The Cavell Escape Network

It All Started When the BEF Arrived 

The dramatic and tragic story of the execution of Nurse Edith Cavell is so moving that it overwhelms the history of the network for evacuating Allied soldiers from enemy territory during the Great War, which she helped organize, and which inspired similar efforts for the entirety of the war.  Fortunately, Virginia Commonwealth University has helped tell this story in its fullest. Presented here are excerpts from their research.  Their full, multi-page account can be read HERE.

The Ecole Belge d’Infirmieres Diplomees, better known simply as the Clinique, was established 16 May 1907, by renowned surgeon Dr. Antoine Depage. Cavell was recommended to Depage by the Francois family of Brussels. It was Depage's desire to modernize and expand Belgium's hospital system and well-regarded Edith Cavell would lead a new generation of nurses to staff the facilities. Resistance to the occupying Germans organized quickly. The Belgian resistance that Cavell would become a part of was made up of a small handful of loosely organized individuals that sheltered wounded Allied soldiers and ferried them out of Belgium. 

Edith Cavell (Front Left) and the Staff of the Clinique

It began in late September when Princess Marie de Croy and Prince Reginald de Croy were approached by Henriette Moriame and Louise Thuliez. These two women had been nursing English soldiers in their homes after the Battle of Mons in August and needed to find a way for them to escape. The decision was made to use the De Croys' castle of Bellignies and privately owned Forest of Mormal to hide them. Medieval prison rooms, such as the "Black Hole" below a staircase, would hide Allied troops from the surprise German inspections. Photographs were taken to create fake passports before guides escorted the men out of Belgium. The organization continued to grow throughout its existence; recruiting Cavell, architect-turned-guide Phillipe Baucq (who would be executed at the same time) and many others who assisted in the sheltering and smuggling of troops.

The relative quiet of Clinique life changed on 1 November 1914. Herman Capiau, a member of the Belgian resistance, led English Colonel Dudley Boger and Sergeant Fred Meachin into Brussels to be hidden. Both men had been wounded at the Battle of Mons, 23 August 1914.. After failing to secure shelter in numerous places they were directed to the English matron of the Clinique. It was believed that perhaps she would give assistance to her fellow countrymen. It was only by chance that Cavell found herself involved in the Belgian resistance.  

Colonel Boger was the commander of the 1st Cheshire regiment. During the battle he had been wounded three times, including a very serious spur injury to his right foot. He was found by German officers who gave him emergency medical treatment before taking him to a nearby convent. Sergeant Meachin, a non-commissioned officer in the Cheshires was hit by shrapnel in the head and had to crawl to a Belgian Red Cross station to receive assistance. Meachin, upon learning of his commander's location, traveled to the convent. Soon they had made their escape and found themselves under the care of Capiau.

One of the Earliest Escapees

Shortly after their arrival Cavell arranged for their escape out of the country. Colonel Boger was captured before he could make his way out of Brussels and spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner. Sergeant Meachin was more fortunate, and eventually found his way back to England. By opening her doors to these two men it became understood that she would help any and all Allied soldiers who asked for her assistance.

Cavell's role in the organization was sheltering and caring for Allied soldiers found in Bellignies and Northern France until guides were organized to take them out of Belgium. One charge against her at the German military trial was that most of the men coming into the Clinique were not wounded at all. In reality, a substantial number of soldiers arrived with serious wounds. One such patient was French General Henri Giraud who was left for dead on the battlefield until German medical crews picked him up. Injuries ranged from bullet wounds and shrapnel to crushed ligaments and shell shock. 

Hiding these soldiers was no easy task, as the Germans had set up a command post across the street from the Clinique. Cavell was well aware that her activities would draw the attention of the German secret police, and on numerous occasions the Clinique was raided in attempts to uncover Allied soldiers and incriminating documents. Due in equal parts to quick thinking and sheer luck, soldiers were able to hide as Belgian patients behind bed curtains, in sheds, and in dire circumstances by jumping over the back wall and finding shelter in neighboring houses.

Two Men of the Norfolk Regiment Cavell Helped,
R.W. Mapes and Frank Holmes

Unfortunately, the false sense of security the peaceful town presented meant that a handful of the soldiers became careless in their attempts to blend in with the natives. Cavell refused to house them as prisoners, so they were free to go about the city, though almost exclusively in the evening. On a handful of occasions soldiers roamed the streets and taverns singing in English and otherwise drawing attention to themselves. When this occurred, swift action was required to relocate them.

German soldiers were not the only danger that could foil the escaping soldiers. Guides were selected and operated with a large amount of anonymity so they and the organizers would not be compromised. However, in some cases, these guides were double agents that trapped the people they were tasked with helping. Despite all of the risks, Cavell was instrumental in ferrying over two hundred Allied soldiers across the border.

Despite all of the precautions, the resistance members knew it was only a matter of time before their operation would be discovered. The Germans had been suspicious of the Clinique for a long time, but lacked the hard evidence required to make arrests. Otto Mayer, a member of the German secret police, made his way to Brussels in June 1915 and was tasked with investigating Edith Cavell. That month he paid a visit to the Clinique, which nearly led to the uncovering of four Allied soldiers and other damning evidence. Though nothing was discovered, arrests and interrogations followed for her and many of her nurses before they were released. Marie de Croy recognized that the organization was being swiftly closed in upon, and she appealed to Cavell to stop her operations. Cavell's resolve remained, however, and she committed herself to the continued aid of the soldiers.

Graves of the Executed Resistance Members

George Gaston Quien, a Frenchman who had defected to the German side in exchange for his release, disguised himself as an Allied soldier in need of safe passage out of the country and made his way into the Clinique. He was communicated out in June, and throughout July the Clinique had an increasing number of German inspections and refugees that lacked well known passwords. On 5 August 1915, German authorities entered the Clinique and arrested Cavell. Our article on Nurse Cavell's imprisonment, trial, and execution can be found HERE.  VCU's section can be found HERE.

