1914 and Innocence

The British Expeditionary Force Arriving,  August 1914

Shaun O'Connell

For Henry James, writing in August 1914, The Great War represented “the plunge of civilization into the abyss of blood and darkness . . . that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, . . . making it too tragic for words.”  But not, as it turned out, beyond the reach of language, for James’s eloquent epiphany anticipates the floodtide of words poured out to describe and account for modern warfare. For war, whatever else it may be, is a painful process of initiation and enlightenment, a motivation for reflection and an inspiration for journalism, memoirs, fiction, and poetry. Indeed, the tragic may only be contained, fully imagined, in language.

“Never such innocence,” wrote Philip Larkin of the British who went off to war in “MCMXIV”:

Never before or since,

As changed itself to past

Without a word—the men

Leaving the gardens tidy,

The thousands of marriages

Lasting a little while longer:

Never such innocence again.

But innocence among the young men who fight wars and the citizenry who applaud them as they march “over there,” while qualified by the record of previous wars, is, it seems, infinitely renewable, so the terrible facts and lessons of warfare require constant retelling. War, as H. G. Wells wrote, “is just the killing of things and the smashing of things,” but “when it is all over, then literature and civilization will have to begin again.”

The literature of warfare of the last century, particularly war memoirs, then, stands as an eloquent claim to civilization under siege and threatened by destruction; such literature is testimony to the transformation, for soldiers and civilians, affected by unimaginable experience, from innocence to awareness.

From: "Wars Remembered (2003)", New England Journal of Public Policy, 18 November 2015

Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I

German Cavalry Entering Warsaw, 5 August 1914

By Jesse Kauffman

Harvard University Press, 2015

Reviewed by Michael S. Neiberg

Originally presented in Michigan War Studies Review, 22 February 2016. 

Distinguished historian Bernard Bailyn has recently written a masterful study of the differences between teleological and contextual history.  The former presumes an inevitable or likely end state. On this view, the American Revolution, for example, becomes merely one stage in the United States’ rise to global power or its realization of full political equality. Contextual history, by contrast, posits no such end state and accommodates a wide variety of possible outcomes. It recognizes that actors at any given time do not have a later historian’s awareness of the longer-term course of events. The teleological theory is so tempting because we cannot erase from our consciousness the events that subsequently flowed from past actions. The challenge is to avoid letting those events determine too exclusively how we write about the past.

In this regard, the First World War presents a particularly acute problem. Those who see it as merely a prelude to the Second World War often ignore that the generations alive in 1914–18 did not know what we now know. By positioning the First World War as the start of the time stream leading to the Second, we neglect, in Bailyn’s terms, the contextual significance of events in their own time. Too often teleological writers over-interpret evidence from one era because they can only see it through the lens of another.

Thanks to some marvelous scholarly work, the German war on the Eastern Front in 1914–18 is no  longer, as Winston Churchill called it, an “unknown war.” But we still struggle to give it meaning on its own terms. Our knowledge of Nazi genocide, the Cold War, and the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe makes it hard not to see the events of the First World War in a larger context of the twentieth century as a whole. Scholars have sometimes cast the war as a manifestation of the German notion of Sonderweg (special way) that makes the genocide of 1939–45 a bit more explicable. A purely teleological explanation draws a direct line from German war crimes in the Great War to the death camps of the Third Reich and perhaps beyond to the years of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe.

In Elusive Alliance, Jesse Kauffman (Eastern Michigan Univ.) rejects any such reductive analysis.  Adopting Bailyn’s contextual method, he sees a variety of possible outcomes in the German occupation of Poland from 1914 to 1918. Rather than portraying it as a dress rehearsal for the Second World War, he elucidates German occupation policy in Poland as a function of the exigencies of total war in the East, domestic politics inside Germany, and, crucially, the actions of the Poles themselves. While these overlapping contexts may share critical elements with those of 1939–45, they were nevertheless distinctive. In other words, the Kaiser’s Second Reich fought a kind of war in a not yet independent Poland that necessarily differed from the one Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich waged against both the Soviet Union and an independent Poland. The key to comprehending the first, therefore, is to forget the second ever happened, or, perhaps better put, to remember that no one in 1914–18 knew what was to come a generation on. For Kauffman, the German occupiers of Poland in the First World War were not harbingers of their counterparts in the Second; they instead represent a fading 19-century view of Europe, in which Poland played a key role in stabilizing or destabilizing central and eastern Europe.

