An American Nurse in Paris: Novels of the Great War

Nursing Staff, American Red Cross Hospital #1, Paris

John F. Andrews

46 North Publications, 2025

Reviewed by David F. Beer

They don’t need to paint a target on me. I wear a skirt. The only one in the American press corps in France.

Imagine you’re a young American woman who has graduated as a registered nurse and finds herself in Paris as the Great War is painfully drawing to a close with its terrible human cost. Moreover, you’re not at all interested in a nursing career because your heart has always been in the written word, and especially journalism. Your one goal now is to work as a war correspondent—specifically as a medical journalist. This woman is Alice Simmons, whose experiences from 24 May through July 1918 reveal a myriad of situations and intrigues involving not only Alice but also the world of war journalists, AEF officials, wounded soldiers and marines, and the fighting in and around Belleau Wood.

An American Nurse in Paris is a rewarding historical novel. In some 300 pages the author (himself a career physician) takes the reader through the challenges and setbacks of a young woman who is seen by the American Press Corps and military as presumptuously vying for recognition she shouldn’t be awarded—because she is female.

The barriers Alice must overcome (including discrimination and an attempted rape by two U.S. officers) are numerous, but she persists. Fortunately, she has a few supporters among the AEF officer ranks and she does manage to get a nursing position in an American Red Cross military hospital. Her demanding work and trying experiences in the hospital among badly wounded and dying American troops comprise over half of the book and make for captivating reading.

Some of the characters are based on real people, as the author points out in an afterword. Thus we meet General Ireland, Brigadier General Nolan, Brigadier General Harbord and others who, as actual persons, played important roles in the AEF in World War One. Their attitudes, conversations and actions in the book’s plot are of course fictionalized. An actual journalist who was quite popular in his time is Floyd Gibbons, a flamboyant writer who was wounded in the war and who wrote a short memoir of the conflict. In the novel he is also unhappy about Alice’s final acceptance as a nurse and journalist.

Order HERE

Ultimately, the narrative of the book centers on Alice and how she meets the numerous challenges that face her in these few months. She not only determinedly overcomes social and professional discrimination but also comes to terms with her own self-doubts and aspirations. And she becomes both a valued nurse and an effective war correspondent who shows us the terrible aftermath of battle when writing about her hospital work and patients:

The physical wounds are obvious and the topic of much conversation. The unseen, unspoken wounds lurk in the shadows. Will they ever heal? Many are sad about the loss of comrades, gone in ways too horrific to imagine. Tasting air filled with the blood mist of their best friends and the chemicals of an industrial death creates indelible memories that a lifetime of nightmares cannot reconcile (p. 198).

If you enjoy historical novels of the Great War, you will enjoy this book.

David F. Beer

Eyewitness: I Was Buried Alive at Verdun

Bernard Potrykus, a German soldier of Polish ancestry, while serving with the German infantry at Verdun,  barely managed to escape being buried fatally in a collapsed dugout while helping dig out men entombed by an earlier explosion. He described the experience in his 1939 war memoir Wspomnienia Kaszuba spod Verdun (Memories of a Kashubian from Verdun).

German Trench at Verdun

Suddenly, the ground beneath our feet shifted. We heard a bang as loud as a hundred thunderbolts. It got dark because of the dust. Everybody ran toward the other edge [of the dugout], while those in bed started to call for help. The enemy did his job: he penetrated our cover. All those sleeping were buried. 

“Boys!” The deputy officer Winkler yelled in uproar, “help our companions!” He himself was there, and he started to dig up the ground with a small shovel that he found. Around ten people, who were more courageous and were not afraid of dying, came to help the buried. Our Winter… did not search for a shovel but started to dig with his own hands, he ripped his nails, he tossed the boards with his teeth. The efforts of those who tried to rescue the buried soldiers were superhuman.

At first, the layer of ground that covered them was apparently not so thick, cause we could hear their cries and we could even understand individual words that they used to call for help. However, more and more ground started to fall, much more than dozens of hands could handle. A second explosive must have hit a spot near the entry, because a new avalanche of ground and stones fell on those unfortunate ones, and the third hit the same spot, Winkler yelled, “Move back!” As if he sensed something. They jumped to the side, and a great part of our dugout was buried.

