Léopold Jules Maréchal's Book of Hours of the Great War, Part III: Aftermath

Old Comrades Remembered in Le Journal des Tranchées
(Note Fine Calligraphy & How Text & Images Are Presented)

By John Anzalone

By 1916, his superior officers had become aware that Maréchal was a capable draftsman thanks to the theater and concert programs the troops put on and for which he had executed cover illustrations (none have turned up, to date). Maréchal’s talent was well known and appreciated among his mates and that reputation made its way up the chain of command to general staff officers seeking draftsmen for artillery units. So it was that in February of 1916, Maréchal received a providential transfer. He was reassigned behind the lines to a cartography unit known as a Canevas de tir, specializing in relief maps that gunnery groups used for aiming and locating. 

His departure from the 86th took place barely a week before the unit was transferred to Verdun. In the preface he writes that only three of every ten men would return from that inferno. At some point after his reassignment but almost certainly not until after the war, Maréchal decided to collect the notes he had been keeping and the drawings made in the trenches and turn them into an illuminated book of hours. The Journal’s preface underscores the weight of the coincidence of his transfer out of combat at virtually the same moment that his friends went off to one of the worst of the Great War’s killing fields.  Did Maréchal intend the Journal as a homage to those who didn’t return? It is tempting to discern in it a token of survivor’s guilt. In La Victoire endeuillée/Bereaved Victory, Bruno Cabanès’s study of protracted mourning in France during the two year period during which the field army was progressively demobilized, the author refers to a widespread incidence of “survivor guilt syndrome.” 

The mixed emotions of commemoration and mourning coincide with the book’s devotional aspect. A moving image of the New Year’s mass of 1915 in the Montigny quarries corresponds to the general tenor of the celebration of the liturgy of a medieval Book of Hours 

Maréchal's Altar at the Quarry

Among the documents uncovered during research for the publication of the facsimile edition of the Journal, we found a photograph of Maréchal standing in front of the altar piece and cross that he and his closest friend, a poilu named Moulin, had sculpted from the available stone, in preparation for the mass. 

Today the chapel, appropriately located in the gallery adjacent to the field hospital within the quarries, has been completely restored at Montigny thanks to the manuscript’s representation of the mass and this corresponding photograph. Upon the release of the facsimile edition of the manuscript in the fall of 2016, a memorial service was held in that very chapel, in front of an altar piece reconstructed from fragments of Maréchal and Moulin’s original sculpture.

There is no evidence in the manuscript to suggest that Maréchal was particularly or even casually religious. His emphasis is much more on aesthetic sensitivity, a love of pageantry and his sense of history, which suggests that he intended his book to fulfill a memorial as well as an historical function. But whether as pastiche of the medieval model or as matter of fact contemporary exposé, the key characteristic of the Great War Book of Hours Maréchal has left us is how relentlessly it exposes the impact of the passage of time, and with it the conflict’s daily quota of death and mourning. That may well explain why Maréchal’s figures are almost always seen from a distance except for the exceptional page of portraits of his mates shown above. 

A Stretcher Team

Bernard and Lucette Lambot tracked down the service records of all these men, as well as those of a half dozen others who are specifically named in the text. Of those depicted above, only one survived the war. More tellingly, there is an oddity here that demands explanation: the page is numbered 67 (of a total of 84), and is placed therefore toward the end of the narrative; but it is dated October 1914. The previous page is dated October 1915; the following page December 1915. No other page in the book violates chronological order. The times are out of joint. Clearly, the portrait page was intended to be placed at the start of the narrative, but Maréchal moved it to the book’s final pages, where he recounts the circumstances of his transfer to the rear and of theirs to Verdun. It is hard not to see in this an acknowledgement of the ironic accident that saved his life and quite probably moved him to encode his memoirs in a book of devotion.

Restraint, guilt and the burden of History inhabit Maréchal’s Book of Hours. Le Journal des Tranchées is a hybrid; it raises many questions about which we can only speculate. We cannot ask them of Maréchal, but it’s not at all clear he would answer them if we could, for if the book has managed to survive the accidents of history, it has also survived Maréchal’s reticence. Like previous accounts of the Great War that have come to light, the Journal adds to a rich testimonial literature by shedding light on a single individual’s experience of war. But chance rather than design has played a major role. 

It is my deep conviction that Léopold Maréchal never intended it to have wide distribution; available evidence suggests that he rarely if ever shared it with anyone. Its iconography encodes a pain that slips quietly in and out of the traumatic. Some pages have in fact the feel of an exorcism, like this half-mummified skull of a German soldier, the book’s most shocking watercolor. A danse macabre image that draws from medieval iconography and was a frequent trope of WWI illustration, its horror has lost none of its power in the more than a century since it was executed on a frigid December morning in 1915. It is however discussed in the text with the kind of clinical detachment that recalls the dissociative defense mechanisms common among soldiers exposed repeatedly to horrific violence.

