled the time he and his buddies overcame their reluctance to discuss the future, a subject they usually considered taboo, and had a long conversation about what they planned to do after the war. The next day, 34 of the 40 men in the trench were wounded or killed during a shell attack. "From then on I never spoke of the future," Hilton said.  Others turned to more traditional sources for resolve. "My prayer book gave me courage and comfort when under fire," Sergeant Stephen Morray recalled.

In the trenches, American soldiers lived within a few hundred yards of their German opponents, yet rarely saw them. An array of rumors helped soldiers create tangible images of their unseen enemy, who, according to these "soldier's tales," was a particularly clever and brutal foe. In a favorite ruse, according to soldier storytellers, German soldiers wore French uniforms or Red Cross brassards, pretended they were wounded, and lay on the battlefield to lure Allied soldiers into direct range of German machine guns. Another German trick began with a group of German machine gunners pretending to surrender by yelling "Comrade" in order to draw the troops who came to collect the prisoners into the open. Equally gory stories of the bloodthirsty revenge American soldiers exacted for such crimes countered these lavish tales of barbaric treachery. Soldiers repeatedly spoke of companies that captured snipers, gave them shovels, forced them to dig their own graves, then shot them.

Once they came into actual contact with dead Germans, many doughboys abandoned their taste for such macabre tales. Coming upon a German corpse in the Argonne Forest, one sergeant surprised himself by thinking that "these Germans didn't look like such bloody monsters. Quite an ordinary everyday crowd." A corporal undoubtedly spoke for others when he noted that "in the heat of battle men do not realize that the enemy is only a scared, frightened boy like we are, killing for self preservation and because he has to and hating it as bad as we do". 

When Americans left the trenches to actively pursue the Germans, fighting on the open battlefield also disappointed those seeking glory in combat. In the Meuse-Argonne campaign, Donald Kyler found himself going numb as the horrors multiplied. "I had seen mercy killings, both of our hopelessly wounded and those of the enemy. I had seen the murder of prisoners of war, singly and as many as several at one time. I had seen men rob the dead of money and valuables, and had seen men cut off the fingers of corpses to get rings," he explained.

Unidentified Shell Shock Patient

In the closing months of the war, a significant number of undertrained soldiers headed to the front lines. General John J. Pershing had expected these recently arrived replacement troops to receive additional training in France, but with Germany falling back, circumstances forced him to send these desperately needed men into battle. Division commanders complained bitterly about hem, feeling, as one inspector general put it, that sending untrained men into battle was "little short of murder. How we have escaped a catastrophe is a clear demonstration of the German demoralization." Although aware of their poor preparation, few untrained troops refused to fight. Instead, "when issued rifles they asked to be shown 'how to work this thing so that they could go up and get a "boche,"'" exclaimed the inspector general.

All battle accounts include some mention of soldiers collapsing from the strain of continuous artillery bombardments, the sight of bodies blown to bits, wearing tight gas masks for hours, or sheer exhaustion. After morning-to-night bombardments during the three straight weeks the 78th Division spent along the front lines in the Meuse-Argonne campaign, some soldiers "went into shock or coma from which they could not be aroused ... these shell-shock victims fell down as if they had been hit but actually they hadn't been touched," Corporal Paul Murphy later recalled, "they were completely helpless, mumbling and trembling at each new explosion"). Despite these soldiers' obvious suffering, the army did not consider shell-shock a legiti mate war injury. According to the chief surgeon of the Medical Department, "the so-called 'shell-shock' patients are no more entitled to a 'wound' chevron than are soldiers who are seized with an acute medical complaint due to exposure in battle, to the elements or to bad water or indigestible food".

Men diagnosed with shell-shock suffered from nightmares and panic attacks. Some could not sleep or speak. Private Duncan Kemerer of the 28th Division arrived at the base hospital in such poor condition that the sound of a spoon dropping sent him frantically searching for cover under his bed. After resting and eating well for a few days, however, Kemerer returned to his unit. Most soldiers who suffered from shell shock, battle exhaustion, or gas hysteria (a malady in which soldiers described physical symptoms associated with gas but had no actual injuries) voluntarily returned to thefront after a few days rest in a field hospital. If rest and food were not enough to convince men to take this step once the tremors had stopped and speech and memory returned, field psychiatrists emphasized to each man that their comrades needed them and that the glory of victory would be lost to them forever if they failed to return to the front.

Regardless of the Human Toll, the Army Marched On

Men usually responded to these appeals to their honor, masculinity, duty, and ambition. Whether these soldiers were cured is another question. Three out of every five beds in government hospitals were filled in the interwar period with veterans suffering from shell-shock.  Anecdotal evidence also underscores that many veterans had difficulty forgetting the wartime horrors they had witnessed. Three years after returning home, for instance, Walter Zukowski was not alone in noting that he was still fighting the war in his dreams. Many other veterans described themselves as nervous, jumpy, and unstable for years afterwards. 

