A Primer on Iran's (Persia's) Rather Unpleasant World War I Experience

The Teheran Gate, Persia

Originally Presented on AwayFromTheWesternFront.org

Persia (now Iran) is little-known as a theatre of the First World War, but events there influenced global politics in the years following the war. Although Persia declared its neutrality in 1914, it was too important strategically for Britain, Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Germany to leave it alone and as a British diplomat wrote, ‘Persia, during the war, had been exposed to violations and sufferings not endured by any other neutral country’.  Persia and Iran are use interchangeably in this article.

1905 – 1909 Constitutional Revolution

The Persian constitutional revolution sought to replace arbitrary power with law, parliamentary democracy and justice. When Naṣer-e-Din Shah Qajar was assassinated in 1896, the crown passed to his son Moẓaffar-e-Din Shah Qajar, who reigned until 1907. He was forced in 1906 to grant a constitution that called for some curtailment of monarchical power. He was succeeded by his son Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, who with the aid of Russia, attempted to rescind the constitution and abolish parliamentary government. He aroused opposition and was deposed in 1909, the throne being taken by his son, Aḥmad Shah Qajar, who reigned until 1925. The occupation of Iran during the First World War by Russian, British, and Ottoman troops was a blow from which Aḥmad Shah Qajar never effectively recovered.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Map of southwest Asia, showing British and Russian areas of rule or influence. 

1907 The Anglo-Russian Convention

This convention was signed on 31 August 1907. It made a neutral buffer of Tibet, recognized Britain’s interest in Afghanistan and partitioned Persia into spheres of influence: a Russian zone in the north, a British zone in the south and a neutral “buffer” zone in the rest of the country, in which both the British and the Russians shared power. [Read our article on how this resulted in the expansion of the Entente Cordiale to the Triple Entente, HERE.]

First oil drilling Masjed Soleyman 1908

1908 Discovery of oil in Persia

The Anglo-Persian oil company struck oil at Masjid-e-Suleiman in the southwest of modern-day Iran. The British Navy started to switch to oil combustion in 1910, thereby increasing its operating distance and speed.

1911 Occupation of Iran by Russia

A rebellion had broken out in Tabriz in north-western Iran on 23 June 1908, and in response to the siege situation there, Britain and Russia agreed that a Russian force should be sent to occupy the city. The Russians occupied Tabriz on 30 April 1909. Negotiations for its withdrawal soon began but dragged on into 1911. On 29 November 1911, the Russian government presented the Persian government with an ultimatum. There were several demands, but the most significant was to fire an American lawyer Morgan Shuster, who had been hired by the Majlis (parliament) to organize the country’s financial affairs. Upon the Persian parliament’s refusal, the Shah dissolved parliament and agreed to the Russian ultimatum. The ultimatum created unrest in Tabriz and on 21 December 1911, militants attacked the Russian troops, inflicting high casualties. In response, a brigade of the Russian Imperial Army was dispatched to Tabriz. Its aim was to occupy three major cities – Tabriz, Anzali and Rasht. The fiercest battle of the Russian invasion occurred in Tabriz, where the constitutionalists resisted. After about three days, the defense of the city broke, the Russians shelled Tabriz with artillery and entered the city on 31 December 1911. The Russians executed the constitutional revolutionaries of Tabriz, their families and many civilians of Tabriz as well. The Russians also destroyed part of the Arg of Tabriz by shelling and a fire broke out there while it was held by Russian troops. The Russian forces remained in the city until 1917.

Tabriz defenders in the days before the fall of Tabriz

1914 Declaration of Iran’s neutrality

The Iranian government’s early reaction to the outbreak of the war was to declare Iran’s strict neutrality by royal decree on 1 November 1914. In 1914, the British Indian Army had several units located in the southern influence zone.

Ahmad Shāh Qājār, Shah of Iran, 1897 – 1925

1914 Provisional National Government in exile

In the absence of a powerful central government in Iran to resist Anglo-Russian dominance, some Iranians concluded that aligning with Germany was the best option to guarantee national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Britain and Russia viewed the activities of some members of the parliament with mistrust and dismay. The situation became so tense that Russian troops began marching to the capital, Tehran. The cabinet of Mostowfi al‑Mamalek considered moving the capital from Tehran to Isfahan. Unable to reach Isfahan, they established themselves in Kermanshah. In 1916, Kermanshah fell to Russian forces, and the Provisional National Government collapsed.

