100 Years Ago: The First Tank Attack

Lt. Bert Chaney, 41st Division
Witnessing the First Successful Tank Attack at Flers

[Dozens of tanks were committed to the 15 September 1916 renewed offensive at the Somme.  The operation bears the name "Battle of Flers–Courcelette" in many sources. Tanks were used at both those fortified villages that day. The attack against Flers is considered the most successful use of tanks in the attack.]

Big metal things they were, with two sets of caterpillar wheels that went right round the body. There was a huge bulge on each side with a door in the bulging part, and machine guns on swivels poked out from either side.

Basic Design of the British Mark Series Tank

I was attached to battalion headquarters and the colonel, adjutant, sergeant-major, and myself with four signalers had come up to the front line. From this position the colonel could see his men leave the assembly trench, move forward with the tanks, jump over us and advance to the enemy trenches. As a new style of attack he thought it would be one of the highlights of the war.

While it was still dark we heard the steady drone of heavy engines, and by the time the sun had risen the tanks were approaching our front line, dead on time. The Germans must have heard them too, and, although they had no idea what to expect, they promptly laid down a heavy curtain of fire on our front line. This had the effect of making us keep our heads down, but every now and again we felt compelled to pop up and look back to see how the tanks were progressing. It was most heartening to watch their advance, we were almost ready to cheer. But there was a surprise in store for us.

The Tanks That Attacked Flers

Instead of going on to the German lines the three tanks assigned to us straddled our front line, stopped and then opened up a murderous machine gun fire, enfilading us left and right. There they sat, squat monstrous things, noses stuck up in the air, crushing the sides of our trench out of shape with their machine guns swiveling around and firing like mad.

Everyone dived for cover, except the colonel. He jumped on top of the parapet, shouting at the top of his voice, "Runner, runner, go tell those tanks to stop firing at once. At once, I say." By now the enemy fire had risen to a crescendo, but, giving no thought to his personal safety as he saw the tanks firing on his own men, he ran forward and furiously rained blows with his cane on the side of one of the tanks in an endeavour to attract their attention.

George Louth of the 41st Division Also Witnessed the Attack against Flers

Although, what with the sounds of the engines and the firing in such an enclosed space, no one in the tank could hear him, they finally realized they were on the wrong trench and moved on, frightening the Jerries out of their wits and making them scuttle like frightened rabbits. One of the tanks got caught up on a tree stump and never reached their front line, and a second had its rear steering wheels shot off and could not guide itself. The crew thought it more prudent to stop, so they told us afterwards, rather than to keep going as they felt they might go out of control and run on until they reached Berlin.

The third tank went on and ran through Flers, flattening everything they thought should be flattened, pushing down walls and thoroughly enjoying themselves, our lads coming up behind them, taking over the village, or what was left of it, and digging in on the line prescribed for them before the attack. This was one of the rare occasions when they had passed through the enemy fire and they were enjoying themselves chasing and rounding up the Jerries, collecting thousands of prisoners and sending them back to our lines escorted only by Pioneers armed with shovels.

The 41st Division Memorial at Flers Is Among
the Most Famous on the Western Front

The four men in the tank that had got itself hung up dismounted, all in the heat of the battle, stretching themselves, scratching their heads, then slowly and deliberately walked round their vehicle inspecting it from every angle and appeared to hold a conference among themselves. After standing around for a few minutes, looking somewhat lost, they calmly took out from the inside of the tank a primus stove and, using the side of the tank as a cover from enemy fire, sat down on the ground and made themselves some tea. The battle was over as far as they were concerned."

Three War Poems That Stick with Me

107th Infantry Memorial, Central Park New York City (Steve Harris Photo)

To Germany

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But, gropers both through fields of thought confined,
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other's dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other's truer form,
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm,
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But, until peace, the storm,
The darkness, and the thunder and the rain.

Charles Hamilton Sorley, Suffolk Rgt., Killed at Loos, 1915
(Sorley was studying in Germany when war broke out.)

Guard Duty 

A star frightens the steeple cross
a horse gasps smoke
iron clanks drowsily
mists spread
fears
staring shivering
shivering 
cajoling
whispering
You! 

August Stramm, German Army, KIA Eastern Front 1915

Harbonnières to Bayonvillers: Picnic (a Sonnet)

A house marked Ortskommandantur—a great
sign Kaiserplatz on a corner of the church,
and German street names all around the square.
Troop columns split to let our sidecar through.
“Drive like hell and get back on the main road—it’s getting late.”
“Yessir.”
The roadway seemed to reel and lurch
through clay wastes rimmed and pitted everywhere.
“You hungry?—Have some of this, there’s enough for two.”
We drove through Bayonvillers—and as we ate
men long since dead reached out and left a smirch
and taste in our throats like gas and rotten jam.
“Want any more?”
“Yes sir, if you got enough there.”
“Those fellows smell pretty strong.”
“I’ll say they do,
but I’m too hungry sir to care a damn.”