Those who had tried to rescue the other soldiers were also almost buried…  Our situation was horrible… A shell hit half of the stairs at the exit. Although they were thick, the boards did not endure it: we heard a creak; when we turned our eyes to this spot, we could not see daylight anymore. The entire staircase was buried down to  them bottom. There was an overwhelming darkness, like in a grave. We were also silent because everyone got scared so much that we could not speak. Only when someone lit a match did everybody start moving. There was an undescribable tumult. 

German Soldiers at Damaged Trench and Dugout

Some kept saying on and on, “We are lost now!” Others ran from one wall of the trench to the other, like wild animals in a cage, and they wanted to break them down with their chests to get outside; besides, they screamed loudly and stridently for the help of God and the saints…. Our commander ordered us to search through our pockets, [because maybe] we will find matches or a candle. We found a little of that. Half of a matchbox, a lighter, and, what was most important, a piece of candle, although it was small. Winkler took it all, light up the candle, and said: “Now, boys, let’s get down to work. We have to dig ourselves out of here. There are too many of us to just die here, and we still have healthy hands and legs. Get down to work with everything you got and we will soon escape from this unfortunate place.” 

First, he ordered us to gather all the rifles and masks in one place, so that they do not get buried. Then, he formed us in a chain: he stood at the head by the stairs and transfered the ground to the nearest soldier. He gave it to another one, and so on, until it was in the very corner of the trench. Winkler emphasized the fact that we have to place it high and tight, so that it does not take much space…  We worked in silence. We only grunted heavily since the work was extremely burdensome since we lacked big shovels; we had only the small ones that we carried on our belts. We alternately worked in standing positions and on our knees, and it was even worse when Winkler blew out the candle, because he was afraid that we would run out of the candle at the end.  Then it often happened that one would hit his companion’s side with a shovel in the dark… 

The air was thick with dust, less and less oxygen, and it was so hot that we thought we were in a bakery oven. Sweat flew down our bodies and hurt our eyes with the dus. A crust grew on our faces, which was so big that – when Winkler lighted a match to have a look – we could barely see anything at all.  The trench slowly started to fill with soil. Winkler did reach the point where the shell hit, but the more ground we tossed, the more ground fell down, as if from the horn of plenty! … Space quickly diminished.We moved closer to each other, eventually working back to back. Breathing became increasingly difficult with each passing second.

Eventually, one of us fainted…  Soon, a second soldier fell down, thena a third right after him, almost when our candle faded away. “It is bad,” a dry throat gasped.  It was a cry that would begin general panic, which would be the end of us, had our Winkler not exclaimed with his shrilly but dry voice: “Boys, I see sky!” Indeed, it was true.  We dug ourselves out from the ground…  Then, we came out, one after another. God, what a joy! It was night, the half moon above, so many stars in the sky! What a great difference: this sky and the black abyss. It was still much better to die here, on the surface. 

Source: "Poles in Kaiser’s Army on the Front  of the First World War",  Ryszard Kaczmarek, STUDIES IN HISTORY, MEMORY AND POLITICS, Vol. 33 

Lonesome Memorials #17: Community War Memorial, Thiaucourt, France

 

The Town of Thiaucourt's Children Who Died
for France 1914–1918

Virtually every town and village in France has a memorial dedicated to its fallen citizens of the community in the First World War. Thiaucourt, in what Yanks referred to as the St. Mihiel Salient, includes a unique American feature on theirs. The main sculpture, on the grounds of the Église Saint-Rémi de Thiaucourt, includes a Doughboy shaking hands with a French Poilu. It is clearly an expression of appreciation for the liberation of the town by Pershing's First Army on 12 September 1918. Interestingly, Thiaucourt would be liberated by the U.S. Army again in 1944 by George Patton's Third Army (long after the 1925 dedication of the memorial). Since the First World War, the town has also been the location of the U.S. St. Mihiel Cemetery. If you're visiting Thiaucourt a visit to both sites is strongly recommended.

