Those Old Michelin Battlefield Guides, #2 The St. Mihiel Salient

When I first started Roads to the Great War, I recommended the original Michelin Battlefield Guides as a great source of  battlefield images. Immediately after the war, these guides – produced by the Michelin Tire Company – were state-of-the-art helpers for tourists. Today, however, they would just get you lost. The roads, visual landmarks, and signage today are quite different from those of the 1920s. Nevertheless,  their historical summaries photos are still superb and quite unique. I promised to share some of their images with our readers but forgot (temporarily for three years) about it. Here are a dozen images for you from the St. Mihiel Salient, which, even today, has such an amazing collection of interesting sites to see that it is in effect an outdoor museum of the Great War.

I've selected some images I've never seen in other works with their original captions. They can be found in the guide titled The Americans in the Great War, Vol II: The Battle of Saint Mihiel.

Remembering a Veteran: Saki at the Somme

Among the 73,000 names engraved on the memorial to the missing of the Somme at Thiepval is that of Lance Sergeant H. H. Munro of the 22nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers. H.H. Munro, aka Saki, had gained popularity before the Great War for his witty and off-beat stories. He could have avoided serving, but Munro was the son of a soldier and a child of the Empire. And so he found himself at the Somme in November 1916 during the battle's final stages, when the high command decided that they damn well ought to capture the village of Beaumont Hamel, because they were supposed to take it on the first day of the fighting, July 1st. Munro's company had been put out to guard the left flank in a night attack on the village. It was a foggy night, and the fighting had died down by the early hours. Munro and some other men had taken cover in a shell hole. An English officer called across to a friend. A man struck a match, Munro snapped, "Put that bloody cigarette out!" whereupon he was shot in the head by a single round from a sniper. As Saki, he always appreciated a telling punch line.

Sometime before his death, he made this contribution to war poetry titled "Carol" —

While shepherds watched their flocks
     by night
  All seated on the ground,
    A high explosive shell came down
      And mutton rained around. 

Read a fine tribute to Munro at:  http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-grinning-shadow-that-sat-at-the-feast-in-commemoration-of-hector-munro-saki

Albert Robida: The Futurist Who Visualized the Great War

Albert Robida (1848-1926) was a French illustrator, etcher, lithographer, caricaturist, and novelist. His work in which he
visualized coming warfare appeared in two waves.

From 1883 to 1890 he published a remarkable series of magazine pieces and books that addressed future wars, the most famous being "La Guerre au vingtième siècle" (War in the Twentieth Century). His war scenarios are sometimes fantastical–Mozambique takes on Australia in 1975–but his caricature-style drawings capture many aspects of the Great War of the future struggle. 

Many of his predictions would be validated during the war of 1914-1918.:

•  Railroads would play a dominant role, used for mobilizing and moving troops, and as mobile artillery platforms.
• Airships and balloons would be used for bombing, firing specialized artillery, and observation.
•  Chemists would be called on to create asphyxiant gases.
• Artillery and barbed wire would command the battlefield.
• Tunneling would be required to attack and advance.
• Specific weapons would include armored vehicles, bomb-dropping airships, fire and gas projectors, and anti-aircraft artillery.

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

Who Was Tasker Bliss?

General Tasker Bliss

Born at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 31 December 1853, General Tasker Bliss served for more than 42 years in the U.S. Army, participating in four campaigns, and reaching the rank of general and serving as chief of staff and commanding general of the Army.

Before America's entry into the Great War he served mainly in staff and school assignments. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, he was military attaché in Madrid. He returned to participate in that war in both Cuba and Puerto Rico and later was department commander of the Philippines. He was appointed chief of staff of the Army shortly after the declaration of war, but by the end of 1917 he had reached the mandatory retirement age of 64.

Bliss was kept on active duty by order of President Woodrow Wilson and sent to France where he served as U.S. military representative to the Allied Supreme War Council. Since President Wilson could not be present at the meetings, Bliss had measurably a statesman's rôle. When his resources of tact and argument failed, his stubborn resolution, backed by a thorough study of the subject, was a check on the conflict of national interests among the Allies at the expense of joint action. His letters to Secretary Baker, in their intimate reports of the operations of the council, are an indispensable contribution for the historian. They also reveal how the Allied leaders sought early on to circumvent President Wilson's Fourteen Points and his plans for a league of nations. From the outset he was for the unified command in the field, which ultimately was given to Marshal Ferdinand Foch, and at the same time he supported General John J. Pershing's insistence that American troops should not be infiltrated into the Allied armies. 