One night, my squad is digging a new trench right on the front line. Tessier calls me over: “Corporal, come look at this dead Boche right near the top of the trench. You can see his skeleton...” I jump up on the embankment and see the guy in question. He has rotted 3⁄4 of the way through and his skull is shining in the moonlight. With a shovel I loosen the skull—it has separated from the torso. As the head rolls over I realize that flesh still covers the side where it had been resting on the ground. Pressed against the earth in a mold sculpted by the rains, it had mummified in the clay when the frosts came on.  Crows and rats had picked clean everything on the side exposed to the air. I pick it up with my shovel and we clamber down into the trench to examine it out of danger. In the moonlight, the silhouette of this half-eaten head is striking. I carefully put it by, promising myself to return the next day to do a study of it. And I managed to succeed in my plan because the weather cooperated. I placed the handle of a shovel across the trench and positioned the Boche skull on the blade. It was so bloody cold that there was no stench, thankfully. But there wasn’t a drop of water to be had either, so I had to resort to the “call of nature” to provide “water” of my own to use my paints.”

Marechal’s intricate barbed wire borders, in their evocation of the Crown of Thorns are inseparable from the commonplace war themes of Christian suffering and redemption. But they also serve to hem in both text and image in a tightly controlled space that offers safety as well as remembrance, thus ensuring that once Maréchal had given voice to his memories, he could, as in one of the manuscript’s final images, walk away from the war. His experiences could no longer escape the constraints in which he had both literally and figuratively bound them; he could at last put the war behind him.

A Centennial Remembrance

Today: The Quarries Where Maréchal Once Served

A two-volume facsimile was published in an edition of 500 copies in September 2016. Volume One contains the exact reproduction of the manuscript. Volume Two contains the full text in French with accompanying English translation by John Anzalone, Maya Mortman, and Anna Tracht,  with historical and cultural annotations by John Anzalone. Additional appendices on the biography of Maréchal and the topography referenced in the Journal are the work of Bernard and Lucette Lambot. The set was issued in celebration of the opening of the Machemont quarries for the Great War centennial observations and recognized by the European Union as possessing historical importance.

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

About Our Contributor

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

Contact John at: janzalon@skidmore.edu

Eyewitness: General George C. Marshall Looks Back on His AEF Experience

 

From VMI Cadet to Key Staff Officer of the AEF

In 1957, 39 years after the 1918 battles in France, George Marshall was interviewed by his official biographer Forrest Pogue. In the past, I've drawn on the recordings of these revealing  interviews to gain insights on events like the Meuse-Argonne Offensive or personalities such as General Pershing or Premier Clemenceau, with which Marshall had direct experience.  In this article, the focus is on Marshall, himself. I've combed the manuscripts of the interviews for places where the general—an austere, highly reticent individual—revealed interesting aspects of his personality and unique experiences in the Great War. These are excerpts from those interviews in which the questions and spontaneous comments from the general jumped around chronologically. I've tried to rearrange them at least semi-chronologically. MH

1.  Going Over There

I left San Francisco [in May 1917] . . . and went directly to Governors Island. The next thing of excitement that occurred was that General Pershing arrived, headed for Europe. I found out that he had asked for my services. He didn't do it personally, but his chief of staff did-his new chief of staff, General Harbord. But when General Pershing found that I was with General Bell, he had them drop the request and, therefore, I didn't go, though I didn't know of it at that time. . . General Pershing arrived in civilian clothes and straw hat. We put him on the ferryboat at Governors Island at a secluded dock and sent him over to the Baltic which he boarded for his trip to Europe [28 May 1917]. 

Then I received a telegram that my services were requested by General Sibert, the man who had built the Gatun Dam [at Panama Canal]. . .  He had asked for me to go and I was to report to him. He made my desk, my  services, the headquarters for troops just coming in to go to Europe in the first convoy, which was to be the First Division. [Subsequently] we got on board the Tenadores [4 June 1917], and I was in the same stateroom with [future WWII General] Lesley McNair.  

[During the voyage] something occurred there that I never forgot, because it was about as significant an indication of our complete state of unpreparedness as I have ever seen. I was standing up under the bridge and they had mounted a three-inch gun on a pedestal mount on the forward part of the deck, and these trim-looking naval files under a naval noncom were rigging up the gun. Having dealt with this multitude of recruits in this regiment as we had and their complete ignorance of their weapons or anything, I thought to myself, "Well, thank goodness, there is one thing that's organized, the Navy." Just then the captain called down to this yeoman, or whatever he was, in charge of this detail and said to him in a very strong voice, he said, "Have you your ammunition?" And this fellow in a rather offended voice replied, "No, sir, we haven't any ammunition." Well, I thought, "My God, even the naval part isn't organized here and we are starting off to Europe." It was altogether a terrible exhibition of our paucity of means with which to go to war.