Polish Lancers on Parade During German Occupation

Kauffman argues most convincingly that the Germans’ confused quest for a viable policy for Poland in the First World War lacked clear goals and so ended in failure. Rather than murdering the Poles and destroying their institutions, as they tried to do in the Second World War, the Germans had hoped to create an independent nation (its borders shifted eastward at the expense of Russia) with close cultural, economic, and military ties to Germany. In doing so, they could cast themselves as modernizers and liberalizers in contrast to the autocratic and brutal Russians they were replacing. To achieve this, Kauffman maintains, they had to find a balance between coercing the Poles and gaining their consent for German designs. They never succeeded, mostly because the Poles recognized that Germany, not Poland, would benefit from German reforms.

Like Isabel Hull,  Kauffman does not see Germany in the First World War era as an outlier among European states. Instead, he contends that its plans for Poland differed little from Britain’s plans for Ireland, France’s for Corsica and North Africa, or even the Americans’ for Mexico. Similarly, the Allies’ wartime policy in the liberated portions of the Ottoman Empire reflected a desire to ensure both political stability and easy access to raw materials, while at the same time respecting local customs. In so doing, they wished to project enough political legitimacy to dampen overt resistance and even allow them to recruit soldiers from occupied regions. At least until 1918, Kauffman demonstrates, the Germans behaved essentially like other occupying states. Only later, when memories of the occupation of Poland and the Treaty of Versailles’s creation of a new Polish state embittered Germans in the postwar years, did a far more horrifying and brutal—but not inevitable—model present itself. 

The most critical context of the occupation was, of course, the total war Germany was fighting on multiple fronts during the First World War. Like all warring states, Germany sought to win first and remake the areas it occupied later. Effective occupation policy was vital to achieving victory. This put the occupiers in a difficult position, given the diverse religions, cultures, and languages within Poland. Policies that helped to win the war (like the confiscation of food to minimize the effects of the British blockade at home) undermined Germany’s goal of establishing good relations with a reborn Poland and tsarist Russia after the war. This dilemma proved insoluble—a lesson for all occupying powers, including recently the United States. 

Kauffman astutely returns the Poles themselves to the center of their own story. Like the Balkans, Poland, too, has more history than it can consume. In 1914, it was home to competing polities and a diverse population. It was more an idea than a nation with distinct borders or a common history. Various groups strove to control both the country’s historical narrative and the future direction of any Polish state. This struggle allowed the Poles to play the Germans off against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at least until its collapse.

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The author organizes his narrative around the figure of Gen. Hans Hartwig von Beseler, who came to Poland after making his name as the victor of Antwerp (Oct. 1914). The general became the principal German policymaker in Poland following the great Russian retreat after the Gorlice-Tarnów offensive in spring 1915. Finding himself immersed in both German and Polish domestic politics, he envisioned a reliably pro-German postwar Polish state that Poles themselves could regard as legitimate. As Kauffman observes, Beseler’s plans differed sharply from the genocidal tactics of Hitler’s Reich a generation later. Beseler wanted to work with all but the most anti-German Poles, including the Jews, most of whom initially saw the Germans as liberators from the pogroms and repressions of tsarist Russia. Kauffman notes that many of the professors whom Beseler helped to develop the new pro-German Warsaw University later died in Nazi death camps, a poignant index of the differences between the two occupations.

Beseler’s travails will sound familiar to observers of present-day occupations. Unversed in the history and culture of the people he would soon rule, Beseler struggled to understand the Poles and the fissures in Polish society. Rejecting the biological racism of many Europeans, he tended to see the Poles as children, unsophisticated and incapable of self-government, yet (he presumed) eager to learn from and emulate the more advanced political system of their occupiers. He also had to deal with representatives of the German civil government, who often had their own goals for Poland. Moreover, other great powers, friend and foe alike, tried to influence the nature of the German occupation. In the end, as Kauffman clearly shows, it was all too much to hold together.

The contexts and results of the Second World War were far different. By 1939, German leaders had conceived a white-hot hatred of Poland, a state created in 1919 by the victorious Allies partly from German territory. The leaders of the deeply racist Third Reich meant to empty Poland in order to maintain the standard of living, and thereby the morale, of the German home front, an intention consistent with their explanation of Germany’s defeat in 1918. Poland was then to be resettled by Germans in accordance with the Nazi quest for Lebensraum. These differences in historical context, not some deeper Drang noch Osten (drive toward the east) or unusually virulent racism, best explain the dissimilarities of the two occupations.

Students of twentieth-century European history or occupations generally should read Elusive Alliance and carefully consider its core arguments. Jesse Kauffman has made a most compelling case that Nazi occupation policies were not continuing but reacting against those of the Kaiserreich. Policymakers, too, should reflect on the relevance of the German occupation of Poland to a general theory of occupation. However good their intentions and their resources, occupying powers will always face daunting challenges. As Robespierre is said to have remarked, no one loves armed missionaries.

