"March or Die" — A Tradition of la Légion étrangère Meets Trench Warfare

Legionnaires on a Desert March in Algeria, 1905 

"March or Die" — A Tradition

“March or die” (Marche ou crève) is the famous unofficial motto and operational ethos of the French Foreign Legion. Rooted in 19th-century North African colonial campaigns, it symbolizes extreme physical endurance, absolute mission completion regardless of hardship, and the consequence of failing to keep pace in harsh desert environments. The ethos dictates that legionnaires push past physical breaking points because abandoning a comrade or failing a designated task is completely unacceptable.

The Legion famously marches at 88 steps per minute  (the pas légionnaire), much slower than the standard 120 steps per minute of regular French military units. This deliberate, heavy cadence reflects a history of moving steadily through deep desert sand and an attitude of not rushing toward mortal danger. Because of its marching speed, the Foreign Legion is always the last unit marching in any joint parade of the French Army.

During World War I, the French Foreign Legion shifted from colonial policing to intense trench warfare on the Western Front. Over 43,000 global volunteers—including Italians, Russians, and Americans—joined specialized marching regiments, suffering catastrophic casualty rates while earning some of the French army’s highest military honors. On the Western Front, Legion units fought heavily in Champagne, Artois, Verdun, and the Somme, often assigned to high-risk assault objectives. In late 1914, Italian volunteers of the unique Garibaldian Legion (Légion Garibaldienne) fought valiantly in the Argonne before disbanding. Smaller Legion deployments fought in Serbia, Salonika, and Gallipoli. By November 1915 two Foreign Legion units had been merged into the “Régiment de marche de la Légion étrangère” (Foreign Legion Marching Regiment, RMLE) .

In Alsace, a Group of American Volunteers Pose for a Photo, 1915

March or Die on the Western Front

Did these new Foreign Legionnaires, who served in Europe during the Great War adhere to the standards of "March or Die" as followed by the Legion's old veterans of Morocco or Indochina?  Recruits underwent intense conditioning focused on long-distance endurance with heavy field packs, rigid unit synchronization, and the signature slow ceremonial pace of 88 steps per minute set to their iconic anthem Le Boudin. 

Additionally—in regards the marching part—we have this 1914 account from famed American volunteer Alan Seeger's diary that seems to resoundingly answer "Yes".

11 October

[A] seven-hour march

20 October

Short walk of 16 Kilometers in morning

9.8 km later in the day

22 October

30 km Hautvilliers to Verzy

Later, short march to Verzenay [2.4 km]

28 October

A long day's march was promised us to counteract the comfort of marching without sack. It was in fact the hardest day we have had. We marched with small and few interruptions from 6.30 in the morning to 10.30 at night, in which time we covered probably about 55 kilometers. No food except the scraps we had in our musettes. . . Arrived at Fismes after nightfall and exceedingly fatigued, expected to be cantonned there, but kept on marching through the town and out into the dark country again. . . At 10.30 we halted and were told to spread our blankets in the field beside the road. . . At midnight I lay down on the wet ground and managed to get some sleep before three, when we got up again and continued the march 10 or 12 kilometers to this wretched village, where we are lodged for the day in a dirty stable. . . Here we are just behind the lines. We are resting and go into the trenches tonight. At last we shall be under fire. [Editor's comment: This last sentence sounds like a sigh of relief.]

A RMLE Detachment on Parade, 1918

Combat, of course, provided its own tests of the mettle of the Legion's men. Because they were repeatedly sent into the bloodiest sectors of the front lines, entire units were often wiped out and had to be repeatedly reconstituted with fresh drafts of international volunteers. Towards the end of the war, however, a serious dearth of recruits would jeopardize the Legion’s continued presence at the Western Front. Officially 4,116 members of the Foreign Legion were killed on the Western Front and another 1,200 in other theatres of war. Thus, roughly 10 percent of those serving in the Legion between 1914 and 1918 lost their lives.

It was not by chance, therefore, that the Legion would not be affected by the general morale crisis and mutinies of the French army in spring 1917. While roughly half of the conventional French divisions on the Western Front experienced collective indiscipline or refusals to attack after the failed Nivelle Offensive, the Régiment de marche de la Légion étrangère maintained its high morale, discipline, and commitment to combat.  While they weren't marching across the Sahara, the core demand of the tradition—absolute compliance, relentless stamina, and a willingness to face certain death for France—remained unchanged in the mud and barbed wire.