2.  Called to the Front [1918]

[While Marshal was at a school in Langres] the great German offensive broke loose March 21st and was going on at the time I lectured. The first day, the 21st, of course we just got the news of the affair and a little bit of the extent of the affair. You will recall the British Fifth Army was literally destroyed in this first part of this offensive and a great gap was made in the line. . . The second day the thing was getting very much hotter, we could tell that. The German advances were far greater than had been customary in trench warfare. They generally made very, very short advances. . . 

[On 29 March] we were having breakfast when an order came in for me to return to the First Division immediately and a car would meet me north of Chaumont near Domremy. About a half an hour later, or less than that, because I got out as fast as I could, I left for the First Division.  I got up there and found it was just preparing to leave for the scene of the battle where the British Fifth Army had been driven out and very badly handled. . . We moved immediately, going south of Paris motoring. The troop trains were going south of Paris, too, and the motor trains and all were going south of Paris, because there was too much confusion north of Paris in supplying the French Army and everything to meet this great German offensive.

Then the next morning we started again up the trail. We were now west of Paris and we finally came into these assembly areas as they called them. I learned a great deal about troop movements during this procedure, because it was a tremendous affair and I thought perfectly, beautifully done by the French in their handling of the railroads. The trains would come through, it seemed to me, at ten minute intervals, and I would have to be at the train when it came in because I didn't know who was on it-maybe part of a French division or part of an American division. If it was an American division, I had to catch the fellow and give him his orders as to where he was to march to after he detrained. So we had a very hectic time there grabbing these trains as they came in.

3. Early Experience of Combat

We learned a great deal about fighting up at this time. It was a continuous affair, terrifically heavy artillery bombardment. The night was just hideous. I used to try to sleep upstairs in this chateau, but they drove me down when they began hitting the building with these 8-inch shells which sounded like the end of the world. So I found more composed rest down in this deep wine cellar that I have already referred to. Then we had a very difficult situation. We had the first mustard gas attack and that was a vicious thing. The brigade commander had directed the regimental commander at this town-he sent word up to him-to evacuate the town and go out into the fields and woods. Well, it was raining hard and shells were breaking all over the place. So the fellow preferred his dugout. Of course, the worst thing you can do with mustard gas is get in a wet dugout. That just permeates the whole business. They were ordering him out and he wasn't going. So I was sent up. The brigade commander didn't go. I was sent up from division headquarters with orders to relieve him, and that isn't very pleasant.

4.  The Performance of the AEF at St. Mihiel

It went off pretty well; it went off very well, as a matter of fact. I think we could have gone a little farther at the end if the corps commanders had followed out their orders. The order provided that when they got to the line rigidly specified, specifically outlined, and there was any opportunity to go forward, they should send forward battalions with some artillery and reconnaissance units and push ahead as fast as they could. They didn't do this. In one division this was proposed and that was done by Douglas MacArthur, who was chief of staff of the Forty-second Division. He wanted to push right on at that time. The trouble was none of the others had gathered themselves, and General Drum and the army commander thought we should leave well enough alone. Undoubtedly, if they had pushed on, they would have gone much closer to Metz at the first lunge. However, they already had authority to organize a battalion or regiment in the division and push ahead with that, but they didn't do that. Of course, it was their first big battle and there's always much confusion and there's always much uncertainty as to what the exact conditions were which is to be carefully considered when you are trying to judge whether you did this just right or not. You didn't have a Stonewall Jackson who had been experienced in many fights already.

Lt. Marshall, 1907
Instructor, School of the Line, Ft. Leavenworth

5. The Move from St. Mihiel to the Meuse-Argonne

[After St. Mihiel] the  complications now began. I had been concerned now with the full battle. Now suddenly I was called over to headquarters, which was across the street, and they outlined the Meuse-Argonne, That's the first time I'd ever heard of it, and that's what the other fellows on the staff had been working on-the plan for the deployment for the Meuse-Argonne and the initial plan for the battle. I was told to concentrate the troops and I was given the line-up they were to have in the battle. That was my first intimation of the Meuse-Argonne battIe.