The Ottoman Army in Urmia, 1916

1915 Ottoman invasion

The city of Tabriz in Iranian Azerbaijan suffered from multiple occupation and re-occupation by the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire during the First World War. Tabriz had been held by Russian forces since the Russian invasion of 1911. On 2 January 1915, at the Battle of Sarikamish in the Caucasus, Ottoman forces started their campaign inside Iran and forced the Russian forces to retreat to Jolfa. During this campaign, Ottoman forces occupied Tabriz. With fresh forces, the Russians defeated Ottoman forces south of Jolfa and regained control of Tabriz in early February 1915. The Russians proceeded on toward the west, invaded Urmia and went up to Van Lake. At the same time the Russians entered central Iran and occupied Qazvin, Karaj, and Tehran.

1915 Constantinople Agreement

The Anglo-Russian part of the agreement stipulated the division of the whole of Iran into two zones of influence between Russia and Britain. The neutral zone that the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907 had established in the center of Iran was to be added to the British Zone of influence, except for the city of Isfahan, which was to be allocated to the Russian zone.

Rais Ali Delvari and other Tangestani fighters

1915 – 1918 Resistance to the occupation of Persia

The Iranian tribes, including Qashqais and Tangestanis, resisted the British occupation in Southern Iran. On 12 July 1915, the Tangestani tribes of southern Iran attacked the British forces near Bushehr. The British dispatched a force from Basra to Bushehr and inflicted a heavy defeat on the Tangestanis. Between 1915 and 1921, in the forests of the Caspian coastal province of Gilan, the ‘Jangalis’ nationalist movement, combined domestic objectives with anti-colonial and anti-imperialist agenda.

1916 South Persia Rifles

Towards the end of 1915, Sir Percy Sykes established a force, the South Persia Rifles, using local tribesmen. His mission was to counter the German influence in most of South Persia. After establishing headquarters at Shiraz, Sykes tried to restore order in the south; he paid subsidies to tribes who remained loyal and rounded up enemy agents and their Persian allies. The South Persia Rifles’ first action was at Bocaqci on 28 September 1916, where it defeated tribesmen who were being assisted by 25 escaped German prisoners. For the next two years, it was involved in similar actions, but its existence increased the hostility of local tribal leaders, who saw it as a potential threat to their interests and independence. In July 1918, the Abadeh garrison of the Rifles mutinied. Sir Percy Sykes left Persia in October 1918 and the Rifles were finally disbanded in July 1921.

1917 Russian Revolution

The Soviets renounced their 1907 Anglo-Russian treaty rights in Persia at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, and Lenin sent a formal message to the government of Persia ‘repudiating all Tsarist privileges and agreements that are contrary to the sovereignty of Persia’. After the February Revolution in 1917, front-line Russian forces dissolved and started to retreat from Iran. Ottoman forces quickly took action and occupied north-western Iran and Tabriz. They stayed in Tabriz up until 23 August 1918, despite two British efforts to dislodge them.

1917 – 1918 Famine

Successive seasonal droughts caused widespread famine during 1917 – 1918. The requisition and confiscation of foodstuffs by the occupying armies to feed their soldiers added to the famine.

Resht, Persia, local police, being inspected by British soldiers from
the Dunsterforce, July 1918

1918 Dunsterforce in Persia

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, pro-German tribesmen under Mirza Kuchik Khan rebelled against the Russian forces in the north of the country. Britain sent Major-General Lionel Dunsterville and an elite group of British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand soldiers from Mesopotamia. They became known as the Dunsterforce. Its mission was to safeguard the immense oil installations at Baku from the Ottomans and the Germans, while organizing local groups of Armenians, Georgians, and anti-Bolsheviks to safeguard the strategically important trans-Caucasian railway and approaches to Afghanistan and India.

Azeri and Turkish Artillery Firing at Baku, 1918

The Battle of Baku, which began on 26 August 1918 ended with the evacuation of Dunsterforce on 14 September. They fought a determined and well-orchestrated action but were vastly outnumbered and underequipped and were forced to concede Baku and its prized petroleum resources to the Ottomans. They also struggled to mobilize the residents of Baku, who were too pre-occupied with infighting to mount a united defense. Despite this, Britain’s wartime prime minister, David Lloyd George, believed the Dunsterforce had succeeded in keeping the Ottomans and Germans from acquiring much-needed oil for six crucial weeks of the war in August and September 1918.

