Carriage 2419D: History's Most Momentous Railway Car

The Original Carriage, 1918

4 JUNE 1914: Carriage 2419D is brought into service

Twenty-two identical restaurant carriages are put into service by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Carriage 2419D is sent to the Gare Montparnasse station serving the western lines.

28 OCTOBER 1918: Carriage 2419D is requisitioned

Carriage 2419D joins the command train placed at the disposal of Marshal Foch.

At the Compiègne Forest during Armistice Discussion
2419D on Left, German Quarters on Right

Allied Representatives with Signed Armistice Instrument

11 NOVEMBER 1918: Carriage 2419D becomes the “Armistice Carriage”

On 11 November 1918, Marshal Foch and Admiral Wemyss, representing the Allies, and Minister of State Erzberger, representing Germany, sign the armistice at 5:15 a.m. It would take effect at 11 a.m.

11 NOVEMBER 1922: Inauguration of the Armistice Clearing

At the entrance to an avenue stretching 250 meters is erected the Alsace-Lorraine Monument in pink sandstone from the Vosges. Within the clearing, a granite slab reads: “Here, on 11 November 1918, the criminal pride of the German empire was vanquished by the free peoples it had sought to enslave.”

1922 at Les Invalides

1922: Exhibition of the carriage at Les Invalides

Symbolizing France’s victory over Germany, the carriage is exhibited in the main courtyard at Les Invalides, capturing the public’s attention

NOVEMBER 1922:  The carriage is restored

During six years sitting outside at Les Invalides, the carriage must brave the bad weather. Newspapers finally cry out. Arthur Henry Fleming, an American millionaire, offers 10,000 gold francs for the carriage’s restoration and relocation to the clearing.

10 MAY-22 JUNE 1940: The Battle of France

In the space of 40 days, the German army occupies Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and a portion of France.

21 JUNE 1940: Reading of the Armistice conditions

On 21 June, Hitler, surrounded by his general staff, welcomes within the carriage (reinstalled in the clearing) the French delegation led by General Huntzinger. After the reading of the Armistice conditions, Hitler leaves the clearing.

Adolf Hitler and Entourage at the Carriage

22 JUNE 1940: The Signature of the Armistice

On 22 June, the Armistice is signed by Generalfeldmarschall Keitel and General Huntzinger.

JULY 1940: The carriage and monuments are taken to Germany

On Hitler’s order, the carriage is transported to Germany, as are the Sacred Slab and the Alsace-Lorraine Monument. The Marshal Foch statue is spared and protected during the clearing’s complete destruction.

1940 - 1945: The carriage in Germany

The carriage is initially exhibited in Berlin. It is then transferred to the Ohrdruf prison camp to protect it from the Berlin bombings.

The Carriage in Berlin

1945: End of the Second World War

The carriage is destroyed in the accidental burning of the Crawinkel railway station next to the Ohrdruf prison camp.

11 NOVEMBER 1946: The monuments recovered

Recovered in Germany, the monuments are brought back to France in July 1946. They are reinstalled in the Armistice Clearing in time to commemorate 11 November 1946.

16 SEPTEMBER 1950: The carriage’s installation

A carriage from the same series is presented by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. It is identically furnished and fitted out and installed within a new shelter attached to a rotunda built to house 800 stereoscopic views.

The Identical Carriage at the Armistice Glade Today

(Notes:  The museum was enlarged in 1992 and further enhanced for the Centennial of the Great War in 2018)

Source:  Le Mémorial de L'Armistice Website

 

What Happened at Bois des Nonne Bosschen During the First Battle of Ypres?

Fighting at  Nonne Bosschen, 11 November 1914

On three days during the Fall of 1914's First Battle of Ypres,  the tide of victory turned on actions at three locations near where the extreme eastern boundary of the salient crossed the Menin Road: Polygon Wood, Gheluvelt Chateau, and Nonne Bosschen. The action at Nonne Bosschen—fought on 11 November—was the final significant action of the last major battle in the west of the war's first year. Afterward, it was evident that any decisive movement would necessitate a new approach for breaking through the massive and deep trench system that had ended the war of maneuver.

At the dawn of 11 November 1914, the German Army, though, had not quite given up on breaking through at Ypres. The Fourth Army was ordered to prepare another assault over a broad front. After an intense bombardment, their best advance was just north of the Menin Road. A force estimated at 13 German Guards battalions captured Gheluvelt Chateau and they pushed almost a mile farther to Bois de Nonne Bosschen, a small wooded area just northwest of Polygon Wood. The defending British troops in the sector were from the 1st Guards Brigade under the command of Brigadier General Charles FitzClarence, who would later be killed in the action.