The Scramble for Africa (1862–1912)

Thomas Pakenham

Random House, 1991

Compilation of Reviews

German Schutztruppe Patrolling Near Kilimanjaro 

The Scramble for Africa (1876–1912) is a comprehensive history of the colonisation of African territory by European powers between 1876 and 1912. The book was written by historian and arborist Thomas Pakenham and published in 1991, by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the United Kingdom and Random House in the United States.

The book juxtaposes the motives of missionary David Livingstone, King Leopold II, and other leading figures in the southern African land-grab of the late 19th and early 20th century. Pakenham details the famous battles and short wars, such as the battles of Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana of the Anglo-Zulu war. The author explores how the different powerful figures dealt with the conflict and its ultimate consequences on the region.

Winner WH Smith Literary Award and the Alan Paton Award, 1992
Order HERE

Reviewers mostly thought highly of The Scramble for Africa:

The “Scramble for Africa” began, according to Thomas Pakenham, in 1876. The Germans had a handy word that summed it up more succinctly--the Torschlusspanik-- the “door-closing panic.”

There the continent lay, ripe for exploitation, and nobody wanted to miss out. Europeans had been there for many years, of course, but only on the fringes--in Lagos, Zanzibar and Alexandria, for instance--where trade and climate had made a settlement necessary and possible. As the last quarter of the 19th Century approached, however, they queued up, in an unseemly turmoil, like avid shoppers on the opening day of a sale, to see what they could lay their hands on. .  . There was land to be grabbed, vast tracts of it, and, so they believed, unimaginably large amounts of money to be made. In their train came the added bonuses of strategic and political influence, of setting the agenda for the power struggles of the new century. And so they moved in on Africa: Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany all at once found themselves involved in an extraordinary “Sale of the Century.” A whole continent was available, and surely everyone would be able to claim a piece of the action. . . Thomas Pakenham’s fine book tells the story of this particular gold rush with admirable and judicious poise. These four decades of European colonization contain some of the best-known episodes of 19th-Century history as well as some of the most mythologized and colorful characters the world has ever seen. . . It was all about the greater greed and glory of Britain and France, Germany and Belgium and the other Europeans participating in the carve-up. The Africans did not feature in the equation at all.

William Boyd, Los Angeles Times, 1991 

If ever there was an over-used phrase, it is "Tour de Force". I've probably over-used it myself over the years, along with everybody else. However, if any book truly deserved to have  that phrase applied to it, it is surely this one.

A View Over the Bell, 2026

Not everyone agreed, of course:

Pakenham has written a book that contributes nothing of significance to our understanding of the scramble. More damagingly, the work perpetuates and popularizes an outdated view of both African and imperial history.

Tony Hopkins, 1993

America's Summertime World War One Commemorations – 2026

Remembrance of  the Battle of Croix Rouge Farm
28 July 1918 – 25 July 2026

A  major Remembrance address was made on 25 July 2026 at Croix Rouge Farm, France, former battlefield of the 42nd Rainbow Division, by Monique Brouillet Seefried, Ph.D.  Monique served for 10 years as WWI Centennial Commissioner, was chair of the Croix Rouge Farm Memorial Foundation and is now on the board of advisors of the American Revolution Institute. In her speech, she also honored two other commemorative events that had proceeded the ceremony at Croix Rouge Farm.

It is always with intense emotion that I find myself among all of you today, like every year since its dedication in 2011, in front of this powerful memorial — The Rainbow Soldier, carrying his dead comrade, on a battlefield that saw one of the fiercest combats in WWI of the 42nd US Division. It is the work of the late British sculptor James Butler, and was commissioned through the generosity of the late Nimrod T. Frazer to remember his father and his fellow soldiers who fought on this battlefield 108 years ago.

In the United States, at a time we celebrate the 250th of the creation of our Nation, we also celebrate and honor our first alliance with France which made our Independence possible. And France does not forget the American soldiers who came to its rescue in WWI. This July, I’ve already attended two events remembering them.

Gold Star Mothers at the Sacred Soil Marker Rededication

At Arlington, on July 5th, took place the rededication of the Sacred Soil Marker honoring American soldiers who died on French and Flemish battlefields in WWI. In 1929, the original marker conceived by the sculptor Gaston Deblaize, a French veteran of that war, was installed at Arlington containing soil of battlefields where the blood of American soldiers was shed. This marker was removed in 1938, due to deterioration, and almost lost to memory. Its restoration was a transatlantic project to honor Franco-American relations during the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States.