Depiction of the Yanks Arriving in Thiaucourt
American Divisions participated in the
Liberation of Thiaucourt

Captain Cunningham

The features of the American figure are based on a specific Doughboy, Captain Oliver B. Cunningham, DSC, of the 15th Field Artillery of the 2nd Division, who was killed in action on 17 September 1918 at a crossroads outside of town. There are no documents I can find definitively explaining why he was selected for this honor, but two facts stand out.  Much admired by his regiment, Cunningham had a marker placed over his temporary grave that was eventually replaced by a concrete cross for many years. A smaller marker still exists at the site. Additionally, in 1920, chimes were contributed for the rebuilding of the war-damaged church, presumably by his family.  It seems Captain Cunningham became the symbolic American Doughboy for Thiaucourt and he became his nation's representative for the dramatic expression of  two nation's friendship. I would love to discover if there is a similar story behind the French Poilu.

Cunningham was, in any case, a most-admirable representative for America.  He received the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously for his efforts at Château-Thierry and St. Mihiel. He has been  highly honored, as well, by Yale University for his character and scholarship, both while he was still a student and after his death. He is buried at the St. Mihiel Cemetery, Plot C Row 13 Grave 18.

Your Editor (Top Left) with His 2010 Battlefield Tour

How to Find the U.S. Cemetery and Memorial:

From Verdun: Follow D903 and D904 to D3 in Thiaucourt-Regniéville

Proceed to the St. Mihiel Cemetery, which will be on your right side, just north of Thiaucourt. (Recommended long stop.)

Continue on D3, which becomes Rue de Verdun for 1 Km.  The church will be on your right.

Thanks to the staff of St. Mihiel Cemetery for material from their files. The photo of Capt. Cunningham and some helpful details were found at Find a Grave.

 

A Baker's Dozen Grim Wartime Cartoons: 1914 – 1918

Will Britain Betray France?

Where Will Austria Fight?

(Dernberg Was a Representative in Washington
 Early in the War)

Lambs to the Slaughter

Measuring for Caskets

Sweet Dreams

Germany Imposes "Peace" on Romania

 

(I'm Not Sure Why Wilson Is Yanking
the Kaiser's Tooth, but It Looks Painful.)

No Christmas This Year

Is Victory Close in 1916?

Meet Elsie Janis, Sweetheart of the AEF–Video

This is a 1926 recreation with sound of Elsie's visits to the front during the war.

Also, for more information on Elsie with photos of her with the troops at the front, see our previous articles on her:

Part I

Part II

CLICK HERE TO PLAY


Thanks to our friend and supporter Robin Clayton at WLRC Radio in Walnut, Mississippi, for discovering this gem.

Remembering a Veteran: 2nd Lieutenant Eric Duckworth, Lancashire Fusiliers

Lt. Eric Duckworth

By James Patton

Eric was born on 19 September 1895 in Dunsterville House, Rochdale (now a part of metropolitan Manchester). He was the eldest son of James and Mary Duckworth and thus a scion of one of Rochdale’s wealthiest families. Their fortune was founded by Eric’s grandfather, Sir James Duckworth (1840–1915), who was a councilman, four-time mayor of Rochdale and a Member of Parliament 1897–1900 and 1906–10.

Duckworth’s was a major grocery wholesaler and retailer in the industrial Midlands. At their peak, they had 180 stores, which their clientele nicknamed “Jimmy Duck’s." The Duckworth family ownership continued until 1958, but it’s all gone today. 

One of the Family Grocery Stores

Eric was educated at Rugby, where he was a member of the Officer Training Corps. He returned home in 1913 and enrolled at Manchester University, intending to study politics and economics. On the day following the declaration of war, he volunteered for his local Territorial Force unit, the 6th  (Rochdale) Battalion, Lancs Fusiliers (LF).

Since 1908, all Territorial Force battalions had been designated as either First Line or Second Line. The First was made up of men who were available for overseas service, while the Second’s men could only serve at home, either by individual choice or due to restrictive circumstances. After war was declared, all new volunteers went to the First Line (1st /6th ), including Eric. Later, due to high casualties, the Seconds were deployed overseas as well.