Sources: "Americans as Warriors: "Doughboys" in Battle during the First World War", Jennifer D. Keene, Magazine of History, Oct. 2002, Full Article; "Brotherhood of the Damned", VFM Magazine, Sept. 1997, Full Article

"A Natural History of the Dead"—Hemingway's Surreal World War One Short Story

An Italian Army Dressing Station

In 1932 Ernest Hemingway, as an extra-feature to his bullfighting treatise Death in the Afternoon, included "A Natural History of the Dead," his  oddest reflection on his service in Italy during the Great War. Posing as a detached but cynical naturalist, he patches together his observations on the death throes and decay of various animal species and humans,  the nature of the fighting in the Dolomite Alps, and his fond memories a pleasant drive in the countryside around Milan picking up human remains left after a munitions plant explosion. The concluding, and longest, segment, describes the action at a dressing station where a fatally wounded—but still conscious soldier—has been prematurely placed among the dead and is causing a disturbance.

Anyway, it's well worth a read HERE

Or a listen HERE.

The Great War Poets of Westminster Abbey

Recently in an article on Siegfried Sassoon, we mentioned he had been included on the "Poets of the First World War Memorial" at Westminster Abbey.  I thought it would be of interest to our readers to present an article on the memorial and the list of 16 poets honored. MH

Click on Image to Enlarge

The Memorial and Dedication

The idea for this memorial came from the Dean of Westminster, Edward Carpenter, who initially thought that five or seven poets could be chosen to represent all the poets of the Great War. He consulted with eminent historians and authors to ask for their suggestions. From those suggestions, a final list of 16 representative poets was drawn up and funding was obtained.

A floor stone it is located today at the South Transept of the Abbey, Poets' Corner.  The stone is of dark green Westmoreland slate, cut by Harry Meadows. The inscription in red lettering around the names reads:

My subject is War, and the pity of War. 

The Poetry is in the pity

The date "1914+1918" appears at the base.

On 11 November 1985,  Ted Hughes, the Poet Laureate, unveiled the memorial, followed by the oration for the dedication service, given by Professor Michael Howard, Regius Professor of Modern History and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. The readings from the honored poets were by Jill Balcon, Ted Hughes, Stephen Lushington, and Richard Pasco. 

Poets' Corner Setting

About the Poets

Sixteen poets of the Great War are remembered on this memorial. None of the poets are actually buried in the Abbey. Listed here are their names and their works chosen for reading at the dedication.

Richard Aldington (1892–1962) who served in the trenches and achieved success with his novel Death of a Hero based on his war experiences.

*** "On the march"

Laurence Binyon (1869–1943) whose words "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old…," from his war poem "For the Fallen," are heard each year on Remembrance Sunday. He was buried at Aldworth in Berkshire.

*** "They went with songs to the battle"

Edmund Blunden (1896–1974) who fought at Ypres and the Somme and later became Professor of Poetry at Oxford and wrote poems on rural life as well as the war. He is buried at Long Melford in Suffolk.

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) "The handsomest young man in England" died en route to the Dardanelles and is buried on the Greek island of Skyros. His War Sonnets included "The Soldier" with the famous lines "If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England."

*** "The Soldier" and "The Dead"

Wilfrid Gibson (1878–1962) of Northumberland, whose poetry also dealt with rural themes.

*** "A Lament"

Robert Graves (1895–1985) was badly wounded on the Somme but was the only one of the poets still living at the time of the unveiling. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and his novels include I, Claudius.

*** "Two Fusiliers"

Julian Grenfell (1888–1915) whose celebrated poem "Into Battle" appeared in the same year that he was killed at Ypres.

*** "Into Battle"

Ivor Gurney (1890–1937) was gassed during the war and never fully recovered, being taken into care for the last years of his life. He also composed many songs.

*** "To the poet before battle"

David Jones (1895–1974) had a Welsh father but was born in Kent and served throughout the Great War. His epic work was In Parenthesis on the subject of war.

Robert Nichols (1893–1944) had early success with his poem "Invocation" in 1915, but he later turned to writing plays.

*** "By the wood"

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), from whose Collected Poems the quote on the stone is taken, won the Military Cross and was killed just a week before the Armistice.

*** "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Futility"

Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968) had a distinguished war record and was poet, critic, and writer on fine art, and was knighted in 1953.

*** "The Refugees"

Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918) was killed in action. The publication in 1937 of his Collected Works confirmed his importance as a writer of realistic war poetry.

