1914: Fight the Good Fight. . . Reviewed by Bruce Sloan

1914: Fight the Good Fight, Britain, the Army & 
the Coming of the First World War

by Allan Mallinson

Bantam Press, 2013

The BEF on the Way to France, August 1914

Allan Mallinson spent 35 years in the British Army and is the author of Light Dragoons–a history of four regiments of British Cavalry (one of which he commanded), numerous historical novels, as well as the acclaimed The Making of the British Army. He has written on defense matters for the Times, and has regularly reviewed for the Times and the Spectator. He was a year at the Staff College and was posted to the Directorate of Military Operations, in the branch concerned with war in Europe.

With the author's access to prominent military figures and the War Office papers in the National Archives, this history is researched with exactitude. In my opinion, 1914 stands up very favorably with, and supplements, The Guns of August, with regard to the reasons, the treaties and the bumbling beginnings of the war.

Mallinson takes us through the preparations and mobilization of the BEF and General Sir John French's leadership through the retreat from Mons (which General Haig's I Corps doesn't manage to get to) to the battle at Le Cateau, the Race to the Sea, and to the Marne, where probably the last lance-to-lance cavalry battle was fought on 7 September at Le Montcel.

He relates incidents and decisions leading to and within World War I from Waterloo, the Zulu War and the disaster at Isandlwana (which General Smith-Dorian survived—he thinks because he had a blue jacket), the Boer War, and the Russo-Japanese War.

It was pleasing to find that the author, an infantryman and cavalryman, spends a fair amount of time on the decisions regarding the British Navy and the fledgling Royal Flying Corps and the usefulness of both. The friction between commanders, both British and French, is explored, with the resulting actions and repercussions. He pulls no punches when analyzing their decisions and motivations, and he addresses other analyses when he has subsequent or contrary evidence. (He is not overly friendly to Sir John French.)

All in all, an extremely good and enlightening read.

Bruce Sloan

Impressions of the YMCA at War

A Soldier Enjoying Music at  a YMCA Canteen

By Mark Hauser
From the Hoover Institution Website
https://www.hoover.org/news/silas-palmer-fellow-examines-role-wwi-doughboy-american-mass-culture

In France, YMCA huts provided soldiers with record players and movie theaters; again, soldiers’ responses were more complicated than those anticipated by Y officials. John Wister, a horticulturist from Philadelphia, wrote home to his family that at the Y "they never show anything but the oldest, cheapest and worst. I have seen good American pictures in Bordeaux by going to the French theatres at about 4 francs, but never anything good in the Y yet, but of course tastes differ and some like them.”

YMCA Sponsored Baseball League

Although Army and welfare officials struggled to organize entertainment, YMCA workers were more effective at organizing sports leagues; sports had been an important part of the Y’s services in the United States where officials encouraged men to participate in sports as a form of “muscular Christianity". Birge Clark, a Palo Alto native and former Stanford student who served as the captain of a balloon company during the war, wrote in his diary of the popularity of the Y baseball league, which three times a week attracted ten percent of his company to a nearby French town. Baseball was so popular in Clark’s unit that even though the Y had spent millions of dollars on sporting goods it was unable to supply his soldiers with enough equipment; Clark’s company eventually built their own machine to sand lumber into bats. However, over time athletic programs transformed from mass participation into mass spectatorship, a change welcomed by many soldiers. Independence Day celebrations in 1918 featured huge baseball games designed to showcase the best soldier talent, yet also turned the non-participants into a crowd that watched the games with enthusiasm. Roy Davis, an ambulance driver from Los Gatos, CA, recorded in his diary the experience of attending his first football game alongside thousands of other soldiers, writing “I am willing to frankly admit that I did not know the first thing about football. However, after the ‘kickoff’ at 2:30, the points of the game soon became apparent to me and when things became especially exciting I found myself yelling and waving my arms with as much gusto as some of the one-time-stars of the game.” Winning new fans like Davis was important for football but even more important for a controversial sport like boxing; boxing’s popularity soared after the war in large part because of soldiers’ spectatorship at YMCA and Knights of Columbus-sponsored bouts, and veterans successfully lobbied to legalize the sport in states such as New York where it had previously been banned.

A YMCA Tour of Paris for the Troops

YMCA officials operated “canteens” where soldiers could buy a wide range of goods, including cigarettes, canned fruits, toiletries, chocolate, and even wristwatches. Edwin Gerth, a Knox College student who enlisted in the Army, wrote in letters to his family and his diary of his appreciation for the YMCA, and wished their canteens could be in the trenches where he could have chocolate when he needed it most. Other soldiers like Jacob Emery, a lieutenant and student at Harvard, wrote to his family criticizing the canteens for their limited selection, high prices, and inconvenient hours. The reactions of soldiers like Gerth and Emery highlighted what soldiers perceived as the unfulfilled potential of canteens to provide inexpensive, convenient comforts during times of intense physical and mental strain.

Photos from the Hoover Institution Collection

The Dangerous Lives of WWI Tank Crews

I was looking through my folder of WWI tank images and came across many of damaged tanks, especially of British Mark-Series vehicles. The two shown here with the dead crew members were especially affecting. This led me to do some searching for information on the hazards of serving on tank crews. The best material I could find was The Long, Long Trail website article "The Tank Corps of 1914–1918." It turns out that it wasn't just enemy fire that was dangerous for the men aboard.