Once the Ottomans capitulated in late October 2018 and the war in the Middle East was officially over, British troops poured into Northern Iran to complement their control over the South.

1919 Anglo-Persian Agreement

The British government showed no sign of following the Russians and declaring the 1907 and 1915 conventions null and void. With the collapse of the Tsarist and Ottoman Empires, Britain now not only dominated Persia itself, but had extended control to most of the surrounding regions. The Iranian Prime Minister was replaced by the pro-British Hassan (Vosough) Vossug ed Dowleh, who played a leading role in the negotiations with the British Ambassador. After six months of secret negotiations, the Anglo-Persian Agreement was declared on 9 August 1919. This agreement was widely viewed as establishing a British protectorate over Iran. However, it aroused considerable opposition, and the Majlis (parliament) refused to approve it.

Reza Khan (later Reza Shah) in his time as war minister

1921 Termination of Qājār Dynasty

With a coup d’état in February 1921, Reza Khan, who ruled as Reza Shah Pahlavi, 1925 – 1941 became the preeminent political personality in Iran. Aḥmad Shah was formally deposed by the Majlis, the national consultative assembly in October 1925 while he was away in Europe. The assembly declared the rule of the Qājār dynasty to be terminated. 

I'm Haunted by Inspector Rutledge and the Ghost of Corporal MacLeod

Like Many Tales, This One Begins at the Somme

By Mike Hanlon, Editor/Publisher

World War One veterans Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge and deceased soldier Hamish MacLeod are the main figures in a two dozen-volume collection of mystery novels I'm addicted to. Their creator, "Charles Todd", actually a dual-pseudonym for a mother-son team of writers, Caroline and David Watjen,  lived and wrote in North Carolina. Caroline passed away in 2021, which seemed to have ended the critically acclaimed series. Recently, however, the David half of Charles has produced two additional Rutledge works, a Christmas-themed novella, and another case for Rutledge set in 1921.

I was lucky to discover this series with the publication of the first of the novels in the mid-1990s and have been regularly reading them ever since. I've lost track of which of the subsequent volumes I've read.  This has caused me to overlook some of the adventures and re-read some.  

The stories are all set in post-WWI England, and the cases Rutledge is assigned—like another big favorite series of mine, the early Maisie Dobbs mysteries—are all connected to the war somehow. A major contrast in these two successful series, though, is that Masie has remained sensible and level-headed, while Rutledge is, well, possessed. This requires some explanation.

After recovering from his wartime injuries, Inspector Rutledge returns to his old job, despite secretly still suffering from shell shock. Captain Rutledge had commanded a group of sappers of the Royal Engineers up through the Battle of the Somme. Postwar, he remains haunted by the voice of a fellow soldier, a former subordinate. Our detective, of course, must hide this information from those around him in order to avoid the social stigma which accompanies odd psychological disorders, especially among other coppers.

During the Battle of the Somme, his man, Corporal Hamish MacLeod, had refused to follow orders to join a foolish attack and was sentenced to death at his court martial. As MacLeod's commanding officer, Rutledge was obliged to carry out the execution of MacLeod and did so. Rutledge, however, was almost immediately buried alive with the man's corpse when an artillery shell exploded near the burial site. After being rescued, Rutledge learned that it was an air pocket created by Hamish's corpse that had kept him (and no one else) alive underground. 

The source of this interesting information is the voice/counter-spirit/super-ego (whatever) of MacLeod that has now taken permanent tenancy in Rutledge's mind—at times sadistically tormenting him over his moral insufficiencies, puncturing his self-righteousness (Hamish is quite witty about this), and suddenly and at unpredictable moments helping to solve the crimes, despite his implacable resentment.  The thought-streamed interchanges are not one-sided.  Rutledge scores his points. Also, the adversaries form a tacit alliance against Rutledge's resentful boss, who is continually undermining him. 

Together, Rutledge and MacLeod manage to make a formidable mystery-solving team, comparable in many ways to you-know-who. What I've written so far applies to the dozen or so books of the series I've read.  I've seen  reviews that suggest as the cases move beyond 1920, Rutledge starts putting his war trauma behind him, and MacLeod's presence starts to fade away.  I don't know if I'll enjoy the stories as much when I get to those volumes.

Let me suggest a starter set of four  Rutledge books, if I've succeeded in interesting you in reading these mysteries. They are books I've read myself and enjoyed—listed in order of the inspector's postwar cases, not by publication date. The sequence of cases is not especially significant,  but the early development of the Rutledge—MacLeod relationship is.