Michael S. Neiberg

A Maxim Machine Gunner's View from the Trenches

Private Gilbert Williams

Private Gilbert Williams worked at the Great Western Railway audit office at Paddington and enlisted in the Seaforth Highlanders when war broke out.  The British National Archives holds two of his letters to a Mr. Hunt at Great Western in which Williams vividly describes life in the trenches and his pride (thrill?) at being a Maxim machine gunner. 

16 November 1915

Dear Mr Hunt,

Please accept yourself and convey to the other gentlemen my best thanks for the State Express cigarettes. They are fine. Oh what a picnic it is in the trenches just now. We have been in the trenches 10 days up to now, and except for the last two days it has been raining almost steadily. The result is mud, mud and yet more mud, knee deep in places. But luckily we have long top boots from trench wear, so that the mud does not worry as much, except that is making our feet as cold as ice… We have been issued with fur jackets so we can keep our bodies warm.

Just now the whole countryside is covered with snow and moving objects are distinguishable a long distance off. For instance this morning when I was on duty with the gun I could see the Germans walking down a road away behind their lines. I had several bursts at them with the gun but they were out of range. Made me damned mad I can tell you seeing the blighters and then not being able to lay them out.

You can’t realise the power one seems to possess when handling a Maxim. Personally I feel as if I could lay out the whole German army. We fire about a couple of thousand rounds every night into Fritz’s trenches just to keep them quiet. They (the Germans) have been trying to find the gun, both with their Maxims and with shells, but up to now, they’ve not succeed. Kind regards to everybody. Yours very sincerely,

Gilbert Williams

A Maxim Machine Gun Squad in Training

6 April 1916

Dear Mr Hunt,

Thanks very much for your letter which I received a week or two ago, also for the magazine.

We are in the trenches just now. In fact we seem to spend about three times as much time in as we do out. Also we are in a pretty warm spot, it was about here, towards the end of last summer that the French and German had some of the fiercest fighting of the war. The country around about is a veritable maze of trenches. The fighting at one time was so fierce that there was only time just to bury the dead in the sides of the trenches, and now that the trenches have crumpled one is constantly seeing the bones of men’s legs or their boots, or skulls sticking out from the sides of the trenches, pleasant, eh? There will be a pleasant smell here in the summer. I only hope we are not here then. In places we are only about twenty yards away from Fritz and company. Consequently alltimes the air is pretty thick with bombs, grenades and trench mortars.

These last are pretty hellish sort of toys. They have an explosion like about ten earthquakes rolled into one. But even these are not the worst we have to put up with. The trenches being so close together there is of course any amount of mining going on. So one never knows when the particular lump of earth one is standing on is going to take a trip through the solar regions. When a mine does go up, there is some excitement knocking about I can tell you. Suppose for instance we were going to explode one, all the artillery in the neighbourhood is ranged on the spot and directly the mine is exploded, there is hell let loose on the crater. Of course as soon as he gets the range the enemy replies, so that the air is fairly full of everything that kills quickly. One can on these occasions always rely on a good many casualties. Since we have been in this spasm there have been five exploded in this neighbourhood, while others are expected to go up at any time. So much for conditions here.

How is everything in town? Pretty quiet I suppose. I see you’ve had the zepps (Zeppelins) over again? Is it a fact that one dropped in the Thames? (Lines censored.) That is about all the news, so will close, kindest regards to everybody. 

Yours very sincerely,

Gilbert Williams.

Pvt. Williams survived the Western Front and returned to serve in the Second World War. He died in 1967.

Crisis at the War Department: How Do You Manage a Global War on the Fly?

On 19 January 1918,  Chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee Senator George E. Chamberlain dramatically announced: 

The military establishment of America has fallen down!

Production line for 3-inch shells, Bethlehem Steel, PA

The one area where the War Department was supremely lacking was in its own ability to manage the war. In the spring of 1917 the Army’s General Staff was a small war-planning agency rather than a coordinating staff for the War Department and its bureaus. The National Defense Act of 1916 had limited the number of General Staff officers that could be stationed in Washington to fewer than twenty, less than a tenth of England’s staff in August 1914. Once the United States joined the conflict many talented officers left Washington for overseas or commands, even as the staff needed to undergo a massive expansion. Without a strong coordination agency to provide oversight, the staff bureaus ran amok. By July more than 150 War Department purchasing committees competed against each other, often cornering the market for scarce items and making them unavailable for the Army at large. While the General Staff at least established troop movement and training schedules, no one set up industrial and transportation priorities. 

To a large degree the problem was that Baker did not have a strong chief of staff to control the General Staff and manage the bureaus. Both General Scott and his successor, General Bliss, were near retirement and distracted by special assignments. Baker did little to alleviate these problems until late 1917. By then the situation had become a crisis. 