Eric was the type of chap that the LF were looking for. The 6th LF was commanded by a former Yeomanry officer, cricket player, and heir to a textile empire named George Kemp (1866–1945), 1st Baron Rochdale, who was briefly a brigadier general in 1915. The 6th LF had strong local roots. Many men were from Rochdale’s leading families. On 6 August, Eric was duly gazetted a 2nd  lieutenant and assigned to “B” Company; at only 18 he was the youngest officer in the battalion.

Within days, the 1st /6th was made a part of the 42nd  (East Lancs) Division, which would become the first Territorial Force unit to go overseas, arriving in Egypt in early September 1914. At this time, Territorial units were sent out to replace Regulars in Imperial Service, so the Regulars could be sent to France. This restriction didn’t last too long. On 6 May 1915 the 1st /6th was landed at Cape Helles on the Gallipoli peninsula and rushed into action, where they mounted a costly bayonet charge in the 2nd Battle of Krithia. Eric wrote of this to his father:

I was fortunate to come out unhurt but my platoon suffered. I cannot go into detail as regards numbers of casualties but 12 per cent are killed. We have had our fill of war and I shall not mind when it is over.

 

Present Day Krithia (Alçıtepe in Turkish)

 On  5 August he wrote to his mother:

Little enough did I think 12 months ago today on the anniversary of mobilisation I should be writing to you from a hole in the Gallipoli Peninsula, not having seen you for 10 1/2 months, and to the tune of 75mm guns. However, you never know your luck, and I may see you in time to celebrate my 20th birthday at home, but as things look at present, there’s not much chance of that.

Indeed, Eric’s luck did run out on 7 August, when the 1st /6th  LF were engaged at the Battle of Krithia Vineyard. His men recalled that, on seeing the defenses opposing them, Eric’s sardonic message to them was “Well, lads, we are not going to a church parade today!”

Nevertheless, he led his platoon in another bayonet charge that captured the first line of trenches, but he was killed in the unsuccessful attempt to breach the 2nd line. He was 43 days short of his twentieth birthday.

The officers mess of the 6th LF was a tight-knit and socially linked group made up of "the great and good"of Bury, Rochdale, and Middleton, and this old-boy network facilitated Eric’s father’s eventual pilgrimage to the Dardanelles. Within days of hearing of Eric’s death, his father, James, had managed to open a direct line of communication with the officers mess in the field, yet. Within weeks, with the personal intervention of the battalion chaplain, he had received a written firsthand account from one of his son’s wounded soldiers, who had been evacuated to a hospital in Malta.

Private Norman Howarth, told them:

At 9.45am (on the 7th August) Lieutenant Duckworth led our platoon towards the vineyard, Many of the men were green reinforcements and halted at the first trench. About 20 men led by Duckworth kept charging toward the second trench. Only three men made it to the Turkish parapet: Private Porter, myself and Lieutenant Duckworth. Private Porter was about 20 yards to my left and he and I were busy shooting Turks. Private Porter crawled nearer to me and told me that Lieutenant Duckworth had been shot.

When the smoke had lifted, Howarth said that he could see Duckworth 30 or 40 yards to his left, “sat [sic] on the parapet with his head on his chest.” Eric’s parents asked to have Howarth draw a map of the spot where Eric had last been seen, slumped in the Turkish wire. When Eric’s father and a brother made their 1922 pilgrimage, it was this map that guided their search. They took with them an oak tree sapling from Rochdale to plant as a memorial to Eric and the other local men who didn’t return. This would be a semi-official act, since Eric’s father was also the mayor of Rochdale.

They arrived on the peninsula sometime in the latter part of March. Their visit was brief but effective, since they had attentive assistance from the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC). We don’t know when the two departed for home, but they were back in Rochdale by 15 April, when they made public the details of their journey in the Rochdale Observer.

James Duckworth Carrying the Oak Sapling

They had meant to plant the oak sapling in the spot where Howarth had indicated that Eric had fallen, but they found that this site was being actively farmed. Eric’s father wrote: “We travelled by the coast and then turned inland… and Krithia village  appeared on the right, a deserted pile of ruins. A few hundred yards further we turned right and stopped at the graveyard known as Redoubt Cemetery” where they discovered the graves of several of Eric’s men—and a couple of graves marked as "An officer of the Lancashire Fusiliers: Known unto God’. Could one of these be Eric’s? Eric’s father again:

We had no grave of our own to visit, having numbered with those whose boys fell in advanced positions, face to the foe and under such conditions that recovery was impossible. We found graves of a dozen or more of the men in our boy’s platoon – his (Eric’s) name would stand alongside those with whom he fought and for whom he so sincerely cared.