Order HERE

Book # 1,  A Test of Wills begins in June 1919, introducing the war-damaged Scotland Yard Inspector with PTSD named Ian Rutledge. After returning home to England, Rutledge has put his life back together and is thrown into a baffling murder case.

Order HERE

Book # 2,  Wings of Fire rolls right into a new case in July 1919 in Cornwall, Southern England, when Inspector Rutledge investigates the sudden deaths of three members of the same eminent family.

Order HERE

Book # 3,  Search the Dark takes place in August 1919, Dorset, England during which a dead woman and two missing children, followed by a second murder, bring Rutledge’s quest to find answers up against both the locals and Londoners whose privileged positions and private passions work to prevent it. 

Order HERE

Book # 4,  Legacy of the Dead takes you to Scotland in September 1919 when Rutledge takes on a murder investigation involving a young mother accused of committing the crime. She turns out to be the former fiancée of Hamish MacLeod, whom Ian had executed during the war.

Sources:  Wikipedia entries, The Charles Todd Website

David Stevenson on The Unexpected Armistice of 1918 (Video)

Bless the French! They Kept Up Their Production of Naughty Cartoons in Wartime

Laying Siege to a Heart

By Tony Langley

La Vie Parisienne was one of the best-known risqué magazines. Published in Paris, its stood symbol for a high-spirited and slightly hedonistic lifestyle in which women, wine, and having a good time were considered to be of prime importance in life. It made a name for itself by printing numerous drawings and illustrations (no photographs) of lovely looking ladies in all stage of dress and undress. Sometimes, the nicely or scantily dressed girls would be shown expressing anti-German sentiments or performing heroic deeds but almost always with a hint of the erotic. The illustrations were made by artists such as Leonnec and Hérouard, many of whom later became rightly famous for their charming depictions of the female.

Utterly innocent and inoffensive by modern standards, the magazine nevertheless managed to offend the bourgeois sensibilities of many a straight-laced individual, especially those living outside of France. Some American and British military authorities unfavorably mentioned La Vie Parisienne by name as an unhealthy influence upon the manners and mores of the troops.

Publication continued during the war years and the magazine was no doubt eagerly read by soldiers at and behind the front lines, French, British, American, or German for that matter. War-related humor was quite the thing during 1914-18 of course and several collections of cartoons and drawings from La Vie Parisienne were published. This collection of cartoons comes from a volume called l'Amour en Campagne (Love on Campaign). Most of the drawings were simply excuses to show ladies in various romantic or erotic situations. Here we have chosen those with a military theme.

 

Cover for a Collection of 100 Cartoons
from La Vie Parisienne

"It's not only the front line trenches that are dangerous" —
a joke about the hastily built barricades around Paris in August 1914

She wants nothing more to do with things "made in Germany."

Howling at the moon and zeppelins

One of the fruits of war: the hand grenade

 
Everything a good French soldier needs to go on campaign

Source:  From the Tony Langley Collection

Eyewitness: "Burying Pete Walling" by Arthur Guy Empey

 

After remaining in rest billets for eight days, we received the unwelcome tidings that the next morning we would "go in" to "take over." At six in the morning our march started and, after a long march down the dusty road, we again arrived at reserve billets.

I was No. 1 in the leading set of 4's. The man on my left was named "Pete Walling," a cheery sort of fellow. He laughed and joked all the way on the march, buoyed up my drooping spirits. I could not figure out anything attractive in again occupying the front line, but Pete did not seem to mind, said it was all in a lifetime. My left heel was blistered from the rubbing of my heavy marching boot. Pete noticed that I was limping and offered to carry my rifle, but by this time I had learned the ethics of the march in the British Army and courteously refused his offer.

We had gotten half-way through the communication trench, Pete in my immediate rear. He had his hand on my shoulder, as men in a communication trench have to keep in touch with each Other. We had just climbed over a bashed-in part of the trench when in our rear a man tripped over a loose signal wire, and let out an oath. As usual, Pete rushed to his help. To reach the fallen man, he had to cross this bashed-in part. A bullet cracked in the air and I ducked. Then a moan from the rear. My heart stood still. I went back and Pete was lying on the ground; by the aid of my flashlight, I saw that he had his hand pressed to his right breast. The fingers were covered with blood. I flashed the light on his face, and in its glow a grayish-blue color was stealing over his countenance. Pete looked up at me and said:

"Well, Yank, they've done me in. I can feel myself going West." His voice was getting fainter and I had to kneel down to get the words. Then he gave me a message to write home to his mother and his sweetheart, and I, like a great big boob, cried like a baby. I was losing my first friend of the trenches.