Bliss on Right as Member of the U.S. Commission at Paris

He was for unconditional surrender of the German Army in conclusive admission of its defeat, but then for wise and farsighted support of the German republic to ensure its endurance. Later he was selected by President Wilson to be one of five American delegates to the Paris Peace Conference. He was very supportive of the president and afterward spoke in favor of the League of Nations and disarmament for all to avoid future wars. He also served as governor of the Soldiers Home until 1927 when he finally left active service.

Tasker Bliss died in Washington, DC, on 9 November 1930 and was buried in Section 30 of Arlington National Cemetery, where he lies among other family members. 

Sources: Arlington Cemetery Website, Imperial War Museum, Nelle Rote, and the Dictionary of American Biography 

Faking a Classic Combat Photo

You've probably seen the image above in photo histories of the Great War. It was one a series of propaganda photos created for exhibitions that were mounted in London by British, Canadian, and Australian photographers. "The Raid," as it was originally titled (later it was known as "Over the Top")  has a lot of dynamic elements to it — too many, as a matter of fact. It turns out that it was rather difficult to get dramatic combat images to show the folks back home because battlefields are damn dangerous places. And no photographer in his right mind would be standing in no-man's-land with shells falling all over the place and aircraft overhead looking for targets of opportunity to take an image of the boys going over the top.

M.T. Jolly in Australia has made a systematic study of WWI propaganda photos, and he has discovered a lot about "The Raid" that explains how these images were manufactured. It was the work of Australian official photographer Frank Hurley, who was stationed in Flanders and Palestine late in the war. I was surprised to discover in Jolly's work that these "composites" as they were known were officially sanctioned, and they were revealed as assemblages in the exhibition's catalogs. Such language as "This picture is a combination of two photographs, each taken on the Ypres battlefield, and is constructed to show an incident common in the experience of those who know the place," was used to subtly justify (or alibi) the fact that they were faked.

Jolly believes 12 different negatives were combined to create  "The Raid." Here are a few of the pieces that I think give an idea of how the final product was patched together.

This is a preliminary photo of what will actually turn out to be both groups of soldiers going over the top in the composite photo. Note that they are not ducking or watching for approaching enemy or aircraft overhead. Also, the photographer is standing in the open on the parapet. He's not worried about being shot at either. This is clearly not combat, it's a reenactment or training exercise — the men are simply too casual for someone who is facing the possibility of imminent death. Note for further reference the position of the tarpaulin in the trench.

These are the men going over the top shortly after the above photo.  Shell explosions have been added to enhance the feel of battle. This group is shown on the left side of the final composite.  

These are the same men leaving the same trench a second or two later. The photographer has moved a few steps backward and to the left, so the troops look slightly smaller and in a different formation. This is the base image for the right side of the final photo. It's the same men as on the left side. You would think that the tarpaulin would be a give away, but look again at the final composite below.

The tarpaulin on the left has been shaded in by about 30 percent to make it less conspicuous. The tarpaulin on the right has been shaded in completely. The effect is that this appears to be a simultaneous attack from two different trenches. More shading was added to the merged images to distinguish between the two trenches and more explosions dropped in to add to the excitement. In the sky, the smoke – not visible in the base photos – was added, plus the low-flying airplanes. The author believes these aircraft were photographed by Frank Hurley in Palestine and transported to this position on the Western Front via photographic negative. All-in-all, the end product is extraordinary, but, alas, it is still a fake.

Source: "Fake Photographs: Making Truths in Photography," PhD Dissertation by M.T. Jolly at the University of Sydney, 2003.

The Ingenious Mr. Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy reviewed by Bryan Alexander

The Ingenious Mr. Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy

by Henry Hemming

Public Affairs, 2016

What makes the creative mind tick? How can unusual approaches to problems succeed, and what makes them fail? <i>The Ingenious Mr. Pyke</i>is a very engaging, inspiring, and sad biography of an odd thinker.

Geoffrey Pyke is best known as the instigator of Project Habbakuk, a wild WWII plan for the Allies to build warships out of ice (actually a compound of ice and wood pulp, dubbed "pykrete" after the inventor). Hemming situates that extraordinary idea in a lifetime of creative ideas, many of which failed or backfired.

Pyke's career began with the First World War, which is what led me to the book (since I'm obsessively researching that period). When war broke out in 1914 Pyke decided to best serve Britain by sneaking into the German Empire as a war correspondent and/or spy. Although he made it in past armies, fortifications, and an armed border, remarkably, he was caught in less than a week and interned at the Ruhleben camp for suspicious foreign civilians, located just outside of Berlin.