At best, the early tanks could achieve a top speed of 4 miles per hour. On the battlefield this was rarely realized, and in many cases infantry moved far faster. The machines were crewed by a subaltern, three drivers, and four gunners, of which one was an NCO. Interior conditions were truly appalling, being a combination of intense heat, noise, and exhaust from the engine, violent movement as the tank crossed the ground and molten metal splash as bullets struck the plating. Men would often be violently sick or badly incapacitated by the conditions and were often in no fit state to continue after quite short journeys. It was difficult to communicate within the tank and with men and other tanks outside. The tank officer often had to get out and walk, to reconnoiter his path or to work with the infantry. The tanks also proved to be mechanically unreliable and vulnerable to shellfire. Some tanks carried a wire frame on the roof, designed to deflect grenades. 

[At the Battle of Amiens] in conjunction with the new artillery and infantry tactics [the 450 tanks assembled], proved to be useful in crushing wire, overrunning machine gun posts and strong points, and helping infantry through the streets of destroyed villages. However, tank losses were significant and within days of the initial assault the Tank Corps was a temporarily spent force. It was not until the assaults on the Hindenburg Line in late September 1918 that a large enough force had been assembled again. From 21 August 1918 to the Armistice on 11 November 1918, some 2,400 men and officers of the Tank Corps became casualties.

Source: http://www.1914-1918.net/tanks.htm 

Who Was John Purroy Mitchel?

Known as "The Boy Mayor of New York", John Purroy Mitchel (1879–1918) was New York City's youngest-ever mayor, elected to office when he was only 34. He was soundly defeated for re-election and died less than six months after he left office on 6 July 1918, at age 38, while he was training as an Air Service pilot. He fell 500 feet out of his biplane near his training field in Louisiana after apparently forgetting to fasten his seat belt. 

Mayor Mitchel at a War-Related Event

He was the namesake of Mitchel Field on Long Island, formerly Hazelhurst Aviation Field #2. Charles Lindbergh flying the Spirit of St. Louis departed for France in 1927 from an adjacent airfield.

Photos from Keith Muchowski 

Recommended: T.E. Lawrence and the Forgotten Men Who Shaped the Arab Revolt

By Philip Walker
At OUPblog of Oxford University Press

[Some readers have asked me why we are recommending works from other blogs with greater frequency, some of which are just irresistibly interesting.  As it turns out, I'm getting more and more recommendations from our readers and editorial team.  This article was discovered by our contributing editor Tony Langley.]

T. E. Lawrence, known as “Lawrence of Arabia”, has provoked controversy for 100 years. His legend was promoted in the 1920s by the American Lowell Thomas’s travelogue, renewed in 1935 through his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and revived in 1962 by the epic film Lawrence of Arabia. The hype should not blind us to the fact that Lawrence’s contribution to the Arab Revolt of 1916–18 against the Turks was indispensable. His skills in organizing and coordinating, his daring and courage, his intuitive grasp of guerrilla warfare and how to harness it, his influence over Emir Feisal (the leader of Arab forces in the field), and his talent for manipulating his own leaders if necessary, were all crucial to the hollow success of the revolt.

Yet Lawrence was a team player. In particular, there was a nexus of influence over the revolt that has stayed below the radar. While Lawrence and other British, Arab, and French officers were blowing up the Hejaz Railway, a forgotten band of British officers at Jeddah, far from the desert campaign, carried out vitally important diplomatic and intelligence work that prevented the revolt from collapse. This untold story centres on Colonel Cyril Edward Wilson, the British representative at the Jeddah Consulate. Wilson was a dependable officer of the old school—the antithesis of the brilliant and mercurial Lawrence. But his strong relationship with Sherif Hussein of Mecca, the leader of the revolt, drew this suspicious and controlling man back from the brink of despair, suicide, and the abandonment of the revolt. Wilson’s undervalued influence over Hussein during critical phases of the revolt was at least as important as the well-known influence of Lawrence over Emir Feisal, Hussein’s son.

Wilson’s core team included Captain Norman Bray, a highly strung Indian Army intelligence officer who rooted out anti-British and anti-Hussein jihadists. These men were incensed that Hussein dared to rebel against the Turkish sultan, who was also the caliph (leader) of all Sunni Muslims. The stakes were high because the jihadists based at Jeddah and Mecca wanted to discredit both Hussein and the British by disrupting the Hajj—the Muslim pilgrimage—and encourage Indian pilgrims (passing through Jeddah on their way to Mecca) to rebel against British rule in their homeland. Bray helped keep the revolt on course by neutralizing the jihadists, with the aid of a resourceful Persian spy named Hussein Ruhi, and had their leader deported to prison in Malta.

Ruhi is one of the most intriguing and influential players in the Arab Revolt. His cover was as Wilson’s Arabic interpreter, and he did invaluable intelligence work for the colonel in other respects too— even at times putting his life in danger.

Wilson’s two deputies, both with intelligence backgrounds, helped him with vital diplomatic work. In the colonel’s absence, the eccentric, half-deaf Major Hugh Pearson helped steady Hussein when he lost his nerve. Later, the genial and imperturbable Colonel John Bassett stood in for Wilson while he spent five months recovering in Cairo from life-threatening dysentery. Bassett encouraged and cajoled Hussein when Hussein fell out with his son Feisal, resigned as King of the Hejaz, spoke of suicide, and threatened to withdraw all of Feisal’s Bedouin tribesmen from the planned advance into Syria. If those fighters had returned to the Hejaz (Hussein’s territory) the revolt would have dissolved.