Major General George Goethals at the Panama Canal

Responding to pressure from Congress and recommendations from the General Staff, Baker took action to centralize and streamline the supply activities. First, in November, he appointed industrialist Benedict Crowell, a firm believer in centralized control, as the assistant secretary of war; later Crowell would also assume duties as director of munitions. On the military side, Baker called back from retirement Maj. Gen. George W. Goethals, who had coordinated the construction of the Panama Canal. First appointed acting quartermaster general in December, Goethals quickly assumed the mantle of the Army’s chief supply officer. Eliminating red tape and consolidating supply functions, especially the purchasing agencies, he also brought in talented administrators from both the military and the civilian sector to run the supply system. 

In the meantime, the secretary of war was beginning to reorganize the General Staff. Congress had increased the size of the staff, but it wasn’t until Maj. Gen. Peyton C. March became the chief of staff in March of 1918 that the General Staff gained a firm, guiding hand. Over his thirty years of service, the 53-year-old March had gained an experience well balanced between line and staff. He had been cited for gallantry as a junior officer in the War with Spain and in the Philippine Insurrection. He also served tours of duty with the Office of the Adjutant General and  most recently had been Pershing’s artillery chief in France. Forceful and brilliant, March was unafraid of making decisions.

March’s overarching goal was to get as many men as possible to the AEF in Europe to win the war. To achieve this, he set about making the General Staff and the War Department more effective and efficient, quickly clearing bureaucratic logjams, streamlining operations, and ousting ineffective officers. In May 1918 he was aided immeasurably by the Overman Act, which granted the president authority to reorganize executive agencies during the war. Moreover, he received the additional authority of the rank of four-star general. March quickly decreed that the powerful bureau chiefs were subordinate to the General Staff and were to report to the secretary of war only through the chief of staff.

A Revealing Photo of General Peyton C. March

In August 1918 March drastically reorganized the General Staff, creating four main divisions: Operations; Military Intelligence; Purchase, Storage, and Traffic; and War Plans. The divisions’ titles fairly well explained their functions. Notably, with the creation of the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division, for the first time the Army had centralized control over logistics. Under this reorganization, the total military and civilian  strength of the General Staff increased to just over 1,000 and took on a much more active role. [Secretary Baker summed up March's role: "The war was won by days. Your energy and drive supplied the days necessary for our side to win."]

By the end of the summer of 1918, Generals March and Goethals and their talented military and civilian subordinates had engineered a managerial revolution in the War Department.  Inefficiency, pigeonholes, and snarled actions were replaced by centralized control and decentralized operations.

Source: The U.S. Army in the World War I Era,  Center of Military History, United States Army

Remembering French Wartime Fashion

I want to commend the staff of the National World War I Museum for their imaginative efforts in 2021 to keep the public interested in the historical importance of the war by presenting imaginative and fresh programs that look at its surprising aspects. I've been meaning to write this article for some time, but the museum's latest special exhibition, Silk and Steel: French Fashion, Women and WWI, which  showed through 11 April 2021, is a perfect example of what I like to see. Obviously intended to attract an audience other than hard-core military history types, Silk and Steel will allow visitors, who may otherwise have never traveled to the museum to learn how deeply connected the war is to our 21st-century culture.

Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City
Part of the WWI Museum's Display

Silk and Steel features original dresses, coats, capes, hats, shoes, and accessories. Topics presented are the evolution of the wartime silhouette, Parisian designers during the war, military uniforms’ influence, women’s uniforms in France and America, war work, economics of fashion, and postwar emancipation. Original clothing and accessories were on loan from many other museums. Here are a few examples:

"Madame Dress" by Jeanne Lanvin

Blouse by Coco Chanel

Smith College Relief Unit Uniform,
Abercrombie and Fitch

French Fashion, Women, and the First World War was organized by Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York. An initial iteration of this exhibition called Mode & Femmes 14–18 was presented at the Bibliothèque Forney in Paris by Bibliocité.

Ten Things I Missed on My Numerous Trips to the Ypres Salient but Discovered on Google Street View

1. Lock on Ypres-Yser Canal
A key location in the 1915 Second Ypres battle in which it was destroyed, the site became the front line for two years until the opening of the Battle of Passchendaele. Located about 3 miles north of the Menin Gate.

2.  Monument to the 20th Light Division of the British Army
This Kitchener division was rotated several times into the Ypres Salient, seeing its heaviest action in the Battle of Passchendaele.  Its monument is located on the Boezinge-Langemark Road on the southern edge of Langemark.

3.  Monument to Harry Patch
 The last surviving British combat soldier of the War, Harry Patch fought in the Salient with the 20th Light Division in 1917  and was severely wounded. The monument is located near where he was wounded on the west side of Langemarck during the effort to capture the town.