Finally came the great concentration for the Meuse-Argonne. It went across the rear zone of the St. Mihiel battle and then cut up towards the Meuse-Argonne front. When I went to work on this troop movement, it was one of the most difficult ones I have ever heard of in military performance prior to the great rush across Europe in the last war. I found that I was familiar with the names of practically every village and every city, more so almost than the little villages near my home, because they were all on this Griepenkerl [a German tactical guide adopted by the U.S. Army] map and had all been involved in Griepenkerl problems and were right in the track of these great moves we were making towards the Meuse-Argonne front. It seemed rather a commentary on the fact that we were being criticized, even in Congress, for using German maps, and all when it developed afterwards they were most useful to us in our being familiarized with the very ground we were going to fight over.

6.  Problems in the Meuse-Argonne

Once we got into the battle, the great problem was to resume the advance. The division on the left, the division next to the Meuse-Argonne forest, got into trouble and the First Division had to be hurried out of support position and carried up to the front. They had to travel more or less off the road over these deep trenches and, with the machine gun carts and all, it was a very difficult thing to do. No Man's Land was some kilometers in width and it was a morass that didn't look like there was a space ten yards square that hadn't been struck by a great shell. It was a morass. There was no trace of the roads left at all except the Route National, and there was some trace there, but in the retirement from a German attack, the Italians had blown up the road so successfully that we had a terrible time getting around the crater.

So it was the crossing of No Man's Land and getting the artillery across that was so very difficult and so very important. One commander, who had previously lost his regiment for something a long time back and now had it again-he didn't have the light [artillery] regiment this time-he had a ISS-mm regiment and these heavy guns. And he hastened up on his own initiative, crossed No Man's Land, and the weight of these guns completely wiped out this very poorly ballasted trail that we had made across No Man's Land and set the affair back about a day and a half, which was a great tragedy at the time, as we were trying to get light artillery across and supporting troops across.

As a matter of truth, the men advanced very well at the start. Then they got into these dugouts and they got after souvenirs. They went into the dugout for a German in a sense and then they stayed for a souvenir and the whole advance lost its momentum, and the Germans very quickly readjusted themselves and put up a vicious defense from there on. As a matter of fact, if the troops could have been kept together and have gone straight ahead, they probably could have gone as far that first day as we made in the first month, because we fought a very desperate battle with the Germans after that halt or loss of momentum.

7.  The Final Push in the Meuse-Argonne

We finally came up against what you might call the northern line and there we got ready for the great attack which led up to Sedan. I've forgotten how many divisions took off in that, but we tried to get them rested a little bit. In order to do that, we had to hold the other divisions in line when they were just tired to death. But there was no other way to manage it. It was very necessary to go and see the division commanders and see the regimental commanders. In some of them, the regiments had lost all organization and were just groups of men, but they had to hold on and they fought on so that these partially rested divisions could go forward in the final attack on November 1st, I think it was, which led up finally to the heights above Sedan.

I would go up to the battle front and it was very hard to get up there on account of the traffic. After you got across No Man's Land, the only way you could do it was to get on a horse and go up there that way. I did that and I did that with General Drum, who was chief of staff of the [First] Army, and, of course, we had a great deal of our debating while we were riding. . . 

The great trouble here was keeping the various organizations along the front really aware of what was happening along other portions of the front, because each one thought he was the only one who was having this desperate situation, when, as a matter of fact, everyone was having it pretty much and we were now getting into some French troops over towards Verdun where we had both Americans and French. The Germans had hard luck on this front. They had had several Austrian divisions on that front. They were a little bit leery about them and, as you recall, the Austrians surrendered first. So they kept some Germans there to stiffen up the Austrian front which was to the east and northeast of Verdun. Nothing happened on that front at all, so they withdrew the German divisions that were stiffening up the Austrians and the next day we attacked on that front and the Austrians pretty largely folded up and let us make a considerable advance.

A Postwar Assignment as Pershing's Aide Kept
Marshall on the Road to High Command

8.  About His Superiors

General Pershing as a leader always dominated any gathering where he was. He was a tremendous driver, if necessary; a very kindly, likeable man on off-duty status, but very stern on a duty basis.

I wasn't on intimate terms at all with Marshal Foch, though I travelled with him quite a bit in this country and saw him quite often with General Pershing.  He was rather resentful if I said anything when I was with General Pershing. Nobody below the grade of a full general would say anything in front of Foch in the French army, and I was talking up there with a very much lower rank to General Pershing when he was in conversation with Marshal Foch.

I know when I received the Croix de Guerre in the plaza at Metz [30 April 1919]. . . the French general that  was tried afterwards and imprisoned? I was very fond of him, came to know him very, very well. (Petain?) Yeah, Petain.

I saw General Charles Summerall, who was really the iron man. He was the nearest approach to the [Stonewall] Jackson type that I saw in the war. He was a wonder to watch when the fighting was on as a leader. His influence on the men was tremendous.