Continue reading the full article here:

https://blog.oup.com/2018/02/te-lawrence-forgotten-men-arab-revolt/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=oupblog

100 Years Ago Today: EINLADUNG—An Invitation to the Americans!

By Terrence J. Finnegan

The First Division Arrives in the Sector, January 1918

Trench Line North of Bois de Remieres Was the
Location of the Raid

The German General Staff decided to engage the 1st Division at the Woëvre front, on the southern side of the St. Mihiel Salient, shortly after it arrived.  Planning commenced on 17 February 1918 for the attack known by the ironic code word Einladung—it was now time for the Germans to send an "invitation" to American forces to experience first-hand the realities of positional war.  General der Artillerie von Gallwitz recognized a trench raid was an appropriate way to test the initial mettle of the American soldier in the area that constituted Bois de Remieres and Bois Carre north of the village of Seicheprey.  The 78th Reserve Divsion (78. R. D.) was tasked with quickly breaking through the lines at dawn and penetrating  as far as the northern edge of Bois de Remieres (see maps, left and below) to acquire prisoners and destroy abris (shelters) and supporting trenches.  Two Res. I. R. 259 Kompagnies augmented by members of Sturmbattalion.14 armed with Flammenwerfer (flamethrowers) were to execute the raid.  After a brief 30 minutes, Stosstruppen (storm troops)  were to return to the lines with MW and artillery ceasing fire 20 minutes later.  Major Bruns,  Res. I. R. 259 commander, issued his order for Einladung. The operation was to occur on 1 March using Stosstruppen and patrols.  Bruns named Hauptmann Seebohm as the assault commander to lead the Einladung attack. 

Click on Map to Enlarge

Post-Action Map Maj. Gen. Bullard Used to Describe Einladung Against His 1st Division

Col.  Frank Parker's 18th Infantry Was
the Main Target of the Raid

On 1 March at 0540, Einladung commenced with an artillery, Gaswerfer (gas shells), and (gas projector)  barrage saturating Colonel Frank Parker’s 18th Infantry holding the F Sector.   The barrage lasted a half-hour, annihilating positions, demolishing abris, caving in trench networks and cutting off wire communications.  Einladung was more noteworthy for the artillery exchange for than the infantry close combat.  In less than an hour the German barrage deluged four 75mm batteries with 300 shells each. A Gasschutz (gas barrage) of 720 Gaswerfer shells landed in the American trenches. Ten minutes after the Germans launched Einladung, the 5th Field Artillery 155mm commenced counter-battery against German batteries. Major Robert C. McCormick, commander of 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery, without waiting for the order, “knew it was an attack and opened fire.”  Major Robert McCormick was a former Illinois National Guard cavalry officer who was assigned to the 1st Division as a field artillery battery commander.  He is best known as the publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper. “As soon as I opened fire everybody else thought the order had been given and the whole brigade opened fire.” The 155mm heavies were also assisted by French 90mm and 95mm.  Sixth Field Artillery and 7th Field Artillery 75mm fired over 5000 rounds at 78. R. D. targets north of Bois de Remieres and other German batteries in the area.

A German Flammenwerfer Team

Major General Bullard, commander of the “Fighting First” Division forwarded a succinct assessment of the battle to Général Passaga on 2 March.  “The enemy entered our lines about 20 minutes after the barrage started.”  A brief description of the attack followed.  “About 50 men entered at Breach A, blew up one dugout, searched the trenches nearby and retired…About 100 raiders entered at Breach B, dividing into two parties.  One party moved west through trenches until met and repulsed by a platoon of Co. F/2.  The other party moved south until met and repulsed by a detachment of Co. F/1.  About 50 raiders entered at Breach C.  A portion reached the P.C. of Co. F/1 before being repulsed.  They blew up all dugouts en route with mobile charges.” First Division Commander Major General Bullard concluded the discussion on the enemy with “Practically all dugouts in subcenters F/1 were destroyed as well as a number in the eastern portion of subcenter F/2. The trenches were demolished.” As German artillery commenced registration fire, Colonel Frank Parker, 18th Infantry commander, was ordered to move their detachments out of the registered area.  When the attack commenced, the infantry groups that had withdrawn advanced and met the raiders in the open. Rifle and revolver fire drove them back. Bullard concluded on a sobering note—“If the garrisons of F/1 and F/2 had not been withdrawn as before explained, it is very probable that few would have survived the enemy’s bombardment.”

Typical 1st Division Trench in the Sector

Looking from the U.S Position at the Actual Area of the Assault

On 3 March 1918 Generalmajor von Stolzmann provided his assessment of Einladung. He emphasized that the Americans were totally surprised; they organized their position according to the principle of the outpost with the point of entry being thinly held and sentry posts withdrawing at first fire; coordination between American infantry and their artillery was perceived to be poor; and no enemy counter attacks followed. Key to the discussion was Besondere Erfahrungen [distinct experiences] that outlined for the German high command the most specific assessment to date of how Americans were adapting to operations in the southern Woëvre front and how well they fought against the first major planned German assault. He made it clear in his assessment that American close-in combat was very good effectively using machine guns, rifle, and hand grenades.  Generalmajor von Stolzmann noted that Stosstruppen gained an impression that the Americans resisted violently and surrendered with more difficulty than previous experience with the French in past raids.

Major Robert McCormick Showed
Great Initiative in the Raid

Around noontime, Major McCormick from 5th Field Artillery received a phone call from General Summerall’s headquarters ordering him to report immediately to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade.  McCormick left his battery on horseback and arrived when the general and his staff were being served lunch.  General Summerall stood up, offered his hand to McCormick, and stated aloud “Thank God there is one man in this outfit who knows when to disobey an order.”

General George Marshall later recalled Einladung. In a 1947 interview he remarked, 

Well, it was too bad that one platoon commander was so uncomfortable outside (it was cold), that he took his platoon back in and met the raiders head on.  And he lost, I think it was, ten prisoners.  The other platoon commanders carried out their orders absolutely. . They just shot up these raiders and we captured German prisoners…except for the loss of these few men by this platoon commander disobeying his orders and coming back into position at dawn, which is exactly the time the raid is carried out.  Of course, he was killed, so you couldn’t say very much about it.

Marshall remembered Einladung as an American victory.  