John Allan Wyeth, 33rd Division AEF, Survived War
From: This Man’s Army: A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets, 
Available from the University of South Carolina Press

Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War reviewed by Bryan Alexander

Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War

by James Kitchen, Alisa Miller, and Laura Rowe
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011

This is a book for World War I scholars and students. It is not for the general reader or WWI newbie, since it presumes the reader is very familiar with the conflict at a global scale.

Other Combatants, Other Fronts is an anthology of articles presented to the Fifth International Society for First World War Studies conference. As such, the contents are very diverse, ranging geographically from Sicily to eastern India, Canada to Turkey. Topically the articles are grouped under headers of alternative mobilizations, neutrality, race and nation, and the legacies of violence; all are really best described as cultural, rather than military history (xv).

Wartime Cartoon Showing Some of the Complications of Neutrality for the Netherlands

Each piece is well researched, grounded in primary and secondary literatures, a deep dive into one particular, often obscure corner of the First World War. This is especially noteworthy since the majority of authors are not established scholars, but grad students and postdocs (xiii, 319ff). As such Other Combatants, Other Fronts previews the next generation of WWI scholarship.

The introduction by Kitchen, Miller, and Rowe is excellent, both as a way into the rest of the volume, as well as a fine precis of recent WWI historiographical issues. I would recommend it to any graduate student or undergrad considering the field. Kitchen et al begin by lamenting the Anglo-centrism of much writing, calling instead for moving scholarship "towards a total history" of the war (xix). They see the British "myopia" as a problem echoed in other accounts, which tend towards a national focus when the war really was transnational (xxii). (This agrees with my reading so far.) An emphasis on total war is one way forward (xxiv ff). So is micro-history, looking at small, sub-national stories. Combined, the approach is "both beyond and below the level of the national approach to war" (xli).

That totality includes taking the colonial background much more seriously. The editors argue that European and American powers applied lessons from the experience of their imperial wars to WWI, bringing colonial war home to Europe. In many respects total war was thus simply "colonial war writ large," with the conflicts of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945 incrementally taking on elements of earlier imperial struggles (xxxiv). If they are correct, Kitchen, Miller, and Rowe conclude that "this...gives the First World War its novelty within the history of total war" (xxxi). Personally, that gives me a new way to think about not just 1914–1918, but also the post-1815 century of imperialism. That also argues against the sense of August 1914 as a break in history.

Let me touch on each article by section, too quickly, though, for the good work every one represents:

A. Alternative mobilizations

"From Peacetime to Wartime: The Sicilian Province of Catania..." tracks one piece of Italy's responses to war, from 1914 (when Italy was neutral, shockingly) onward. Very useful glimpse of the war's issues in microcosm, with a fascinating look at a neglected bit of Europe.

"The Aims of Science Are the Antithesis to Those of War" compares British and French scientists and scientific institutions as they scrambled to mobilize for war in different ways. Very useful context for and complement to the famous German Manifesto of the 93 (October 1914).

Jack Cornwell, VC

"'Faithful Unto Death'" describes the creation of heroic myth around Jack Cornwell (left), a British casualty of the battle of Jutland (1916).

B. Neutrality

"'A Wonderful Something'" probes the Netherlands, who remained neutral throughout the vast war raging all around them.

"Government by Committee" zeroes in on the way the Dutch tried to maintain their commercial relations through blockades and U-boats, emphasizing administrative history. Useful context for the food war fought between Britain, France, and Germany.

"La Suisse Pendant La Grande Guerre..." (which appears in both French and an English translation, alas only partial and summary) draws out details of Swiss neutrality. This is a worthy focal point, given how many intellectuals visited Switzerland — think of Lenin and Einstein, for starters. Charrier makes a case for Romain Rolland being a social network hub.

C. Race and Nation

"Challenging European Colonial Supremacy" delves into the details of how colonial powers (Germany, Britain) used racial rankings to humiliate prisoners. There were plenty of tactical, even minute ways to treat internees in racially relative terms.

"'Racial' Mixing of Prisoners of War in the First World War" returns to Europe and the Franco-British use of colonial troops against Germany, arguing that WWI institutionalized racism as a prisoner of war tactic, "the first articulation of the notion that integration of prisoners of war of different races contravened civilized norms regarding the conduct of war". This led to postwar legal recognitions of race, which obviously went on to help drive mentalities for the Second World War (195).

"The Recruiter's Eye on 'The Primitive'" looks at an Indian labor unit and how the British organized them, from recruitment to return home. Personally, I was introduced here to the Kuki-Chin rebellion, which I hadn't known about (210ff).

"Beyond the Bonhomme Banania" focuses on how France acculturated Senegalese troops, largely through reviewing two books about these Africans by Lucie Cousturier. There's another pointer to WWII in a fascinating and disturbing account of how French and German citizens responded to the presence of these black troops over the Rhine after WWI's conclusion (230-233).