A delegation of Gold Star Mothers went to France to collect again this sacred soil, from mostly ABMC cemeteries, and it was placed in the restored marker which now stands in section 18 of Arlington cemetery. 

Doughboy Hilliard Chastain's Family Receives His Dog Tag

At the French Consulate in Atlanta, on Bastille Day, a dog tag lost in the Vosges region by an Alabamian soldier, Hilliard Chastain, a wagoner in the 167th Infantry Regiment Supply Company, 42nd Division, was returned to his grandchildren and a framed poster of the Rainbow Division Memorial at Croix Rouge Farm was offered to the family. Hilliard Chastain departed France on April 15, 1919 to return to Alabama on the USS North Carolina. Therefore, he must have participated in the battle of the Ourcq River and maybe have been at Croix Rouge Farm. 

Here, today, on this Croix Rouge Farm battlefield, I would like to express my gratitude to the city of Fère-en-Tardenois and its mayor, Madame Madeleine Gabriel, for taking such good care of this beautiful historical site and memorial, and thank Senator Antoine Lefevre, president of the Franco-American friendship group at the French Senate, congressman Jocelyn Designy, Mayor Didier Fernandez (Seringes-et-Nesles) and all other elected officials for their presence. This Rainbow Soldier, on this beautiful day, stands like a true Rainbow in the sky, a beacon of hope for French-American friendship and peace in our world. Thank you.

Senator Antoine Lefèvre, Senator (Aisne) and président of the
French-American friendship group at the French Senate and
Speaker Monique Seefried

Source: Rainbow [Division] Trail, August 2026

The Value of Trench Signage

 

Overview

Signage in World War I trenches was vital for survival, navigation, and tactical coordination. Handwritten or stenciled boards prevented soldiers from getting lost in the vast mazes, warned them of extreme hazards like snipers or gas, and labeled command posts, medical stations, and water supplies. Trench systems were labyrinths, difficult to find your station in daylight, easy to get lost at night.  Also, all positions in a trench were not equally safe.  One common message was "Do Not Stand About Here" or some equivalent. Such signs warned soldiers that lingering or being exposed in a trench could attract snipers and shellfire. Even though trenches were below the ground and soldiers were usually out of sight, movement could be tracked by their noise, the stirring of flies, or even the jutting of shovels or rifles above the trench parapet.

Examples of Trench Signage in British and German Trenches

Villa Margarete — Telephone

Categories of Signage

Directional & Locational: Named specific communication trenches (e.g., "Bicky Doo Trench", "Tranchée de Paris"), junctions, and paths pointing "To Front Line" or "Support Line.

"Safety & Movement Warnings: Instructed soldiers to "Keep to the Trench in Daylight" or warned "Do Not Stand About Here, Even If You Are Not Hit Someone Else Will Be" to prevent sniper casualties.

Services & Logistics: Designated "Good Water Filling Station", ammunition dumps, battalion headquarters, and dressing stations for the wounded.

Morale & Cynical Humor: Dubbed notoriously hazardous intersections with sarcastic names like "Suicide Corner" or "Leicester Square."

Click on Image to Enlarge

Warning Danger of Death

Sources: Scribd; Portraits of War; Canadian War Museum; Imperial War Museum; Wikipedia

Remembering a Veteran: Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Stanton F. Kalk, USN, USS Jacob Jones

Painting by F. Luis Mora, depicting Lt (JG)  Stanton F. Kalk assisting survivors of the USS Jacob Jones after she was sunk by Germany's U-53 on 6 December 1917.

Stanton Frederick Kalk was born in Alabama on 14 October 1894. He received his higher education at the U.S. Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1916. Service in the battleship Florida followed. In September 1917 he was assigned to the destroyer Jacob Jones, which was then performing convoy escort duties as part of the Anglo-American effort to control the serious threat of German U-boats. 

On 6 December 1917, Kalk was officer-of-the-deck when his ship was torpedoed by the submarine U-53. After Jacob Jones sank, he exhibited "extraordinary heroism" while helping move survivors among life rafts in an effort to equalize their loads. As a result of his exertions in the chilly water of the North Atlantic, Lt(JG) Kalk died from exhaustion and exposure. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. He is honored on the Tablet of the Missing, Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial, U.K.