Key  Locations During the First Battle of Ypres

After they captured a British Guards' trench, counterattacks—enabled by reinforcements and artillery fire that prevented the attackers being reinforced—drove the German Guards back. The most famous of these is commemorated with the painting shown at the very top of this page. At 1400 hours, the 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, accompanied by a company of the Northamptonshire Regiment and the 5th Field Company, Royal Engineers who did not want to be left out of the action, moved forward to clear Nonne Boschen of the 1st Prussian Foot Guard.  The official history of the British Second Division, described the decisive action:

A combined charge was then made on the enemy, who, though standing bravely to meet the attack, again lost heavily in killed and wounded, besides many prisoners. The Prussians thereupon fell back to the trench they had captured earlier in the day from the Black Watch and Camerons. . . When night fell, the stretch of ground won by the Prussians was only 500 yards in length. Their losses were very heavy, for although they advanced with great gallantry in close formation they were decimated by the accurate and rapid rifle-fire of Sir John French's infantry, combined with the splendid practice made by the Divisional Artillery. When the Prussians broke through the northern exits of the Nonne Bosschen Wood they came within a hundred yards of the 9th, 16th, and I7th Batteries of the XLIst Brigade R.F.A., and within rifle fire of the gunners of the 35th (Heavy) Battery. Here again they suffered considerably from rifle fire, the gunners of the four batteries using their rifles with excellent effect.

General Fitzclarence made an effort to organize a counterattack the following morning, but the opportunity was lost when he was fatally wounded. After a last effort, on 17 November, German forces moved into a defensive mode in the west and sent available troops to the Russian Front. Sporadic fighting continued until 22 November, when the arrival of winter forced an end to the battle. The Allies claimed a victory.  A month later, the Ypres battlefield would be the site of the famous episode, the 1914 Christmas Truce.

Photos from the Families of the Yanks Who Served in the Great War

I seem to have lost my master list of contributors, but these are photos people have sent me over the years. I've included the names of the individuals that I'm sure about.  MH

Diving Crew of USS Aroostook, North Sea Mine Barrage
Contributed by Shawnee Brown, Granddaughter of the Diver, Larkin Brown

Men of Company K of the 144th Infantry, 36th "Lone Star" Division Contributed by Rebecca Hornyak, Granddaughter of Richard Henry Immel on the Left

Machine Gun Company, 317th Inf., 80th "Blue Mountain" Division at Camp Lee

Three Notable Pilots of the 94th "Hat in the Ring" Squadron
Alan Winslow, Douglas Campbell, John Huffer

KP Detail, Trainees of 78th "Lightning" Division
Left Front Is PFC Louis Marcocci, Whose Great-nephew Steve Contributed the Photo

Officers 308th Field Artillery, 78th Division
Contributed by Tom D'Amario Whose Grandfather Kenneth Haddow Chalmers is Somewhere Above

Kitchen Crew 337th Field Hospital

Members Company 79, 6th Marines

Members of H Company, 106th Infantry in New York City

Marine Detachment Unidentified Battleship

Polar Bears of the AEF, Northern Russia

US Navy Yeomanettes Sworn In

US 2nd Cavalry Somewhere in France

Crew Members of U.S.S. Olympia
AEF, Northern Russia

363 Infantry & 347 Field Artillery Welcome Home
Market St., San Francisco, 23 April 1919

Members 369th "Harlem Hellfighters" Inf., Returning Home

Fathers of Jack Savage Wildman and Barbara Albertson Wildman

John Rudolph Webb [l.] and Crew
301st Tank Battalion (from Bob Rudolph)

Members 124th MG Battalion, 33rd Div.with Citizens of Christnach. Luxembourg (from Steve Collins)

Gun Crew, 148th Field Artillery (From Mary Schaefer)

America Mobilizes—The Challenge of the Nation's Railroads

A Troop Train Passing through West Virginia

By Leo P. Hirrel

Of all the aspects of home front mobilization, railroad operations produced the most spectacular failure. In turn, the crisis in railroad transportation resulted in overdue structural reforms both for the War Department and the entire national mobilization process. At this time motor vehicles were still in the developmental stage, and water transportation served only limited areas. The nation moved on its rails, and railroads relied upon steam engines. 

Troop transportation had some difficulties but on the whole the railroads did a credible job. They moved soldiers from home to initial training, often from one installation to another, and then to the ports of embarkation. Along the way they coordinated with the Red Cross or other organizations to support the troops. 

Even in peacetime the American cargo movement was inefficient because railroads could not manage their freight cars. Cars might pass between different lines, and in the process, they might be held while loading or unloading.  Railroads might also hold empty cars with the expectation of needing them later. After the war in Europe began, the demands upon railroads increased, creating further problems. In the winter of 1916/1917, trains serving New York City and its port became severely congested, and the lines were just starting to clear up when the United States entered the war. 