Annanese Troops from Indochina Arriving on the Western Front

D. The Legacies of Violence

"From 'Skagerrak' to the 'Organization Consul'" traces the emotions of German sailors from their reactions to the Battle of Jutland through the revolution and postwar period. This article links their frustration from lack of combat and fury at the scuttling of their ships at Scapa Flow to the violence of postwar irregular groups.

"Perceptions of the First World War in Turkish Autobiography" does exactly what it says, working through a series of memoirs to see how their authors addressed certain aspects of the war in the Ottoman theater. I found this especially fascinating, partly from unexpected details, like the operation of a Montessori school in Lebanon (281; I thought this was a European-only thing at the time). Wirtz displays a fine literary sensibility in addition to his historian's approach, drawing attention to powerful scenes in these texts (for example, 282).

"Fighting the Alien Problem in a British Country" examines how Canadian veterans became politically active once they returned home. Specifically, they often became xenophobic, even violent, towards other nationalities, going so far as to be seen "alien hunting" (302, 310).

Despite the richness outlined above, Other Combatants, Other Fronts has many limitations. I won't criticize its miscellaneous nature, since it's a conference volume, after all. But the absence of America, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, not to mention East Asia, is a glaring omission; to their credit, the editors admit some of this (xli).

The lack of visual media (photos, maps, charts, illustrations) beyond the awesome front cover is another problem, leaving the reader to Google a variety of topics which the book could have addressed. This is especially annoying when certain articles explicitly discuss specific paintings and photographs, like the Banania ad or the postcards assembled by Likosky.

Moreover, many authors are reticent about the implications of their research beyond how they might challenge historiography. It's up to the reader to apply conclusions and findings to WWI and beyond. Nevertheless, Other Combatants, Other Fronts overall is a useful volume for anyone seriously examining WWI. It's a kind of technical collection, with each component addressing a small piece of the larger puzzle. Many of the articles shed light on interesting and/or obscure issues. At a meta-level, the book gives a glimpse into some forthcoming WWI scholarship.

Bryan Alexander

Verdun Twenty Years Later: A Doomed Reconciliation

It must have promised to be a wonderful, idealistic, hopeful, pacifistic dream come true. French and German veterans aspiring to a reconciliation between their nations collaborated on a joint 20th-anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Verdun with a dramatic honoring of their fallen comrades. It was held on 12 July 1936 at the new, massive Ossuary, the odd mixture of fortress and cathedral architecture containing the skeletal remains of 130,000 unidentified French and German fatalities, and the adjacent French National Cemetery. Both are located on one of the "hottest" spots of the Verdun battlefield. 

Verdun Ossuary and National Cemetery

The Veillée de Verdun, as it was known was initiated by well-meaning former Poilus who were hoping to defuse the heightening international hostilities of the day. They did not appreciate, however, that they would actually be dealing with the Nazi government, who controlled the German participation from behind a curtain of sincere veterans. The German authorities fully intended to distract public attention from their own rearming effort and the Führer's hostile intentions. Despite the Nazi flags borne by the 500-man German delegation and their Heil Hitler saluting, the French participants and observers were utterly duped. Franco-German relations seemed to have advanced, steps had taken back from some bottomless precipice. Four years later, though, Verdun and Paris were both occupied by the German Army. France was utterly defeated. 

French Veterans at the Nighttime Event in the Cemetery

In the run-up to the Second World War the 5.5 million-man French veteran community and its official organization, the Anciens Combattants, were powerful voices in politics. Their advocacy for international peace, strengthened by the apparent success of the Veillée de Verdun, negated in good part French "alarmists" attempting to prepare the nation for the coming onslaught. Even after France surrendered in 1940, the Anciens Combattants were the strongest supporters of Verdun hero Henri Pétain's collaborationist government. Apparently, the price of the victory at Verdun included an epidemic of self-deception for a generation of France's warriors.

War in the Altipiani: Part II – The Strafexpedition of 1916

Italian Prisoners Taken in the 1916 Austro-Hungarian Offensive

In May 1916 on the first anniversary of the war in Italy, the largest battle on the Italian front outside of the Isonzo region was launched from the Austrian fortresses. Called the Battle of Asiago in English-language sources, it was known to the participants as the Strafexpedition — Austria's Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf's "punishment" of Italy for breaking the Triple Alliance. With 18 fresh infantry divisions and over 2000 guns, including 20 batteries of 305mm howitzers, the Austrian Strafexpedition was launched on 15 May 1916. The attack frontage stretched nearly 40 miles from Pasubio to Ortigara. Once off the plateau, Conrad's army would only need to advance across the northern Italian plain a short 35 miles to reach Venice and the sea. The eastern high outposts and the Isonzo front would be cut off and enveloped, and Italy would fall.