I thought [Chief of Staff] Peyton March was a great administrator and a very arbitrary, tactless man. I think his greatest error was having around him a number of men that copied his type. He needed exactly the opposite type as his principal functionaries, it seemed to me.

I would say this in regard to all this being written about my being hostile to General MacArthur. In the first place, it is damn nonsense. . . I don't think I ever said an adverse word about General MacArthur in front of the staff, though he was very difficult-very, very difficult at times-particularly when he was on a political procedure basis. I don't ever recall saying a word in front of the staff, and I do recall suppressing them. I wrote his citation for the Medal of Honor to see that he got it.

9. In the 1939–41 period, did you have the feeling that you were seeing 1915–1916 all over again?

In 1939-1941 I saw very much reflections of the things of '15-'16 all  over again. In fact, in some ways, very little occurred that didn't seem to me was a repetition, but what disturbed me most of all was to find the army, the War Department, and the country in the same shape again. In the same shape again! I was getting rather hardened to coming in when everything had gone to pot and there was nothing you could get your hands on, and darned if I didn't find the same thing when I came into the Korean War. There wasn't anything. We had a terrible time getting ourselves together.

10.  Lessons for Future Wars?

. . . Why, it was a continuous series of lessons. Most of them, what to do and quite a number what not to do. I learnt the technique of high command, the technique of logistics, the technique of a great many of those things, and I saw troops under various conditions. I saw their regard for them in many ways that were an education to me, and I saw so many of the things they did wouldn't have worked with American troops at all. That was all very, very helpful and I would find myself leaning on that knowledge in dealing with things in World War II. 

The big thing I learnt in World War II was the urgent necessity of frequent visits. Well, as I used a plane all the time and about every other week, I would go on the road before we got into the general war. I would visit most of the places in the United States with fair frequency. I know when I went out to Fort Sill the first time, I found out it was the first time the chief of staff had ever been there in the history of the place. I was there time after time, but I could move quickly and I could act quickly. I was abreast of what was going on all over the place. I could sense their reactions and I could see how they felt urgently about this or that, which we at headquarters did not really feel so much, but I would come to an understanding in those ways and I could correct things almost instantly, particularly after Congress-without my request-placed first $25 million and then $100 million at my disposal with no accounting required.

Source:  Transcripts of the entire collection of 10 tapes covering Marshall's entire career can be found starting HERE.

"I Didn't Get Over": A World War I Short Story by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald as an Officer Candidate

Introduction from the National World War One Museum:  

Born in September 1896, Francis Scott Key (F. Scott) Fitzgerald was 20 years old and attending Princeton University in 1917, when he chose to drop out and join the army. On 26 Oct. 1918, Fitzgerald and his unit were moved again—this time to Camp Mills on Long Island, New York, with plans to be sent to France. Fate would intervene: the Armistice was signed on 11 Nov. He never went “Over There.”  

Fitzgerald always seemed to regret never experiencing the war firsthand, as suggested in his 1936 story “I Didn’t Get Over.” Yet World War I, its veterans and the new world that emerged from it deeply shaped his post-war writings, including This Side of Paradise (1920), "May Day" (1920), "The Crack-Up" (1936), The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) and "Winter Dreams" (1922). And of course The Great Gatsby, published in 1925.

_______________________________

I was 'sixteen in college and it was our twentieth reunion this year. We always called ourselves the "War Babies"–anyhow we were all in the damn thing and this time there was more talk about the war than at any previous reunion; perhaps because war's in the air once more.

Three of us were being talkative on the subject in Pete's back room the night after commencement, when a classmate came in and sat down with us. We knew he was a classmate because we remembered his face and name vaguely, and he marched with us in the alumni parade, but he'd left college as a junior and had not been back these twenty years.

"Hello there–ah–Hib," I said after a moment's hesitation. The others took the cue and we ordered a round of beer and went on with what we were talking about.

"I tell you it was kind of moving when we laid that wreath this afternoon." He referred to a bronze plaque commemorating the 'sixteeners who died in the war, "–to read the names of Abe Danzer and Pop McGowan and those fellows and to think they've been dead for twenty years and we've only been getting old."

"To be that young again I'd take a chance on another war," I said, and to the new arrival, "Did you get over, Hib?"

"I was in the army but I didn't get over."

The war and the beer and the hours flowed along. Each of us shot off our mouths about something amusing, or unique, or terrible–all except Hib. Only when a pause came he said almost apologetically:

"I would have gotten over except that I was supposed to have slapped a little boy."

We looked at him inquiringly.

"Of course I didn't," he added. "But there was a row about it." His voice died away but we encouraged him–we had talked a lot and he seemed to rate a hearing.