Word was passed to the rear for a stretcher. He died before it arrived. Two of us put the body on the stretcher and carried it to the nearest first-aid post, where the doctor took an official record of Pete's name, number, rank, and regiment from his identity disk, this to be used in the Casualty Lists and notification to his family.

We left Pete there, but it broke our hearts to do so. The doctor informed us that we could bury him the next morning. That afternoon, five of the boys of our section, myself included, went to the little ruined village in the rear and from the deserted gardens of the French chateaux gathered grass and flowers. From these we made a wreath.

While the boys were making this wreath, I sat under a shot-scarred apple tree and carved out the following verses on a little wooden shield which we nailed on Pete's cross.

True to Us God; true to Britain,

Doing his duty to the last,

Just one more name to be written

On the Roll of Honor of heroes passed.

Passed to their God, enshrined in glory,

Entering life of eternal rest,

One more chapter in England's story

Of her sons doing their best.

Rest, you soldier, mate so true,

Never forgotten by us below;

Know that we are thinking of you,

Ere to our rest we are bidden to go.

Next morning the whole section went over to say good-bye to Pete, and laid him away to rest.

After each one had a look at the face of the dead, a Corporal of the R. A. M. C. sewed up the remains in a blanket. Then placing two heavy ropes across the stretcher (to be used in lowering the body into the grave), we lifted Pete onto the stretcher, and reverently covered him with a large Union Jack, the flag he had died for.

The Chaplain led the way, then came the officers of the section, followed by two of the men carrying a wreath. Immediately after came poor Pete on the flag-draped stretcher, carried by four soldiers. I was one of the four. Behind the stretcher, in fours, came the remainder of the section.

To get to the cemetery, we had to pass through the little shell-destroyed village, where troops were hurrying to and fro.

As the funeral procession passed, these troops came to the "attention," and smartly saluted the dead.

Poor Pete was receiving the only salute a Private is entitled to "somewhere in France."

Now and again a shell from the German lines would go whistling over the village to burst in our artillery lines in the rear.

British Field Burial Service (Getty Images)

When we reached the cemetery, we halted in front of an open grave, and laid the stretcher beside it. Forming a hollow square around the opening of the grave, the Chaplain read the burial service.

German machine-gun bullets were "cracking" in the air above us, but Pete didn't mind, and neither did we.

When the body was lowered into the grave, the flag having been removed, we clicked our heels together, and came to the salute.

I left before the grave was filled in. I could not bear to see the dirt thrown on the blanket-covered face of my comrade. On the Western Front there are no coffins, and you are lucky to get a blanket to protect you from the wet and the worms. Several of the section stayed and decorated the grave with white stones.

That night, in the light of a lonely candle in the machine gunner's dugout of the front-line trench, I wrote two letters. One to Pete's mother, the other to his sweetheart. While doing this I cursed the Prussian war-god with all my heart, and I think that St. Peter noted same.

The machine gunners in the dugout were laughing and joking. To them, Pete was unknown. Pretty soon, in the warmth of their merriment, my blues disappeared. One soon forgets on the Western Front.

Arthur Guy Empey (1883–1963) was an American soldier, author, actor, and screenwriter best known for his 1917 bestselling book Over the Top from which this account is an excerpt. As a volunteer in the British Army, he documented his rather brief, but harrowing experiences in WWI trenches, becoming a famous war hero, cheerleader for Liberty Bonds, and pioneer in early war films.

Imagine This: Amy Lowell Imagined Peace, and It Came True

Amy Lowell, 1874–1925

American imagist poet Amy Lowell described the surreal experience of living an ordinary day in an extraordinary time.

September, 1918

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;

The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;

The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,

And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.

Under a tree in the park,

Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,

Were carefully gathering red berries

To put in a pasteboard box.

Some day there will be no war,

Then I shall take out this afternoon

And turn it in my fingers,

And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,

And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.

To-day I can only gather it

And put it into my lunch-box,

For I have time for nothing

But the endeavour to balance myself

Upon a broken world.