*** "Break of Day in the Trenches"

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) won the Military Cross and was invalided out. His volume of bleak anti-war poems, Counter Attack, was published in 1918, but his reputation became established in the following decade. He was buried at Mells in Somerset.

*** "The Hero" and "Reconciliation"

Charles Sorley (1895–1915) was killed at the battle of Loos aged only 20 so left comparatively few complete poems but was well regarded by his contemporary poets.

***  "All the Hills and Vales Along"

Edward Thomas (1878–1917) was encouraged to write by the American poet Robert Frost. He was killed at Arras, and his work is now highly regarded. He is the source of the title of this blog.

*** "Lights Out" and "In Memoriam-Easter 1915"

Source: Westminster Abbey Website

Photo's of Serbia's 1915 Retreat: The Albanian Golgotha

I've previously presented  a major article on the Great Retreat of the Serbian Army in 1915, and on its subsequent return to action on the Salonika Front and its critical contribution to the Allied victory HERE.

All Images Here Can Be Enlarged. Originals=1000px, Display=580px

Recently, I discovered the Serbian Ministry of Defence have presented a massive 56-part photo album of their nation's efforts during the First World War.  Here's a selection (6 of 18 images) from the album section on the 1915 Great Retreat, which they call "The Albanian Golgotha."  The 155-mile retreat  involved approximately 400,000 soldiers and civilians, with roughly half perishing from cold, starvation, and disease during the winter trek through Albanian mountains. Only about 120,000–150,000 soldiers and 60,000 civilians survived to be evacuated by Allied ships to the Greek island of Corfu. 

A link is provided below for viewing the entire collection.

Visit the entire collection HERE.

Thomas Edison's World War One

Thomas Edison During the Great War

Science is going to make war a terrible thing–too terrible to contemplate.

Thomas Edison, October 1915

Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) is revered as America's greatest  inventor. While also a highly successful businessman, he is best known for developing many devices such as the phonograph, the long-lasting light bulb, and the motion picture camera. He was also a dedicated and energetic contributor to America's war effort

Soon after war broke out in Europe, disaster struck Edison's enterprises. On 9 December 9 1914, a massive explosion and fire destroyed much of Thomas Edison’s West Orange, New Jersey, research laboratory and factory complex. Fueled by highly flammable nitrate film and chemicals, the blaze destroyed 13 to 14 buildings.  He would overcome this challenge while keeping busy supporting his country's military. Ultimately, the war would also place a strong personal strain on Edison and his family.  His oldest daughter, Marion, spent much of the war behind enemy lines as the wife of a German Army officer, while his son William served in France as a sergeant in the U.S. Tank Corps. 

Edison at a Preparedness Day Event, New York City

Edison became a major spokesman for preparedness, and his ideas spurred the creation of the Naval Consulting Board, on which he was appointed as president by Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels. Although a naval-focused group, the board also supported the Army's efforts and the aviation programs of both services.

To overcome the shortages of chemicals previously obtained from Germany, he quickly built new manufacturing plants and became a major chemical supplier not only to American industries but also to the European allies and Japan as well. 

In February 1917, a few months before the United States entered the war, Edison and his assistants began conducting anti-submarine experiments for the U.S. Navy, as well as other military research, at a specially equipped new laboratory at the top of Eagle Rock Mountain in West Orange. Over the next two years, Edison would continue his research aboard the USS Sachem in Long Island Sound, at an office in Washington, D.C. formerly occupied by Admiral George Dewey, and at the U.S. Naval Station in Key West, Florida.

Edison with Secretary Daniels and the Naval Board

During this period, some truly creative ideas, prototypes, and devices were generated by the board. The war would end before all but one—the Ruggles Orientator (a precursor to the flight simulator)—could actually be produced and implemented.  An article from the University of Central Florida lists a number of the most promising that were likely helpful for future American military operations including:

• A device for detecting submarines by sound

• A shipborne device able to hear a torpedo approaching from up to 5,000 yards away 

• Reducing ships' visibility by smokescreens, zigzag maneuvers, and camouflaging 

• A strategy for navigating ships out of mined harbors 

• A steel protective net coupled with a detecting device for incoming torpedoes

• An underwater searchlight for  destroyers to track and find U-boats

• A water-penetrating projectile that would not ricochet off the water but continue smoothly through the water to reach U-boats

• Methods for submarine stabilization  and extinguishing coal fires safely from within the ship

• A telephone system for ships to contact other ships

• Direction finder and sound ranging devices that would predict the direction and distance of incoming enemy aircraft and artillery pieces 

However, despite his various experiments and innovations, Edison nevertheless grew increasingly agitated with the Navy for failing to implement any of his ideas. Of the 48 new inventions and improvements he proposed, the Navy [with one exception] failed to develop any of them beyond the prototype stage. This later caused Edison to accuse them of lacking the imagination or the foresight to see the usefulness of his work. As he wrote in 1918, "Nobody in [the Navy] will do anything on the account of taking risks that an innovation will bring in ... no training at Annapolis to cultivate the imagination."