"Nothing much to tell. The little boy, downtown with his father, said some officer with a blue M. P. band slapped him in the crowd and he picked me! A month afterwards they found he was always accusing soldiers of slapping, so they let me go. What made me think of it was Abe Danzer's name on that plaque this afternoon. They put me in Leavenworth for a couple of weeks while they investigated me, and he was in the next cell to mine."

"Abe Danzer!"

He had been sort of a class hero and we all exclaimed aloud in the same breath. "Why he was recommended for the D. S. C!"

"I know it."

"What on earth was Abe Danzer doing in Leavenworth?"

Again Hibbing became apologetic.

"Oddly enough I was the man who arrested him. But he didn't blame me because it was all in line of duty, and when I turned up in the next cell a few months later he even laughed about it."

We were all interested now.

"What did you have to arrest him for?"

"Well, I'd been put on Military Police in Kansas City and almost the first call I got was to take a detail of men with fixed bayonets to the big hotel there–I forget the name–and go to a certain room. When I tapped on the door I never saw so many shoulder stars and shoulder leaves in my life; there were at least a brace apiece of generals and colonels. And in the center stood Abe Danzer and a girl–a tart–both of them drunk as monkeys. But it took me a minute's blinking before I realized what else was the matter: the girl had on Abe's uniform overcoat and cap and Abe had on her dress and hat. They'd gone down in the lobby like that and run straight into the divisional commander."

We three looked at him, first incredulous, then shocked, finally believing. We started to laugh but couldn't quite laugh, only looked at Hibbing with silly half-smiles on our faces, imagining ourselves in Abe's position.

"Did he recognize you?" I asked finally.

"Vaguely."

"Then what happened?"

"It was short and sweet. We changed the clothes on them, put their heads in cold water, then I stood them between two files of bayonets and said, forward march."

"And marched old Abe off to prison!" we exclaimed. "It must have been a crazy feeling."

"It was. From the expression in that general's face I thought they'd probably shoot him. When they put me in Leavenworth a couple of months later I was relieved to find he was still alive."

"I can't understand it," Joe Boone said. "He never drank in college."

"That all goes back to his DSC," said Hibbing.

"You know about that too?"

"Oh yes, we were in the same division–we were from the same state."

"I thought you didn't get overseas."

"I didn't. Neither did Abe. But things seemed to happen to him. Of course nothing like what you fellows must have seen–"

Field Training Stateside

"How did he get recommended for the DSC," I interrupted, "–and what did it have to do with his taking to drink?"

"Well, those drownings used to get on his nerves and he used to dream about it–"

"What drownings? For God's sake, man, you're driving us crazy. It's like that story about 'what killed the dog.'"

"A lot of people thought he had nothing to do with the drownings. They blamed the trench mortar."

We groaned–but there was nothing to do but let him tell it his own way.

"Just what trench mortar?" I asked patiently.

"Rather I mean a Stokes mortar. Remember those old stove-pipes, set at forty-five degrees? You dropped a shell down the mouth."

We remembered.

"Well, the day this happened Abe was in command of what they called the 'fourth battalion,' marching it out fifteen miles to the rifle range. It wasn't really a battalion–it was the machine gun company, supply company, medical detachment and Headquarters Company. The H. Q. Company had the trench mortars and the one-pounder and the signal corps, band and mounted orderlies–a whole menagerie in itself. Abe commanded that company but on this day most of the medical and supply officers had to go ahead with the advance, so as ranking first lieutenant he commanded the other companies besides. I tell you he must have been proud that day–twenty-one and commanding a battalion; he rode a horse at the head of it and probably pretended to himself that he was Stonewall Jackson. Say, all this must bore you–it happened on the safe side of the ocean."

"Go on."

"Well, we were in Georgia then, and they have a lot of those little muddy rivers with big old rafts they pull across on a slow cable. You could carry about a hundred men if you packed them in. When Abe's 'battalion' got to this river about noon he saw that the third battalion just ahead wasn't even half over, and he figured it would be a full hour at the rate that boat was going to and fro. So he marched the men a little down the shore to get some shade and was just about to let them have chow when an officer came riding up all covered with dust and said he was Captain Brown and where was the officer commanding Headquarters Company.

"'That's me, sir,' said Abe.

"'Well, I just got in to camp and I'm taking command,' the officer said. And then, as if it was Abe's fault, 'I had to ride like hell to catch up with you. Where's the company?'

"'Right here, sir–and next is the supply, and next is the medical–I was just going to let them eat–'

"At the look in his eye Abe shut up. The captain wasn't going to let them eat yet and probably for no more reason than to show off his authority. He wasn't going to let them rest either–he wanted to see what his company looked like (he'd never seen a Headquarters Company except on paper). He thought for a long time and then he decided that he'd have the trench mortar platoon throw some shells across the river for practice. He gave Abe the evil eye again when Abe told him he only had live shells along; he accepted the suggestion of sending over a couple of signal men to wigwag if any farmers were being bumped off. The signal men crossed on the barge and when they had wigwagged all clear, ran for cover themselves because a Stokes mortar wasn't the most accurate thing in the world. Then the fun began.