The execution of Nurse Cavell was met with almost universal condemnation. A German admiral went as far as writing in his 14 October 1915, diary entry that the decision to execute her was one of “Incredible stupidity!” Some have justified the action as a necessary military maneuver made during the stresses of war. Regardless of opinion, the execution proved to be a public relations disaster for Germany. English propagandists seized the opportunity presented to them with great enthusiasm. News stories of the previously unknown nurse were furiously published, exalting her saintly virtues and demonizing the barbaric "Huns." Enlistment rates into the regular army that had slowed down by September 1915, jumped by over 50,000 men until December. 

Australian Recruiting Poster

Allied soldiers continued to escape through Belgium after Edith Cavell’s execution in October 1915. While her arrest and death severely damaged the specific network she worked with, other clandestine networks, such as the Comtesse de Belleville group, continued to operate despite increased German surveillance, helping hundreds more British, French, and Belgian soldiers reach neutral Holland throughout the war.

Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War by Alan Kramer

Reims 1918

The dynamic of destruction was not a law of nature, it was man-made, capable of infinite variation ... capable of being stopped before ultimate self-destruction.

If you want to gain a more sophisticated understanding of the causes and effects of the Great War, this book is a fine beginning point. Dr. Kramer teaches at Trinity College, Dublin, and is the author (with John Horn) of A History of Denial, winner of WFA's 2002 Tomlinson Book Prize.

Kramer starts with the burning of Louvain and the atrocities of 1914 in Belgium to peel back the layers of myth and legend about the motivations of the principal European actors in this tragedy. He finds identifiable causes for the cultural destruction and mass killings on the Western Front, on the Italo-Austrian Front, of Armenians in Turkey in 1915, and the collective violence in Russia following the 1917 revolution.

Though he finds no straight connection between German frightfulness and Hitler's holocaust, Kramer sees World War I as a decisive step toward eroding the distinction between soldier and civilian and the development of fascist warfare that totally eradicated that distinction. But, at the same time, while not minimizing German war guilt and picking apart the "stab in the back" excuse for German defeat, he challenges the assertion of a uniquely German development of a total war policy leading to genocide in the Second World War.

In fluid and lucid prose, he explains how this dynamic came about delving into the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 and unraveling the complexities of prewar European diplomacy and politics. He also looks at European culture and its increasing fascination with violence taking one case study from the emergence of fascism in Italy.

 

Order HERE

In sum, this is an ambitious book in a class by itself deserving of careful reading by any WWI student.

Originally presented in the Spring 2011 issue of Relevance

Fifteen Delightful British Great War Slang Expressions I've Just Discovered

I've been reading all sorts of stuff about World War I since about 1960, but these were all new to me.  MH

AUNT SALLY
Ration truck. From one of the nicknames of the Army Service Corps (ASC). 

An "Aunt Sally" Loading with Rations

BASE RAT

A soldier perpetually at the base, therefore maintaining comfort and safety. Also known as a base wallah.

BUMF

Toilet paper, or newspaper used for that purpose. Later on came to mean any excessive official documentaion. From bum fodder, an 18th-century expression.

CHIN-STRAPPED

Tired, exhausted. From the sense that a man could be so tired he was held upright only by the chinstrap of his cap or helmet.

CUTHBERT

Someone who remained at home in a cushy job, usually an officer posted to the War Office.

A Royal Artillery Officer Displaying His D.S.O.

DICK SHOT OFF

D.S.O.—the Distinguished Service Order, an "officers only" award. Used exclusively by enlisted men.

DONKEY WALLOPER

British cavalryman, especially a member of the Household Cavalry. 

GIEVES, MATTHEW & SEAGROVE

Naval version of Pip, Squeak, and Wilfred, the three WWI campaign medals. From the well-known firm of naval outfitters.

JAKES

Latrines. Expression dating back to Elizabethan times.

One of the "Jakes" at Gallipoli

JUMPING THE BAGS
Going over the top. Attacking over the sandbags of the trench parapet.

LANDOWNER

Dead. To become a landowner was to be dead and buried.

RATS AFTER MOULDY CHEESE; ROB ALL MY COMRADES

Disparaging nicknames for the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC)

"Rats and Robbers" Manning a British Dressing Station

RUSSIAN SAP

Sap trench dug below ground so that the surface earth was not disturbed.

SILENT DEATH

The practice of waiting quietly at night in no man's land for the advent of a German patrol. The patrol was then dispatched hand-to-hand as quickly and silently as possible by the use of trench knives. Much favoured by the Canadians.

UNCLE CHARLIE

Marching order; full equipment.

"Uncle Charlie" on a Long, Long, Winding Trail

Sources:  I found these scattered around the internet, but they all seem to originate in Paul Hinckley's 2014 booklet Battlefield Colloquialisms—World War I (Available HERE)

Mongolia's Mad Baron and World War One

In the 19th century, Mongolia was absorbed into the Chinese Empire of the Manchurian Qing dynasty, which ruled it as a vassal state. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, Mongolia was sucked into the vortex of global geopolitical instability that featured the overthrow of the Qing dynasty by Sun Yat Sen’s revolution in 1911.

In the chaos, Mongolia launched its bid for freedom. In 1911 a Buddhist theocratic state was established under Bogd Khan (1869–1924), the eighth Jebtsundamba Khutuktu (Holy Precious Master), who ruled a country where one in three men were monks—Mongolia had been proselytized by the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism in the 16th century. For the next decade, Mongolia slipped in an out of independence during the Zhili-Fengtian wars of the northern warlords and their international backers, which included not only Russia but also Japan, Britain, and America.