Midshipman Kalk, U.S. Naval Academy

Read the Story of the sinking of the U.S.S. Jacob Jones HERE.

The Navy has named two destroyers in honor of Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Kalk:

• USS Kalk (Destroyer # 170, later DD-170), 1919-1940; and

• USS Kalk (DD-611), 1942-1969.

Sources:  U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command; ABMC

HMS Saxifrage (1918), Last of the Q-ships

HMS President / Saxifrage, 2014

By James Patton

News flash from the BBC: the retired Q-ship HMS President [formerly HMS Saxifrage during the Great War] which, along with the cruiser HMS Caroline in Belfast and the monitor  HMS M33 at Portsmouth, are the only remaining Royal Navy (RN) ships that served in World War I. This seems bound to change, as the onetime  HMS Saxifrage  is going to be scrapped. It has been moored out of the public’s view at Arcelor Mittal Kent Wire's (AMKW) site at Chatham in Kent. AMKW says that they don’t own the ship, and they announced last December that their Chatham dock facility is closing. 

AMKW says that in 2016  they "agreed with the owner of the ship to berth it," but since then the owner has "ignored requests" to "take responsibility for their ship." AMKW has "therefore borne the ongoing costs of maintaining the vessel [at the dock], including the installation and continuous operation of bilge pumps to ensure it remains safely afloat."

AMKW said it "has explored a range of options for the vessel", including berthing elsewhere, but was "unable to identify a viable location or plan for relocation". AMKW says that it is closing the Chatham docks due to "the severity and scale of the challenges facing the business”. Additionally, a recent marine survey prepared for AMKW found the vessel to be "in very poor condition with extensive deterioration and asbestos", and that restoration would be "highly complex and prohibitively costly"." Therefore, AMKW says that she will be "dismantled in accordance with all relevant safety and environmental regulations, and with the owner's consent". It should be pointed out here that the steel is valuable because it was made before 1945. 

AMKW’s spokesperson said this is "an outcome we regret" and that "it is with great sadness that we have reached the conclusion that this is the only responsible course of action within our control".

 A last-minute effort to preserve  the ship has been mounted by The Q-Ship Society (QSS). Its Chairman, Daniel Broom, speaking for the society said the loss "would be disastrous" since it is the last surviving warship of its kind. He told the BBC that QSS has been searching for an alternative berth. "We've had so much public interest but the people that can help are not stepping up to assist," he said.

With her future now in peril, the QSS is still hoping to save her, embarking on a campaign to raise the funds needed to tow the ship to another, hopefully permanent,  berth. QSS is also trying to raise funds for restoration, with the goal of turning her into a museum focused  on the history of the Q-ships and the U-Boat war during 1914-18, but the Heritage Lottery turned them down. On 17 July 2026, tugs GPS Iberia and GPS Arcadia began the ship’s final voyage, towing her from Chatham, along the River Medway and out onto the River Thames. She passed Gravesend for the final time before continuing towards Erith, her final destination, where she is due to be broken up for scrap.

HMS Saxifrage, 1918

For those who are unfamiliar with the Q-Ships, here’s a brief introduction. They were warships disguised as unarmed merchantmen. Most were originally civilian vessels and were modified. Many even got the “dazzle paint’ camouflage of a cargo ship. Purpose-built examples had unnecessary masts and booms and even fake rudder housings. The concept originated in 1914 correpondance between The Hon. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Master of the Queenstown dockyard, so the resulting craft was code-named a “Q-Ship”.

They were armed with concealed  4-inch naval guns and 3-inch Quick Firers, seriously outgunning their intended foe. The  U-Boats of 1914 often had only six torpedoes, which the commanders preferred to use against warships or high-value targets. Common sense dictated that small merchantmen should be sunk by gunfire or placed explosives.  Thus, when the U-Boat surfaced the Q-ship crew would appear to be abandoning ship in haste (called the ‘panic party). However, the gun crews would stay aboard, uncover and prep the artillery and open fire on the U-Boat when it was at close range. 

Statistics on  WWI  RN Q-Ships vary. The BBC says there were 193; the QSS says it was 366. Reported Q-Ships lost are BBC 44 vs. QSS 61. BBC says that the Q-Ships destroyed 15 U-Boats. After the implementation of the convoy system in May 1917, U-Boat commanders grew wary of any ship traveling solo, and so the Q-Ships that came into service after that time were mostly used instead as escorts for coastal convoys.  