            —Amy Lowell

About the same time, Lowell explained how the war had left her feeling unmoored: "The war has shaken us out of an eddy into the main stream of the centuries, and has given me the sensation of swirling along on a rapidly moving current, passing woods and water-plants and shores almost too fast to glimpse them, realizing as I pass that many other shingles like me have rushed down this same river, rushed toward something which I cannot now see."

Some Doughboy Beneficiaries of Lowell's Efforts

Lowell resisted the tumult with poetry, convinced that it had the power to comfort, inspire, and change the world. She invested her energies in convincing the American public of the value of contemporary poetry. Learning that American Army training camps were requesting books for their libraries, Lowell arranged to supply poetry books to 34 military bases across the United States, and she also donated funds to supply books to military hospitals. As scholar Nina Sankovitch notes, “by the summer of 1918, Amy Lowell had placed poetry in the hands of just about any United States soldier asking for it."

From Connie Ruzich's Terrific WWI Poetry Blog Behind Their Lines

Learning by Fighting: The AEF Experience

Editor's Introduction:  Thanks to our contributor this month, historian Jeffrey LaMonica, we will see that Pershing's forces were needed on the battlefield earlier than anticipated and had no choice but to learn as they were fighting. This process involved making many mistakes, digesting them, and developing new doctrines and tactics on the fly. In this issue, our contributor analyzes the learning curve of the AEF, using a case-study approach with the 5th Division of the First Army, a formation that did not arrive in France until May 1918, had absolutely minimal formal training, and yet on 11 November 1918 found itself in the most advanced position of all the U.S. forces. MH

By Jeffrey LaMonica

Introduction

Most historical treatments of the AEF published before the 1980s do not acknowledge its tactical development. They provide sweeping assessments of American battlefield performance and draw broad conclusions concerning the U.S. Army's general contribution to the defeat of Imperial Germany. More recent scholarship, however, provides a deeper understanding of the United States' impact on the Great War by evaluating all facets of the AEF. The majority of these works dismiss the AEF as tactically stagnant and inept. A few scholars delve deeper into the evidence to reveal and more fairly assess AEF tactical growth, such as Mark E. Grotelueschen's The AEF Way of War: The American Army and Combat in the First World War. This article strives to fit in with this trend by exploring the AEF's aptitude in two specific tactical areas, open warfare—the use of fire and maneuver, championed by General  Pershing from the birth of the AEF—and combined-arms warfare—the coordinated use of infantry and its weapons, artillery, vehicles, aircraft, communications, and logistics—by demonstrating how they were learned and applied by the 5th Division, one of America's most active divisions of the Great War. 

The AEF came to appreciate these techniques by late 1918 but was not able to execute them with greater success. Ultimately, its formal training failed to prepare the AEF for modern industrialized warfare. Survival instinct and combat experience, however, fostered enough tactical learning to enable American divisions to keep gaining ground until the Armistice. The U.S. Army would revisit and build upon the AEF's experimentation with combined arms and open warfare during the interwar period and the Second World War. Furthermore, the AEF's brand of learning by fighting continued to be the Army's method for tactical growth from 1941 to 1945 and still persists in the 21st century.

Pershing's initial open-warfare vision stemmed from his determination to restore mobility to the Western Front and his confidence in the skill and fighting spirit of American officers and enlisted men. He believed open warfare relied on expert marksmen to provide effective suppressing fire and individual bravery to flank the enemy and close with the bayonet. The commander-in-chief's brand of open warfare represented a combination of traditional tactical principles, such as offensive spirit and hand-to-hand combat, and new trends in battlefield survival, such as infiltration and flanking maneuvers. Pershing's tactical ideas, however, contained flaws. Other belligerents learned earlier in the war that élan and the bayonet counted for little on the modern industrialized battlefield. Although the Japanese launched successful bayonet charges as recently as the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the volume of machine guns and artillery on the Western Front in 1914 made it virtually impossible to get close enough to engage the enemy with cold steel. Furthermore, the most effective open-warfare tactics relied on support from advanced weapons, motor vehicles, and aircraft. 

The AEF also proved slow to mix open-warfare infantry tactics with advanced weapons and other arms. The fact that a clear definition of Pershing's open-warfare concept was not published until the fall of 1918 was highly problematic. Despite issuing 54,968 copies of Pershing's Combat Instructions to the AEF before the end of the war, there were not enough weeks left before the Armistice to afford time to learn and implement these new tactics. The fact that Pershing's open-warfare concept remained nebulous until September 1918 had the hidden benefit of allowing AEF divisions several months of combat to improvise, experiment, and engage in the experiential learning typical of the U.S. Army's history. AEF officers and enlisted men devised their own tactical innovations to survive on the Western Front. The resulting incarnations of open warfare and combined arms often proved more effective than those published by the commander-in-chief and the U.S. War Department.