Bogd Khan

The White Russian-Bolshevik wars featured a dubious cast of military chancers, including Nikolai Robert Maximillian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg (1886–1921)  otherwise known as the "Mad Baron." Born from a family of German aristocrats, he claimed descent from Ghengis Khan and dreamt of rebuilding the Mongol empire. As an independent warlord, he intervened in Mongolia's conflict with China. Sternberg began an immediate concentration of power around himself. Though de jure power was held by Bogd Khan, Sternberg acted as the true head of state and began insisting that he was the saviour of the lands of Mongolia and that he would bring the Mongols justice. To further his ambitions, he entered a dynastic marriage with a Manchurian princess. The Mad Baron, a ferocious bully, anti-semite, sadist, mystic, and drunkard, was nevertheless a brilliant horseman and cavalry officer. Above all he was known as a fanatical anti-communist who believed, not without reason, that, "we are not fighting a political party but a sect of murderers of all contemporary spiritual culture."

"Mad Baron"  von Ungern-Sternberg

However, the Mad Baron’s success was short lived. The Soviets, both in Mongolia and Siberia, had been helped by the withdrawal of the pro-White Russian Siberian expeditionary army that comprised Japanese, American, British, Italian, French, Belgium, Polish, Serb, Rumanian, and Chinese forces, which had landed in Vladivostok in August 1918 to engage the Bolsheviks. Their objectives were hopelessly divided by their nations’ conflicting operational parameters. 

Mongolian Cavalry

In August 1921, the Mad Baron was defeated while supporting anti-Soviet forces in Siberia. Captured by the Bolsheviks, he was tried and put in front of a firing squad. Thereafter Bogd Khan ruled under Bolshevik "protection." When this last Jebtsundamba Khutuktu died of cancer—or more likely poisoning—in 1924, he was not replaced. The Soviets consolidated their grip over Mongolia with the establishment of a Communist Mongolian People’s Republic. Later it was fear of the Soviet Union that was the key reason for Japan’s annexation of the whole of Manchuria in 1931 and their subsequent invasion of northern China. With some degree of logic, Japan’s leaders began to fear that unless it took control of a weak Chinese state, the Soviet Union would fill the power vacuum.

Source: The Spectator, 16 September 2023

Weapons of War: The Browning Automatic Rifle

BAR — Original Version

By Bruce N. Canfield

Soon after the United States became embroiled in the war, the legendary American arms designer, John Moses Browning, was in the process of developing several weapons for our military. One was an automatic rifle that was destined to become one of the most respected U.S. military weapons of all time.

An Ordnance Board was appointed on 1 May 1917, to consider various light machine gun and automatic rifle designs for potential adoption by the United States. One of the submissions to the board was an automatic rifle designed by John Browning. Browning's design was the unanimous selection of the board, and the War Department ordered that plans be made to get the weapon into production as soon as possible. Mr. Browning had done the preliminary work on his weapon in conjunction with the Colt Firearms Manufacturing Company, and the firm owned production rights to the weapon. 

John Browning (L) with His Invention

The new weapon was soon known as the Browning Automatic Rifle, or simply the "BAR," and the government wasted no time in securing the manufacturing rights from Colt. Colt wished to manufacture the weapon for the government and sought to build a new plant in Meriden, Connecticut, since its main factory in Hartford was currently operating at near-peak capacity. Colt's request was not approved by the Ordnance Department, as the lag time necessitated by building a new facility, acquiring the necessary manufacturing equipment, and training a work force was too great. 

The government wanted the BAR in production as rapidly as possible. In September 1917, the Ordnance Department negotiated with Colt to transfer the BAR project to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. This transfer was soon consummated, and Winchester assumed the lead role in the BAR production program. John Browning was well acquainted with Winchester since he had designed many of the arms made by that firm. Contracts for production of the BAR were granted to Winchester, Colt, and the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation.

Soon after Winchester assumed responsibility for the BAR program, the company completed a production prototype of the weapon with assistance from John Browning. It is reported that Winchester borrowed the single handmade prototype from Colt and completed the necessary drawings and prints over a weekend. By working literally around the clock, the Winchester engineering team completed the drawings and returned the prototype to the Colt factory the following Monday morning. 

The new weapon was adopted as the "U.S. Browning Automatic Rifle, Caliber .30, Model of 1918." The arm weighed 16 pounds which, considering its contemporary automatic weapons, was quite light. The weapon had a 24" tapered barrel and was 47" in overall length (including a removable cylindrical flash hider). 

The BAR was chambered for the standard U.S. .30 caliber (.30-06) cartridge and could be fired semi-automatically or fully automatically at a rate of approximately 550 rounds per minute and a muzzle velocity of about 2,800 feet-per-second. The weapon was equipped with a 20-round detachable box magazine. Magazines of larger capacities were tested but not put into production. The rear sight of the BAR was almost identical to the M1917 Enfield rifle sight.

 

Lt. Val Browning Demonstrating the BAR

The BAR was an immediate success, especially compared to the problem-plagued Chauchat. Unfortunately, the weapon was not in use for a long period of time before the war ended. By the time of the Armistice, some 16-18 thousands BARs had arrived in France, although its impossible to determine how many made it to the frontline troops.  A typical reaction among the Doughboys is related in Make the Kaiser Dance: "The day after the Armistice we got word to turn in our Chauchats and draw Browning Automatic Rifles. That BAR was so much better than that damn Chauchat. If we'd only had the BAR six months before, it would have saved so many lives."

This informal assessment is echoed by the official report on ordnance production authored after the war by the Assistant Secretary of War, Benedict Crowell:

The Browning Automatic Rifles were highly praised by the officers and men who had to use them. Although these guns received hard usage, being on the front for days at a time in the rain and when the gunners had little opportunity to clean them, they invariably functioned well. Not only were our own forces enthusiastic, but the allied armies as well, about the Browning guns. . .as soon as they had seen them in action. The best proof of this is that in the summer of 1918 the British, Belgian and French governments all made advances to us as to the possibility of the United States producing Browning Automatic Rifles for their respective forces.