Nevertheless, if Edison's work during this period had one significant effect, it is the resulting creation of what became known as the Naval Research Laboratory. Edison firmly believed in the necessity of a federal research laboratory to produce new ideas and inventions to improve the military. 

Sources: "Thomas Edison in the Great War", Florida in World War I, University of Central Florida; "Edison in World War I", National Park Service; The World War One Centennial Commission

Kut: The Death of an Army

By Ronald Millar

Pen & Sword Military, 2017

Reviewed by Timothy Heck

 

British Prisoners Evacuating Kut

Originally Presented by the Western Front Association

Kut’s tragedy rings out as “the most abject capitulation in Britain's military history." Given British defeat at Yorktown in 1781 and the 1942 surrender of Singapore, this is quite a claim for a battle on the periphery of the Great War. Led into defeat by General Charles Townshend, British forces, including a large Indian Army contingent, spent five months entrapped by an ever-growing Turkish force before surrendering in April 1916. With dwindling supplies and an increasing toll from disease and malnutrition, thousands of Imperial soldiers died waiting for rescue as Townshend frittered away what combat power he had through indecision and ineptitude. Ronald Millar’s Kut: The Death of an Army recounts the siege from the British perspective of the officers and men trapped inside Kut, revealing shortfalls in logistics and planning that sealed their fates.

Millar starts by recounting British failure at Ctesiphon in late November 1915 and the operational-level implications that defeat portended. Envisioned as the next victory over an inept Turkish military, taking Ctesiphon was supposed to be the next victory en route to seizing Baghdad and breaking the Ottoman Empire. Townshend, opposed to the advance, was overruled by his superior, General Sir John Nixon. Following orders, Townshend’s 6th (Poona) Division of around 11,000 men, advanced north to Ctesiphon where they were stopped after several days of hard fighting by Turkish soldiers. Efforts to push towards Baghdad ended as British casualties approached 40% and Townshend was forced to retreat south in order to rebuild. By 6 December 1915, Townshend’s forces retreated into Kut.

Once the British were fixed in Kut, Turkish units slowly surrounded the city and began constricting the British forces through a series of encircling trenches and probing saps. Attempting to capture the city through force, the Turks commenced a series of unsuccessful assaults on British defensive lines. After being repelled multiple times, at great losses, Turkish commanders switched to siege warfare and began shelling and sniping at the trapped British. Of note, Millar attributes this change in tactics to the Germans. Referencing Oberleutnant von Kiesling’s Mit Feldmarschall von der Goltz Pasha im Mesopotamia und Persien, Millar states the arrival of the German field marshal led to a change in Turkish tactics. “The new supreme commander forbade any further attempt to take Kut by storm...to him it appeared to be a better plan to starve the garrison into submission” (97-8). The implication that Turkish commanders were ineffective is one worth addressing, though Millar does not do so, rather relying on German source material.

As the siege continued, British commanders launched a series of relief attempts in order to lift the siege. Pushing north from Basra, the closest came to within hearing distance of the defenders of Kut before being beaten back by stiff Turkish defenses. Ultimately, all were unsuccessful and cost the British over 23,000 officers and men killed and wounded (284-5). British commanders failed to effectively mass their forces in order to break through Turkish defenses, instead bringing units in piecemeal in an effort to lift the siege. Furthermore, the defenders were not used to launch spoiling attacks or to tie down Turkish units being sent to defeat the relief columns.

After failed ceasefire negotiations with the Turkish commander, Townshend surrendered his depleted garrison on 29 April 1916, with approximately 13,000 British troops marching into captivity. Almost 4,000 died as prisoners of war due to a variety of causes, including malnutrition and abuse between capture and release in 1918. The Mesopotamia Commission, established in August 1916, “found the weightiest share of responsibility lay with Nixon whose ‘confident optimism’ was a main cause of the decision to advance on Baghdad” (286). The commission also noted the breakdown of logistics support, including failure to provide adequate medical coverage or supplies.

A Turkish Trench Cutting Off Kut

The aphorism that amateurs study tactics while professionals study logistics echoes loudly throughout the book. From the outset, logistics problems and shortfalls should have urged caution from the outset but were overlooked after relatively easy victories and advances earlier in the campaign:

“There were no heavy guns; although a plan to form an air corps had been approved shortly before the outbreak of war nothing had yet been done about it. Other deficiencies included such items as wire-cutters, telephones, transport for drinking water, Very lights, signal rockets, tents, mosquito nets, sun-helmets, periscopes, telescopic sights, loophole plates, flares, hand-grenades and even blankets and clothing.” (4)

Food was also in short supply. Dietary restrictions among the the Indian troops precluded many of them from eating horse meat, a main staple as the siege progressed. The lack of food, or the refusal to eat what was at hand, led to a variety of debilitating diseases caused by malnutrition, further reducing the defender’s combat power.