Thus they decided to plant the oak there, in the Redoubt Cemetery, with a plaque dedicating it to Eric’s memory. They then hired the IWGC’s Turkish gardeners to water and tend to the tree. Eric’s father died in 1937, but over the ensuing years Eric’s younger brothers, all of whom had been too young to serve in the war, continued to pay for the care of the tree and periodically visited.

It is a testimony to the skills of the gardeners that the tree has continued to survive despite living in an alien climate. Over the ensuing years, the tree would gain symbolic importance to the surviving veterans of the 6th LF, and at reunions they looked forward to updates from the Duckworths about how it was faring.

The Gallipoli Oak, Redoubt Cemetery

At one such reunion in 1935, the veterans were shown pictures of the tree, and one poignantly wrote: “Our comrades lie sleeping, and we were shown a fast-growing tree in memory of Eric Duckworth. Its leaves were a rich green and it looks so strong, as young Duckworth was. Ah yes, we must forget those days, but we cannot forget men like Duckworth and many more. We shall go on remembering them until the sun goes down for us.”

The oak tree remains to this day in the Redoubt Cemetery near Alçıtepe, now 103 years old, a unique memorial known as “The Gallipoli Oak.”

Dedication Plaque

Eric Duckworth is also commemorated on:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission Helles Memorial.
• The University of Manchester War Memorial, Main Quadrangle.
• The Manchester Municipal College of Technology Memorial in the Sackville Building, University of Manchester.

Sources: University of Manchester and the Western Front Association

The Imperial Russian Army After the February Revolution

Poster for 1917 "Freedom Loan" 
for Continuing Military Operations

Lewis Siegelbaum, Michigan State University

At the time of the February Revolution, the Imperial Russian Army contained some seven-and a-half million soldiers who were overwhelmingly drawn from the peasantry. The most immediate and tangible effect of the revolution on the army was Order No. 1 issued by the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on 1 March 1917 and approved under duress by the Provisional Government. Among other things, the order called for the election of soldiers’ committees under whose disposal all arms were to be placed. Although they were to maintain “the strictest military discipline,” soldiers were to enjoy the rights of all citizens outside the service and the ranks. They also were no longer to be addressed by their officers in the familiar (and condescending) form of “you” (ty). The addressing of officers with titles such as “Your Excellency” was abolished and replaced by “Mister General,” “Mister Colonel,” etc.

In his report of 16 April, General Alekseev, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, complained that “the army is systematically falling apart,” a situation that he attributed to the spread of “defeatist literature and propaganda." What is no less striking about the revolution in the army is the extent to which rank-and-file soldiers justified their actions in the patriotic terms of defending a “free Russia.”

_____________________________

General Alekseev to Minister of War Guchkov, 16 April 1917

The situation in the army grows worse every day: information coming in from all sides indicates that the army is systematically falling apart.

(1) Desertions continue unabated: in the armies of the Northern and Western fronts between April 1 and 7, 7,688 soldiers are reported as deserters … a number manifestly and considerably underestimated …

(2) Discipline declines with each passing day; those guilty of violating military duty are completely indifferent to possible criminal punishments, convinced of the extreme unlikelihood of enforcement.

(3) The authority of officers and commanders has collapsed and cannot be restored by present methods. Owing to undeserved humiliations and assaults, the de facto removal of their authority over subordinates, and the surrender of such control to soldiers’ committees … the morale of the officer corps has sunk to a new low.

(4) A pacifist mood has developed in the ranks. Among the soldier mass, not only is the idea of offensive operations rejected, but even preparations for such, on which basis major violations of discipline have occurred …

(5) Defeatist literature and propaganda has built itself a firm nest in the army. This propaganda comes from two sides -from the enemy and from the rear … and obviously stems from the same source.