The M1918 BAR remained the standard U.S. automatic rifle after the war. Slightly modified versions saw production and wide use during World War II and Korea and some were used as late as the Vietnam war. Few weapons have as good of a reputation as the BAR. While somewhat of an anachronistic weapon by the time of the Second World War, the BAR was very much "state of the art" in World War I. As aptly stated by one writer: The ultimate proof of the BAR's success is the answer of any Doughboy or G.I. who used one would give when asked what he thought of it; practically to a man they would answer, "It is the best damn gun there ever was. "

Our contributor, Bruce N. Canfield, is one of America's leading experts on small arms. He is the author of: U.S. Infantry Weapons of the First World War, Alan Mowbray, Inc., 2000. 

On Becoming a World War I Historian by E.M. "Mac" Coffman

Edward M. Coffman, Historian of the Great War

Editor's Introduction:  My friend and early mentor Mac Coffman (1929–2020) served as an army infantry officer in Japan and Korea 1951–1953 and subsequently completed his doctorate at the University of Kentucky in 1959. He later joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught for 31 years, developing an outstanding military history program. He was a member of the Society for Military History, serving as president in 1983–85. In 1990, he received the organization's top award, the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of military history. His influential writings on the American military include The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I, still the most essential single work on the subject. His books can be ordered HERE. 

By Edward M. Coffman

In the early 1930s there was a Senate investigation of the significance of American bankers and munitions manufacturers who, it was argued, brought about the  American entrance into the war. This led to several neutrality acts and a peace movement that in 1937 had the support of 95 percent of the American public. As late as 1940 a peace group put out a poster depicting a veteran in a wheelchair with the caption “Hello, Sucker.”

As a schoolboy in the 1930s in Hopkinsville, KY, I was not aware of this attitude toward World War I. My father and most of his friends were veterans whom I respected. There were parades on Armistice Day that impressed me because of the local National Guard troop of cavalry. In grade school, we memorized "In Flanders Field" and stood every year for one minute of silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I knew who General Pershing, Alvin York, and Eddie Rickenbacker were. By 1940, I was in the habit of dropping in to talk with Erskine B. Bassett, a retired National Guard colonel who commanded an infantry regiment in the 92nd Division in the last days of the war. He owned a ladies' store that had to be unique—each counter had World War I posters on its front, and the colors of the 150 Infantry Regiment, the National Guard unit he had commanded earlier in the war, were on top of a shelf. His helmet and sword were by its side. We talked not just about World War I but also about his experiences in National Guard units from the 1880s into the 1920s. With the advent of the American entrance into World War II we discussed that also. 

I was a journalism major as an undergraduate, but my first job after graduation was the army as an infantry officer. While in the army, I decided that I would go to graduate school and major in history. Fortunately, the GI bill paid my way for four years at the University of Kentucky. At that time, in the mid-1950s, I wanted to work on a Civil War topic, but a professor warned me that the field was flooded with books, so I turned to a World War I topic—Peyton C. March as chief of staff of the army—as my dissertation topic. It is a clear indication of the lack of interest in World War I that I then knew of only one other academic who was working on a U.S. Army topic. 

In September 1955 I went with a friend, Carl Begley, with whom I had spent my first year in the Army, to visit Tom Arnold, who had been with us during that year and was then living in Alcoa, Tennessee. On our trip back to Kentucky, I realized that the Yorks lived on the road so Carl and I decided to visit him. We stopped in Jamestown, which we knew was close to where he lived and asked a postal clerk where his home was. He gave us directions and then told us that York had a stroke the year before and was bedridden. He advised us to ask his son, who ran a country store across the highway from the York home, to find out if his father would see us. We stopped at the store and the son said to ask his mother, who told us that he would.

American Hero Alvin York About the Time of Mac's Visit

She took us through the living room to a smaller room where he was sitting up in a bed. He was a large, ruddy-faced man with sandy hair and mustache. He shook hands with us and I told him that I had talked with the widow of the commanding general of the 82nd Division a week or so earlier. He responded in his tenor voice that he remembered "old General Duncan" and his battalion commander, George Buxton. He made us feel at ease and talked about watching TV and the unusual cold weather.

Later, in the advanced stage of my research, I spent two-plus months in the National Archives and became acquainted with other World War I researchers. They were working on different topics, involved with the use of gas by the AEF. They published a limited edition of several excellent monographs for the Chemical Corps. In addition to my research in personal papers, newspapers, and memoirs, I worked on a lot of oral history and corresponded with other significant figures from World War I. This was a great opportunity to be able to ask participants questions.

When I tried to get my March biography published in the early 1960s I became increasingly aware that there was little interest in World War I subjects. Fortunately, the University of Wisconsin Press published The Hilt of the Sword in 1964, but sales were low. By that time I already had a contract from Oxford University Press to write a book on the American participation in the war. A World War I veteran and former governor of Philip LaFollette, made that possible by recommending me to an Oxford Univ. Press editor, Sheldon Meyer. Oxford was planning a series on American wars. As it happened, my The War to End All Wars and Charles MacDonald's The Mighty Endeavor, about the American war in Europe in World War II, were the only volumes in the planned series that were published. 

Oxford Press hoped that my book would sell well because of the significance of the date of publication—1968. In addition, a book about the AEF—The Doughboys—had sold well in 1963. However, the author was the well-known writer Laurence Stallings, a Marine veteran who had lost a leg at Belleau Wood. As publication time neared, I heard that another author, Harvey DeWeerd, was bringing out President Wilson Fights His War as one of the distinguished series that Louis Morton developed for Macmillan Press. When I read DeWeerd's book I was impressed by the difference in our approaches. A third of his book was devoted to the war before the American entry. His coverage of the American part of the war is primarily concerned with diplomacy, strategy, and logistics at the high command level. I was relieved that I had dealt with the American military experience from the time of mobilization to the end of the war and gave the soldiers as well as the leaders due coverage. I should add that when I finally visited the Western Front in 1990 I was very pleased to see that my dependence on the maps in the American Battle Monuments Commission's American Armies and Battle Monuments in Europe (1938) was justified. Having learned a lot in map reading at the Fort Benning Infantry School helped me in recognizing terrain features. 