And here the Americans had met the first raid and won really a victory.  We had captured their flame fighters. We had captured—I think they had brought up even a gun—47-mm gun or something like that.  We captured a lot of them.  We took a number of prisoners.  We killed a great many, and it was altogether an American victory.” Marshall’s post-war written reminiscence had more luster. “Our men fought beautifully and viciously, and covered themselves with glory.  The result was apparently tremendously reassuring to the higher French officials.

German Prisoners Captured in the Sector

However, the most memorable recognition came from the French premier Clemenceau himself.  Leaving Paris, he arrived at the American sector at Ansauville on 3 March accompanied by Général Debeney, commander of Ire Armée.  A narrow road in a neighboring forest was selected for the ceremony.  The condition of the road required that Clemenceau leave his automobile and make the presentations a few feet from a line of troops along the road.  A light snow was falling.  Lieutenant John N. Greene, Lieutenant John L. Canby, First Sergeant William Norton, Sergeant Patrick Walsh, Private David Alvan Smiley, and Private Budie Pitman, of the 18th Infantry arrived covered in mud and residue from the battle.  

French Premier George Clemenceau Decorating Men of the 1st Division after the Raid

General Marshall recalled, 

It was altogether an American victory. Well, that was so unexpected and quite contrary to French assumptions about our troops—they had seen so many untrained troops—that Clemenceau himself came from Paris and came right up there and I escorted him.  He came up and he was giving Croix de Guerre.  He was a very old man and in doubtful health, but fortunately he had on rubber overshoes.  He gave these Croix de Guerre, but there was one fellow he didn’t get.  And as we were coming out—it was rather difficult because we had to walk beside the trucks and there was only a foot width of path along beside the trucks—this fellow [Private David Alvan Smiley] came loping down the road and he was yelling, “Wait for me, wait for me!”  He caught up.  He was about six feet two and gangling and, of course, covered with mud.  He had been through the raid and had done a very good stunt.  He had taken several prisoners and Clemenceau had the medal for him.  We had the name, and he was just yelling and yelling.  Clemenceau understood a little English.  When the fellow came up, we stood there beside the trucks, having a very hard time finding any place to stand.  And Clemenceau put this on him and shook his hand and said, You were called and you were late this morning.  But yesterday was what counted and you weren’t late yesterday,” and congratulated him.

This article is an excerpt from Terrence Finnegan's 2015 work, A Delicate Affair on the Western Front: America Learns How to Fight a Modern War in the Woëvre Trenches.  It can be ordered at the author's website:  terrencefinnegan.com

Horatio Kitchener Shares His Views on America's Entry Into the War

By Michael McCarthy

By 1916 the Wilson administration was ambivalent about the war in Europe. Its members and the president knew they might be sucked into hostilities but were determined to hold on to neutrality. Contingency planning was discouraged. However, the prospect of being drawn into the war stimulated "bottoms up" discussions between American Army and Naval officers and British officials and officers. These became intense during the spring of 1916. They generally did not have much impact and there was little follow-through. However, it is clear by this time the British had made a high-level decision to woo America and convince her to join the war. It was Horatio Kitchener who seems to have made the opening approach.

Lord Kitchener

On 24 March 1916 a German U-boat torpedoed the French steamer Sussex, injuring several Americans. Greatly angered, Wilson sent a note to the German government demanding that they renounce their submarine policy. Germany finally acquiesced on 4 May but not before this event had further tarnished that nation in Wilson's eyes. Meanwhile, the British secretary of state for war, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, was meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Charles O. Squire, the American military attaché in London. Kitchener suggested that a break in diplomatic relations between Germany and the United States would inevitably lead to war, either through a German declaration or through some overt act that would force Wilson's hand. The two discussed the possibility of committing an American expeditionary force to European soil. Kitchener claimed that American involvement would hasten the war's conclusion and, when pressed, even claimed that it would do so "at least by the end of the year." Either Kitchener's assessment of the American military was grossly unrealistic, or, more likely, he was hoping to entice the Wilson administration into joining the fight through the promise of a hasty finish. Kitchener also suggested that American troops be trained in France instead of in the United States so that they could enter combat "in the shortest possible time." 

Newton D. Baker, easing into his new position as secretary of war, received this memorandum with little interest. Again, no evidence exists that Baker briefed Wilson on this meeting between Kitchener and Squire, probably for the same reason that Acting Army Chief of Staff Scott had kept his earlier mobilization questions to the War College Division hushed. In addition, Wilson was apparently kept ignorant of discussions to mobilize U.S. shipping to carry an American army to Europe in the event of war. This proposal, prepared on 4 April by American naval and military attachés in London and Paris and by two American officers assigned with the British Expeditionary Forces, warned that "any system adopted at the moment and operated without previous study and experience is more than apt to bring discredit on the Navy, and useless danger to the army and the Nation." 

In 1916 the Challenge of Building a Huge Army and Transporting It
to Europe Was Only a Year Away

[However] even the military planners ignored this recommendation until November 1916. [Kitchener, of course, was no longer available to lend a voice of encouragement.  He was drowned at sea on 5 June 1916.]  Again, coordinated military planning was forsaken and once more American military leaders neglected realistic contingencies, leaving the consideration of such ideas to the very eve of the American declaration. 

Excerpted from: "Lafayette, We Are Here": The War College Division and American Military Planning for the AEF in World War I by Michael McCarthy  

The Great and Holy War. . . Reviewed by Bryan Alexander

The Great and Holy War: 
How World War I Became a Religious Crusade

by Philip Jenkins

HarperOne; Reprint edition, 2014

What is the relationship between religion and violence? This question has grabbed my attention for much of my adult life, starting with grad school. I was assigned to TA a Bible as Literature class; not having been raised with any religion, I rapidly set to study and was (among other things) amazed at the sheer amount of violence and horror in some religious works. This led me to explore the centuries of writing about violence and religion, an exploration that only deepened on 11 September 2001. As a professor at a small college, I helped a group of faculty and students explore the emerging conflict, including trying to understand religion's role.