"Saxifrage" is the popular name for a family of flowering bushes, many native to Asia, but some, known as the purple saxifrages, live in the far north or at high elevations, even in the UK. All of the 28 purpose-built ships of the Anchusa Class were named after flowers, leading to the  preferred label ‘Flower Class’, which is wholly distinct from the WWII Flower Class of  294 ‘corvettes’.  

The WWI Flower ships were 282 ft. long, displaced 1,290 lt., drew 11 ½ ft. and had a maximum speed of 16 kts. They were bigger than the WWII corvettes, and  were coal-fired. HMS Saxifrage was the 24th in the class,  built on the Clyde by Lobnitz & Co. and  commissioned early in 1918. Though she engaged with nine U-Boats, she didn’t destroy any. She survived the war; six other Flower ships didn't.

In 1921, HMS Saxifrage was saved from the scrap yard because her sister Flower ship, HMS Marjoram, was wrecked near Flimston Head in Wales while under tow.  She had been selected to be a Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve (RNVR) drill ship. HMS Saxifrage was selected as her replacement and was renamed HMS President in 1922. 

HMS President, c. 2000

For decades, HMS President was moored on the Thames Embankment, and during WWII she was used first as a gunnery training ship and later as office space, even housing the operations of the French Resistance. When she was the only RN ship in London, all navy personnel working at the Admiralty were nominally on her strength. Off and on for many years she served as a cadet training ship for the RNVR, until it was disbanded in 1958. She was the last RN warship to wear the Victorian battleship livery—with black hull, white superstructure and buff yellow funnel and masts. 

In 1987 the Admiralty sold the ship, and the name HMS President was passed to a shore installation (known in RN vernacular as a ‘stone frigate’).  Under a succession of private owners, the ship was  used for private office space, an event venue and even a recording studio.  Some owners unsuccessfully attempted to get public grants for restorative maintenance. In 2014 she was repainted with a dazzle-like pattern as a part of a centennial arts campaign. This paint job [top photo] wasn’t Cubist like the 1918 Dazzle; it’s a tromp l’oeil spoof on Cubism. In 2016, after 94 years next to Blackfriarts Bridge, she  was evicted due to the construction of the Thames Tideway Tunnel. She was towed downriver to Chatham Working Docks, where she’s been ever since, a derelict since 2022. 

Not all derelict WWI ships have been broken up. Check out the inspiring story of the Austro- Hungarian river monitor SMS Bodrog, a.k.a. in Yugoslav service the Sava, which has been fully restored by Serbia (although in Yugoslav livery). LINK 

Sources include: Maritime Executive and the BBC

 

Eyewitness: Red Dragon — Aftermath of a Mine Detonation

Red Dragon of the Royal Welch Fusiliers

At 2:50 a.m. on 22 June 1916, a German mine was exploded under a British trench near Givenchy-Lez-La Bassée in Northern France. The mine’s shock wave caused considerable damage, the powerful underground charge tore through the British trench system, burying members of B Company of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers alive, killing 54, and creating a massive crater measuring roughly 150 by 75 yards. Using 8,000 pounds of explosives, it is considered the largest German mine on the Western Front during 1916. The explosion was quickly followed by a German trench raid, which the surviving British troops eventually repulsed. In honor of the Royal Welch’s prompt action in defeating the German raiders (a force of some 150 men) the crater was given the name "Red Dragon Crater" from the design of the regiment’s insignia.

The explosion also brought down eight meters of gallery behind the British tunnelers of the 254 Tunnelling Company Royal Engineers 35 feet underground who were digging their own mine, the Shaftesbury Shaft, cutting off their sole exit route. Five of the miners were trapped underground.

Royal Engineer John French described the chaotic immediate aftermath:

When we reached the place where the mine had gone off, we could not recognize the place it was altered so. Great gaps in the parapets, where you could see the German lines easily and where the mine had gone off or rather series of mines. There was an enormous crater with dead and wounded, both Germans and British for the Germans had made an attack right after the explosion. They got in our trenches but very few got back again, for after the first shock our men got together splendidly and there was some fierce had to hand fighting. The enemy carried hand grenades and daggers beside rifle and bayonet. . . . There was a German Officer lying dead just over the back of our trench with a grenade still in his hand. There was also one of our officers who had killed three Germans in hand to hand fighting finally being killed himself with a dagger thrust. . . . Two of our squad dug out a sergeant . . . He had a leg and arm broken and was half buried. . . .[T]here were scores of German hand grenades and a lot of German equipment lying around and blood on almost everything. Five of our Coy are buried in one of our mine galleries.