I was very glad that I could give my father a copy of my book. By then he was referring to himself and other Great War veterans as the “forgotten men.” Over the years, I stayed in touch with some of the veterans I had interviewed. Every time I went to Washington I would visit General Charles L. Bolte, who as a lieutenant had been wounded early in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. I often visited Sidney C. Graves, who led the first American raid against German lines and later wound up in Siberia. On several occasions I also visited Doug Campbell, who was the first U.S. Air Service pilot to achieve ace status after our entry into the war. General Bolte and Campbell lived into their nineties. 

When the French awarded Legions of Honor to surviving American veterans in 1998,  I visited George Fugate, the last veteran surviving in Lexington, KY, and helped him apply for the medal. An in 1999 at age 105. He died in January 1999 at age 105. Unfortunately, his medal did not arrive until a few weeks later.

They are all gone now,  but I know that readers of this article and I will never forget them.

Excerpted from the Journal of the World War One Historical Association, Spring 2012

In 2021, I published a tribute to Mac with more details on my friendship with him, as well as more details on his academic career and achievements. HERE

Map Series #29—Von Spee's Blunder at the Falkland Islands

SMS Leipzig Under Fire at the Falklands

On the morning of 8 December 1914, in preparation for a dash home to Germany, Vice Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee was advancing his East Asian Squadron to Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, with the objective of silencing the British communications center there.

His advance ships Gneisenau and Nürnberg, however, reported a substantial British squadron re-coaling in the harbor, although their reports were unclear or misinterpreted about the presence of capital ships.

Admiral von Spee

Von Spee therefore neither appreciated his opportunity to bottle up and possibly disable major ships of his enemy nor factored into his calculations that the two modern battle cruisers on the scene could run down any of his ships in open waters and fire upon him from beyond his own ships' range. He chose to decline battle under the most promising and advantageous conditions and ordered his vessels to break off contact and sail southeast at full speed. 

In a pursuit at sea, the British battle cruisers had multiple advantages over von Spee's ships. Their main batteries had greater range and, though coal-burning, they carried a limited amount of oil allowing maintenance of their great speed for a longer time. Coal-fired ships could only maintain their designated top operational speeds for about eight hours due to the need to clean fires, which required a temporary reduction in speed. 

For von Spee it was both a missed opportunity and doomed escape. He lost his squadron, both his sons, and his own life.  Here is a map showing the battle as it unfolded.  Click on the image to enlarge it.

Sources:  Over the Top, March 2011; World War I Document Archive (Map)

America's Postwar Transcontinental Truck Convoy

In the summer of 1919, a young Lieutenant Colonel—only four years out of West Point—named Dwight D. Eisenhower participated in the first Army transcontinental motor convoy. The expedition consisted of 81 motorized Army vehicles that crossed the United States from Washington, DC, to San Francisco. The convoy was to test the mobility of the military during wartime conditions. As an observer for the Tank Corps, Lt. Col. Eisenhower learned first-hand of the difficulties faced in traveling great distances on roads that were impassable and resulted in frequent breakdowns of the military vehicles. These early experiences influenced his later decisions concerning the building of the interstate highway system during his presidential administration. Since the trip was so meaningful to President Eisenhower's career, his Presidential Library has a wonderful collection of material pertaining to the trip.  This article is primarily a collection of material from that archive.

Departure
Trip Log: 7 July 1919

Departed Camp Meigs, 8:30 A.M. Dedicated Zero Milestone at the Ellipse, Potomac Park, 10 A.M. Departed Washington 11:15 A.M. Stopped for lunch at Rockville, Md., 12:30 P.M.  Trail mobile Kitchen broke coupling,  2:50 P.M. Fan Belt broke on White Observation Car. Militor towed Class B, with broken magneto coupling, one mile in to camp at Frederick Fair Grounds.  Fair and warm.  Road excellent. made 46 miles in  7¼ hours. Arrived Frederick, Md., 6:30 P.:M.  [At this time Tank Corps observer Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower joined the convoy.]

The Mission

The principal objectives of the expedition were to service test the special-purpose vehicles developed for use in the first World War, not all gf which were available in time for such use and to determine by actual experience the possibility and the problems involved in moving an army across the continent, assuming that railroad facilities, bridges, tunnels, etc. had been damaged or destroyed by agents of an Asiatic enemy. The expedition was assumed to be marching through enemy country and therefore had to be self-sustaining throughout, in addition to surmounting all of the obstacles interposed by mechanical difficulties, unfavorable road, bridge, topographical, and weather conditions.

  

The Route

The expedition crossed eleven states in addition to the District of Columbia, and passed through about 350 communities. The total distance traveled, Washington, DC, to San Francisco, CA  was 3,251 miles in 62 days.  The chosen route closely followed the only partially paved "Lincoln Highway".  Conceived in 1912 and formally dedicated October 31, 1913, it was the first road to cross the United States. It ran from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. In 1925, the US Bureau of Public Roads eliminated named trails and highways, and Lincoln Highway became a drab series of numbers: US 1, US 30, US 40, US 50.

Lt. Col. Eisenhower During the Trip

The personnel consisted of 24 expeditionary officers, 15 War Department staff observation officers, and 258 enlisted men. Twenty-one men were lost through various injuries en route. In his report, Eisenhower was critical of the overall discipline of the men.

Initially hoping to travel 18 mph, there were problems with equipment, inexperienced mechanics and drivers, as well as poor roads and bridges.  The average road speed for the trip turned out to be 5.66 mph.

The route was filled with wooden bridges whose reliability could be tested only by driving a vehicle over them.

There were 230 road accidents (almost 4 per day), that is, instances of road failure and vehicles sinking in the soil, running off the road or over embankments, overturning, or other mishaps due entirely to the unfavorable and at times appalling traffic conditions that were encountered.

There were three instances involving an aggregate period of forty-two hours, which were spent in the most arduous and heroic effort in rescuing the entire convoy from impending disaster on the quicksands of the Salt Lake Desert in Utah and the Fallow Sink Region in Nevada. In these emergencies, the entire personnel, regardless of rank, engaged in rescue and salvage operations

The Rear Section of Convoy Near Salt Lake City
Usually the full moving convoy was about 2 miles long.