 _____________________________

The first few weeks of the revolution witnessed the desertion of between 100,000 and 150,000 soldiers, most of whom were peasants anxious to return to their villages to participate in what they expected would be a division of land. There was also a substantial tide of arrests of officers, particularly senior commanders, and their replacement by more popular individuals. Instances of violence, including executions of officers, were recorded in the Baltic Fleet and in the Petrograd garrison but were relatively rare at the front. 

Kerenskii Visiting the Front

Whatever the case, Aleksandr Kerenskii, who had replaced Aleksandr Guchkov as Minister of the Army and Navy in May, became convinced that Russia either had to accept the virtual demobilization of the army and capitulate to Germany or assume the initiative in military operations. Touring the fronts, he sought to whip up enthusiasm for an offensive that he and the leading core of officers hoped would ignite patriotic fervor and bring victory to revolutionary Russia. The offensive, under General A. A. Brusilov, began on 18 June all along the Southwestern Front. After some initial successes, the Russian Army’s advances were repulsed, and the desperate attempt to stem the tide of the army’s disintegration actually served to accelerate it.

Source: Seventeen Moments in Soviet History

Deserters of the First World War

Australian Forces Field Court Martial

By Andrea Hetherington

Pen and Sword Books Ltd., 2021

Matthew Barrrett, Reviewer

Originally Presented at Canadian Military History, Vol. 33, #2

In Deserters of the First World War: The Home Front, Hetherington delves into this intriguing and neglected topic by investigating the experiences and motivations of British and Dominion soldiers who for one reason or another, at one time or another, rejected military duty. By turning our attention away from offenses on the battlefield to the situation in the United Kingdom, Hetherington explores the social lives of ordinary soldiers-turned deserters as they navigated precarious fugitive status on the home front.

From the perspective of working-class civilians in uniform, she argues, “Desertion was a small strike against the monotony of the military machine, a brief holiday from routine. It was a tactic for a man to negotiate or manoeuvre his way through a war which was mostly beyond his immediate control and it was a tactic utilized by many thousands of men” (p. 172). Frustrated with poor living conditions, inadequate compensation or unfair discipline, soldiers, especially those with trade union backgrounds, often interpreted absenteeism as another form of worker protest rather than a wholesale mutiny against the military system.

Army authorities nevertheless responded with all the legal and disciplinary tools to catch and punish the offenders, setting a deterrent for any who would overstay leave or abscond from a reserve depot. Between 1914 and 1920, over 82,000 courts martial in the British Army and Dominion forces were held for charges of desertion and absence without leave in the United Kingdom (p. 1).

Although the distinction between the two crimes was not always clear cut in practice, desertion required evidence that the soldier did not intend to return. The courts sentenced most convicted of either offence to periods of detention in barracks or imposed prison terms on habitual offenders. To prevent the prospect of misconduct and confinement from becoming perverse incentives to escape military service, authorities used suspended and commuted sentences to send convicted soldiers to duty and danger at the front.

Hetherington’s study proceeds roughly chronologically from the earliest examples of desertion shortly after the declaration of war in August 1914 through to the enforcement of conscription under the Military Service Act of 1916 to demobilisation and the postwar treatment of wartime deserters. Thematically, the chapters also explore interesting aspects of deserters’ lives on the home front, such as domestic issues, employment challenges, criminality, ethnicity and the depictions of desertion in the popular press. 

Desertion not infrequently resulted from marital rather than strictly martial problems, and a wayward serviceman could burden families with economic and emotional uncertainty. Some discarded their uniforms for more lucrative munitions work and others managed to evade military justice for years in the countryside working for farmers. Some runaway soldiers impersonated serving officers and veterans to exploit false military glory for profit while more nefarious individuals turned to vice and violence. Attitudes toward deserters could reflect ethnic prejudices with the problem of shirking disproportionately and unfairly associated with Jewish and Irish communities. In her analysis, Hetherington points out that the negative perception of deserters was balanced to some degree with public sympathy for volunteers-turned absentees who had at least served for a time at the front. Greater press hostility toward the problem of shirking was reserved for the deserter’s civilian counterpart—the conscientious objector (p. 51).