British logistics problems did not end with sustainment shortfalls. Throughout the Mesopotamian campaign, British forces suffered from inadequate medical care in a climatically challenging environment where a multitude of deadly diseases were endemic. The loss of eight doctors at Ctesiphon reduced the number available for service during the retreat and siege. Furthermore, medical orderlies previously evacuated could have been useful in treating the growing number of wounded and ill. During one relief attempt, “there were scenes [of uncared-for wounded] which witnesses described as being reminiscent of the Crimea” (143). After over a year of campaigning in Mesopotamia, “there was still not one hospital ship” (143) available. So devastating was this lack of medical planning or preparation that Millar describe it as the “most acute” shortfall (4).

Supply shortages of all kinds were compounded by the anemic lines of communication which were already overstretched. All British supplies in theatre had to flow through Basra. Analysis by Sir George Buchanan, who arrived in Basra to assist Nixon in improving the port, revealed just how poor the main port of entry was. He later remarked, “I had never before in my life seen such a hopeless mess and muddle...It seemed incredible that we should have been in occupation of Basra for over a year, so little had been done in the time” (129). Basra’s port facility, Millar writes, was “nothing more than an anchorage and a swamp” (130). Buchanan, who had spent years as the chief engineer of the port in Rangoon, was roundly ignored or marginalized by Nixon and his staff at the cost of the opportunity to improve lines of communication.

Order HERE

Millar’s strongest writing is in his portrayal of the individual soldier, be he the commander or a common private. Townshend is the book’s central character, which makes sense as he was the commander and left a memoir from which Millar draws heavily. Ultimately, Townshend cannot be held responsible for the failure in planning in India or logistics at Basra, though these each helped doom his men. Nevertheless, his inability to effectively lead once inside the siege are well-explored by Millar. Millar’s inclusion of common soldiers and junior officers is admirable, helping reveal the battle from the bottom-up. Unfortunately, many are unnamed or anonymous, giving the reader few to latch onto.

Millar’s book, originally published in 1970 as Death of an Army: The Siege of Kut, 1915-1916, remains a concise and engaging telling of the siege from the British perspective. As such, it is limited in its ability to tell a balanced picture of the battle. Furthermore, given that it was originally published almost 50 years ago, Millar lacked access to many of the archives that have since opened. Recent scholarship, including Nikolas Gardner’s The Siege of Kut-al-Amara: At War in Mesopotamia, 1915-1916, should be read before Millar’s work. Readers looking for a better understanding of the Turkish army should read works by Edward J. Erickson in order to flesh out the largely faceless victors of Kut.

Timothy Heck

The Unlikely Miracle Medical Dressing of World War One: Peat Moss

A Humble Moss Healed the Wounds of Thousands in World War I.  Its Remarkable Properties Also Helped Sequester Carbon and Preserve the Bodies of the Fallen!

Peat Moss aka Sphagnum

By Lorraine Boissoneault

A Smithsonian Special Report,  28 April 2017 

The First World War had just begun, and already the wounds were rotting on the battlefield. In the last months of 1914, doctors like Sir. W. Watson Cheyne of the Royal College of Surgeons of England noted with horror the “great prevalence of sepsis,” the potentially life-threatening response triggered by a bad infection. And by December 1915, a British report warned that the thousands of wounded men were threatening to exhaust the material for bandages.

A Corpsman Applies a Dressing to a Wounded Mate

Desperate to get their hands on something sterile that would keep wounds clear of infection, doctors started getting creative. They tried everything from irrigating the wounds with chlorine solutions to creating bandages infused with carbolic acid, formaldehyde or mercury chloride, with varying degrees of success. But in the end, there simply wasn’t enough cotton—a substance that was already in high demand for uniforms and its recently discovered use as an explosive—to go around.

What were the Allied Powers to do? A Scottish surgeon-and-botanist duo had an idea: stuff the wounds full of moss.

Dried Moss Ready for Medical Use

Yes, moss, the plant. Also known as sphagnum, peat moss thrives in cold, damp climates like those of the British Isles and northern Germany. Today, this tiny, star-shaped plant is known for its use in horticulture and biofuel, not to mention its starring role in preserving thousands-year-old "bog bodies" like the Tollund Man, which Smithsonian Magazine revisited in March 1917. But humans have also used it for at least 1,000 years to help heal their injuries.