Crossing the Sierra Nevadas
Tractors were needed to move larger trucks up the grade.

 

Parading Through San Francisco's Civic Center
Trip Log: 6 September 1919

Departed Oakland, 8:30 a.m. Convoy crossed San Francisco Bay on two ferry boats, and. immediately paraded through the city to Lincoln Park. "The end of the Trail", where medals were presented to entire personnel by the Lincoln Highway Assn.  Convoy was formally received by Col. R.N. Noble, representing Lt. General Hunter Liggett, Commanding General, Western Department and Mayor James Rolph, Jr.  Milestone marking western terminus of Lincoln Highway dedicated [with French Maréchal  Ferdinand Foch among the welcoming committee]. Red Cross Canteen Service served lunch. Convoy parked at the Presidio. Fair and Warm. Made 8 miles in 3 hrs. 

Lt. Col. Eisenhower's full trip report can be downloaded HERE.

Sources: The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, NoeHill California Travels, Celebrating the 1919 Army Convoy on the Lincoln Highway. 

A special thanks to our friend Robin Clayton of WLRC radio in Walnut, MS, for inspiring this article.

Who Won at Jutland?—John Keegan's View

The Battle of Jutland, 31 May to 1 June, 1916
By Robert Henry Smith

An Excerpt from The Price of Admiralty

At 9:45 [the evening of 2 June 1916] Jellicoe reported to the Admiralty that his warships were ready to steam out again on four hours’ notice. That signal writes the strategic verdict on Jutland. Britain’s navy re­mained fit for renewed action, however soon it should come. Germany’s did not. [Nonetheless] the kaiser preferred to ignore this fact. He exulted that “the magic Trafalgar has been broken,” distributed Iron Crosses wholesale to the crews of the High Seas Fleet when he visited it on June 5, and kissed many of the captains. He promoted Scheer to full admiral and invested him with the Pour le Merite, Germany’s highest military honor. . . “The High Seas Fleet,” Scheer said in his report to the kaiser, “will be ready by the middle of August for further strikes against the enemy.”

True to Scheer’s word, the High Seas Fleet did put to sea, on August 19, and steamed north to bring the English east coast town of Sunderland under bombardment. Scheer’s approach was covered, however, by 10 of the zeppe­lins he had not been able to take to Jutland, and when one reported that the Grand Fleet was bearing down on him from the Scottish anchorages, he reversed course and raced for home. The Admiralty cryptographers had de­tected his sortie, and were to do so again when he next put to sea, in October, with the same humiliating outcome. That was to be the High Seas Fleet’s last open challenge to the Royal Navy.

[In June 1916] Germany could publicly celebrate Jutland because the raw “exchange ratio” was in its favor. The High Seas Fleet had inflicted far greater damage than it had suffered. Three British battlecruisers, the Indefatigable, Invincible, and Queen Mary, were sunk, as were three armored cruisers, the Black Prince, Defence, and Warrior, and eight destroyers. And five British capital ships had suffered hits by 11-inch shells or heavier, notably the Lion, Tiger, and Warspite. The High Seas Fleet, by contrast, had lost only one battlecruiser, the Lützow; the other ship casualties were either pre-dreadnoughts like the Pommern or secondary units like the four light cruisers and five torpedo boats. . .

Three to one, in rude terms, did make Jutland look more like a German than a British victory. But calculated in refined rather than crude terms, the “exchange ratio” was very much more in  Britain’s  than  Germany’s  favor. Three of her fast battleships–Warspite, Barham, and Malaya–had suffered damage requiring dockyard attention. But the battleship fleet itself was al­most unscathed; and despite losses, the Battle Cruiser Fleet on June 1 still outnumbered the German 1st Scouting Group, which moreover was crippled by damage. The German dreadnought battleships had also suffered  griev­ously. König, Markgraff, and Grosser Kurfurst all needed major refits when they returned to port, and the German battle line could  not have met the British at four weeks’ notice, let alone four hours’, except at risk of outright defeat. The balance of forces had not been significantly altered by relative losses. The Grand Fleet still outnumbered Scheer’s, 28 dreadnoughts to 16.

This Selection Is from Keegan's 56-page
Chapter on Jutland
Order the Book HERE.

The human cost, however, had fallen far more heavily on the  British. True, her long tradition of “following the sea” and her large seafaring popula­tion made her losses easier to replace than the German. But the truth was that over 6,600 British officers and sailors had gone down with their ships or been killed on their decks while the  Germans had lost only a few more than 2,000.

John Keegan

A New Zealand Soldier Writes Home About a Catastrophic Operation

Private Leonard Hart, 2nd Battalion, Otago Regiment

This transcript is from a letter by Private Leonard Hart to his parents on 19 October 1917. Hart describes in detail the terrible events of 12 October 1917, when New Zealand troops were asked to take the Bellevue Spur, near Passchendaele. A veteran of Gallipoli, Hart was lucky to survive and later smuggled his letters past army censors, giving a bitter and honest account of what happened to him and his unit.

France, Oct 19, 1917

Dear Mother, Father and Connie,

In a postcard which I sent you about a fortnight ago, I mentioned that we were on the eve of a great event, and that I had no time to write you a long letter. Well that great event is over now, and by some strange act of fortune I have once again come through without a scratch.

The great event mentioned consisted of a desperate attack by our Division against a ridge, strongly fortified and strongly held by the Germans, but the name of which I had better not mention. For the first time in our brief history as an army the New Zealanders failed in their objective with the most appalling slaughter I have ever seen. My Company went into action 180 strong and we came out thirty-two strong. Still, we have nothing to be ashamed of as our commander afterwards told us that no troops in the world could possibly have taken the position, but this is small comfort when one remembers the hundreds of lives that have been lost and nothing gained. I will give you an account of the battle as near as I can without meaning any names or exasperating the censor (should he happen to open this) too much.