Pyke could easily have been stuck there for the war's duration, or simply shot, but instead managed a daring escape. Back in Britain he published an account of the adventure, which became a bestseller:

He had. . .written a best-selling book, smuggled himself into Germany, become an amateur spy, faced execution in solitary confinement, converted to socialism and escaped from a German detention camp. All this by the age of twenty-four. (438)

On the Eve of the Great War
Pyke Had Been Editing This
Literary Magazine at Cambridge

After the war's conclusion, Pyke turned his mind to… getting rich, of all things, while starting an innovative school, the former to pay for the latter. After some energetic study (and rooming with John Maynard Keynes!) he came up with a commodities trading scheme that made him a great deal of money for several years (124ff). This let him launch Malting House, a school which saw children as young scientists and investigators. Its emphasis on students as independent learners reminds me of Summerhill, which was opened roughly the same time. Blending Freudian psychology into the curriculum and pedagogy is definitely contemporary (134). All of this fell apart in a few years, as his financial plan ran into opposition, and the school failed. Hemming observes sympathetically:

Geoffrey Pyke was bankrupt, he was being sued, his experimental school had closed, he was living in a nursing home and had been described as borderline insane. But he still had not reached rock bottom. During the winter of 1929, with the global economy entering meltdown, his wife left him. (153)

Yet Pyke didn't succumb, but turned instead to a new cause for inspiration, and that took him forward for more than a decade: stopping the Nazis. Hemming takes us through a series of prewar projects aimed at understanding and undermining anti-semitism. WWI played a role, with Pyke being inspired by the Turkish Armenian genocide (162). He published articles and magazines against the fascists. He arguably helped create the Mass Observation sociological analysis project, in order to grapple with German attitudes (170). Pyke also raised money and invented tools and vehicles to support the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Hemming concludes that Pyke also gave some information and support to the USSR, which elicited MI5's attention. Once WWII broke out Pyke brazenly talked himself into a very high position, working with Mountbatten's Combined Operations outfit. Hemming shares a good story about Pyke impressing the imposing British lord with a creative way to sink a battleship: changing the density of the water around it (253). At Combined Ops he invented pykrete, along with a strange, screw-powered vehicle for snow operations, not to mention a concept for sending materials and soldiers ashore for amphibious attacks through pipes. He also helped shape commando and special forces operations, an influence felt to the present day.

Prototype of  Pyke's Snow Vehicle

Pyke traveled to the U.S. to organize his ice ships, and ran afoul of Vannevar Bush (373-4, for example) (if you don't know the name, realize he helped come up with the technology you're using now). Bush's analysis of Pyke actually rings true, describing this very odd and creative man as "someone who has a contempt for channels of authority and ducks around them" (314).

Eventually Pyke left Combined Ops, having alienated many there, and convinced MI5 that he was a Soviet spy. Failing to come up with new schemes or traction for old, and vitiated by ill health, he committed suicide in 1948.

Hemming structures the book along chronological lines, framed by Pyke's death and charges of being a Soviet agent. Each chapter appears as a how-to guide, like "How To Defeat Nazism" or "How To Succeed in America." Along the way the book presents good quotes from Pyke, some of which are actually useful to the reader. For example,

Military people. . . don't really plan at all. What they call planning is trying to adapt what they were taught in youth, with the minimum of alteration, to what they can see. That's why they see so little. (279)

So what makes a creative mind like Pyke's tick? Hemming thinks Pyke began by "thinking adventurously," being unafraid to look foolish. Then he challenges accepted ideas with powerful skepticism, "to keep doing so until he found the one that did not ring true -- for there was always at least one." (432) Next comes stating the problem correctly. "He often found that tiny adjustments to the formulation of a problem could unlock a torrent of fresh ideas." (433) That done, Pyke would scan history and the present, looking for inspiration and above all connections. "EVERYTHING IS IRRELEVANT TILL CORRELATED WITH SOMETHING ELSE." (caps in original; 434) Pyke would further push at the problem with experiments, internal dialogues, reversing expectations (if the Nazis obsessed over "the Jewish question", why not investigate the Nazi question?), and a willingness to rapidly try out new solutions.