Surprisingly, Germany Had an Equivalent to the Angel of Mons Legend

This interest brought me to Philip Jenkins's powerful Great and Holy War. Many people see the 20th century as driven by competing secular ideologies (fascism, communism, decolonialism, etc.). In this setting, World War I appears as the first war of science and industry, the first great modern conflict. In contrast, Jenkins assembles a powerful case for understanding World War I as a deeply religious conflict.

The First World War was a thoroughly religious event, in the sense that overwhelmingly Christian nations fought each other in what many viewed as a holy war, a spiritual conflict (5). Each chapter takes a different run at the problem. So rich is the subject, and so assiduous is Jenkins's approach, that I have to identify these topics to give a sense of the book's richness.

Great and Holy War begins by demonstrating how the gigantic horrors of WWI summoned up religious responses from participants. Many soldiers, leaders, observers, and civilians saw the bloodshed and destruction as apocalyptic, or as signs of divine wrath, or as creating martyrs, or as summoning up vengeful ghosts. All of this makes sense if we recall that the belligerent nations were, in 1914, deeply religious, many with religious authorities intertwined with state power. Some of those authorities and believers called on religious reasons to understand or support the war, even to the uttermost. Jenkins does a terrific job of assembling quotations from clerics of all kinds, calling on their followers to murder, destroy, exterminate, and sterilize.

For example, from the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, came this jeremiad:

[K]ill Germans - do kill them; not for the sake of killing, but to save the world, to kill the good as well as the bad, to kill the young as well as the old, to kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends... I look upon it as a war for purity, I look upon everyone who died in it as a martyr (71).

These beliefs appeared in every involved nation according to Jenkins: Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Italy. I'm impressed at how he takes care to focus not just on Anglophonic countries. WWI is when Portugal saw the Fatima visions, for instance.

Jenkins does a commendable job in broadening our attention to areas beyond the Western Front. He takes care to show how Russian orthodoxy committed itself to holy war. He addresses the complex intersection of Judaism and WWI, from the importance of Jewish soldiers in different armies (on both sides!) to the decisive John Chilembwe (269–270). He reminds us that the (Islamic) Ottoman empire's genocidal attack on (Christian) Armenians was, in part, a religious struggle (chapter 11). Indeed, the Sultan launched his empire into WWI as a holy war, while German agents sought to spark jihad against British and French colonial regimes, with some real effects, including organized violence (345).

There are so many ways that religious believers brought their faiths to bear that I cannot summarize them all here. Let me mention Jenkins's keen eye for imaginative writers. He begins with Arthur Machen's "Angel of Mons", where a defeated British army successfully summons up Agincourt's dead to defend them from German attack. Jenkins reminds us that J.R.R. Tolkien experienced the Western Front's horrors, which we can see in the famous "Dead Marshes" scene, among others. And he recalls that Carl Jung, absent from the war in neutral Switzerland, nonetheless addressed it in his cryptic Seven Sermons to the Dead. Jenkins even establishes a link between Rudolf Steiner, visionary on multiple levels, and the von Moltke family, leaders of the German war machine (156).

I approve of how Great and Holy War does not end with 11 November 1918, but carries on as wars continued to rage, most notably in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The book reminds us that religion played a huge role in the Russian Revolution and Civil War ("a full-scale religious civil war" (201)), and that many believers beyond the Orthodox spent the next generations terrified of a Soviet-style campaign against belief—the 20th century's anticommunist movement would draw heavily on religion. It also reminds us that after 1918 the victorious nations struggled to manage their expanded empires. "Between 1919 and 1925 Britain's newly founded Royal Air Force saw action against Muslim rebels and enemy regimes in Somalia, Afghanistan, Waziristan, and Iraq" (349).

A Zionist Interpretation of Allenby's Conquest of Jerusalem

The book also addresses the post-Armistice civil strife within Germany, which appears in the notorious Nazi theme, the Horst Wessel song, where the "postwar" dead appear:

Kam'raden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,
Marschier'n im Geist in unser'n Reihen mit
(Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit within our ranks.)

This mix of religion, politics, imagination, and violence appears in the 1920s within the American KKK, which had a strongly religious mission as well as symbolism (206). It appears in the brutal war between (Christian) Greece and (Islamic, though soon to be secularized) Turkey from 1919 to 1923.

Throughout the book Jenkins looks even further ahead, to WWI's century of influence. He finds the war to have rebooted a global sense of Islam, a development obviously of today's moment. He sees WWI as launching the huge shift of Christianity to Africa (starting with "an African reformation", 325). He argues that while the passionate public religiosity of WWI faded afterward, its currents continued to flow and develop.

Strongly recommended.

Bryan Alexander

Remembering a Veteran: U.S. Army Nurse Lillian S. McKnight, RRC

By James Patton

The Royal Red Cross (RRC) is bestowed by the British Crown exclusively upon nurses. Established by Royal Warrant of Queen Victoria on 27 April 1883, the RRC is the second oldest decoration in the British scheme, following the Victoria Cross (VC) which was created on 29 January 1856. The RRC is distinctly different from the Red Cross medal, granted by the British Red Cross to a Red Cross nurse for long service.

The RRC is a prestigious decoration; to date, it has been awarded 8,969 times, with the first going to Florence Nightingale. The RRC was often called “The Nurse’s VC”, since nurses were ineligible for the VC. Victoria’s instruction to Parliament was: 

To confer the decoration upon any ladies, whether subjects or foreign persons, for zeal and devotion in providing for, and nursing, sick and wounded sailors, soldiers, and others with the army in the field, on board ship or in hospitals.