Three of the trapped miners escaped.  A fourth, Sapper John Hackett, refused to abandon a fifth man, Thomas Collins, who was injured. Another major roof collapse sealed the chamber and both men were lost. Hackett later was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his self-sacrifice. 

Sapper John Hackett, VC

Noted war poet Edmund Blunden was an observer to the event and supervised some of the post-explosion repair work. While he did not dedicate a piece to the Red Dragon explosion, there's a stanza from his poem "The River House" that seems to me might have been inspired by what he saw that night.

The fields are desolate under the gray; 

But once they have seen the sun to-day. 

He came up in a blood-red lift 

That blackened like the red blood spilt, 

And through a sudden awful rift 

There came a gleam, a fiery dream

Of God’s eye watching demon guilt.

Sources:  MilitaryHistoryNow; Nottinghamshire Mining Museum; Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum, Tunneller Memorial Survey; 1914-1918.co.uk.

"World War I: The American Legacy" — A Beautifully Produced Documentary

Editor's note:  This is an old-style documentary that exclusively uses still images with no moving footage.  The images, however, are of the highest quality, as is the script and its reading by the late David Carradine. MH

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

By T.E. Lawrence

Privately Printed, December 1926

Max Boot, Reviewer

Lawrence When He Was a Student at Jesus College, Oxford, About 1910

Originally Presented at the Hoover Institution Blog, 2016

The cult of celebrity around T.E. Lawrence was created by the American journalist Lowell Thomas immediately after World War I and expanded with the 1962 release of David Lean’s magnificent film Lawrence of Arabia starring Peter O’Toole. Lawrence contributed to his own mystique through this memoir. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the greatest books to come out of World War I (rivaled only by All Quiet on the Western Front) and surely the greatest ever written by an insurgent.

In muscular, elegant prose, it recounts Lawrence’s adventures as a British adviser to the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire from 1916 to 1918. On the very first page he strikes a winningly modest note: “My proper share was a minor one, but because of a fluent pen, a free speech, and a certain adroitness of brain, I took upon myself, as I describe it, a mock primacy. In reality I never had any office among the Arabs: was never in charge of the British mission with them.” 

Yet he remains indelibly identified with the Arab uprising which combined with a conventional British offensive to strip the Turks of their Middle East empire. In the end, however, his account is hardly a “triumph”; the title is ironical. He emerged bitterly disappointed that the Arabs were not granted the freedom he and they desired; they simply traded British and French sovereignty for Ottoman rule. “I meant to make a new nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts…,” he wrote. “In this hope they performed some fine things, but, of course, instead of being proud of what we did together, I was continually and bitterly ashamed.”

Order HERE

The fact that Lawrence was ultimately disappointed with the result of the Arab Revolt only added further to his mental anguish and made Seven Pillars a work of considerable psychological complexity as well as a manual for generations of insurgents and counter-insurgents. Its aphorisms (e.g., “Irregular war was far more intellectual than a bayonet charge”) remain quoted to this day.

Max Boot

See links to all our articles on Lawrence of Arabia HERE.

Sgt. Frank L. Carbaugh's 1918 Poem "The Fields of the Marne"

Sgt. Frank L. Carbaugh, 7th M.G. Battalion, 3rd Division

By Connie Ruzich

Frank Carbaugh was a Doughboy from Greencastle, a small town in central Pennsylvania.  A non-commissioned officer with the 7th Machine Gun Battalion, Carbaugh was wounded at the Second Battle of the Marne late in July of 1918. While in hospital, he wrote a poem that looks ahead to the war’s aftermath.

  The Fields of the Marne

The fields of the Marne are growing green,

  The river murmurs on and on;

No more the hail of mitrailleuse,

  The cannon from the hills are gone.

The herder leads the sheep afield,

  Where grasses grow o'er broken blade;

And toil-worn women till the soil

  O'er human mold, in sunny glade.

The splintered shell and bayonet

  Are lost in crumbling village wall;

No sniper scans the rim of hills,

  No sentry hears the night bird call. 