 

Click on Map to Enlarge

Location of Bellevue Spur - Attacked 12 October 1917

 

On a certain Wednesday evening our Brigade received orders to proceed to the firing line and relieve a Brigade of Tommies who had two nights previously advanced their positions a distance of two thousand yards and had held the captured ground against several counter attacks by the Huns. These Tommies had, however, failed to take their last objective and we knew before we left that we were going to be put over the top to try and take it. At dusk we started off from the town where we had been billeted for a few days, in full fighting order, to proceed to the front line. Our track led over five miles of newly conquered ground without lines of communication, roads, or anything but shell holes half full of water. The weather had for some days been wet and cold and the mud was in places up to the knees. We struggled on through this sea of mud for some hours, and everyone was feeling pretty well done. It was quite common for a man to get stuck in the mud and have to get three or four to drag him out. You can have no idea of the utter desolation caused by modern shell fire. The ground we were traversing had all been deluged with our shells before being taken from the Germans, and for those five miles leading to our front line trench there was nothing but utter desolation, not a blade of grass, or tree, here and there a heap of bricks marking where a village or farmhouse had once stood, numerous ‘tanks’ stuck in the mud, and for the rest, just one shell hole touching another.

The torn up condition of the ground made the mud ten times worse than it would otherwise have been. The only structures which had stood the bombardment in any way at all were the German machine gun emplacements. These emplacements are marvellous structures made of concrete with walls often ten feet thick and the concrete reinforced throughout with railway irons and steel bands and bars. There is room inside them for a large number of men but of course they vary in size. Many of these emplacements had been shattered to pieces in spite of their strength but others had withstood the bombardment. The ground was strewn with the corpses of numerous Huns and Tommies. Dead horse and mules lay everywhere, yet no attempt had been made to bury any of them. Well, we at length arrived at our destination – the front line and relieved the worn out Tommies. They had not attempted to dig trenches but had simply held the line by occupying a long line of shell holes, two or three men to each hole. Many of them seemed too worn out to walk properly and I don’t know how some of them must have got on during their long tramp through the mud back to billets.

Each of us had a shovel with him, so we set to work to make some kind of trenches. We were at this point about half way up one slope of the ridge which in the course of forty-eight hours we were to try and take. The mud was not so bad here owing to the water being able to run away into a swamp at the foot of the ridge. Anyway by daybreak we had dug ourselves in sufficiently and, although wet and covered in mud from head to foot, we felt fit for a feed of bread and bully beef, for breakfast. We stayed in our new trenches all that day and the day following during which it rained off and on, and Fritz kept things lively with his artillery. At 3 o’clock on the third morning we received orders to attack the ridge at half past five, which was just before daylight. We were accordingly arranged in three successive waves or lines; each wave about fifty yards ahead of the other. There was a certain amount of difficulty in this operation as it was pitch dark and raining heavily. When all was ready we were told to lay down and wait the order to charge. My Company was in the first wave of the attack which partly accounted for our heavy casualties. Our artillery barrage (curtain of fire) was to open out at twenty past five and play on the German positions on top of the ridge 150 yards ahead of us. It was to move forward fifty yards in every four minutes – that is to say we were to advance as our barrage advanced and keep 100 to 150 yards behind it.

 

New Zealand Artillery Supporting the Attack

At twenty past five to the second, and with a roar that shook the ground, some three thousand of our guns opened out on the five mile sector of the advance. (The whole advance was on a five mile front and our Brigade occupied about a thousand yards of this front forming the centre of the advance. Our Rifle Brigade was on our left and a Tommy Division on the left of them again. An Australian Division was on our right and another Tommy Division on the right of them again.) Through some blunder our artillery barrage opened up about two hundred yards short of the specified range and thus opened right in the midst of us. It was a truly awful time – our own men getting cut to pieces in dozens by our own guns. Immediate disorganisation followed. I heard an officer shout an order to the men to retire a short distance and wait for our barrage to lift. Some, who heard the order, did so. Others, not knowing what to do under the circumstances, stayed where they were, while others advanced towards the German positions, only to be mown down by his deadly rifle and machine gun fire.

At length our barrage lifted and we all once more formed up and made a rush for the ridge. What was our dismay upon reaching almost to the top of the ridge to find a long line of practically undamaged German concrete machine gun emplacements with barbed wire entanglements in front of them fully fifty yards deep. The wire had been cut in a few places by our artillery but only sufficient to allow a few men through it at a time. Even then what was left of us made an attempt to get through the wire and a few actually penetrated as far as his emplacements only to be shot down as fast as they appeared. Dozens got hung up in the wire and shot down before their surviving comrades’ eyes. It was now broad daylight and what was left of us realised that the day was lost.

 

We accordingly lay down in shell holes or any cover we could get and waited. Any man who showed his head was immediately shot. They were maravellous shots those Huns. We had lost nearly eighty per cent of our strength and gained about 300 yards of ground in the attempt. This 300 yards was useless to us for the Germans still held and dominated the ridge. We hung on all that day and night. There was no one to give us orders, all our officers of the Battalion having been killed or wounded with the exception of three, and these were all Second Lieutenants who could not give a definite order about the position without authority. All my Company officers were killed outright one of them the son of the Reverend Ryburn of Invercargill, was shot dead beside me.

The second day after this tragic business, we were surprised to see about half a dozen Huns suddenly appear waving a white flag. They proved to be red cross men and the flag was a sign that they were asking for a truce to take in their wounded and bury their dead. It was granted and not a shot was fired on either side during the whole of that afternoon. It was a humane and gallant act and one worthy of such gallant defenders as those particular Huns certainly were. Our stretcher bearers were able to go and take all our wounded from the barbed wire, a thing that would have been impossible otherwise. Numbers of us who at ordinary times had nothing to do with stretcher bearing were put on and we had all the wounded carried out before nightfall. We had no time to bury many of our dead but the wounded should be the only consideration at times like that. I went out and buried poor Ryburn. He came with the Main Body, but had not been in France long. The proportion of killed to wounded was exceptionally high compared to other battles, owing to the perfect marksmanship of the German machine gunners and snipers. My Company has come out with no officers, only one Sergeant out of seven, one Corporal and thirty men. Even then we are not the worst off.