Reflecting change in the profession, males became eligible in 1977. Over the succeeding 135 years other aspects of the qualifications have been interpreted and tweaked. Today those eligible are qualified nurses, serving with an officially recognized military or civilian medical service, who have either shown "exceptional devotion and competence in performance of actual nursing duty over a sustained period" or performed a "very exceptional act of bravery and devotion to duty."

The award was expanded in 1917 to two classes—nursing assistants and VADs were eligible for the 2nd Class (until 1920). Later the classes were renamed "Full" and "Associate" Members, and the abbreviation for an Associate is ARRC.

During the period 1914 through 1921 there were about 23,000 nurses and 75,000 VADs in British service, and 1,100 of the former were seconded U.S. Army nurses. RRCs of both classes were awarded to 6,741 nurses, 69 of which went to the Americans. 

One of these RRC recipients was Lillian Sarah McKnight, from Cavalier County, North Dakota. She was born on 30 September 1886 in Leaskdale, Ontario. Her family moved to a farm in North Dakota in 1887.  

Lillian’s account of her war service is included in North Dakota Nurses Over There, by Grace E.F. Holmes, MD, Professor Emerita at the University of Kansas Medical Center, along with the stories of 224 other nurses from the Roughrider State. 

Lillian begins her story with this preamble:

At the time that war was declared, I was nursing at Minot, North Dakota. I enrolled with the Red Cross at once at Grand Forks. The memories of an army nurse summed up in the short sketch that follows are taken from my diary. This recalls many memories of glad days and sad days, good times and hard times, friends and enemies. Beautiful stretches of foreign country and desolate wastes of the war district, the meeting of some wonderful people, so many I shall never remember them all…

The SS Orduña Departing Halifax, February 1918
Lillian Is in the Crowd Somewhere

She received her Red Cross appointment on 3 November 1917 and was sworn into the Army on 2 January 1918. She proceeded at once to New York for training and kitting out and was assigned to the First Detachable Unit, which was made up of 100 nurses not assigned to a U.S. Base Hospital unit. Her group departed for France on the SS Orduña, leaving on 1 February and arriving at Liverpool on 17 February. Two days later they went over to Le Havre and were sent to British hospitals. Lillian was one of the four assigned to Stationary Hospital No. 3, a 1,200-bed facility located at a former convent near Rouen. Lillian was on the surgical floor, in charge of 78 beds. 

Frequently they had as many as 2,000 patients, sometimes running out of space. Lillian recounted this experience:

Red Cross Nurses at Rouen

One night my ward with filled when they brought in about thirty patients...and we had to place them on the floor. I said to one boy [Lillian was 33 at the time]…“Buddy, I’m sorry we haven’t a bed for you.” His answer was “Sister, this is the first time I have been comfortable in months—just let me rest.” That was the type our soldier patients were.

The hospital was swamped by the German spring offensive called Operation Michael. At one time they were only 16 miles from the fighting, and they could hear the guns and see the flashes, which Lillian described as like "a bad electrical storm". As the British troops moved forward, the nurses would try to go to the road to call out "Goodbye and good luck," to which some would reply "Goodbye, Sister, I’ll be back in a few days. Have a bed for me." 

After the offensive, the Germans began intensive night bombing around Rouen, which meant caring for the patients in the dark and sheltering in dugouts. When the Armistice was announced, one of her patients said "Well, no more over the top and good luck." Although the war was over, nursing was not. Her British hospital slowly emptied out as patients died or were sent to the U.K., and eventually she was transferred to U.S. Base Hospital 110 at Mars-sur-Allier. 

A Typical Ward at Rouen Like the One Supervised by Lillian

Lillian left St. Nazaire on 12 April 1919 on the SS Ryjndam and arrived at Newport News on 26 April. Eventually she returned to North Dakota and received her discharge on 21 July  1919, having served about 18 ½ months, long for a U.S. Army nurse in WWI. 

In 1924, while working as a nurse for Pillsbury Mills in Minneapolis, she married Joe Weir, a regular Army soldier, who was listed as retired in 1930. She is known to have lived in Indiana and Florida as well. An LDS family history entry says that she was called “Lil” in the family, and she sometimes used “Sarah Lillian” rather than her birth names. Also stated was that she was a shrewd investor and generous to her nephews and nieces. She passed away in Miami Beach on 8 April 1976 and is listed as buried in Cavalier County. 

North Dakota Nurses Over There can be purchased through the publisher, the American Legion Auxiliary, Department of North Dakota, at its website: ndala.org.

Incredible: He Claimed To Have Survived Napoleon's March on Moscow and the Great War

Poland’s Oldest Soldier
 M. Krasinski, who claimed to American Red Cross relief workers in Kiev that he was a veteran of Napoleon’s Moscow campaign, that he was born in 1792 and was 128 years old. 
Photo from American National Red Cross Collection, 10 August 1920

(Revised 2 March 2018 at the behest of our skeptical readers. Personally, I think he looks 128, but the oldest person on record ever was 122, so I'm guessing the skeptics are correct and Sergeant Krasinski was fibbing a bit.)

U.S. Navy Recruiting Posters

In some earlier writings, I touted (maybe waxed poetic) the superior artistic quality and emotional power of World War I posters versus their equivalents in the next main event.  Here are some U.S. Navy posters I came across recently that I think support  my case.