American entry into the war further complicated the procedures. In theory, the railroads recognized the potential problems presented by the war and organized the Railroads War Board, but this was only an advisory organization, without any real authority. Antitrust laws further prevented railroads from cooperating in the emergency to find more mutually efficient means of managing operations. 

Troubles began quickly. Cantonment construction dominated freight shipments. Soon each of the supply bureaus began pushing its own shipments either for raw materials or finished goods, often without regard for whether the organization at the other end was ready to receive and unload the cargo. Government contracts called for payment once a product was loaded on to the train, so manufacturers wanted to begin shipment upon completion of production. Shipments to the New York port soon exceeded the ability of the port to unload the cars or load the ships. Efforts to ease the congestion through a priority system failed miserably because there were no controls, and every shipment became a high priority. 

Winter turned a bad situation into a disaster. Winter always brought added stress to the railroad system, with increased demands for coal, the difficulties of heating steam engines in cold weather, snow on the tracks, and frozen equipment. The winter of 1917/1918 was brutally cold with extra snow storms and sub-zero temperatures. The forces already in France required supplies, and these shipments contributed to the backlog. At the peak of the crisis, railroads were backed up from New York City to Buffalo, while 200 ships lay at anchor unable to load.

Coal shortages plagued the northeastern states and hindered the sailing of cargo ships, which further contributed to the traffic jams on the rail system. Finally, on 26 December 1917, President Wilson seized control over the railroads using authorities granted in the 1916 Army Appropriation Act. Concurrently, President Wilson created the U.S. Railroad Administration. Less than one month later, on 17 January 1918, the director of the Fuel Administration announced that factories in the eastern United States would close for four days in order to provide coal to the ships ready to sail. 

1918 Cartoon Characterizing the Start-up of the 
U.S. Railroad Administration

Resolution of the paralysis required control over shipments at the point of origin. Even before the federal seizure of the railroads, the War Department initiated a process to control shipments through a newly created Inland Traffic Division on the expanded General Staff. The supply bureaus lost their freedom to initiate shipments, and instead each rail shipment required a War Department Transportation Order from the Inland Traffic Division. Following seizure of the rail system, the Director General of Transportation instituted a similar system to resolve comparable conflicts among the other government agencies and essential civilian commerce.

Requests for a transportation order needed to include evidence that the receiving party was ready to unload and store the traffic, instead of using the cars as improvised storage. Other changes allowed for better tracking of freight cars and more efficient use of less crowded lines. With the coming of warmer weather the situation resolved itself.

Source: Source:  "America Mobilizes," Over the Top, September 2017

What Happened on the Bainsizza Plateau in 1917? - A Roads Classic

Note:  Because of the frequent mention of the Bainsizza Plateau in Ernest Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, this article is among the most read and commented  in the history of Roads to the Great War.

Austrian Defensive Position on the Rugged Bainsizza

The Bainsizza (Banjšice in Slovene) is a semi-mountainous plateau to the north of the strategic city of Gorizia on the Italian Front of 1917.  The city had been captured during the the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo in 1916 in hopes that it would provide a launch pad for the Italian Army to the highly prized port city of Trieste. However, Austro-Hungarian forces retained control of several key mountains north of the city and most of the rugged Carso Plateau to the south. During the previous ten battles along the Isonzo, the Bainsizza was considered impassable by both sides, and it remained lightly defended during the summer of 1917.  

The Italian Army had previously resisted attacking the area, which presented incredibly challenging terrain. It is a hybrid of pretty pastoral farmland and towering limestone mountains separated by narrow ravines. However, by this stage of the war there was a secondary issue north of the Bainsizza. Near the town of Tolmino, the enemy held a bridgehead across the Isonzo.  It was great strategic threat to both Italian armies in the area and had to be dealt with. Commando Supremo concluded that both challenges could be overcome by a major attack through the Bainsizza—the Tolmino bridgehead and the mountains around Gorizia could both be flanked by a successful breakthrough. From past experience, the planners knew that the plateau would be lightly defended, at least for the opening assault.

Benign-looking Farmland on the Plateau

This was the genesis of the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo. The main objective was to capture the Bainsizza Plateau. Unfortunately, the planners combined this somewhat creative solution with the old standby scheme for capturing Trieste by just pounding very, very hard through the Carso. Guided by this two-pronged strategy, Italy's Second and Third Armies began the largest of all the Isonzo Offensives on 19 August 1917.