Heritage: A Snow Dome Constructed of Pykrete Juuka, Finland, 2014

There are also biographical forces which shape unusual minds like Pyke's. Hemming shows a young man growing up under a series of blows and stresses, from losing his father early to being sent to military school, being abused for his Jewish heritage, and suffering from poor health. These events forced Pyke out of the ordinary.

Another lesson from Hemming's biography: the creative mind needs champions and allies. Pyke's escape from Germany in WWI required a fellow escapee. His rise in WWII depended on Mountbatten's patronage. Mountbatten then set up a group of radical thinkers in Combined Ops, which became a space for Pyke and his creativity to thrive. (A desire for this is what leads some of us to social media)

So why do Pykes fail? For one, they can drive hierarchies mad. Vannevar Bush:

Everyone who has ever worked in a complex pyramidical organization recognizes that there occasionally appears somewhere on the ladder of authority a dumb cluck who has to be circumvented if there is to be any progress whatever. . .He can throw any organization, civilian or military, into confusion. His breed should be exterminated for the good of society. (314)

For another, the unusual nature of creative thought can remove the thinker from social interaction. Hemming saw Pyke's passions as backfiring:

Pyke's emotional fragility and heightened sensitivity to being sidelined appeared to make [working easily in a group] impossible. When he felt himself being marginalized he had a tendency to self-destruct, and would either cast around for a scapegoat or become difficult and behave, as one colleague put it, like an "awkward cuss." (378)

Third, Pyke's habit of challenging all accepted ideas threatened those who held them, of course. <i>The Ingenious Mr. Pyke</i> is a tragic work, in that Pyke died with so many ideas defeated or unrealized, and largely unrecognized. That combination of inspiration and sadness together presents a powerful case study of extraordinary thinking and how it fares in the world.

Bryan Alexander

A Most Photogenic War Memorial: The Sacrario Militare di Pocol

The Approach to the Memorial Features the 14 Stations of the Cross

Opened by Italy's fascist government in 1935, the Sacrario Militare di Pocol is an essential orientation point to learn about the mountain warfare on the Great War's Italian Front. There are 9,770 fallen interred at the Sacario including 4,455 unknown Italian soldiers and 87 from the Austro-Hungarian forces. Four Italian heroes have special tombs. 

Main Memorial Entrance

View of Cortina and Tofane Group from the Observation Deck

It is also one of the most photogenic war memorials in the world. Its views of the resort town of Cortina in the valley below from 5,000 feet and the mighty Tofane Group to the north, where mountaintop  warfare was waged until the front moved far south after the Battle of Caporetto, are stunning. Also, it is a masterful work of architecture. The tower design is simple, almost plain, on the outside — there is simply nothing humans could create to compete visually with the surrounding Dolomite Alps. But  the architects were given free rein with the tremendous vertical space on the inside.  The central indoor feature is a dramatic spiral staircase to the observation deck near to the top of the 48-meter memorial.  The finishes are in fine taste, with few of the Fascistic-monumentalist touches.  

Central Staircase

Two of the artistic enhancements of the memorial show up frequently in histories of the Italian Front. The chapel contains a renowned fresco of a fallen soldier in the snow that's not a realistic representation of mountain soldiers but powerfully moving, nonetheless. At the memorial's entrance is a sculpture of a more authentic-looking dagger-armed elite Alpini soldier that's quite striking.

The Siamese Expeditionary Force

Siam's Expeditionary Force Parading in Paris, 14 July 1919

King Vajiravudh of Siam, on 22 July 1917, decided to declare war on the Central Powers and joined the Entente Powers in their fight on the Western Front. He sent a volunteer corps translated in some sources as the "Siamese Expeditionary Force." 

Thousands of candidates applied, but only 1,233 men were selected. The Siamese volunteers were initially commanded by General HRH Chakrapong Phuvanart, brother of the King . The force included air, transport, and medical personnel.

Volunteers Memorial, Bangkok 

After primary training, the force departed Siam on 19 June 1918. Their training in theater was still under way when the war ended, but some of the units became involved in the occupation of the Rhineland after the Armistice.  One of their missions was to transport Allied troops across the Rhine river into Mainz.

Although Siam’s participation militarily was minimal, the result was the revision or complete cancellation of unequal treaties with the United States, France and the British Empire. The Force was also given the honour of marching in the victory parade under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. 

Yod Sangrungruang sole survivor of the Royal Thai Expeditionary Force died in October 2003 at the age of 106. He was an aircraft mechanic in France and became headman of his village after his return. 

By the way, it was on 20 July 1948, the Siamese constituent assembly voted to change the name of Siam to Thailand, the change to come into effect the following year.