From blood-wet soil and sunken trench,

   The flowers bloom in summer light;

And farther down the vale beyond,

  The peasant smiles are sad, yet bright.

The wounded Marne is growing green,

  The gash of Hun no longer smarts;

Democracy is born again,

   But what about the troubled hearts?

                                                      —Sgt. Frank Carbaugh

Battle of Marne (detail) by Harvey Dunn (Smithsonian)

The poem imagines a time when peace has returned to the world, yet so many French soldiers have died that women must continue to work in the fields. They till the land that has been fertilized by the bodies of the slain. At the site of the Battle of the Marne, snipers, sentries, and sounds of gunfire have been replaced by the song of night birds and the green of newly grown grass. Though wounded and scarred by battle, the land is healing, and Democracy rises like a phoenix from the ashes. 

 But there are some hurts that can never be healed—the broken hearts of those who mourn.

 “The Fields of the Marne” was first published in Stars and Stripes on 16 August 1918. A brief note under Carbaugh’s name simply stated, “Written while lying wounded in hospital; died August, 1918.”  Franklin L. Carbaugh was 22. Nearly three years later, in May of 1921, his parents met the train that brought their youngest son's body back to Pennsylvania for burial in the family plot at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Franklin County. 

An anonymous source later posted an account of Carbaugh’s death and its effect on the men who knew him to the Benton Scott County Democrat of Benton, Missouri. The details of the story suggest that it was also sent to his mother by those who were with Frank during the last weeks of his life:

Sergeant loses his last fight.

Soldier wins admiration of comrades through cheerfulness in hospital.

He was game till the end.

Four operations were too much for strength of non-com who was wounded in action at Chateau-Thierry.

An American Hospital in France.

"No, they're not going to bring the sergeant back to the ward, boys."

These were exactly the words the nurse used. But the tone of her voice and the look in her eyes said more.

The little group in the ward, which had been playing cards on one of the beds to forget the tension they felt while the sergeant's operation was taking place, stopped suddenly, all attention, all hungering for good news.

"You don't mean the sergeant's gone, do you? exclaimed one.

"Yes, boys, the sergeant's gone. Four operations were just too much for his strength. He never regained consciousness."The little group of patients and the nurse were silent.

The chap with one leg gone had half a deck of cards in his hands. Dazed, he relaxed, and the cards fell to the floor, scattering over half the ward. The chap with one leg gone never noticed them.

"Gee, the sergeant's gone," he said huskily, "He sure was a game boy." 

"He was the best fellow I ever knew," said another, "and the cheerfullest, too. I've seen them dressing his leg time and again, and gosh! but it hurt. But did the sergeant ever say anything? Not the sergeant--he never batted an eye.""Just to think," mused a third, "it wasn't half an hour ago when we saw him go out. I shouted, "Good luck, Sarge," when the stretcher was carried through the door, and he smiled and said, "Thanks, I'll be back in a few minutes with you." 

The sergeant was Frank Carbaugh of Greencastle, Pa., a member of the Seventh Machine-Gun Sanitary detachment. No mother ever reared a braver boy.  The sergeant, who was a mathematics teacher before the war, was wounded when his outfit was rushed into action near Chateau Thierry. None of his bunkies knew just how, because, as one of them explained, "The sergeant wasn't the kind of a fellow who'd talk of himself. You can bet he was wounded doing something for somebody, though."

They did know that the sergeant lay out in the open a long time after he was wounded. Medical records show that his left leg was badly slashed, and they operated at the first hospital he reached. But gangrene had set in, and four operations had followed in an effort to save him. They have had lots of brave patients that doctors and nurses and patients admired alike in that hospital, but never one just like the sergeant, who said little, was always joking and cheerful, and never had a complaint. The rest of the boys in the ward would do anything in the world for "the sarge."

The little group sitting on the cots, with the nurse, had been talking of the sergeant for a long time when one of the boys said, "You ought to write to his mother, Miss Cutter. The sarge thought the world of his mother." " I'm going to," replied the nurse. "You boys write out what you think of the sergeant, and I'll send that, too."

This article by Connie Ruzich was originally published in her own blog Behind Their Lines: Poetry of the Great War (LINK) and by the World War One Centennial Commission.  Images from Find a Grave, the Smithsonian, and Behind Their Lines.