Click on Image to Read Text

4. Panel for Frederick Dancox, VC
Pvt. Dancox captured a Bunker and 40 German Prisoners at this Site in October 1917. He was awarded the Victoria Cross but was killed in action before he could receive the award. The panel is located on a bicycle path crossing the Langemarck-Staden Road.

5. Memorial Park for Lt. Juul De Winde, Belgian Army
Lt. De Winde was KIA 28 September 1918 in King Albert's sole offensive of the war. During the war he was a soldier-poet in a trench newspaper and, after his death, became a symbol for the Flemish (Dutch) Movement. The site is accessed by a quarter-mile long path off of N313 about a mile from the center of Westrozebeke.

6. Beecham Dugout
Site of massive German bunker on Passchendaele Ridge that has been relocated to a museum in Dixmude and partially reassembled for viewing.

7. French National Cemetery at St. Charles de Petyze 
With 3,500 burials, this is the principal French Cemetery in Belgium. The sculptor of the dramatic crucifiction monument, Jean Fréour, was a member of the Breton art movement.   Many of the men buried here were from the 87th Division, recruited in Brittany. It  is located between Potijze and Zonnebeke on the east side of the road.

8. Messines Miner Tribute
Honoring the men who dug the mines detonated in June 1917. Located at the Wijtschaete village church.

9. Observation Ridge Marker
Commemorates 1916 fighting by Canadian Forces Between Hill 62 and Mont Sorrel. Located about .2 miles south of Maple Copse Cemetery.

10. Kasteel de Lovie
Wartime Headquarters of the British 5th Division. Located 1.8 miles NW of Poperinge on N308. (Possibly contributing to the term "Chateau Generals" ?)

See my similar article on the Meuse-Argonne Sector HERE.

Eyewitness: The Day of Glory (Armistice Day in Paris)

[Background: Dorothy Canfield (1879–1958)  was an education reformer, social activist, and best-selling American author in the early 20th century. With her husband, she spent the war in Paris and became deeply involved in war work, including establishing a Braille press for blinded veterans and aiding refugere.  The Day of Glory, a collection of her wartime articles, was published in 1919. It concludes with this vivid description of Armistice Day.] 

Paris, 11 November 1918

By Dorothy Canfield 

... if the armistice is signed, a salvo of cannon from the Invalides at eleven o’clock will announce the end of the war.

The clock hands crept slowly past ten and lagged intolerably thereafter. The rapid beating of your heart, telling off the minutes, brought eleven finally very near. Then the clock, your heart, all the world, seemed to stand still. The great moment was there. Would the announcing cannon speak? Such a terrible silence as the world kept during that supreme moment of suspense! It was the quintessence of all the moral torture of four nightmare years.

And then ... like a shock within your own body it came, the first solemn proclamation of the cannon, shaking the windows, the houses, the very sky, with its news. The war was over. The accursed guns had ceased tearing to pieces our husbands and our sons and our fathers.

Of all the hundreds of thousands of women who heard those guns, I think there was not one who did not feel instantly, scalding on her cheeks, the blessed tears—tears of joy! She had forgotten that there could be tears of joy. The horrible weight on the soul that had grown to be a part of life dissolved away in that assuaging flood; the horrible constriction around the heart loosened. We wept with all our might; we poured out once for all the old bitterness, the old horror. We felt sanity coming back, and faith and even hope, that forgotten possession of the old days.

When the first tears of deliverance had passed, and your knees had stopped shaking, and your heart no longer beat suffocatingly in your throat, why, then every one felt one common imperious desire, to leave the little cramping prison of his own walls, to escape out of the selfish circle of his own joy, and to mingle his thanksgiving with that of all his fellows, to make himself physically, as he felt spiritually, at one with rejoicing humanity.

And we all rushed out into the streets.

I think there never can have been such a day before, such a day of pure thanksgiving and joy for every one. For the emotion was so intense that, during the priceless hours of that first day, it admitted no other. Human hearts could hold no more than that great gladness. The dreadful past, the terrible problems of the future, were not. We lived and drew our breath only in the knowledge that “firing had ceased at eleven o’clock that morning,” and that those who had fought as best they could for the Right had conquered. You saw everywhere supreme testimony to the nobility of the moment, women in black, with bits of bright-colored tricolor pinned on their long black veils, with at last a smile, the most wonderful of all smiles, in their dimmed eyes. They were marching with the others in the streets; every one was marching with every one else, arm in arm, singing:

Allons, enfants de la patrie,

Le Jour de Gloire est arrivé!

The houses echoed to those words, repeated and repeated by every band of jubilant men and
 women and children who swept by, waving flags and shouting:

Come, children of our country,

The Day of Glory is here!