Sources: The Thai Military Blog and the St. Mihiel Trip-Wire

The Railway Mail Service Goes to War: Bringing the Mail to Doughboys in World War I, Part II

by David Thompson

The American Bordeaux Terminal RPO played a critical role as a mail transportation hub in serving our WWI AEF troops in France:

The terminal distributed up to 44,555,000 letters a month (582 tons of mail), dispatched in sealed pouches. When ships were due to sail, no hours were too long and no conditions too forbidding to prevent a speedy all-out dispatch (p. 211).

Actual Postmark & Annotations, Late War

The Railway Mail Service also set up postal detachments around the world to serve our troops during World War I. Long and Dennis write:

United States postal detachments manned by RMS personnel were set up in other parts of the world- at Vera Cruiz, Mexico, and even as far away as Siberia. A leading member of that far-flung unit was the late Joseph P. Cleland, of the Omaha & Denver RPO (on the CB& Q RR), who was renowned as a three times-round-the-world traveler (p. 212).

On the home front, at the other end of this mail pipeline to and from the AEF in France in WW I stood the Chelsea RMS Terminal in New York City, running the length of Pier 86 at West Forty-Sixth Street. The Chelsea RMS Terminal’s task was to gather all the mail from across the U.S. going to the servicemen of the AEF in France and get it placed on ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean to Bordeaux RMS Terminal for distribution to soldiers at the front. In turn, the Chelsea RMS Terminal received all mail from the Bordeaux RMS Terminal off ships that transited the Atlantic Ocean and distributed it to post offices and RPO’s in the United States to speed the mail home to families concerned about their doughboy serving with the AEF in France.

All Army overseas mail was ordered diverted there (Chelsea RMS Terminal), and half frozen clerks struggled with it in overcoats until ‘the world’s largest one-room heating plant’ was installed. Hap-hazard overseas addresses used by the public (as, 110 Engineers, France) gradually were standardized in the general form: Name of soldier and unit, AEF, APO 123 (or whatever it was), France. Hundreds of patriotic ‘dollar-a year’ volunteers worked alongside the paid men and women clerks in the terminal with steady efficiency, including such notables as Henry Ward Beecher, Jr. (p. 212).

The System Working at Its Most Efficient

When the war ended in November 1918, a large redistribution center was set up at one end of the Chelsea RPO Terminal, to assure mail initially routed to men in units in France to catch up with them upon their return to the United States. This redistribution center was "manned by Army clerks who redirected parcels addressed to men leaving France to the proper United States separation center (p. 212)."

The Postal History of the AEF, 1917-1923 reports: “By December 1918, 131,900 sacks pf mail had been received from and 25, 532 sent to the United States; by January 1919  twenty-eight million letters had been dispatched to the United States, and more than fifty million had been received from the United States. At one point, the Military Postal Express Service handled more mail than the entire French civilian postal system” (Van Dam, p. 13).

The British later also set up RPO's on the European continent for occupation duty British soldiers following the war, "particularly the BEF Main Line TPO from Boulogne (France) to Cologne (Germany), operated January 1919 to the end of the occupation."

The Troops Knew Their Letters Would Get Home

After the war, according to Long and Dennis, "many 'Railway Mail Posts' of the American Legion sprang up at New York and elsewhere," attesting to the number of RMS employees who served during WW I. My dad was one of those WW I soldiers who got mail from the RMS in 1918 and who returned the favor, sorting and distributing mail to our troops in World War II from 1940-1945 as a railway mail service clerk working at the Chicago Terminal RPO. Like so many WW I veteran RMS clerks, he knew what an encouragement it was for troops to get mail from home during the war… and he worked hard to keep the mail going to get to GI’s in World War II. 

As we near the World War I Centennial Commemoration of this long forgotten war of the early 20th Century (1917-18), we need to remember to salute the men and women of the Railway Mail Service, who in an outstanding support role, kept the mail coming to lonely doughboys at the front and concerned families back home, maintaining morale for a nation at war. They truly lived up to the Railway Mail Service motto in helping our troops in World War I: “The mail must always go through.”

David A. Thompson, Rosemount, Minnesota, is the son of WW I Veteran, PFC Arne M. Thompson, 34th CAC, U.S. Army.  From 1940-1962, Arne was a RMS RPO Clerk and Foreman/Clerk in Charge on RPO’s in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and North Dakota.

Part I of the article was presented yesterday 8 October 2016.