"The shells worked on a time fuse and the river was too wide so the first one only made a nice little geyser under water. But the second one just hit the shore with a crash and a couple of horses began to stampede on the ferry boat in midstream only fifty yards down. Abe thought this might hold his majesty the captain but he only said they'd have to get used to shell fire–and ordered another shot. He was like a spoiled kid with an annoying toy.

"Then it happened, as it did once in a while with those mortars no matter what you did–the shell stuck in the gun. About a dozen people yelled, 'Scatter!' all at once and I scattered as far as anybody and lay down flat, and what did that damn fool Abe do but go up and tilt the barrel and spill out the shell. He'd saved the mortar but there were just five seconds between him and eternity and how he got away before the explosion is a mystery to me."

At this point I interrupted Hibbing.

"I thought you said there were some people killed."

"Oh yes–oh but that was later. The third battalion had crossed by now so Captain Brown formed the companies and we marched off to the ferry boat and began embarking. The second lieutenant in charge of the embarking spoke to the captain:

"'This old tub's kind of tired–been over-worked all day. Don't try to pack them in too tight.'

"But the captain wouldn't listen. He sent them over like sardines and each time Abe stood on the rail and shouted:

"'Unbuckle your belts and sling your packs light on your shoulders–' (this without looking at the captain because he'd realized that the captain didn't like orders except his own). But the embarking officer spoke up once more:

"'That raft's low in the water,' he said. 'I don't like it. When you started shooting off that cannon the horses began jumping and the men ran around and unbalanced it.'

"'Tell the captain,' Abe said. 'He knows everything.'

"The captain overheard this. 'There's just one more load,' he said. 'And I don't want any more discussion about it.'

"It was a big load, even according to Captain Brown's ideas. Abe got up on the side to make his announcement.

"'They ought to know that by this time,' Captain Brown snapped. 'They've heard it often enough.'

"'Not this bunch.' Abe rattled it off anyhow and the men unloosened their belts, except a few at the far end who weren't paying attention. Or maybe it was so jammed that they couldn't hear.

"We began to sink when we were half way over, very slowly at first, just a little water around the shoes, but we officers didn't say anything for fear of a panic. It had looked like a small river from the bank but here in the middle and at the rate we were going, it began to look like the widest river in the world.

"In two minutes the water was a yard high in the old soup plate and there wasn't any use concealing things any longer. For once the captain was tongue-tied. Abe got up on the side again and said to stay calm, and not rock the boat and we'd get there, and made his speech one last time about slipping off the packs, and told the ones that could swim to jump off when it got to their hips. The men took it well but you could almost tell from their faces which ones could swim and which couldn't.

"She went down with a big whush! just twenty yards from shore; her nose grounded in a mud bank five feet under water.

"I don't remember much about the next fifteen minutes. I dove and swam out into the river a few yards for a view but it all looked like a mass of khaki and water with some sound over it that I remember as a sustained monotone but was composed, I suppose, of cussing, and a few yells of fright, and even a little kidding and laughter. I swam in and helped pull people to shore, but it was a slow business in our shoes . . .

"When there was nothing more in sight in the river (except one corner of the barge which had perversely decided to bob up) Captain Brown and Abe met. The captain was weak and shaking and his arrogance was gone.

"'Oh God,' he said. 'What'll I do?'

"Abe took control of things–he fell the men in and got squad reports to see if anyone was missing.

"There were three missing in the first squad alone and we didn't wait for the rest–we called for twenty good swimmers to strip and start diving and as fast as they pulled in a body we started a medico working on it. We pulled out twenty-eight bodies and revived seven. And one of the divers didn't come up–he was found floating down the river next day and they gave a medal and a pension to his widow."

Hibbing paused and then added: "But I know that's small potatoes to you fellows in the big time."

"Sounds exciting enough to me," said Joe Boone. "I had a good time in France but I spent most of it guarding prisoners at Brest."

"But how about finishing this?" I demanded. "Why did this drive Abe hell-raising?"

"That was the captain," said Hibbing slowly. "A couple of officers tried to get Abe a citation or something for the trench mortar thing. The captain didn't like that, and he began going around saying that when Abe jumped up on the side of the barge to give the unsling order, he'd hung on to the ferry cable and pulled it out of whack. The captain found a couple of people who agreed with him but there were others who thought it was overloading and the commotion the horses made at the shell bursts. But Abe was never very happy in the army after that."