The strategic planning and combat decisions of AEF commanders during the last phase of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive indicated that combined arms and open warfare had permeated the AEF's collective mindset primarily through battlefield experience, not published doctrine or training. 

Divisional Observation Post in the Vosges Sector

The 5th Division's Experience

Although the 5th Division spent the prescribed six months in a stateside training facility, its piecemeal assembly at Fort Logan and fragmented shipment to Europe led to discrepancies in the amount and type of instruction received across the division. Major General John E. McMahon took command of the division in January 1918. 

After arriving in France, the division's infantry brigade began Pershing's three-month training regimen in April 1918 at AEF Training Area Thirteen near Bar-sur-Aube, France. Officers of the advance training detachment rejoined their units as instructors at this time. For approximately one month, the men learned basic trench warfare tactics, such as defensive chemical warfare techniques and trench raiding. The 5th Field Artillery Brigade remained at Le Valdahon for its instruction. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth machine-gun battalions trained around Bar-sur-Aube but did so separately from the infantry. Training divisional elements separately from one another was typical of all U.S. Army divisions during the Great War and greatly detracted from their ability to conduct cohesive combined-arms tactics in combat. For example, American machine-gun crews never provided fire support for live infantrymen during their training exercises.

The first phase of the 5th Division's training in France ended on 31 May, when General Pershing ordered the division to a “quiet” zone on the Western Front near the town of Epinal in the Toul Sector. The Vosges Mountains stretched across much of this area and inhibited large-scale military activity. This sector of the front saw only occasional patrols, raids, and minor exchanges of artillery fire.

The division's Ninth and Tenth infantry brigades joined with two divisions of the XXXIII Corps of the French Seventh Army for this phase of instruction. French officers taught American enlisted men trench construction, defense against poison gas, patrolling, and raiding. These raiding exercises represented the division's first opportunity to handle live grenades. In keeping with General Pershing's emphasis on marksmanship, the 5th Division's brigade commanders insisted that the French training officers include target practice in their trench warfare regimen. The Official History of the 5th Division USA recounted, “The Americans still clung to the idea that the rifle was the main dependence in warfare, and pushed training with that arm to the utmost.” 

5th Division 155mm Howitzer

The third and final stage of the 5th Division's training barely resembled the month of open-warfare instruction General Pershing intended. Instead, the division occupied its own position on the Western Front in the Saint Die Sector near Lorraine on 19 July. Its first independent action took place at 4:00 a.m. on 17 August near Frapelle. After a ten-minute preliminary bombardment, the Third Battalion of the Sixth Regiment from Brigadier General Walter H. Gordon's Tenth Infantry Brigade successfully advanced into the Fave River Valley and captured the town of Frapelle.

Surprisingly, this short operation included some successful combined arms. The infantry moved forward behind an effective creeping barrage provided by batteries from Brigadier General Clement A. Flagler's 5th Field Artillery Brigade. A major in the Sixth Infantry Regiment by this time, described the infantry assault as “strongly supported by artillery, mortars, machine guns and American aviation.” The demands of the modern industrialized battlefield, survival instinct, and experiential learning were already forcing the 5th Division to employ advanced tactics beyond the scope of their formal training. This month spent in the Saint Die Sector cost the 5th Division about 600 casualties.

With its formal training completed, the 5th Division participated in the Saint Mihiel Offensive on 12 September. It was here where the division began tactical learning through combat experience and battlefield survival. General McMahon had several combined-arms components at his disposal during the offensive, including 63 tanks, the Twelfth Aero Squadron, the Second Balloon Company, and  several units from the First Gas Regiment. After a four-hour preliminary bombardment, the Sixth and Eleventh infantry regiments of the Tenth Brigade attacked at 5:00 a.m. under a creeping barrage. First Sergeant Clyde Heldreth of D Company of the Sixtieth Infantry Regiment noted the effectiveness of this creeping barrage: “At 5:00 o'clock came the command `over the top.' The artillery bombardment then changed to a rolling barrage. Our artillery shelling had accomplished the desired results and the enemy was in full retreat.”  This marked the style of operations that the 5th Division would implement, with continuing success in the final and largest offensive of the war for the AEF, the Meuse-Argonne.