The Railway Mail Service Goes to War: Bringing the Mail to Doughboys in World War I, Part I

by David Thompson

An Early Postmark of the Service

As we near the Centennial Commemoration of World War I, a number of stories begin to emerge of that time that bring “the war to end all wars” to life for us 100 years later. As a veteran, like many veterans, I remember hearing during my time of service: "Never mess with a soldier's chow or mail if you want to keep the troops happy."

My story is about one half of this equation:--the speedy delivery of the mail to and from the troops at the front, on ships at sea, or on faraway bases and places in World War I. Researching the history of the Railway Mail Service, I came across how the mail got to the troops in World War I was different from all American wars since that time.

Before the Army Post Offices (APOs) and Fleet Post Offices (FPOs) of WW II (up until the present) that were staffed by uniformed military personnel, much of the mail for the troops in WW I was sorted and delivered in large part by civilian Railway Post Office (RPO) clerks of the Railway Mail Service (see: http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/RMS/ ).

In reading Mail by Rail—The History of the Postal Transportation Service by Bryant Long and William Dennis (New York: Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation, 1951), I discovered that the civilian Railway Mail Service (RMS) took complete charge of all mails for the AEF forces overseas in World War I.  After April 1917 railway mail clerks were exempted from the draft, but thousands of them enlisted anyway, leaving behind undermanned Railway Post Offices that became choked with mail for military camps in the United States and overseas. 

From July 1917 to June 1918 the U.S. Railway Mail Service (RMS), using civilian RPO clerks and supervisory personnel to bring the mail to AEF troops in France and staff two large mail terminals, one in Bordeaux, France, and the other in New York City, to gathered and directed all mails to the troops and back to their families in the first year of combat operations in France in WW I. 

A number of U.S. Post Office employees of the Railway Mail Service left their jobs on Railway Post Offices on trains in America and volunteered for service in France to bring the mail to the troops (http://postalmuseum.si.edu/collections/object-spotlight/special-passport.html ). 

Sorting the Mail at St. Pierre des Corps

One such RMS employee, mentioned in a Smithsonian National Postal Museum on-line exhibit noted above, Charles Leary of Kansas City, MO, went to France and supervised Army Post Office (APO) # 714 at Langres, Haute-Marne, France, where Army Schools in France were located.  

These RPO clerks worked supervising many of the APO’s in France or worked in the Bordeaux Terminal RPO in Bordeaux, France or on one of the 18 RPO train routes that, according to  The Postal History of the AEF, 1917-1923, edited by Theo. Van Dam and the WW I Study Group of the War Cover Group (Fishkill, NY: The Printers Stone, Ltd., 1990), serviced an AEF Army Post Office (APO) network by the end of the war of 275 AEF Army Post Offices (APO’s) on these RPO routes (APO 701 to APO 975). “Civilian Postal Agents attached to the Army (General Orders, No. 9, dated July 9, 1917 were to wear a distinctive brassard displaying the letters ‘P.A.’ “ (Van Dam, p. 8).

Long & Dennis expand on the WW I story of the Railway Mail Service overseas with the AEF in World War I:

In France was created, mostly by RMS personnel detailed to the AEF Postal Administration, the largest network of military RPO lines and terminals ever set up by Americans at any time. By 1918 eighteen American RPO’s and six additional closed pouch lines had been activated on the French railways; plus the new Bordeaux RMS Terminal, which received United States-bound mail from the lines and sorted 84 percent of it out to direct packages for American cities, towns, or RPO routes (pp. 210-211).

The Mail by Rail authors go on to tell of the network of RPO’s that ran up to, but behind the battle lines, in France in World War I.

Main-line military RPO’s were from Paris north to Boulogne (APO # 751); south to Orleans (797), Chateauroux (738) and beyond; Paris west to Le Mans (762); Le Mans to Rennes (940) , and also to Tours (717), on the Le Mans & Tours RPO., whose postmarks are most commonly found. Other lines to Bordeaux, Nancy (915), and Dijon (721), were similarly named; postmarks read “North” or “South” in lieu of train numbers, plus the letters “M.P.E.S.”…Military Postal Express Service (p. 211). (Route map below; click on image to enlarge.)

In addition to AEF RPO’s on French trains in World War I, which distributed and transported the mail to the troops and back home to their families, the Railway Mail Service used the Bordeaux RMS Terminal to receive, sort and distribute the mail to RPO’s in France to get mail to the troops and to gather and distribute outgoing mail from the troops to place it on ships back to the United States.