Looking Directly South at the Rugged Bainsizza from
One of the Assault Points

The new target for 1917, the Bainsizza, rises so rapidly and so high from the Isonzo that a frontal assault would be nearly suicidal. For once, however, tactics were adjusted to the situation. In an admirable bit of creativity it was decided that the plateau, with the help of 14 bridges to be placed across the river by engineers, would be assaulted from the north at a section where the terrain was not as challenging for assault troops. Despite heavy casualties, the men of the 24th Corps crossed the river, advanced behind an effective artillery barrage, forced their adversaries to withdraw, and eventually occupied about half of the plateau. On the south edge of the plateau a secondary attack was staged from Mte Kuk, resulting in the capture of Mte Santo, which had resisted the Italians in the Tenth Battle. These advances around the plateau stopped, however, when the artillery support was not able to follow farther and the Austro-Hungarian forces—always good on the defense—started taking advantage of the many caverns and hiding places provided by the Bainsizza's weird geology. 

Fourteen Foot Bridges Were Quickly Built by Engineers
for the Attack

The Italian Army, which entered the fighting with a huge manpower advantage, still suffered 150,000 killed and wounded, the Austro-Hungarian 5th Army about two-thirds of that figure by the 12 September conclusion of the battle. Nevertheless, after the success of the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo when Gorizia was captured, the Eleventh Battle was the most impressive military achievement by the Italian Army on the Isonzo. Their opponents were nearing the breaking point and were about out of troops to reinforce the sector. However, their concerned German allies were watching and the decision was near for them to help their partner. Italian Supreme Commander Luigi Cadorna sensed the Germans were about intervene and decided to get ready. His preparations, though, would prove  inadequate in preventing the cataclysm to come, at Caporetto.

Recommended: The Legend of What Actually Lived in “No-Man’s-Land” Between World War I’s Trenches

 

No Man's Land (Douai Plain) by Maurice Galbraith Cullen

By James Deutsch
Originally presented in Smithsonian magazine,  8 September 2014

During World War I, no-man’s-land was both an actual and a metaphorical space. It separated the front lines of the opposing armies and was perhaps the only location where enemy troops could meet without hostility. It was in no-man’s-land that the spontaneous Christmas truce of December 1914 took place and where opposing troops might unofficially agree to safely remove their wounded comrades or even sunbathe on the first days of spring.

It could also be the most terrifying of places; one that held the greatest danger for combatants. “Men drowning in shell-holes already filled with decaying flesh, wounded men, beyond help from behind the wire, dying over a number of days, their cries audible, and often unbearable to those in the trenches; sappers buried alive beneath its surface," wrote scholar Fran Brearton in her 2000 history The Great War in Irish Poetry: W.B. Yeats to Michael Longley. No-man’s-land, said poet Wilfred Owen, was “like the face of the moon, chaotic, crater-ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.”

In the Oxford English Dictionary, Nomanneslond, c. 1350, comes from the Middle English, and was “a piece of ground outside the north wall of London, formerly used as a place of execution.” The phrase took on a military connotation as early as 1864, but it became an especially prevalent term during the First World War. The German equivalent was Niemandsland, while the French used the English term le no man’s land.

Gunner Officers Correcting Their Battery Fire by Field Telephone from a Disused Trench in No Man's Land
by Colin Gill

It was during the Great War that a legend arose out of the real-life horrors that occurred in this wartime hellhole. Part Night of the Living Dead and part War Horse, like all oft-told tales, it had several variants, but the basic kernel warned of scar-faced and fearless deserters banding together from nearly all sides—Australian, Austrian, British, Canadian, French, German, and Italian (though none from the United States)—and living deep beneath the abandoned trenches and dugouts. According to some versions, the deserters scavenged corpses for clothing, food and weapons. In at least one version, the deserters emerged nightly as ghoulish beasts, to feast upon the dead and dying, waging epic battles over the choicest portions.

Historian Paul Fussell called the tale the “finest legend of the war, the most brilliant in literary invention and execution as well as the richest in symbolic suggestion” in his prize-winning 1975 book, The Great War and Modern Memory. Fussell, a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania who had served as a lieutenant during World War II, knew well the horrors of combat, which he vividly described in his 1989 memoir, Wartime.

One of the earliest published versions of the “wild deserters” legend appeared in the 1920 memoir The Squadroon by Ardern Arthur Hulme Beaman, a lieutenant colonel in the British cavalry. No other telling of the legend—at least in print—is as horrifying as Beaman’s. Written just two years after the war’s end, Beaman's tale begins in early 1918 on the marshes of the Somme in northern France. This is where some of the bloodiest battles of the war were fought, and Beaman is convinced that he witnessed two dozen or so German prisoners of war vanish into the ground. He wants to send a search party into the maze of abandoned trenches but is advised against it because the area “was peopled with wild men, British, French, Australian, German deserters, who lived there underground, like ghouls among the mouldering dead, and who came out at nights to plunder and to kill. In the night, an officer told him, mingled with the snarling of carrion dogs, they often heard inhuman cries and rifle shots coming from that awful wilderness as though the bestial denizens were fighting among themselves.”