Every group had at its head a permissionnaire or two in field uniform who had been pounced upon as the visible emblem of victory, kissed, embraced, covered with flowers, and set in the front rank to carry the largest flag. Sometimes there walked beside these soldiers working women with sleeping babies in their arms, sometimes old men in frock coats with ribbons in their buttonholes, sometimes light-hearted, laughing little munition workers still in their black aprons, but with tricolored ribbons twisted in their hair, sometimes elegantly dressed ladies, sometimes women in long mourning veils, sometimes ragged old beggars, sometimes a cab filled with crippled soldiers waving their crutches—but all with the same face of steadfast, glowing jubilee. During those few blessed hours there was no bitterness, no evil arrogance, no revengeful
 fury. Any one who saw all that afternoon those thousands and thousands of human faces all shining with the same exaltation can never entirely despair of his fellows again, knowing them to be capable of that pure joy.

The Day of Glory has come.

The crowd seemed to be merely washing back and forth in surging waves of thanksgiving, up and down the streets aimlessly, carrying flowers to no purpose but to celebrate their happiness. But once you were in it, singing and marching with the others, you felt an invisible current bearing you steadily, irresistibly, in one direction; and soon, as you marched, and grew nearer the unknown goal, you heard another shorter, more peremptory, rhythm mingling with the longer shout, repeated over and over:

Allons, enfants de la patrie,

Le Jour de Gloire est arrivé!

Now people were beginning to shout: “To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg!” Then you knew that you
 were being swept along to the Place de la Concorde, to salute the statue of Strasbourg, freed from her forty years of mourning and slavery.

The crowd grew denser and denser as it approached that heart of Paris; and the denser it grew the higher flamed the great fire of rejoicing, mounting up almost visibly to the quiet gray skies:

Come, children of our country,

The Day of Glory is here!

“To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg!”

No evil epithets hurled at the defeated enemy, not one, not one in all those long hours of shouting out what was in the heart; no ugly effigies, no taunting cries, no mention even of the enemy—instead a fresh outburst of rejoicing at the encounter with a long procession of Belgians, marching arm in arm, carrying Belgian flags and pealing out like trumpets the noble Brabançonne! We made way for them with respectful admiration, we stopped our song to listen to
 theirs, we let them pass, waving our hats, our handkerchiefs, cheering them, pressing flowers upon them, snatching at their hands for a clasp as they went by, blessing them for their constancy and courage, sharing their relief till our hearts were like to burst!

We fell in behind them and at once had to separate again to allow the passage of a huge camion, bristling with American soldiers, heaped up in a great pyramid of brown. How every one cheered them, a different shout, with none of the poignant undercurrent of sympathy for pain that had greeted the Belgian exiles. These brave, lovable, boyish crusaders come from across the sea for a great ideal, who had been ready to give all, but who had been blessedly spared the last sacrifice—it was a rollicking shout which greeted them! They represented the youth, the sunshine; they were loved and laughed at and acclaimed by the crowd as they passed, waving their caps, leaning over the side to shake the myriad hands stretched up to them, catching at the flowers flung at them, shouting out some song, perhaps a college cheer, judging
 by the professionally frantic gestures of a cheer leader, grinding his teeth and waving his arms wildly to exhort them to more volume of sound. Whatever it was, it was quite inaudible in the general uproar, the only coherent accent of which was the swelling cry repeated till it was like an elemental sound of nature.

The Day of Glory has arrived.

Now a group of English soldiers overtook us, carrying a great, red, glorious English flag, adding some hearty, inaudible marching song to the tumult. As they passed, a poilu in our band sprang forward, seized one of the Anglo-Saxons in his arms, and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks. Then there was laughter, and shouts and handshakings and more embracing, and they too vanished away in the waves of the great river of humanity flowing steadily, rapidly toward the statue of the lost city whose loss had meant the triumph of unscrupulous force, whose restitution meant the righting of an old wrong in the name of justice. We were almost there
 now; the huge open Place opened out before us.

Now we had come into it, and our songs for an instant were cut short by one great cry of astonishment. As far as the eye could reach, the vast public square was black with the crowd, and brilliant with waving flags. A band up on the terrace of the Tuileries, stationed between the captured German airplanes, flashed in the air the yellow sheen of their innumerable brass instruments, evidently playing with all their souls, but not a sound of their music reached our ears, so deafening was the burst of shouting and singing as the crowd saw its goal, the high statue of the lost city, buried in heaped-up flowers and palms, a triumphant wreath of gold shadowing the eyes which so long had looked back to France from exile.

Ah, what an ovation we gave her! Then we shouted as we had not done before, the great primitive, inarticulate cry of rejoicing that bursts from the heart too full. We shook out our flags high over our heads, as we passed, we cast our flowers up on the pedestal, we were
 swept along by the current—we were the current ourselves!