In five days the Austrians advanced five miles and captured all the Italian forts. The final penetration was 13 miles with the advance stopped just east of the Town of Asiago. Although outgunned and outnumbered initially, major reinforcements rushed from the Isonzo allowed the Italian Army to hold, eventually. Many sources attribute the halting of the Austrian attack to the beginning of the Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern Front (4 June) that targeted Austrian forces on that front. However, the attack in the Trentino had run its course by then and could only have been renewed with new forces that were just not available.

Trenches South of Asiago Town  Where the Line Was Stabilized at the End of 1916

For 18 months Austrian forces would control most of the Altipiani but would not mount any more attacks until Caporetto got the front moving dramatically. After the long Italian retreat, the Asiago plateau would be the western anchor of the new line along which the war in Italy would be decided. We will cover the 1918  operations in the Altipiani and Trentino in future postings on Roads to the Great War.

War in the Altipiani: Part I – Where Hostilities Opened on the Italian Front

There was a geographical "wild card" to the 1915 border between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. In the southeastern part of the Trentino, running roughly west to east from the city of Rovereto are a series of four plateaus (collectively "Altipiani Trentini") covering almost 600 square miles, about the size of Greater London. East to west they are the Folgaria, Lavarone, Luserna, and Asiago Plateaus.

Asiago Plateau with Italian War Memorial, Beyond Asiago Town

The Altipiani are simply enchanting — the image of the Asiago Plateau above is representative — they are all prime resort areas today. These four linked tablelands effectively form a series of steps downward into the Veneto, which would have been the rear of the main Italian deployments during most of the war, or, reversing the perspective, upward into the Trentino, the capture of which was a prime Italian war aim. Consequently, after the Isonzo basin, the Altipiani would be the next most critical battlefield on the Italian Front.

Two Key Mountain Positions on the Periphery of the Altipiani

Two significant mountains located on the north and south flanks would be important objectives of both sides. On the north, Mte Ortigara (6,900 ft) was the locale of a horrendous defeat for the elite Alpini troops of the Italian Army in 1917. Mte Pasubio (7,322 ft)  had been in Austrian territory but was quickly occupied by the Italians, who built 52 galleria (dugouts excavated from rock) to support their troops on the summit, where the front line held despite the blowing of a stupendous Austrian mine in March 1918.

Fort Verena: Fired the Opening Shots in 1915, Destroyed in the Strafexpediton of 1916

Since the Altipiani were strategically important both governments, each nation built a line of concrete and iron fortresses, set back five kilometers from the actual frontier. These 14 forts utilized the region's immense cliffs and mountaintop rock, as well as satellite batteries and garrisons for their defense. The facing walls of forts played a significant role in the first year of warfare on the Italian Front. On 24 May 1915 the four 150mm guns of Fort Verena (altitude 6,600 ft), shown on the top of page 12 fired the first shots on the front against the opposing Austrian line. Fort Luserna  and the nearby town of Luserna absorbed considerable punishment in that opening barrage.

Part II Tomorrow: The Strafexpedition

What Did You Do in the Great War, Mr. Joyce?

What did you do in the Great War, Mr. Joyce?

I wrote Ulysses.  What did you do?

Tom Stoppard, Travesties

Having left his native Dublin in 1904, James Joyce (1882–1941) settled for a decade in picturesque Trieste on the periphery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . He published his masterful short story collection Dubliners on the eve of war. When Italy joined the hostilities in 1915, however, Trieste was threatened with invasion, and the author abhorred the thought of any exposure to war. 

James Joyce in Zurich

He fled to Zurich for the duration, where he was highly productive — completing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916 and much  of Ulysses (published in 1922). In his free time in Zurich he managed to meet fellow author Stefan Zweig, cross paths with Vladimir Lenin, and observe the birth of Dada, the First World War's contribution to modern art. it was in Zurich, however, where his eye troubles became serious.  

Ulysses contains some war references, usually antiwar. It's set in 1904 so it predates the Great War and only the Boer and Russo-Japanese wars are mentioned. One apparent reference to the Battle of Tsushima seems a chronological error.  The battle occurred almost a year after Bloomsday (16 June 1904). It seems likely, though, that is was the current war that in any case was on the author's mind. A few of the shorter war references I've been able to track down in Ulysses include these:

• Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill. . . War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used to.  Whether on the scaffold high.
• Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion.  Religions.  Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of innocents.  Eat drink and be merry.  Then casual wards full after.  Heads bandaged. . .
• "British Beatitudes!. . . Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs, battleships, buggery and bishops."
• Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease.
• Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square.  He thought, but not for long, of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs, ending their days in some pauper ward, and of Cardinal Wolsey's words: If I had served my God as I served my king He would not have abandoned me in my old days.

After the Armistice, Joyce and his family returned to Trieste, but it had become a backwater —  no longer an imperial jewel.  It was on to Paris, but Zurich held a permanent place in his heart. Fleeing the Nazis, he returned in the Second World War and died there in January 1941.

Zurich retains a lasting affection for the Irish author. It is headquarters for the James Joyce Foundation and Library and in 2002 placed the statue shown below at his grave site.