One poet described the horrors of the no-man’s-land between the encamped armies as an "abode of madness." 

Wire by Paul Nash

Artist and writer Deanna Petherbridge describes Wire in these terms:

Great bomb craters filled with sullen waters, possibly concealing rotten corpses; the pitiful paths up and down dunes that speak of some hidden human presence; the pall of smoke partly filling the sky; the imagined stench. We assume that it is winter from the degraded palette, but it could just be the winter of the soul – war allows no other season than that of desolation. What makes this painful watercolour so memorable is the blasted tree, a great ripped phallic symbol enmeshed with barbed wire. There is a long tradition in Western landscape art of decaying tree stumps as symbols of destroyed civilisations. In sixteenth and seventeenth-century landscapes such signs of decay signify renewal, but in this modern work about the horrors of war, rebirth has been suspended.

"Paul Nash and World War One . . ." at Gerry in Art

__________________________________________

In the 1930 novel Behind the Lines (or The Strange Case of Gunner Rawley, its title in the U.S.) by Walter Frederick Morris, who served in the war as a battalion commander. The protagonist, Peter Rawley, a second lieutenant, deserts his Royal Field Artillery unit after killing his company commander. Somewhere on the battlefields of France, Rawley meets up with Alf, another deserter, who leads him underground. “Rawley squeezed through the hole, feet first. He found himself in a low and narrow tunnel, revetted with rotting timbers and half-blocked with falls of earth. . . . The whole place was indescribably dirty and had a musty, earthy, garlicky smell, like the lair of a wild beast. . . . ‘Where do you draw your rations?’ asked Rawley. . . . ‘Scrounge it, [Alf] answered, . . . We live like perishin’ fightin’ cocks sometimes, I give you my word. . . . There’s several of us livin’ round ’ere in these old trenches, mostly working in pairs.”

Continue reading the article HERE

Highlights from "Any Soldier to His Son"

Parts of what seems like a long, (nearly) epic poem by a British Tommy shows up online in pieces at numerous sites online. Sometimes they are attributed to Anonymous and sometimes to a chap named George Willis, about whom there are never any details.  Here are some of my favorite parts.

What did I do, sonny, in the Great World War?

Well, I learned to peel potatoes and to scrub the barrack floor.

I learned to push a barrow and I learned to swing a pick,

I learned to turn my toes out, and to make my eyeballs click.

I learned the road to Folkestone, and I watched the English shore,

Go down behind the skyline, as I thought, for evermore. . . 

I learned to wash in shell holes and to shave myself in tea,

While the fragments of a mirror did a balance on my knee.

I learned to dodge the whizz-bangs and the flying lumps of lead,

And to keep a foot of earth between the sniper and my head.

I learned to keep my haversack well filled with buckshee food,

To take the Army issue and to pinch what else I could.

I learned to cook Maconochie with candle-ends and string,

With "four-by-two" and sardine-oil and any God-dam thing.

I learned to use my bayonet according as you please

For a breadknife or a chopper or a prong for toasting cheese. . .

I learned to sleep by snatches on the firestep of a trench,

And to eat my breakfast mixed with mud and Fritz's heavy stench.

I learned to pray for Blighty ones and lie and squirm with fear,

When Jerry started strafing and the Blighty ones were near.

I learned to write home cheerful with my heart a lump of lead

With the thought of you and mother, when she heard that I was dead.

And the only thing like pleasure over there I ever knew,

Was to hear my pal come shouting, "There's a parcel, mate, for you" . . .

So much for what I did do - now for what I have not done:

Well, I never kissed a French girl and I never killed a Hun,

I never missed an issue of tobacco, pay, or rum,

I never made a friend and yet I never lacked a chum.

I never borrowed money, and I never lent - but once

(I can learn some sorts of lessons though I may be borne a dunce).

I never used to grumble after breakfast in the Line

That the eggs were cooked too lightly or the bacon cut too fine.

I never told a sergeant just exactly what I thought,

I never did a pack-drill, for I never quite got caught.

I never punched a Red-Cap's nose (be prudent like your Dad),

But I'd like as many sovereigns as the times I've wished I had.

I never stopped a whizz-bang, though I've stopped a lot of mud,

But the one that Fritz sent over with my name on was a dud.  . .

You'd like to be a soldier and go to France some day?