David A. Thompson, Rosemount, Minnesota, is the son of WW I Veteran, PFC Arne M. Thompson, 34th CAC, U.S. Army.  From 1940-1962, Arne was a RMS RPO Clerk and Foreman/Clerk in Charge on RPO’s in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and North Dakota.

Part II: Tomorrow

Where Was the USS Arizona in World War I?

The USS Arizona, New York Harbor, 26 December 1918

The battleship USS Arizona is remembered today because of its tragic demise at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and its status as a national memorial. However, it was on the navy rolls for the entirety of America's involvement in the Great War. Advertised as the most modern "super-dreadnought" afloat, with its sister ship, the USS Pennsylvania,  it was certainly a candidate for  the world's most powerful man-of-war. It had 12 14-in guns, armor ranging from 13.5 to 18 inches, and was propelled by four sets of steam turbines. So how did the U.S. Navy use this mighty ship in the Great War?

Both ships of the class were used for training and ceremonial purposes up to and after the Armistice. Arizona's specific mission was to train the gun crews of the cargo ships that were being armed. She suffered the indignity of having some of her 5-inch guns dismounted for use on the freighters. (Pennsylvania, meantime, served as flag ship of the Atlantic Fleet and performed other training duties.) Now why hold them out of the battle zone? The official line is that burned fuel oil, which was in short supply in the European theater. In 1917 the U.S. sent a number of coal-fired battleships that served with the Grand Fleet out of the Firth of Forth. Later in the war the navy used some additional battle-wagons that were oil-fueled, but not its most modern ships. Possibly it was judged unwise to expose the navy's biggest investment to a lucky shot from a U-boat.

Once hostilities ended, though, Arizona was among the ships chosen to escort President Wilson to France for the Peace Conference and to participate in the Fleet Review (shown above) at New York Harbor on the day after Christmas 1918.

First To Mobilize?

Students of the Great War sometimes hear that in 1914 mobilizing a nation's armed forces was the equivalent to declaring war. The trains, it was said, couldn't be turned back once they were rolling. While this is an exaggeration of the 1914 conditions in the literal sense, the serial triggering of ultimatums together with the difficulty of reversing the process of moving troops to the front probably overwhelmed the various governments. So — who did mobilize first? Who tilted that first domino over? 

Officers and Men of the Serbian Army on Parade, Prewar

The answer is that it was Serbia on 25 July 1914, the same day it replied to the onerous Austro-Hungarian ultimatum. Most likely, they figured whatever answer they made was bound to be deemed as inadequate, so they ought to get ready for what was coming. Austria-Hungary responded with their own mobilization the next day, and the race to Armageddon was on. 

Serbian Army Moving to the Border Shortly after Mobilization

Wolfhounds and Polar Bears: The American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, 1918-1920 reviewed by Peter L. Belmonte

Wolfhounds and Polar Bears: The American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, 1918-1920

by Col. John M. House, U.S. Army (Ret.)

The University of Alabama Press, 2016

American Soldiers on the March in Siberia

The North Russian and Siberian Expeditions (1918-1919 and 1918-1920, respectively) may be properly considered to be part of World War I, with the Mexican Punitive Expedition (1916-1917) and the German Army of Occupation (1918-1923) as closely related bookends. All are worthy of study in relation to U.S. involvement in the Great War. Retired U.S. Army colonel John M. House addresses the Siberian Expeditionary Forces in this work. In addition to helping readers understand this little-known and confusing episode in U.S. history, House hopes this study will afford both Americans and Russians a common ground of understanding our past with a hope for a better future. The author provides a general overview of the war as a backdrop to U.S. involvement in Siberia; he goes into much more depth on the specific situation in Russia from 1914 to 1918. House's description of the various factions, including (but not limited to) White Russians, Red Russians, Green Russians, peasants, Czech soldiers, Austro-Hungarian and German prisoners of war, and Japanese, Chinese, and British soldiers, is enough to make one's head swim. In the end, although there were many reasons given for intervention, U.S. diplomats considered the Siberian expedition mainly a humanitarian effort. But from the outset the Allies were hampered by differing goals and an abandonment of the military principle of unity of command. Indeed, even upon the arrival of the first U.S. troops in mid-August 1918, confusion reigned, and no one had a clear idea of what their mission was.