The 5th Division Marker at Remoiville on the Meuse Heights
Marks the Farthest Advance of the AEF

Summing Up:

Consistent with the majority of AEF divisions, formal training did little to prepare the soldiers of the 5th Division to conduct combined arms and open warfare in combat. All phases of the “Red Diamond” Division's instruction were rushed, and there were few weapons available for training purposes. Furthermore, the division's various combat arms trained in different locations around France. Based upon the 5th Division's performance during the final phase of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, it was six months of combat experience and survival on the Western Front that allowed it, and the rest of First Army, to conduct combined arms and open warfare to the point of achieving a successful breakthrough of the German Kriemhilde Line. Deficiencies in the areas of supply, logistics, and communications prevented the AEF from exploiting this breach to the point of annihilating the Imperial German Army. These underdeveloped support systems forced First Army and its 5th Division to pause and refit before crossing into Germany. This respite might have allowed the Imperial German Army to establish a strong line of defense along the Rhine River and drag the conflict into 1919.

According to Colonel Lanza, First Army's Chief of Artillery Operations: “The Armistice put an end to what would have been a long wait, possibly extending through the winter into the following spring. In other words, the Allies managed to give the enemy the final blow just before it would have been necessary to stop the offensive to reorganize and reequip.

After the Armistice, the U.S. Army continued to develop the tactical lessons learned by the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front. Combined arms and General Pershing's open-warfare concept were persistent themes in army doctrine through the 1920s. Supporting the infantry with close artillery and machine gun fire were standard practice. The Army continued working to define and expand combined arms roles for tanks and aircraft. American military thinkers carried on the conversation over trench warfare versus open-warfare tactics.

5th Division Crossing the Meuse River, 5 November 1918

By the 1930s, however, diplomatic isolationism and the budgetary limitations of the Great Depression interrupted the Army's tactical growth. Under these restraints, U.S. Army weapons and equipment became antiquated and costly large-scale training maneuvers were nonexistent. The lack of funding for either improved weapons or training gradually led to a state of under-preparedness in everything but thought. Combat experience was, once again, the Army's primary method of learning to survive and succeed in battle during the Second World War. The U.S. Army of 1941 was not unlike the AEF in 1917 in this regard. Its greatest advantage resided in the leadership of veteran commanders, who had fought in the earlier war, and possessed the wisdom of the Great War's tactical learning curve. 

This article is excerpted  from American Tactical Advancement in World War I: The New Lessons of Combined Arms and Open Warfare by Jeffrey LaMonica.

Available HERE

 

Instant Death Aboard HMS Defence

HMS Defence

HMS Defence was a Minotaur-class armored cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century, the last armored cruiser built for the Royal Navy. The ship was 519 feet long, with a main armament of four 9.2 inch guns. She was stationed in the Mediterranean when the First World War began and participated in the pursuit of the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben and light cruiser SMS Breslau. The ship was transferred to the Grand Fleet in January 1915 and remained there for the rest of her career.

View of Defence's Stern Main Battery

Defence was sunk on 31 May 1916 during the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the war. Escorting the main body of the Grand Fleet, the ship was fired upon by one German battlecruiser and four dreadnoughts as she attempted to engage the disabled German light cruiser Wiesbaden. She was sunk by gunfire of German battleship Friedrich der Grosse that detonated her rear magazine. The fire from that explosion spread to the ship's secondary magazines, which exploded in turn. Capt Raymond Poland, a turret commander on battleship HMS Warspite, was impressed by the “very gallant show” Defence  made. His delight instantly turned to horror as she was hit by three German salvoes in quick succession and the cruiser seemingly disintegrated, her crushed bow sticking out of the North Sea at a 60-degree angle before sinking. “I nearly vomited,” Poland wrote to his brother. “God it was an awful sight.”

Computerized 3-D Image of the Wreck of HMS Defence

At the time, it was believed that Defence  had been reduced to fragments by the explosion, but the wreck was discovered in mid-1984 by Clive Cussler and a NUMA survey of the North Sea. It was dived upon in 2001 by a team led by nautical archaeologist Innes McCartney and found to be largely intact, despite the violence of her sinking. Defence , along with the other Jutland wrecks, was belatedly declared a protected place under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, to discourage further damage to the resting place of approximately 900 men. 

Sources: Royal Navy News, Wikipedia, Wexford.GreatWar, International Journal of Naval Archeology