By all the dead in Delville Wood, by all the nights I lay

Between our lines and Fritz's before they brought me in;

By this old wood-and-leather stump, that once was flesh and skin;

By all the lads who crossed with me but never crossed again,

By all the prayers their mothers and their sweethearts prayed in vain,

Before the things that were that day should ever more befall

May God in common pity destroy us one and all!

The most complete version of this verse I've found can be located HERE.

A Son, Who Is About to Die, Writes His Family

The Letter Of Second Lieutenant Adolfo Ferrero, 3rd Alpini Val Dora Battalion, Written During the Battle of Ortigara 

[in English via Google Translate]

Lt. Ferrero

[19 June 1917]

Dear parents, 

I am writing this in the hope that there will be no need to send it to you. I cannot help it, the danger is grave, imminent. I would be remorseful if I did not dedicate these moments of freedom to you, to give you a last farewell.

You know I hate rhetoric... No, no, it is not rhetoric that I am doing. I feel life in me that claims its share of the sun; I feel my hours are numbered, I foresee a glorious but horrendous death.

In five hours it will be hell here. The earth will tremble, the sky will darken, a thick fog will cover everything and rumblings and thunder will resound among these mountains, dark as the explosions that I hear in the distance at this very moment.

The sky has become cloudy; it is raining. I would like to tell you so many things... so many.... but you can imagine. I love you all, all of you.... I would give a treasure to see you again... But I cannot... My blind destiny does not want it. In these last hours of apparent calm, I think of you, Papa, of you, Mama, who occupy the first place in my heart; of you, Beppe, innocent child, of you, Nina... Goodbye.

What should I say? I am speechless: a clash of ideas, a jumble of happy and sad ghosts, an atrocious premonition takes away my expression... No, no, it is not fear. I am not afraid! I feel moved, thinking of you, of what I am leaving, but I know  how to show myself in front of my soldiers, calm and smiling. After all, they too have very high morale. When you receive this letter, delivered to you by a good soul, do not cry. Be strong, as I have known how to be.

A son who dies in war is never dead. May my name remain engraved in the souls of my brothers; may my military uniform and my trusty pistol (if it is delivered to you), jealously preserved, bear witness to my glorious end.

And if by chance I have earned a medal, let that remain for Giuseppe. Oh parents, speak, speak, in a few years, when they will be able to understand you, to my little brothers, about me, who died at twenty for the Fatherland. Speak to them about me; try to reawaken in them the memory of me... It is painful to think of being forgotten by them... In ten, twenty years, perhaps they will no longer even know that they had me as a brother.

Now I turn to you. Forgiveness  I ask of you, if I have if I have given you sorrows. Believe me, it was not out of malice, if my inexperienced youth has made you endure troubles: I beg you to forgive me... Stripped of this earthly life,  I hope to enjoy that good that I believe I have deserved.To you, Papa and Mama, a kiss, just one kiss that says all my affection.

To Beppe and to Nina another [kiss?] and a warning: remember your brother. Sacred is the religion of the dead. Be good. My spirit will always be with you.

I leave all my substance to you. It is little. However, I want it to be jealously preserved by you. To Mama, to Papa, I leave...my immense affection. It is the most estimable memory that I can leave them. To aunt Eugenia, the silver crucifix; to my uncle Giulio, my golden Madonna. He will certainly wear it. My uniform to Beppe, as well as my weapons and my belongings. I leave my billfold with 100 L. to my orderly. Greetings to aunt Amalia and Adele and to all the relatives.

A burning kiss of affection from your most affectionate Adolfo

The original letter from Adolfo Ferrero is now exhibited in the Museum of the Great War, at the Military Shrine of Asiago. It was originally discovered in 1958 on the exhumed body of Lt. Ferrero's orderly, who was also killed in the fighting. They are both buried at the Asiago Military Shrine. 

For details about the Battle of Ortigara, read our article HERE.

Sources: Federazione Nazionale Ordini dei Medici Chirurghi e Odontoiatri d'Itali; Archivio Storico Dal Molin

Remembering a Veteran: Lieut. William Slim, 9th Royal Warwicks: Gallipoli hero and WWII leader

Bill Slim, A Soldier's Soldier, in World War II

By James Patton

Field Marshal the Right Honorable William J. Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, (1891–1970), KG GCB GCMG GCVO GBE DSO MC PC, who much preferred to be known simply as "Bill" Slim, was a British and Indian Army soldier and the 13th Governor-General of Australia (1953–60). His military career spanned 36 years, including both World Wars. He was wounded in action three times, in 1915, 1917, and 1940. In 1948 he was called out of a brief retirement to succeed Viscount Montgomery as the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1948–52), becoming the first British officer with Indian Army service to be so appointed.