Deserters of the First World War relies on a range of War Office archival files but with much of the British Army court martial record long since destroyed, Hetherington turns to contemporary newspapers and other periodicals, such as the Illustrated Police News and John Bull, for accounts of deserter prosecutions. Mining these sources reveals public reactions to the problem of desertion and offers a valuable if partial window into deserters’ motivations and experiences. As the author notes, the accusations of prosecutors, judgements of court members and testimony of the accused raised questions about credibility and truth behind each story recounted in newspaper columns. Furthermore, the popular press would tend to have featured stories about the more unusual and extraordinary examples of desertion. Despite the loss of most British Army court files, the chapter on the “Wild Colonial Boys,” about desertion among Dominion forces, makes good use of the far more complete and accessible Canadian Expeditionary Force court martial records held at Library and Archives Canada.

Order HERE

Perceptions of wartime desertion tend to evoke scenes of panicked or worn-out soldiers fleeing the trenches before battle, perhaps traumatised by shell shock after unbearable frontline service. The Shot at Dawn Memorial, which commemorates the 306 British and Dominion soldiers executed for cowardice and desertion, captures this popular image of the deserter—a young boy-soldier blindfolded and tied to a post awaiting the fatal bullet. While these deaths galvanised a public and political campaign twenty years ago to secure posthumous pardons, a singular focus on execution cases can distort a deeper understanding of desertion in less extreme circumstances as well as its broader legal, social and cultural implications. 

Associating desertion primarily with a genuine medical problem like combat stress or shell shock further removes the agency of some absentee soldiers who may have seen their action as a deliberate choice or protest rather than an inevitable consequence of psychological breakdown. As Hetherington persuasively demonstrates, those accused of desertion responded to a variety of internal and external factors, and telling their fascinating stories provides an essential new perspective on the wartime experience and especially about the home front environment.

Matthew Barrrett

Why Was the Big Allied Push of 1916 Made at the Somme?

Relief, Delville Wood South African Memorial, Somme

Mark M. Hull

After the war, memories of the event—some more accurate than others—propelled this complicated series of unit actions into the position it has held since: a byword for the hemorrhage of lives for no gain and for military leaders’ uncaring sacrifice of an entire generation of young men.

The Reason Why 

The Somme River Valley theater of operations stretched some 15 miles, with the British sector neatly divided by the old Roman road that ran from Albert (British side of the line) to Bapaume (under German ownership). German forces occupied the key terrain feature—a ridge running west to east from Thiepval to Morval. The terrain was lightly wooded with a scattering of small villages and towns, although by 1916 the trees were gone and the towns were little more than standing ruins. War came early to these parts and stayed. 

The Somme did not suddenly become a battlefield in 1916. On the contrary, it had been the established demarcation between German and Allied forces since August 1914, when the Kaiser’s army lost its mobility and with it, any chance of realizing the quick victory that Germany required. The resulting stalemate did not mean an end to aspirations of offensive success; as different schemes were tried throughout 1915, the Germans asked themselves where the Allies were vulnerable rather than if the war was still winnable. Chief of the German General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn determined that the French fortress town of Verdun was the new “where.” He reasoned—somewhat sensibly—that the French would sacrifice almost anything to hold it, and that France would be “bled white” in the attritional struggle that ensued. By the early months of 1916, although it cost the Germans almost as much as the French, Falkenhayn still believed he was close to realizing the strategic goal of exhausting enemy manpower and with it, the enemy’s political will to continue the fight. If the French were to survive, they required immediate assistance from their British allies. 

The Somme Was the First Major Action for
the Pals Battalions

With the public failure of peripheral operations at Gallipoli, the British returned to the continent as the main theater of operations, and prior to the Verdun crisis, envisioned the main attack by Commonwealth forces at Ypres in 1916 with the aim of reaching the Belgian coast. For a variety of reasons, the plan collapsed due to the inability of their Russian allies to put together an offensive on the Eastern Front until summer and the Belgians’ refusal to support operations in Flanders. By February, both British and French staffs had scrapped their initial plans in favor of a joint Somme operation in July along a broad front—and it was just then Falkenhayn launched the Verdun operation that forced the Allies to rethink yet again the questions of where, when, and to what extent. 