.

A Roads Classic (and Correction) — Edward I. Tinkham and the First American Flag

Since I have been publishing Roads to the Great War I haven't had to publish a correction, but this one is necessary and only fair to all the parties involved, which include two of America's leading universities, two American heroes who died serving in the war, and two of the regular contributors to this blog.

In August we presented a series by Patrick Gregory about how the Stanford University contingent of American Field Service volunteers, led by a distinguished young man named Arthur Kimber, was designated by Secretary of War Newton Baker to carry the first American flag to the battlefields of Europe, after the nation's declaration of war. They achieved their mission in a well-publicized ceremony in June of 1917. Patrick's story was fully accurate in all details. 

Unfortunately, your humble editor (now very, very humble) had major memory breakdown when he posted that series. It turns out that not only is there another claimant to the "First Flag Presented" honor, but I published a series covering that very group in January 2015.  Luckily for me, my friend and author of that series, Jim Patton, quickly pointed out the conflicting postings for me.  I've been wrestling with how to sort this out since then, and now I'm going to give it a try.  First, the other side of the story.  It turns out that when America declared war, there was already another American Field Service unit in place in France.  It was from Cornell University, and it was led by a dynamic young man named Edward Tinkham.  His unit carried an American flag into the front when it went into action at the Chemin des Dames sector on 23 May 1916, about a month before the Stanford group's ceremony.  It apparently did not receive the same level of publicity as the other group, and perhaps may have been forgotten, except that 14 years after the event, it received formal recognition from President Herbert Hoover at a memorial dedication at Cornell University.

Now, how can I make amends for contributing to the confusion?  The one thing that transcends the conflicting claims is the story of both of the men who led their universitys' efforts, Arthur Kimber of Stanford and Edward Tinkham of Cornell. Both started with the American Field Service, delivered their flags, became military pilots, died in service, and are buried in Europe. Since Edward's story is the one I forgot about, I'm going to reacquaint our readers with his story first.  Below is the last article in Jim Patton's series, to provide some context, along with links to the other pieces.  We will re-post Arthur Kimber's story at a later date.

Edward Tinkham of Cornell: Never to Return Home

by James Patton

Edward Tinkham was a Cornell University student who left school at the end of 1915 to join the American Ambulance Field Service (AFS) in France. He served throughout the battle of Verdun (with SSU 3 & 4) and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He then returned to Cornell and recruited a whole section (TMU 526) for the AFS, which in April 1917 became the first American unit to become combatants, hauling shells and troops for the French on the Aisne. 

Student, Volunteer, Naval Aviator

Later he joined the new U.S. Navy aviation service, trained in France, and served as a seaplane pilot at the NAS Porto Corsini in Italy. For this service he received the Italian Croce al Merito di Guerra. Vice Admiral William S. Sims, former chief of U.S. Naval Forces in European Waters, in testimony before the Senate in 1920, spoke about Navy aviation during the war:

The only one of our forces that were in contact with an enemy that did not get away, an enemy that was willing to fight, were, necessarily, air pilots, and they are all officers; and they want to be well-educated officers, too, because they have got a difficult proposition to handle when they are up in the air; it is navigation. . .

And speaking specifically about NAS Porto Corsini:

The air forces which had an opportunity to fight enemy forces that were willing to fight, because a large part of the time the enemy air forces were at least equal, and sometimes superior, to, ours.

American Volunteers Monument France – Edward Tinkham Is Included in Those Remembered
(Contributor James Patton Is Center Right in Blue Shirt and Cap)

Edward Tinkham, however, would  never return home after the fighting ended. From the AFS Bulletin 82, 18 February 1919:

Ensign Kimberly Stuart, U.S. Naval Aviation, formerly of Section 4 and sous-chef and chef of Section 10, writes at the end of last month from Hotel S. Marco, Ravenna, Italy, that Edward I. Tinkham, in the same branch as Ensign Stuart, is still very ill. Ensign Tinkham was member of Sections 3 and 4 and chief of the first T.M.U. No. 526, sent out from rue Raynouard in 1917.

From Tinkham’s biography in the AFS Friends of France:

Shortly after the armistice he was taken sick and was transferred to the Italian Military Hospital at Ravenna where he died of meningitis and pneumonia on March 30, 1919.

More details come from an Italian source:

Edward Tinkham died at 8:10 AM, Mar. 30th, 1919 at the Italian Military Hospital in Ravenna, Italy. His body was cremated and his ashes were placed in the Muro perpetuo at Ravenna.

These accounts agree on two facts: Tinkham was ill for a long time, maybe over four months, and he died of spinal meningitis and/or pneumonia. Nobody, especially in 1919, was afflicted with either meningitis or pneumonia for a long time, but no source has been found to explain what was going on.

The Italian source also reported that Tinkham’s father, Julian, was with him when he died and arranged the burial.