The Author at Work

At the base of the statue a group of white-haired Alsatians stood, men and women, with quivering lips and trembling hands. Theirs was the honor to arrange the flowers which, tossed too hastily by the eager bearers, fell to the ground.

As they stooped for them, and reached high to find yet one more corner not covered with blooms, a splendid, fair-haired lad, sturdy and tall, with the field outfit of the French soldier heavy on his back, pushed his way through the crowd.

He had in his hand a little bouquet—white and red roses, and forget-me-nots. His eyes were fixed on the statue. He did not see the old men and women there to receive the flowers. He pressed past them and with his own young hands laid his humble offering at the feet of the recovered city. He looked up at the statue and his lips moved. He could not have been more unconscious if he had been entirely alone in an Alsatian forest. The expression of his beautiful
 young face was such that a hush of awe fell on those who saw him.

An old woman in black took his hand in hers and said: “You are from Alsace?”

“I escaped from Strasbourg to join the French army,” he said, “and all my family are there.” His eyes brimmed, his chin quivered.

The old woman had a noble gesture of self-forgetting humanity. She took him in her arms and kissed him on both cheeks. “You are my son,” she said.

They all crowded around him, taking his hand. “And my brother!” “And mine!” “And mine!”

The tears ran down their cheeks.

Source:  The Day of Glory, Henry Holt & Company, 1919

What Was the Plan When Austria-Hungary Began Bombarding Belgrade?

Austrian Troops Off to War, 1914

In hindsight, it seems rather premature for Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia on 28 July 1914 and then begin bombarding Belgrade at one o'clock the next morning.

The Plans

General Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf, Austrian Chief of Staff, was delighted in 1914 at the opportunity to punish the Serbs; it was something he had long advocated. He was far less enthusiastic about fighting Russia. This led to indecision at the start of hostilities. His heart was in his Balkan strategy that involved invading Serbia with the three of his armies while placing the remainder of his forces on guard against the feared Russians. However, when the Russians declared war, Conrad was presented with an immediate threat of invasion through Galicia and Poland. The Russia-centered alternate strategy involved a stronger defense in Galicia and a thrust to cut off enemy forces in Russian Poland.

What Happened 

Belatedly shifting his forces to the north for these tasks, Conrad weakened his advance into Serbia. Poor railroads ensured that the tardy shift of units northward was a confused mess and boded ill for the ensuing operations against the Russians. Serbia—fighting for its homeland and experienced from the earlier Balkan Wars—repelled three invasions. They used the mountainous terrain cut by numerous rivers to great advantage, winning decisive victories in August and in December pushing their opponents out of their temporarily occupied capital, Belgrade, then beyond the frontiers. Austria-Hungary would need help from both Germany and Bulgaria to rout the Serbs in October 1915. 

Serbia's Initial Victory

In just weeks, all the plans and the wishful hopes of all the nations that had opted for war during the July Crisis were obliterated. With casualties already being reckoned in the millions and no end in sight, an immeasurable catastrophe had fallen on Europe. 

Kansas and Kansans in World War I: Service at Home and Abroad

Kansas Volunteers Heading for the Army

By Blake A. Watson

University Press of Kansas. 2024

Reviewed by Abigael C. Rich, MFA

When President Wilson visited Topeka in February 1916 as part of his efforts to promote his administration’s “preparedness program,” the reception from most Kansans was negative. At the time, the state of Kansas was overwhelmingly rural: in 1910 only three cities exceeded 40,000 residents and nearly five sixths of the state’s land was devoted to farming. Opposition to Wilson’s preparedness policy primarily fell under two categories. The first, represented by notable state Republicans, was a concern that any preparation would see the United States pushed into the conflict in Europe, while the second, influenced by adjutant general Charles I. Martin, disagreed with the War Department’s approach.

In early 1916, General Martin announced an interest in finding communities within Kansas which were willing to form a National Guard company, a proposal which was held up by “Stub” Quakenbush of Oskaloosa. As tensions at the Mexican border escalated, prompting Wilson to deploy members of the National Guard, the newly founded Oskaloosa company saw its first action. Overall, the Kansas National Guard provided 2,800 soldiers to fight against Mexican invasion at the southern border. Several months later, these soldiers returned to Kansas and were met with celebrations and admiration. Not only did the conflict with Mexico provide valuable training for soldiers who would go on to fight in Europe, but the involvement of Kansas men in the military efforts at the border helped to ease Kansans into supporting Wilson when the United States finally entered the Great War in early 1917.

The sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 also hit Kansas close to home, as among the 128 dead American passengers was a University of Kansas graduate; his wife, on board with him, narrowly survived. In November 1916, Kansas voted to reelect Wilson, in large part due to his commitment to keep the United States out of war in Europe. However, when the contents of the “Zimmerman Telegram” were made public, the perception of going to war shifted. Both Kansas senators and six of the eight Kansas house representatives in Washington D.C. joined the majority in affirming the declaration of war. This had an immediate impact in Kansas, with the Topeka Daily Capital declaring that “today we [Kansas] stand behind the nation’s chosen leader in his… reluctant decision to meet war by war” (Watson, 42).