The Monkey Is a Great Touch

To Be German in London in 1914

By Jerry White
Excerpted from London in the First World War

Outside Buckingham Palace, 11 P.M., 4 August 1914

Not all London men of military age were eligible to fight. A significant part of London’s population growth was made up by migration. London’s draw on young people of working age had never abated in the countries of Britain and the provinces of England. But for 30 years and more, London had attracted increasing numbers from Europe too. The largest of these minorities was made up of Russians and Russian Poles, mainly Jews, who clustered most of all in the East End of London. In 1911 they totalled some 68,000, not counting those born in Britain since their great emigration had begun thirty years before. The next largest migrant group by far was the German-born, over 30,000 in the County of London and 5,000 or more in the outer suburbs, two-thirds of them men; another 10,000 or so Austro-Hungarians, mostly Austrians, might be added to the German-speaking minority in London. They all far outnumbered the French, London’s oldest-established European minority, 14,000 of them in the County of London in 1911, and the Italians, around 12,000. All of these foreign-born communities had increased in number since 1901 and in all likelihood continued to do so in the few years immediately before 1914.

That year London was a more cosmopolitan city than for centuries past. The Germans, for instance, were long-established in both the East End and West End, with suburban communities at all points of the London compass. Charlotte Street, west of Tottenham Court Road, was the main West-End artery, known as “Charlottenstrasse” and famous for its restaurants and clubs. In the rest of London there were a dozen German churches, a Salvation Army German Corps, a German hospital, two German-language newspapers, a great German gymnasium at King’s Cross, and associations for every interest-group from amateur theatricals to chess-players, cyclists to military men. German merchants and traders, stockbrokers and bankers, had carved out an important niche in the City; the German governess had become a necessity in many upper-class homes; and the German waiter among proletarian migrants, and bakers and barbers among tradesmen, had become what seemed like irreplaceable fixtures in London’s economic life. With their high rates of intermarriage with English women and their readiness to stay in London rather than return “home", no foreign community was more integrated than the Germans. August 1914 would change all that.

The war began a process of eradication of German influence from London life, an influence honourably exerted over many generations that had given much to metropolitan culture. Everywhere German-born Londoners were thrown out of work, from lowly German waiters to Theodore Kroell, popular manager of the Ritz in Piccadilly since 1909, to Prince Louis of Battenberg, First Sea Lord, forced out of the Admiralty by the press, jealous enemies and “a stream of letters, signed and anonymous”, calling for his dismissal. German surnames became anglicised or abandoned: the orchestral conductor Basil Cameron changed his name from Hindenburg, the Merton-born writer Ford Hermann Hueffer became Ford Madox Ford, and the House of Commons was assured there were no clerks employed in the Treasury of German or Austrian nationality: “One British-born clerk, who had a name of Teutonic origin, has changed it since the outbreak of War.”  

There were adjustments everywhere. In the Reform Club, as in the rest of clubland, notices were posted asking members not to bring alien enemies as guests. In Sainsbury’s, “German sausage”, a big favourite with the Londoners prewar, was quickly renamed “Luncheon sausage”. In Bermondsey, where “We were not without a large share of aliens in our midst”, shop fascias were transformed from “Schnitzler, et cetera” to “The Albion Saloon”, or “The British Barbers of Bermondsey”. The study of German was abandoned at Toynbee Hall, the university settlement in Whitechapel. Pubs changed their names, so that the King of Prussia, formerly popular in London, now became a rarity (one in Tooley Street became the King of Belgium); and local residents across the metropolis campaigned for the Teutonic taint to be removed from their street names often, after much delay, with success—Stoke Newington’s Wiesbaden Road becoming Belgrade Road, for instance.

All this was productive of much misery. Among the large number of prosecutions of Germans for failing to register was a trickle of press reports from September 1914 of the suicide of Londoners who overnight had become enemy aliens: Joseph Pottsmeyer, 52, a gramophone packer from Hoxton, sacked from his job and unable to get another, found hanged in his room alongside a note expressing admiration for England; John Pfeiffer, assistant manager at the Holborn Viaduct Hotel, who shot himself in the eye and then, with extraordinary determination, the temple; and four weeks later an Austrian couple, recently married and only in their twenties, who took poison “it is believed…from fear of internment and separation.” There would be many others.

In addition, sporadic violence against German shopkeepers in the poorer trading streets of London began immediately after the declaration of war. Before 1914 was out, it turned much worse. That October saw the first serious outbreak of collective violence by the Londoners, beginning at Deptford and widely copied in other parts of south London for a few nights after. The crowds of 5,000 or so were so fierce and persistent that the police had to call out the military for assistance—butchers’ and bakers’ shops were wrecked and looted, shopkeepers and their families fleeing to friendly English neighbours for protection. These alarming riots had been triggered locally by the arrival in south London of Belgian refugees fleeing from the fall of Antwerp and arriving in London with little more than the clothes they stood up in.

Anti-German Riot in London After the Lusitania Sinking

Worse was to come. On the afternoon of Friday 7 May 1915 the great Cunard liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed off Queenstown, Ireland, with the loss of 1,198 lives, including many women and children and 124 U.S. citizens. The sinking shocked and horrified the world. The news reached London with the evening papers. It was received as a culmination of atrocities, the horrors of the German invasion of Belgium widely aired in the British press. Over the weekend of 8 and 9 May serious anti-German rioting broke out in Liverpool, the Lusitania’s home port. Then, beginning in Canning Town, West Ham, and other parts of east London on 11 May, and building to a London-wide conflagration on Wednesday the 12th, a frenzy of violence fell upon Germans in London. Over the next six days, every Metropolitan Police division from Harrow to Croydon and Hayes to Romford experienced violent disturbances. At least 257 people were injured, including 107 police officers, regular and special, beaten for standing between the Germans and the crowd. There were 866 arrests. By great good fortune no one was killed. Shops thought to be run by Germans or Austrians had windows smashed and doors broken down. Interiors—staircases, cupboards, ceilings—were "hacked to pieces." Provisions and property were carted away by the barrowful. The looting and violence extended to homes as well as shops.