Subsequent chapters helpfully describe the military forces in Siberia and the challenges imposed upon troops and civilians simply because of Siberia's remote, austere, and forbidding climate and terrain. One interesting chapter is devoted to a discussion of the Russian Railway Service Corps; this group of American railroad men was "recruited" especially for their skill in running and maintaining a railroad. They arrived before American military forces and helped greatly to maintain the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Although technically civilians, they wore military uniforms, and most of the men thought they were indeed part of the U.S. Army at the time. It wasn't until the early 1970s that the Corps was awarded retroactive U.S. Army veteran status.

House describes each regiment (the 27^th and 31^st Infantry Regiments, plus supporting troops) and its activities throughout the deployment, including duty as railroad guards and mine guards. These units fought mostly what might be termed skirmishes and small firefights (although, to one involved in a firefight, it surely isn't "small"); the Americans in the Siberian force fought no pitched battles. The author also intersperses some detail about the North Russian Expeditionary Forces; this force differed in composition, mission, and activity from the Siberian force. The Siberian force had to contend with hostile Bolsheviks in addition to unfriendly and marauding White Russians and Cossacks. The latter two committed horrific atrocities, and the Americans' erstwhile allies, the Japanese, often fomented anti-American propaganda.

The concluding chapter summarizes the entire affair. Indeed, the expedition might be summed up:

The factors motivating the Allies to send troops to Siberia included survival on the Western Front, saving an ally [Russia], protecting previous military and nonmilitary aid, restraining Japanese ambitions, and assisting the Czech Legion. However, the confused situation in Siberia and the lack of clear military goals made success difficult to define. The lack of a coordinated Allied plan and a single Allied commander increased the confusion and complicated the AEF's task. (p. 164).

As usual, the troops on the ground paid the price.

There are nine maps reproduced in the book, but the country-wide maps are so small that they are very difficult to use, other than to get an idea of the vastness of Russia. House includes 18 photographs of pertinent locations and people. There are also three informative appendices, the first of which reproduces the aide memoire given to Major General William S. Graves, commander of the U.S. Siberian force, before his departure for Russia; the other two list the Siberia force's key officers and its personnel strength figures throughout the period. Rounding out the end matter are notes and a thorough bibliography that is an incredibly rich resource for those who are interested in learning more about this unusual and complex episode in American military history.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Siberian intervention or to those interested in the study of the use of military force for ill-defined purposes.

Peter L. Belmonte

Our October 2016 Newsletter, The St. Mihiel Trip-Wire

Our October 2016 issue of the ST. MIHIEL TRIP-WIRE, your World War I Centennial newsletter,  is now available at: 

http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/smtw.htm

Highlights of this ST. issue include:

• The Countdown to Veterans Day
• 1916 Presidential Election
• Pershing's 100
• Forgotten Battlefield: Pozières Ridge at the Somme
• Symposia at WWI Museum and the MacArthur Memorial
• Getting to Know the Members of the AEF
• Fall 1916: Rumania Staggered
• 2017 Battlefield Tours:  Flander 1917 and Caporetto & the Italian Front
• The Best Books on the Italian Front
• A Diggers Photo Album 
• The First Submachine Gun
• All the usual features

Recommended: The 26th Yankee Division at ARMY HISTORY MAGAZINE

I just got around to reading the latest (summer 2016) issue of Army History — they have a included a truly unique article on the graffiti created in various caves and quarries where the men of New England found themselves of the Western Front. Those men were in a lot of  different places and saw a lot of action — the 26th was among the earliest AEF divisions to arrive in France.

The special contribution by the authors, Alisha Hamel and Paul X. Rutz, is that they tracked down the military records and photos of the artists who signed their works. For instance, we meet  Thomas O'Halloran of Worcester, MA, and Company G of the 101st Infantry (see above), whose artwork, military record, and image are shown on a full-page spread. He had a tough war, evidently; his discharge card indicates he was severely wounded.

Read or download the and article and full issue here (and don't miss the cover):

http://www.history.army.mil/armyhistory/AH100(W).pdf

Rosemary, Remembrance, and Gallipoli

Why Do Australians Display Rosemary on Anzac Day?

An Australian Veteran Displays a Sprig of Rosemary on Anzac Day

Since ancient times this aromatic herb has been believed to have properties to improve the memory. Perhaps because of this rosemary became an emblem of both fidelity and remembrance in literature and folklore. Traditionally, sprigs of rosemary are worn on Anzac Day and sometimes on Remembrance Day and are usually handed out by veterans and patriotic organizations. Rosemary has particular significance for Australians, as it is found growing wild on the Gallipoli peninsula.

Source:  Australian War Memorial