Edward's Name Inscribed on the American Volunteers Monument

After the end of hostilities, Tinkham and the other Porto Corsini bomber pilots were commended in a letter written by R. Adm. Frederick R. Harris, the chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks (coincidentally also a Cornellian) after he reviewed the damage done by bombing to the Pola facilities.

The Navy had no decoration scheme until 4 February 1919 when P.L. 65-253 established the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal, retroactive to 5 April 1917. A medals board was convened in March 1919 to review all commendations, as well as new candidates, for consideration to receive these awards. The board ultimately recommended the award of 1,839 Navy Crosses to Navy and Marine personnel, and Tinkham was on the list. Due to the large number of awards at one time, the citations were brief:

The Navy Cross is awarded to Ensign Edward I. Tinkham, U.S. Navy (Reserve Forces), for distinguished and heroic service as a seaplane pilot in which capacity he made many flights for patrolling the sea and bombing the enemy coasts, showing at all times courage and a high spirit of duty.

Previously, in June 1917, the Cornell faculty, in an unprecedented act, had awarded Tinkham his BS degree, retroactive to the Commencement of 1916. Due in large part to Tinkham’s effort, 122 Cornellians served with the AFS. Only the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton contingents were larger.

Although the war put paid to romanticism, there were still some romantics left at Cornell. Professor A. B. Recknagel wrote this heroic Ode to Tinkham:

As the first song birds of returning Spring
Bring hope and vigor after Winter’s dearth
So Tinkham with his band of Cornell youths
An earnest was of great help to come
And of our country girding for the strife

Consumed as with a bright fierce flame
Of patriotic fervor, he is not dead
Whom once we knew and loved
He is translated, apotheosized
As One who also loved humanity.

After Edward’s death, Julian Tinkham sold his business interests and devoted himself wholeheartedly to promoting the League of Nations and the cause of peace. A diehard, he campaigned tirelessly for the U.S. to reconsider and join the League, frequently contributing what today we call op-ed pieces to the New York newspapers. He moved to his farm (another story) and turned his house at 509 Park St. in Montclair, NJ, into a venue for meetings and lectures. He redeveloped his 1.7 acres of grounds, and from 1924 to 1926 he opened them to the public as a "Peace Garden," where visitors could “enjoy tea in his garden amidst fountains and lily ponds with goldfish and other attractive features.” There were protests from the neighbors, lawsuits, and a city zoning violation action, which ultimately closed the place down. One of the fountains was "The Model for the League of Nations" by the noted Philadelphia sculptor A. Sterling Calder. After Julian’s death in 1940, this work was moved to Mountainside Hospital in Glen Ridge, NJ. In recent years the house was the residence of economist Paul Volcker, Federal Reserve Chairman from 1979 to 1987.

"League of Nations" Fountain Commissioned by Julian Tinkham

And the Tinkham mystique lived on for a while longer. On 23 May 1931, on the occasion of the dedication of the Cornell War Memorial, President Herbert Hoover said:

Fourteen years ago this morning a group of American boys carried an American flag into the fighting on the Aisne front, and thereby made a splendid gesture symbolic of the might of the New World mustering for the decisive issue. This unit was composed of undergraduates of Cornell and was under the leadership of Captain Edward Tinkham, a Cornell student in the class of 1916. It was a vanguard of a mighty army of American youth that flowed across the Atlantic in the months that followed.

For a number of years the Italian Navy base at Ravenna held an annual remembrance for Tinkham, and on the date of President Hoover’s address, the Italian Navy also honored Tinkham in a ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

In addition to his Naval Air Service, Edward Tinkham was one of 19 men from the old AFS TMU 526 who died in the service. A total of 149 men who served with the AFS camions were lost. See the earlier accounts of his remarkable service in the Great War at these Roads to the Great War postings:

Part I: With the American Field Service

Part II: With TMU 526, of the AFS and the Rèservé Mallet

Part III: Difficult times in the Camion Service

Part IV: Training to be a Navy Pilot

Part V: Training to be a Navy Pilot

How did I first get interested in Edward Tinkham and his story? As an undergraduate at Cornell, I frequently walked past this plaque. And yes, I also know the stories of Mason and McCullough.

Sources: American Field Service, Congressional Record (Jan. 1920), Cornell University, Willis Haviland Lamm, Montclair Historical Society, Montclair Public Library, Seal and Serpent Society.

Germany Digests the Lessons of U-boat Warfare

The Germans started World War I with only 24 U-boats. Their campaign against Allied shipping did not begin until early 1915, and after several starts and stops, unrestricted submarine warfare did not begin until February 1917. Over the next year, the Allies lost more than 5.5 million tons of merchant shipping, a loss rate that substantially exceeded new construction.