In ancient times, Gaelic-Irish sources wrote that warriors in the battle of Clontarf used moss to pack their wounds. Moss was also used by Native Americans, who lined their children’s cradles and carriers with it as a type of natural diaper. It continued to be used sporadically when battles erupted, including during the Napoleonic and Franco-Prussian wars, but it wasn’t until World War I that medical experts realized the plant's full potential.

In the war's early days, eminent botanist Isaac Bayley Balfour and military surgeon Charles Walker Cathcart identified two species in particular that worked best for stanching bleeding and helping wounds heal: S. papillosum and S. palustre, both of which grew in abundance across Scotland, Ireland and England. When the men wrote an article in the “Science and Nature” section of The Scotsman extolling the moss’s medicinal virtues, they noted that it was already widely used in Germany.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. Or, as they wrote: “Fas est et ab hoste doceri”—it is right to be taught even by the enemy.

Field surgeons seemed to agree. Lieutenant-Colonel E.P. Sewell of the General Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt wrote approvingly that, “It is very absorbent, far more than cotton wool, and has remarkable deodorizing power.” Lab experiments around the same time vindicated his observations: sphagnum moss can hold up to 22 times its own weight in liquid, making it twice as absorptive as cotton.

Red Cross Volunteers in Seattle Picking Sphagnum
for Dressings

This remarkable spongelike quality comes from sphagnum’s cellular structure, says Robin Kimmerer, professor of ecology at SUNY-Environmental Science and Forestry and the author of Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. “Ninety percent of the cells in a Sphagnum plant are dead,” Kimmerer says. “And they’re supposed to be dead. They’re made to be empty so they can be filled with water.” In this case, humans took advantage of that liquid-absorbing capacity to soak up blood, pus, and other bodily fluids.

Sphagnum moss also has antiseptic properties. The plant’s cell walls are composed of special sugar molecules that “create an electrochemical halo around all of the cells, and the cell walls end up being negatively charged,” Kimmerer says. “Those negative charges mean that positively charged nutrient ions [like potassium, sodium and calcium] are going to be attracted to the sphagnum.” As the moss soaks up all the negatively charged nutrients in the soil, it releases positively charged ions that make the environment around it acidic.

For bogs, the acidity has remarkable preservative effects—think bog bodies—and keeps the environment limited to highly specialized species that can tolerate such harsh environments. For wounded humans, the result is that sphagnum bandages produce sterile environments by keeping the pH level around the wound low and inhibiting the growth of bacteria.

As the war raged on, the number of bandages needed skyrocketed, and sphagnum moss provided the raw material for more and more of them. In 1916, the Canadian Red Cross Society in Ontario provided over one million dressings, nearly  two million compresses, and one million pads for wounded soldiers in Europe, using moss collected from British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and other swampy, coastal regions. By 1918, a million dressings per month were being sent out of Britain to hospitals in continental Europe, in Egypt, and even Mesopotamia.

A WWI Dressing Filled with Sphagnum

Communities around the United Kingdom and North America organized outings to collect moss so the demand for bandages could be met. “Moss drives” were announced in local papers, and volunteers included women of all ages and children. One organizer in the United Kingdom instructed volunteers to “fill the sacks only about three-quarter full, drag them to the nearest hard ground, and then dance on them to extract the larger percentage of water.”

At Longshaw Lodge in Derbyshire, England, the nurses who tended convalescing soldiers trooped out to the damp grounds to collect moss for their wounds. And as botanist P.G. Ayres writes, sphagnum was just as popular on the other side of the battle lines. “Germany was more active than any of the Allies in utilizing Sphagnum … the bogs of north-eastern Germany and Bavaria provided seemingly inexhaustible supplies. Civilians and even Allied prisoners of war were conscripted to gather the moss.”

Each country had its own method for making the bandages, with the British stations filling bags loosely while the American Red Cross provided precise instructions for how to layer the moss with nonabsorbent cotton and gauze. “[The British style] seems to have been looked down upon by the American Red Cross,” says Rachel Anderson, a project assistant in the division of medicine and science at the National Museum of American History who studied the museum’s collection of sphagnum bandages. “The criticism was that you were getting redistribution of the moss during shipment and use.”

But everyone agreed on one thing: moss bandages worked. Their absorbency was remarkable. They didn’t mildew. And from the Allies’ perspective, they were a renewable resource that would grow back without much difficulty. “So long as the peat underneath [the living moss] was not disturbed, the peat is going to keep acting like a sponge, so it enables regrowth of Sphagnum,” says Kimmerer. However, “I can imagine if there were bogs that people used very regularly for harvesting there could be a trampling effect.”