In the beginning, Bill Slim was born to a middle-class family and educated at fee-based schools, finishing at Birmingham’s King Edward’s School (J.R.R. Tolkien was a fellow student).

Due to family business reverses, university was well beyond his means. Between 1910 and 1914 he taught in a primary school and worked as a foreman in a testing gang at an engineering works. 

Although he was never a student at Birmingham University,  in 1912 he was allowed to join their Officers Training Corps, which was affiliated with the 5th (Territorial) Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Due to his completing this course, he would ultimately be commissioned as a temporary 2nd Lieutenant in the 9th (Service) Battalion of the same regiment, a "K-1 New Army" formation, upon its creation on 22 August 1914.

Cap Badge of Slim's WWI Regiment

The Great War — Gallipoli

Some have disputed this story, but in 1945 Slim told a reporter that he “began at the bottom of the ladder” as a private in the 5th. On 4 August 1914,  the 5th was at summer camp, and Slim with a lance-corporal stripe. A few days later, however, he was busted for allowing his section to take a drink on a long, hot and dusty march. A few weeks later, however, his commission and the transfer to the 9th came through. 

In his book The Story of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, C.L. Kingsford tells what happened next:

On June 17, the 9th Royal Warwickshire, under Lieut.-Colonel C. H. Palmer, embarked at Avonmouth, and reached Mudros, in the island of Lemnos, on July 9. Four days later they landed on Beach V, near Cape Helles, where the ship 'River Clyde', from which a part of the immortal 29th Division had disembarked, still lay. For a fortnight they served off and on in the trenches, losing their colonel, who was shot by a sniper on July 25. Colonel Palmer had raised and trained the battalion, which owed much of its fighting spirit and efficiency to his unselfish enthusiasm and ability. A few days previously Lieut. Grundy had been killed, and Lieut. J. Cattanach (the doctor) mortally wounded. Of other ranks 9 were killed and 28 wounded. On July 29 the battalion returned to Lemnos, and on August 3 embarked again for Anzac Cove, where they were to take part in the impending great attack.

Sir lan Hamilton's plan was to endeavour to gain the heights of Koja Chemen (or Hill 971) and the seaward ridges by an advance from Anzac Cove, simultaneously with a new landing to be made further north at Suvla Bay. The whole ridge, of which Koja Chemen is the highest point, is called Sari Bair. Underneath it on the north lies a long spur known as Rhododendron Ridge, below which a wide water course, split into two forks, both called Aghyl Dere, leads up to Koja Chemen. The 9th Royal Warwickshire, under Major W. A. Gordon, landed in the early morning of August 4. During the first two days (August 6-7) of the attack they were in divisional reserve, but advanced up Aghyl Dere. On August 8 they crossed Bauchop's Hill to the ridge beyond, part going to relieve the 9th Worcester at the head of Aghyl Dere. The New Zealanders had captured Rhododendron Ridge on the previous day…

The main attack came on August 9 with the assault of Koja Chemen. Elements of three battalions- the 9th Royal Warwickshire, the 6th South Lancashire, and the 1/6th Gurkhas- reached the crest, whence they could look down on the waters of the Dardanelles and seemed to have victory in their grasp. 

 Click on Map to Enlarge

Note Location of Hills Q and 971

This capture of heights at Sari Bair would mark the furthest point of Allied advance during the campaign. As part of the force detailed to capture Hill Q (Koja Chemen), 2nd Lieut. Slim, leading around 50 men, was attached to the command of Lieut. Col. Cecil Allanson DSO (1877–1943), of the 1/ 6th Gurkha Rifles, who was himself wounded in the assault. Slim was shot through the chest, suffering serious injury which would affect him for the rest of his life.

But the [Australians] on the right, through no fault of their own, were running late, and when the Turks counterattacked [led by Col. Mustafa Kamal], the assault battalions were forced back to the lower slope trenches. One company of the 9th Royal Warwickshire held on, till they were surrounded, and, as it is supposed, all perished. [This account doesn’t mention the friendly fire incident that required Allanson to move his men away from the downward slope of the ridge].

When at night the 9th Royal Warwickshire was withdrawn to reserve, no officers and only 248 men were left. Major Gordon had been wounded on 8 August, and Major A. G. Sharpe, who succeeded him, was killed two days after. During the four days five officers were killed, 9 wounded and one missing; of other ranks, 57 were killed, 227 wounded, and 117 missing. For their service on these days Majors Gordon and C. C. R. Nevill received the DSO.

The fact that the battalion had lost all its officers, [including 2nd Lieut. Slim], probably helps explain why at the time its share in reaching the crest of Sari Bair was not recorded. As for Bill Slim, he was successfully evacuated and ended up on a hospital ship bound for England and a long recuperation.