The U-boat threat was brought under control during the last year of the war, primarily through the implementation by the Royal Navy of escorted convoys, a measure that it had initially resisted. Convoying greatly complicated the open-ocean search problem for German submarines, because a group of ships was not much more likely to be found than a single ship, while escorts reduced the damage that submarines could cause when they did succeed in finding ships to attack.  It is important to note that escorts were much less effective at actually destroying submarines than they were at limiting their effectiveness by forcing them to submerge after their initial attack, which generally allowed the rest of the convoy to escape

WWI U-boat Riding the Surface

In practice, the British were able to counter Germany’s resort to unrestricted submarine warfare only with the help of the Americans, who provided them with additional convoy escorts and merchant shipping, and who, with Britain, successfully pressured the large merchant fleets of countries that remained neutral to continue operation even after the prize rules were abandoned. Thus, Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare campaign failed both because it brought the Americans into the war and because it failed to knock other neutral merchant fleets out of the war. Therefore, in an important sense, the political effects of the campaign negated its military effects, because Britain probably would not have survived the First Battle of the Atlantic if the Royal Navy and the British merchant marine had continued to face the U-boats on their own. As Arthur Hezlet has noted, “The defeat of the U-boats was not because the guerre de course (independent commerce raiding) could not by its nature be decisive: it was because the Allies were able to be strong everywhere and make a gigantic effort.”

The submarines that fought World War I were surface ships which were expected to submerge only in order to attack and escape better-armed surface targets, but which also lost a considerable portion of their mobility and situational awareness when submerged and, therefore, much of their potential offensive power. This characteristic was of course based largely on technical constraints, but it was also a function of expectations about their primary mission, which was assumed in most cases to be coastal defense or fleet cooperation, both of which contemplated attacks against major naval assets, against which surface engagements were suicidal.

The German campaign against Allied merchant shipping demonstrated instead that attacks against merchant ships could be most effectively prosecuted at night, on the surface, at relatively close range, even in the face of escorts. The challenge was to maximize the effects of these attacks, escape the escorts alerted by these attacks, and reengage.  Defined in this way, the operational demands placed on the “submersible” submarine were less in conflict with its basic technical limitations than when the challenge was to attack powerful naval vessels, as in the coastal defense or fleet cooperation missions.  This lesson drove the German submarine force toward the operational and tactical methods it employed in its World War II guerre de course, which emphasized night surface attacks by groups of submarines which would pursue individual convoys and repeatedly attack them over a period of a week or two.

Karl Doenitz at Sea During WWI

These “wolf pack” tactics were pioneered by German Nazi Admiral Karl Doenitz during the interwar years. Wolf pack tactics did not demand a radically new type of submarine, and German interwar submarine designs were evolutionary, emphasizing longer range and endurance and larger torpedo salvos and magazines. The most important technical development that made wolf packs possible was the maturation of high frequency (HF) radio as a command and control mechanism. HF radio provided over-the-horizon performance from a relatively small, low-powered transmitter, and allowed deployed submarines to report convoy sightings to a central command post, which could then broadcast this information to all other submarines in that broad ocean area, allowing them to marshal for a concentrated attack by a dozen or so submarines.

Using night surface attacks, these wolf packs would strike the convoy simultaneously, from multiple azimuths, with multiple torpedo salvos, and then slip away.  Many such attacks would be conducted over the course of several days, with the wolf pack using the daylight hours to separate from the convoy and race ahead of it on the surface to get into firing position for the following night.

Source: U.S. Naval War College, Newport Paper #16

They Didn't Want to Die Virgins: Sex and Morale in the British Army on the Western Front, 1914–1918 reviewed by James Thomas

They Didn't Want to Die Virgins: Sex and Morale in the British Army on the Western Front, 1914–1918

by Bruce Cherry
Helion and Co., 2016

Illustrations from They Didn't Want to Die Virgins (author's collection)

Describing Victorian soldiers, Rudyard Kipling wrote that "single men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints." The generation of "Tommies" who fought in the Great War, as well as those in all wars before and since, are very much the same. Civilians quite often combine a total ignorance of the life of a soldier with a need to idealize them as their nation's finest young men, flawless and pure. Nature has made most men, especially most young men, very sexually...enthusiastic. Armies around the world have always had their "camp followers" and readily available "bawdy houses." With small professional armies fighting in foreign lands, civilians could remain blissfully ignorant of how men in uniform dealt with their sexual needs and desires. However, the vastness of the First World War expanded all military matters exponentially, including coping with that most basic of human drives.

Giant armies were now made up of more men in uniform than had ever been seen before, slaughtering each other in vast numbers with unprecedented violence, The sheer numbers of young men, combined with a total dearth of young women, and those men living with the near certainty of violent and painful death or injury, intensified their sexual needs. Ironically and sadly, the Great War occurred near the end of the long overly moralistic Victorian Era, when all things sexual were stifled, hidden away, or driven underground. Now the children of the Victorians were thrown into the double dose of unheard-of violence and unspoken sexual impulse. Bruce Cherry's outstanding book They Didn't Want to Die Virgins tells the story of these young men and the British Army's and government's attempts to deal with all things sexual in the war while dealing with civilian pressure for enforced celibacy.