So why aren’t we still using moss bandages today? In part, because the immense amount of labor required to collect it, Anderson says (although manufacturers in the U.S. experimented with using the moss for sanitary napkins called Sfag-Na-Kins).

That’s a good thing, because the real value of this plant goes far beyond bandages. Peatlands full of sphagnum and other mosses spend thousands of years accumulating carbon in their underground layers. If they defrost or dry out, we risk that carbon leaking out into the atmosphere. And while humans are no longer picking them for bandages, scientists fear that bogs and swamplands could be drained or negatively impacted by agriculture and industry, or the peat will be used for biofuel. 

Peatlands are rich ecosystems in their own right, boasting rare species like carnivorous plants. “The same things that make Sphagnum amazing for bandages are what enable it to be an ecosystem engineer, because it can create bogs,” Kimmerer says. “Sphagnum and peatlands are really important pockets of biodiversity.” Even if we no longer require moss’s assistance with our scrapes and lacerations, we should still respect and preserve the rare habitats it creates.

Hold That Position At All Costs? Przemyśl (WWI) vs Bastogne (WWII)

Some of the 130,000 Austro-Hungarian Prisoners
Taken at Przemyśl 

By Franz-Stefan Gady

Originally published in War On the Rocks, 2 December 2025

The southeastern Polish city of Przemyśl, with its elegant 19th-century Habsburg-era train station, remains one of the principal gateways to war-torn Ukraine. I pass through it regularly on my way to Ukraine, never missing a chance to visit the statue of the good soldier Švejk on one of the town’s squares. Over a hundred years ago, in the first months of World War I, this at-the-time multinational city in the northeastern corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire became the center of military operations on the Eastern Front, site of the largest and bloodiest siege of the war, and an illustration of the upsides and downsides of dogged static, positional defense — the usual approach of the underdog—and that contingency is the ultimate arbiter of its effectiveness. It holds a valuable lesson for the ongoing fighting in Ukraine [in 2025].

Przemyśl was the most important bulwark in the Empire’s East, with a single mission. In the event of war with Russia, it was meant to protect the passes into the Carpathian Mountains from which a Russian invader could march into the Hungarian plains, on to Budapest, and knock the Dual Monarchy out of the war. The idea was simple: Russia would have more men and materiel available and likely attempt to steamroll Austrian forces with its sheer mass and push back the front line. In such an event, with the front line being pushed back and Austrian forces retreating under pressure, Przemyśl was supposed to serve as a bulwark tying down significant Russian forces and buying Austria-Hungary time.

By and large, this plan worked during a short siege of the great fortress city, which took place from 16 Sept. to 11 Oct. 1914, during these crucial fall weeks. The tenacious defense of a ragtag garrison composed of middle-aged reservists from every corner of the empire—Austrian Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Czechs, Italians, Poles, and Ukrainians—prevented the collapse of Austro-Hungarian military power on the Eastern Front, as Alexander Watson argues in his magnificent book on the subject. It also destroyed any Russian hopes of a quick victory over Austria-Hungary, thereby guaranteeing that the war in the East, just like on the Western Front, would become an attritional contest.

A Russian Officer Inspects One of the Destroyed Forts

However, a second siege lasting 133 days from November 1914 to March 1915 destroyed Austro-Hungarian military power in the East. Austro-Hungarian forces launched several ill‑fated counteroffensives through the wintry Carpathian Mountains to relieve the city, which cost them and their Russian opponents at least 1.8 million casualties in the course of a few months. Meanwhile, Austria-Hungary’s commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf, refused to authorize breakout attempts, judging the situation from his distant vantage as far more favorable than it actually was—contrary to the dire assessments of local commanders who understood the true severity of the garrison’s predicament. When Przemyśl capitulated in March 1915, preceded by one last-ditch breakout effort, over 130,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers fell into Russian captivity and dealt a blow to Habsburg prestige in the region from which it would never recover. At that stage, the professional officer corps and non-commissioned officers had ceased to exist. From that point on, the Austro-Hungarian military was a reservist force incapable of conducting complex offensive or defensive operations at scale for the remainder of the war, save in close cooperation with its German ally.