The third night after the advance we were relieved and taken back about three miles behind the line. Here we acted as a reserve to the Battalion which had taken over our sector for two days, and we were finally taken right out to billets well behind the line where we are now recuperating. The night we came out here I received a parcel from you. The note inside was dated 10/7/17, and I can tell you that I felt hungry enough to eat note and all. I received another parcel from you about three days before we shifted to this front which would be about three weeks ago. They were appreciated about as well as it is possible to appreciate anything, I can assure you. Your letters of Mamma’s 25/7/17, Connie’s of same date and Dad’s of 7/7/17 arrived about a week before the affair of the ridge. A number of our chaps who came through have since been sent to hospital chiefly with trench feet due to standing in cold mud for long hours. I have a touch of them myself but they are not bad enough to be sent away with. I have just decided to have this letter posted by someone going on leave to England, so I will tell you a few more facts which it would not have been advisable to mention otherwise.......

Fighting of a very successful nature had been going on around Ypres for some months previous to our late set back at the ridge where the British are now held up. I hear that another attempt is to be made to take it, but it will not be with our Division. The name of this famous ridge is Passchendaele Ridge, and it has defied two attempts to take it already – viz the one attempted by the Tommies whom we relieved and our own......

 

Leonard Hart (Arrow) with His Tent Mates

The results of our stunt you now know so no more need be said about it except that we did as well or even better that some of the Divisions on our right and left. None of them took their objectives and I know for a fact that our Third Brigade’s losses and those of the Australians were every bit as heavy as ours. The Second Brigade has at least the satisfaction of knowing that they held a few hundred yards of ground they took, and our commander has since told us that no troops in the world could possibly have taken the ridge under similar circumstances. Some ‘terrible blunder’ has been made. Someone is responsible for that barbed wire not having been broken up by our artillery. Someone is responsible for the opening of our barrage in the midst of us instead of 150 yards ahead of us. Someone else is responsible for those machine gun emplacements being left practically intact, but the papers will all report another glorious success, and no oneexcept those who actually took part in it will know any different.

In conclusion I will relate to you another little incident or two which never reaches the press, or if it does it is ‘censored’ in order to deceive the public. This almost unbelievable but perfectly true incident is as follows. During the night after we had relieved the Tommies prior to our attack on the ridge we were surprised to hear agonised cries of ’stretcher bearer’, ‘help’, ‘For God’s sake come here’ etc, coming from all sides of us. When daylight came some of us, myself included, crawled out to some adjacent shell holes from where the cries were coming and were astonished to find about half a dozen Tommies, badly wounded, some insane, others almost dead with starvation and exposure, lying stuck in the mud and too weak to move. We asked one man who seemed a little better than the rest what was the meaning of it and he said that if we cared to crawl about the shell holes all round about him we would find dozens more in similar plight.

We were dumbfounded, but the awful truth remained. These chaps, wounded in the defence of their country, had been callously left to die the most awful of deaths in the half frozen mud while tens of thousands of able bodied men were camped within five miles of them behind the lines. All these Tommies (they were mostly men of the York and Lancaster Regiment) had been wounded during their unsuccessful attack on the ridge which we afterwards tried to take and at the time when we came upon them they must have been lying where they fell in the mud and rain for four days and nights. Those that were still alive had subsisted on the rations and water that they had carried with them or else had taken it from dead comrades beside them.

 

I have seen some pretty rotten sights during the two and half years of active service, but I must say that this fairly sickened me. We crawled back to our trenches and inside of an hour all our stretcher bearers were working like the heroes that they were, and in full view of the enemy who, to his credit, did not fire on them. They worked all day carrying out those Tommies of whom I am afraid some will be mad men for the rest of their lives even if they do recover from their wounds and exposure.

Carrying wounded over such country often knee deep in mud is the most trying work imaginable, and I do not say for a moment that the exhausted Tommies (the survivors of the first attack on Passchendale Ridge) whom we relieved should have tried to carry them out for I do not believe that any of them were physically capable of doing it, but I do say that it was part of their officers’ duty to send back to the rear of the lines and have fresh men brought up to carry out the wounded that they themselves could not carry. Perhaps they did send back for help, but still the fact remains that nothing was done until our chaps came up, and whoever is responsible for the unnecessary sacrifice of those lives deserves to be shot more than any Hun ever did.

 

1918 View of Bellevue Ridge by George Edmund Butler

If they had asked for an armistice to carry out their wounded I do not doubt that it would have been granted for the Huns had plenty of wounded to attend to as well as the Tommies. I suppose our armchair leaders call this British stubbornness. If this represents British stubbornness then it is time we called it by a new name. I would suggest callous brutality as a substitute. Apparently this is not an isolated instance of its kind. While we were in reserve for two days to the Brigade which finally took over from us I was having a look around some old German dugouts and in one of them I came upon about fifty dead Tommies all lying spread out over the floor as though they had been thrown in there hastily. They had evidently been dead some months. I asked an artillery Sergeant Major standing near by how they all came to be in there and he told me that they had been put in there (while wounded) during the advance last July, and had been forgotten. If this were true then it is even worse than the case just mentioned, for these dugouts must have been within a mile of our main dressing stations at the time when the advance took place, and the distance to carry them was thus five times less than in the other case.

After reading this do not believe our lying press, who tell you that all the brutality of this war is on the Huns’ side. The Hun is no angel, we all know, and the granting of an armistice such as that which we had is a rare occurrence. The particular Regiments who were holding the ridge at the time our attack are known as ‘Jaegers’. Probably the Prussians or most of the other Hun Regiments do not ask for armistices, but for all the terrific casualties those Jaegers inflicted on us, we survivors of Passchendaele Ridge must all admit that they played the game on that occasion at any rate......

I remain

Your affectionate son

Len 

Source: NZHistory.net.nz