 

Camp Funston During the War

From 1917 to 1924, Fort Riley, Kansas was the location of Camp Funston, named for a Kansan major general who passed away six weeks before the United States entered World War I. Camp Funston received and trained draftees and enlisters to the military, and served as the home of the Eighty-Ninth and Ninety-Second Divisions of the U.S. Army. The Eighty-Ninth Division included the 353rd Infantry, known as the All Kansas Regiment, as well as the 342nd Field Artillery, which included many famous collegiate and professional athletes. The Ninety-Second was one of two segregated infantry divisions, formed by Black draftees and commanded in part by Black leaders. While part of the existing Kansas National Guard was sent to Camp Mills, New York, to form part of the Forty-Second (Rainbow) Division, the rest arrived in Camp Doniphan in Oklahoma, joining the Missouri National Guard to form the Thirty-Fifth Infantry Division.

Among the accounts of events throughout the war which focused on the perspective of people from and associated with Kansas, Watson added another thread of connection by including several mini-biographies for many of the men and women involved. These snippets highlighted other aspects of their lives, from childhood memories, excerpts from wartime letters, their family life, and what those who survived the war went on to do afterwards, and they also served to further connect the events on the warfront directly to the state of Kansas. To give an example, Charles Orr and Clyde Grimsley were among the first Americans, and the first Kansans, to arrive in France. Orr, who was only eighteen when he enlisted, was critically injured in the trenches after he disobeyed orders to retreat and instead stayed to rescue his wounded bunkmate. Both men survived, and Orr became known as the First American Hero. Meanwhile, Grimsley, a farmer from Emporia, was captured by the Germans in the same advance, and he provided valuable insight into the conditions of German prisons.

The 1918 Battle of Cantigny was the first major American offensive of WWI and resulted in the successful recapture of a German-occupied village. Three Kansas men fought in this advance, narrowly escaping death and living to see the end of the war. In Belleau Wood, a general and graduate of Kansas State University (then Kansas State Agricultural College) helped the Americans gain control of the area. Several Kansas men lost their lives in trenches within the Vosges region, and two Kansas men, Ulysses Grant McAlexander and Thomas Reid, earned the nickname of the “Rocks of the Marne” due to their contributions against a German advance along the Marne River. Finally, Camp Funston’s Eighty-Ninth Division were part of the American army fighting at Saint-Mihiel and continued to fight during the Meuse-Argonne offensive.

The war had a great impact on the Kansas Home Front as well, from distrust between its citizens, to ideological objections, to the outbreak of influenza. In 1910, of the foreign-born living in Kansas, a quarter had immigrated from Germany, and a proclamation from President Wilson in 1918 required all Germans to register as “alien enemies” and restricted their movement and activities. Anti-German propaganda extended into Kansas, creating a difficult environment for German Americans living there. Another community in Kansas significantly impacted by the war were members of the Mennonite church. Pacifists on account of their doctrine, many Mennonites faced criticism for anti-war sentiments, while others were forced to contend with their beliefs after being drafted. Kansas also saw itself at the forefront of another crisis—the Spanish flu pandemic—when the illness swept through Camp Funston. Some historians debate whether the flu even originated in Kansas and was brought to Europe when soldiers were sent there.

 

Order HERE

At the end of the war, Kansans came together to celebrate and grieve the men and women who had served. Loss was felt all across the state: according to records, 589 communities in Kansas experienced the death of a resident during the war. Over a hundred years later, Blake A. Watson continues to remember and commemorate the Kansans who felt the impact of World War I through his extensive biographical and historical research and his care in bringing it all together into this book. Although an attorney by trade, Watson’s great-uncle, a Kansas man whose story is told within his work, inspired him to search for the stories of others who took pieces of Kansas with them while serving in the Great War. Well-researched and thoughtfully arranged, Kansas and Kansans in World War I shows the impact of WWI on the rural state, as well as the impact which those rural men and women had while serving abroad.

Going into reading Kansas and Kansans in World War I, I admit that my study of the Great War was limited to a combined few weeks of lectures during U.S. History and AP European History in high school. However, I spent many of my formative years in Kansas and feel a strong connection to the state and its people; furthermore, I also spent a year living in Amiens, France. Many of the places which feature prominently throughout Blake A. Watson’s book are familiar to me, both at home for the soldiers in Kansas and abroad on the Western Front. I was intrigued to read more about how WWI connected these two places which feel so close to me!

Abigael C. Rich