The two sieges of Przemyśl illustrate a fundamental principle about static defense doctrine: it can serve a legitimate strategic purpose when it creates time for operational maneuver or enables relief of the defending force, but it can become catastrophic for an overstretched military when political imperatives combined with an inflexible and centralized command structure override sound military judgement, preventing commanders from executing the tactical withdrawals necessary to preserve troops and operational effectiveness. This distinction holds vital lessons for the ongoing war in Ukraine, where a “no step back” defense posture by Ukrainian forces risks worsening the relative attrition rate between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

Road Network Around Bastogne

Historically, a static positional defense of urban terrain—or a fortress‑type defense posture—has been justified based on five main points: favorable casualty ratios, tying down enemy forces and preventing their deployment elsewhere on the front, buying time, allowing defensive preparations and mobilization in depth, as well as overall morale and political symbolism. Indeed, there have been many examples in history where such a defense made sense. Just think of World War II and Bastogne in December 1944. The defense of this Belgian town during the Battle of the Bulge was strategically rational because Bastogne controlled a critical road junction essential to German offensive operations. The Allied defensive effort bought time for Patton’s Third Army to relieve the garrison; the defenders were ultimately relieved, not destroyed; and the German offensive was defeated. Critically, Allied commanders recognized Bastogne’s operational importance—losing it would have enabled German armor to move freely through the Ardennes—not merely its symbolic value. The defense succeeded because it served a purpose beyond holding terrain for its own sake.

A Sherman Tank and Crew of the Relieving Force

Excerpted from: "When Defense Becomes Destruction: Austria-Hungary’s Mistake and Ukraine’s Risk", War On the Rocks, 2 December 2025

Lonesome Memorials #22: An Unusual and Evocative War Memorial in Vácrátót, Hungary

 

By James Patton

In a manner of speaking, Hungary was the junior partner of the junior partner to Germany and Austria in the Central Powers alliance. However, she played an outsized role in the fighting. Estimates of ethnic Hungarians killed or died run as high as 1.2 million, out of a total population of 9 to 10 million, one of the highest such ratios among all of the combatant countries.

At the village of Vácrátót, about 25 miles NNE of Budapest, there is a war memorial, shown above, created in the genre of Emil Krieger’s 1956 Four Mourners (at the Langemark German Cemetery in Belgium) as well as the 1932 Käthe Kollwitz sculpture The Grieving Parents (now at Vladslo Gerrman Cemetery, also in Belgium), each of which emphasizes the tragedy of loss rather than sacrifice for victory. The Vácrátót memorial is located on the outskirts the 200-year-old National Botanical Gardens.

The Vácrátót statue depicts a family, all in traditional Hungarian folk dress except for the father, who one can tell is wearing a Honved (Reservist) uniform, even though he is actually a cutout silhouette—forever gone but never forgotten. The wife is trying to wrap her arm around the husband’s missing shoulder, the infant boy is trying to sit on daddy’s knee and the young daughter is attempting to cuddle up to the void. These little actions emphasize the horrific impact of two catastrophic wars on many thousands of Hungarian families. The emphasis is that loss is forever.

The Vácrátót memorial is by the Hungarian sculptor István Horváth Böjte (b. 1972) who specializes in public statuary, in both classical and modern styles. Below the sculpture is a stone plaque inscribed with the names of the 31 local soldiers who died in WWI and the 22 who died in WWII. On the reverse side is another plaque listing the names of seven residents who died while performing forced labor during WWII.  

The National Botanical Garden of Hungary

Directions Driving from Budapest

• Get on MO Expressway in Budapest, north direction, which becomes M2
• Take Vácrátót Exit 
• Follow Signage to National Botanical Garden ( (Nemzeti Botanikus Kert)
• Before the main entrance to the Garden, turn right on  Petőfi tér 
• The monument will be 150 yards farther on the left side.

Address: Vácrátót, Petőfi tér 7, 2163 Hungary

Driving distance: 46 km

Est. driving time: 43 min

Needless to say, there are other war memorials all around in Hungary.

In Budapest’s Heroes Square (Hősök tere) there is a magnificent monument, the Millennium Memorial (Millenáriumi Emlékmű). Built between 1896 and 1900, it commemorates the foundation of the Duchy of Hungary by the Magyars in 896 CE. In 1929 the cenotaph called the Memorial Stone of Heroes (Hősök emlékköve), was added to the site, dedicated "To the memory of the heroes who gave their lives for the freedom of our people and our national independence." 

A major one stands to the left of St. Mary’s Cathedral (one of only four cathedrals in the country) in Kalocsa, which styles itself as “The Paprika City.” Located 85 miles downriver from Budapest, the Kalocsa monument is a grandiose bronze statuary surmounted by a defiant, flag-waving warrior, while at his feet sits a grieving widow. The emphasis is making a heroic stand in defense of the mother country.

Moving over to Tiszadob, about 125 miles NE of Budapest, we see a simpler statue, a soldier standing guard above the honor roll, which is disturbingly long. The design is virtually identical to the most common northern Civil War memorial in America. I used to live in Dexter, Michigan (pop. 6,696), which still has one of these standing in the center of town. The emphasis of this memorial is on faithful service.

Recommended Article:

War For The Unconscious – The Memory of World War I In Hungarian Villages