This would prove the worst outbreak of violence against the Germans in London, though sporadic outbreaks followed many air raids later in the war. But official action against them through the internment of men, including men well beyond fighting age, and the repatriation to Holland of thousands of German men, women, and children continued throughout the war. The results were plainly apparent. In 1911 the census had recorded 31,254 German-born residents of the County of London, excluding all or most of the outer suburbs; in 1921 the number had fallen to 9,083. The comparable figures for Austrians were 8,869 and 1,552.

The Bosnian Crisis: Russia's 1909 Not-To-Be-Forgotten Humiliation

Franz Josef and Tsar Nicholas Pulling the Carpet from Beneath the Sultan

The Young Turks' effort at reforming the Ottoman Empire, for both the great powers and smaller nations on the periphery of the empire, were a signal of weakness. Bulgaria,for instance decided it needed its independence and declared it in October 1908. Russia was looking for free access to the Bosporus and Dardanelles, and Austria-Hungary desired to get better leverage on it nationalities problem.  The foreign ministers of the two empires entered into negotiations out of which Austria got away with its annexing of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Russia gained, well, nothing.

In 1909 Russia was still reeling from the defeat of her army, the annihilation of her main battle fleet in its war with Japan, and an unsettling revolution. The embarrassment over the settlement of the Bosnian Crisis added to the Russian sense of humiliation. This was understood by all observers at the time, as this contemporary account shows. Five years later, the tsar would choose not to be humiliated again over another Balkan dispute. How it looked to contemporary observers is shown in this article from the Wellington, New Zealand Evening Post of 31 March 1909 ~

Baron Aehrenthal's [of Austria-Hungary] success, then, is practically complete. One can now see that his appreciation of  the international situation was the result of broad and, on the whole accurate survey. . . .Russia. . . the head of the Slav family, has been brought low. She has been ousted from the Balkan Peninsula without shedding a drop of blood, and at the cost of a trifling sum. Constantinople, which more than once might have been hers, has definitely slipped from her grasp. Her prestige among her kindred has faded into nothing.

Austrian Foreign Minister Aehrenthal

Thus wrote Dr. E. J. Dillon in last month's Contemporary Review, and for once the rhetoric of that exceptionally well-informed authority on Eastern affairs seemed [at first] to have overshot the mark. . .But [now] the collapse of Russia, reported on Saturday, is complete. Her humiliation is abject and undisguised. The only chance of getting anything for Serbia was by postponing the recognition of Austria's right to Bosnia and Herzegovina for simultaneous settlement with the Austro-Serbian differences. To [this] end British and Russian diplomacy has been steadily striving for weeks past, and with a fair prospect of success, when we were suddenly informed that "two factors have suddenly arisen making for peace in the Balkans," and that one of them was Russia's willingness as a prelude to the proposed conference to recognize the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is always easy to purchase peace by surrendering everything that your antagonist is fighting for, and this is what Russia has done. 

Sometimes, however, a capitulation can be disguised as a compromise which secures something, or a semblance of something, for the defeated party, but here there is absolutely nothing to save Russia's face. "The greatest possibly excitement" is reported as prevailing in the Russian capital when the news became known, and the shame has been aggravated since by knowledge of how the surrender was brought about. The inducement was not a compensating concession of any kind of Russia or her protege, but what the Daily Mail describes as "the free use of the mailed fist." 

Russian Foreign Minister Izvolsky

When the German Ambassador reminded the Russian Foreign Minister that Austria was Germany's ally--a fact of which the Minister must be presumed to have had at any rate some inkling before--he appears to have entirely lost his nerve, and to have reported to the Russian Cabinet "the probability of a German mobilization on the Russian frontier within forty-eight hours". . . .We need not wonder that the St. Petersburg newspapers are reported to be "profoundly indignant at what they deem the unreasonable panic behind M. Isvolsky's [sic] volte face," or that they speak of the betrayal of Serbia as involving "the eclipse of Russian influence in the Balkans for a century." 

If Russia had stood alone, the humiliation would not have been so abject. But in the present case she was supported by the same combination which successfully thwarted German aggression on France at the Algeciras Conference [which settled the First Moroccan Crisis to France's advantage over Germany]. Britain, France, and Russia stood together then as they were standing together now, until M. Isvolsky showed the white feather and told Germany not to shoot. The fall of M. Déclassé, to which the critics are comparing the collapse of the Russian Foreign Minister, was brought about by German dictation to the Republic while her ally was fully occupied with war with Japan. After that war was over Germany made the mistake of supposing that Russia was still a negligible factor in the politics of Europe, but at Algeciras the Kaiser learnt that Russia was still a power, and her combination with Britain in support of France was more than he could resist. The Kaiser has now had his revenge.

Sources:  Over the Top, November 2009; the New Zealand National Archives

Recommended: The U.S. National Park Service WWI Website

I know, America's national parks are "Over Here," not "Over There,"  where the war was fought. That, however, is just the point of this outstanding resource from the National Park Service (NPS).  It has some of the best photos and articles on the American home front that I've encountered during the Centennial of the war.  There are over 400 NPS national parks, memorials, monuments, battlefields, and historic sites, and a surprising number of them have connections with the First World War.  Here are some examples. The dozens of in-depth articles are well researched and written, and the site finder map is easy use.

Officer candidates conduct weapons training at Camp Warden McLean in 1917 near the present day Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center

The NPS Honors the Role of Industry During the War at Keweenaw Copper
Mine National Historical Park, Shown Above and Below

A Present-Day Tour of the Mine Site

Vessels in various stages of construction in the shipways of the
Virginia Shipbuilding Corporation, Alexandria, VA

Doughboys taking "Their last glimpse of old New York" and the Statue of Liberty

Explore the NPS Website here:

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/worldwari/index.htm