Historians have long debated the true goals of the 1916 Somme offensive. It was at least partially designed to divert German reserves and thereby take pressure off the French to the southeast. But was the aim more ambitious than that? The commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), General Sir Douglas Haig, seemed of two minds. When writing about the upcoming operation in April 1916, he wrote that “I think we can do better than this by aiming at getting a large combined force of French and British across the Somme and fighting the enemy in the open!” 

This would appear to indicate unambiguously that the goal (at least at that time) was just that – a war-ending breakthrough that would collapse German resistance and pierce the equilibrium on the Western Front. His subordinate field army commanders were less optimistic, and doubted the chances for the rosy outcome Haig put forth. Fourth Army commander Lieutenant General Henry Rawlinson believed that the attack was likely to be “sustained over a considerable period of time”—meaning an attritional wearing out of the enemy rather than a decisive breakthrough. In response to this, Haig insisted, “The enemy must be beaten!” This schism of expectations between commanding general and key subordinates did not bode well for what was to follow. Haig was further prompted by the operational directive from the French Marshal Joffre, “We can envision knocking out the German army on the Western Front, or at least an important part of their forces.” As the time for the July offensive neared, Haig was watchful for any signs that Fourth Army’s planning embraced objectives that he thought too timid.  In any event, as historian W. J. Philpott observed, “For Britain the Somme was a battle fought for intangible strategic gains, to sustain an ally as much as defeat the enemy.”

One thing was clear—after the German onslaught at Verdun, the French contribution to any offensive in the Somme would be significantly reduced, as would the horizontal frontage of the battlespace. The British would not be making the push alone, but for most British units engaged, it would feel as though they were. With the Allied decision to attack and the general operational guidelines established, the British next had to consider how to best assemble sufficient manpower and material resources.

French Forces at the Somme

Postscript

Of course, the Allies won the Great War, more than two years after the Somme offensive. Did the Somme play a vital role in that success? Was this an important aspect of the attritional struggle that collapsed the German army in October and November 1918? Did the more than 19,000 men who died on 1 July alone contribute to that first V-E day? How should we interpret the greater meaning of what happened on the Western Front in 1916? Unfortunately, none of these questions have a satisfying answer, and perhaps that is why our cultural memory of this long-ago event is so ambiguous. 

Source: Excerpted from "The Somme, 1916" by Mark M. Hull, in Forgotten Decisive Victories, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2017

My AEF Battlefield Guide Is Now Available for Free Download

Cover: Marine Memorial, Belleau Wood Glade

Long-term subscribers to Roads to the Great War might recall that for some time I marketed this guidebook on the site. It is a distillation of all my research and on-site explorations of the war's American battlefields, organized in a way that I believe is easy to follow. Here are some details about the work and how to download it now for no charge. I hope you will have an opportunity yourself to visit these battlefields someday.

The Battlefields Covered:

• Cantigny
• Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Vaux
• Second Battle of the Marne
• Flanders: Mt. Kemmel
• Frapelle
• St. Mihiel Salient
• Meuse-Argonne
• The Hindenburg Line & Beyond
• Blanc Mont Ridge
• Flanders-Lys
• Other Notable Smaller Operations

Specifications:

• 28-page, full color, large 8½ x 11 inch printable PDF Document, readable on desk tops, laptops or P.E.D. devices.
• Ten major battles and five notable smaller operations covered.
• Each main section includes: quick facts, then and now photos, maps, details about the battle, and key sites to visit with GPS coordinates.
• Only delivered electronically.

Click HERE to Download

Photo Album: The British Empire Fighting on Distant Shores

1920 Recruiting Poster
The Empire Had Seemingly Survived the War

Column in Transcaucasus

Base Hospital in Murmansk, Russia

Aircraft Carrier HMS Ben-my-Chee in the Dardanelles
(Sunk 1917)

British and Sikh Troops at Tsing Tao, 1914

Wireless Operators, Tanganyika

Field Ambulance Station, Asiago Plateau, Italy

South African Machine Gunners, SW Africa

North Beach Gallipoli

Rare Photo of T.E. Lawrence

Turkish Officials Surrender Jerusalem

Anti-Aircraft Battery, Mesopotamia

Indian Army Soldiers, Salonika

Armored Car, Iraq, 1920