Chow Time Stateside

There was an emphatic interruption in the person of Pete himself who said in no uncertain words:

"Mr. Tomlinson and Mr. Boone. Your wives say they're calling for the last time. They say this has been one night too often, and if you don't get back to the Inn in ten minutes they driving to Philadelphia."

Tommy and Joe Boone arose reluctantly.

"I'm afraid I've monopolized the evening," said Hibbing. "And after what you fellows must have seen."

When they had gone I lingered.

"So Abe wasn't killed in France."

"No–you'll notice all that tablet says is 'died in service.'"

"What did he die of?"

Hibbing hesitated.

"He was shot by a guard trying to escape from Leavenworth. They'd given him ten years."

"God! And what a great guy he was in college."

"I suppose he was to his friends. But he was a good deal of a snob wasn't he?"

"Maybe to some people."

"He didn't seem to even recognize a lot of his classmates when he met them in the army."

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. I told you something that wasn't true tonight. That captain's name wasn't Brown."

Again I asked him what he meant.

"The captain's name was Hibbing," he said. "I was that captain, and when I rode up to join my company he acted as if he'd never seen me before. It kind of threw me off–because I used to love this place. Well–good night."

Source:  Originally published in Esquire in 1936; found in Project Gutenberg Australia

 

Royal Navy Grand Fleet 1914-1918: Britain’s last supreme naval fleet

Spithead Review, 1914

By Angus Konstam

Osprey Publishing, 2025

Reviewed by David F. Beer

You might think the dreadnoughts and other powerful ships of the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet were destined to find the German High Seas fleet somewhere in the North Sea, engage it in a battle reminiscent of Trafalgar, and thus win the sea war for Britain. However, this did not happen. Apart from the indecisive Battle of Jutland and a few smaller conflicts such as Dogger Bank and Heligoland Bight, the Grand Fleet spent much of the war at anchor in Scapa Flow or making routine sweeps of the North Sea. This was instrumental in winning the war but disappointed the British people, who were proud of their navy. 

The real intent of the Admiralty was not sea battles but the prevention of arms, materials, and food from reaching the enemy. By mid-1916, the blockade was having a real effect, and food and raw materials became increasingly scarce in Germany. Nevertheless, the story of the Royal Navy and its growth, organization, and operations during the war is a complex one, and the author provides an extremely detailed and readable account of these topics. The numerous illustrations, maps, and photos in the book are also enlightening and greatly help the reader gain a clear view of the Royal Navy’s structure, battles, and goals during this period.

The 80 glossy pages of this oversized book are organized into five chapters: Introduction, The Fleet’s Purpose, Fleet Fighting Power, How the Fleet Operated, and Combat and Analysis.  With its 20 dreadnoughts in service by August 1914, more being built, some older battleships, over 120 cruisers, plus destroyers and other vessels, Britannia really did rule the waves. It increasingly did so with ships powered by newly developed steam turbines, not coal. How ships were organized into fleets consisting of squadrons and flotillas, and how these ships were armed, is also fully covered with text and graphics.

Order This Work HERE

Special attention is given to the major naval figures of this time. The personalities and careers of Vice-Admiral David Beatty, Admiral "Jackie" Fisher, and a host of other lesser-known senior officers are described. A chart lists the names of the First Sea Lords during the war. German naval leaders are also given their due. We become familiar with Naval Intelligence and the cryptic Room 40 of the Admiralty with its use of radio and ability to monitor German naval activity. Tragedy is inevitable in war, and Jutland took its toll. HMS Indefatigable was lost with over a thousand British sailors, and later the battlecruiser Queen Mary blew up, with only eight survivors of her crew of over 1,200 men. 

This is an unusually detailed 80-page study of the Royal Navy in the Great War, and the graphics and paintings within the text make it even more informative and readable. An index and a list for further reading add to its value. The author, illustrator, and Osprey Publishing have all produced an impressive volume, and I highly recommend it.

David F. Beer

A Gallery of Warriors: Paintings and Photos

 

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

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

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

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

Alan Seeger, French Foreign Legion, KIA 4 July 1916

General Leman, Defender of Liège

Stood and Fought at Le Cateau

Victor Chapman, Lafayette Escadrille

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck,
Lion of Africa

Mustafa Kemal in Janissary Uniform

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

Sergeant Georgiy Zhukov, Future Soviet Marshal

The Restoration of Lafayette’s Memorial Wreath

By James Patton

The Wreaths of Lafayette's Tomb

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

 

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

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

President Wilson and Premier Clemenceau

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

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

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

Lafayette's Tomb without the Wilson Wreath

What Is the Society of the Cincinnati? 

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

July 2022 Re-dedication Ceremony

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

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

Lafayette's Tomb Today

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

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