The Great War — Mesopotamia

The 9th was transferred to the trenches at Suvla Bay until 19 December, when they were withdrawn to Mudros. On 6 January 1916, they were rushed to Cape Helles to fend off the last Turkish attack, then evacuated three days later straight to Port Said, where they remained until dispatched to Mesopotamia on 12 February 1916 to join the Tigris Corps. 

While convalescing in England, Slim accepted a proffered regular commission as a second lieutenant in the under-strength West India Regiment, the 2nd battalion of which was then serving in East Africa. Eventually, however, he cleared his medical boards in September 1916 and instead got himself named a replacement to the 9th in Mesopotamia.

Key sites of the Mesopotamian Campaign

As a part of Lieut. Gen. Stanley Maude’s (1864–1917) column late in that year, Slim and the 9th served in the capture of the Hai Salient, the capture of Dahra Bend and the Passage of the Diyala. On 4 March 1917, Slim was promoted to lieutenant, then made a temporary captain.  The 9th was one of the first British units into Baghdad on 11 March 1917. They then joined Lieut. Gen Sir W.R. Marshall’s column and pushed north across modern-day Iraq, fighting at Delli’Abbas and Nahr Khalis. Crossing the ‘Adhaim and the fight at Shatt al ‘Adheim, Slim was wounded in the arm in late 1917 and evacuated to a hospital in Shimla, India. He was awarded the Military Cross on 7 February 1918 for his actions in Mesopotamia. Subsequent to his departure, the 9th was in action in the Second and Third Battles of Jabal Hamrin and then at Tuz Khurmathl in April 1918.  In May 1918, they were attached to the North Persia Force, which found itself in Transcaspia (modern-day Turkmenistan) at the Armistice.  Meanwhile, Slim was still in Shimla. For pay reasons, he had been provisionally transferred to the Indian Army, and he was made a temporary major in the 6th Gurkha Rifles on 2 November 1918. On 22 May 1919, he was permanently transferred to the Indian Army and made a permanent captain. 

The Second World War — Southeast Asia

During the Second World War, Slim would lead the British 14th Army, the so-called "forgotten army" in the Southeast Asia Theater. With a peak fighting strength of 606,149 men (87 percent of whom were Indian soldiers), this juggernaut was the largest single Army (an Army is a group of more than one Corps) in British history. They fought in the jungles of Burma, kept the Ledo Road lifeline to China open and stopped the last Japanese offensive of the war at Kohima and Imphal in 1944. 

Some have considered Slim to be the greatest British general of WWII, or even since the Duke of Marlborough. Historian and journalist Max Hastings has written of Slim: “In contrast to almost every other outstanding commander of the war, Slim was a disarmingly normal human being, … without pretension, devoted to his … family and the Indian Army. His calm, robust style of leadership and concern for the interests of his men, ... his blunt honesty, lack of bombast and unwillingness to play courtier did him few favours in the corridors of power.”

In the 1930s, in order pay for his children’s education, Slim wrote novels, short stories, and other publications under the pen name Anthony Mills, an activity which was proscribed by Indian Army rules.  Later, he wrote a personal narrative entitled Defeat into Victory. First published in 1956, it has never been out of print. The prolific author John Lee Masters, an ex-Gurkha officer who had served under Slim in Burmese jungles, said that it proved that Slim was “an expert soldier and an expert writer.”

After Slim’s own autobiography, the next work about Slim was Ronald Lewin’s Slim: The Standardbearer (1977). Following Robert Lyman’s Bill Slim: Leadership, Strategy, Conflict (2011) there has been an outpouring of works on the subject including F.A.  Baillergeon’s Field Marshal William Slim and the Power of Leadership (2012), Edward Egan’s Field Marshal William Slim: the Great General and the Breaking of the Glass Ceiling (2015), John Douglas’s Slim: Unofficial History (2016), and Russell Miller’s Uncle Bill. The Authorised Biography of Field Marshal Viscount Slim (2016). All of these works are available today.

Today there stands a life-size statue of Slim erected in 1990 in Whitehall, opposite the Ministry of Defense.

Slim was a good source of quotable remarks. Here are two examples:

I have commanded every kind of formation from a section upwards to this army, which happens to be the largest single one in the world. I tell you this simply that you shall realize I know what I am talking about. I understand the British soldier because I have been one.

The fighting capacity of every unit is based upon the faith of soldiers in their leaders; that discipline begins with the officer and spreads downward from him to the soldier; that genuine comradeship in arms is achieved when all ranks do more than is required of them. “There are no bad soldiers, only bad officers,” is what Napoleon said, and though that great man uttered some foolish phrases, this is not one.

Sources include The Burma Star Memorial, the War Time Memories Project and Rootsweb.com