Order Now

For the soldiers themselves outlets for sexual energy were sought in all avenues, from increasing availability of pornography and masturbation to friendly French and Belgian women and prostitutes approved and not approved. For the Army the goal was maintenance of morale and avoidance of disease. Seemingly worse than their fear of disease was the Army's concern that if soldiers' "normal" sexual needs were not met, they might turn to each other, and "unnatural" sexual congress between men would most certainly destroy the morale of the Army.

In a war that was grinding away the nation's youth at an alarming rate with shell fire and rifles, it would be unthinkable to lose men to venereal disease or bad morale. For the government it was the struggle between meeting the physical needs of the troops — including their sexual needs — and keeping civilians, whose support was essential for continuing the war effort, from knowing too much about the realities of the war's horrors and the men's sexuality. There were also, of course, the additional problems of coping with Tommy's sexuality by the French Army, French civilians, and the French government, all of whom had to deal with the British soldiers' presence in their country.

For Bruce Cherry, the research necessary to write this book posed more problems than the usual difficulties confronting historians. Even in more modern times, an individual's sexuality is rarely discussed openly. For young men of the Victorian/Edwardian generation, even diary writers were reticent about recording sexual matters. Direct references in official documents are also quite rare. Cherry does a masterful job digging out information, learning from the periphery, analyzing data, and then collating all the material and presenting to the reader a masterful study. It is ironic that while sexuality is such a fundamental part of all humans, talking about it is difficult and trying to examine this largely unspoken topic from the past is even more challenging. In They Didn't Want to Die Virgins Cherry overcomes these challenges and presents to the reader an excellent glimpse into the multifaceted sexual life of Britain's soldiers of the Great War.

James Thomas

The Doughboy Cookbook

This has been one of the most visited sites at our DOUGHBOY CENTER Website over the years.  Visit it
at:  www.worldwar1.com/dbc/food.htm to see all the recipes for the favorite (or well-remembered) rations of American soldiers in the Great War.

The Value of the Rum Ration

Had it not been for the rum ration I do not think we should have won the war. 

1922 parliamentary testimony on shell shock

Standard One-Gallon Rum Jar for the British Forces
 S.R.D.-Special Red Demerara, 86-proof Jamaican Rum

Although all but ignored in the official military records, rum, as well as the canteens, estaminets, cigarettes, letters, and trench newspapers, was essential to the trench soldier. It was these small comforts that affected the individual in the firing line; grand operational plans mattered far less. Rum was overflowing in both song and poem and played an essential role in the life of most trench soldiers: by raising morale; by helping men to cope with the strain of war; by being employed as a medicine; by being offered as a reward; and finally, by reinforcing the hierarchy of the army and the masculinity in soldiers. 

Taking Their Ration in a Trench

By examining the many uses of rum, a window into understanding the often neglected trench culture of the individual soldier is provided. Viewed in this way, rum was a complex and multi-layered tool for morale. Equally important, "Demon Rum" was the soldiers' tool and without it, the common men who made up the soldiers' profession – the bankers, clerks and farmers, who put down their pens and ploughs for rifles – might have collapsed under the terrible strain, both physical and psychological, of trench warfare.

Under the spell of this all-powerful stuff, one almost felt that he could eat a German dead or alive, steel helmet and all.

Canadian Soldier

Source: “More a Medicine than a Beverage”: “Demon Rum” and the Canadian Trench Soldier of the First World War
Tim Cook, Canadian War Museum

Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker's Photo Album, Part II

From Auburn University's Eddie V. Rickenbacker Collection

Members of the 94th Aero Squadron Before a Hannoveraner CL.III
Left-to-right: Jimmy Meissner, Eddie Rickenbacker, Alden Sherry, Reed Chambers, & Weir Cook
(Thanks to Steve Miller for the Details)

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Enemy Bomb Damage, Nancy,  France

Rickenbacker Welcomed Home with Mother, Columbus, Ohio, 1919

Aviation Pioneers Billy Mitchell and Hap Arnold

Rickenbacker Motor Company "Super Sport"

Medal of Honor Certificate, Awarded 1930

Rickenbacker's Account of Being Lost at Sea for 24 Days in 1942

Capt. Eddie Just Before His Death in 1973

Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker's Photo Album, Part I

From Auburn University's Eddie V. Rickenbacker Collection

The Future Captain Eddie, 1906

Racing a Maxwell, 1915

Lt. Rickenbacker Operates a Motorcycle with Sidecar

In Front of a Caudron Trainer

Chateau-Thierry with Bridges Intact 

Rickenbacker and Another Aviator with a Captured 
German Hannoveranner CL.III

Sgt. Victor E. Bertrandias Seated in a Nieuport with 
Lt. Charles A. Rankin Standing Beside the Plane

Rickenbacker with His SPAD XIII of the Hat in the Ring Squadron