Captured: Fifteen British Generals

Major General Charles Townshend in Turkish Captivity

By James Patton

About ten years ago now, I wrote a long article for Over the Top about the British defeat at Kut-al-Amara, which had occurred a hundred years previous. As a result, I became fascinated with the subject and particularly with the saga of the commander of the ill-fated first Baghdad offensive, Maj. Gen. Charles Townshend. I thought that Townshend was the highest-ranking British officer taken prisoner during the Great War, but I now know that he was not even the highest-ranking officer captured at Kut. Knowing that six general officers were  taken prisoner at Kut, I decided to find out how many other British general officers had been POWs in the Great War.   

Before proceeding to the list, I should briefly clarify the fluid status of British brigadier generals. During the First World War they were the lowest-ranking general officers. However, since 1928, British brigadiers are now the highest-ranking field officers. They are classified by NATO as level O-6, which puts them on a par with the U.S. “bird” colonel, who typically commands a U.S. brigade, unless the brigade is independent, such as the U.S. Army’s 173rd (Airborne) Brigade. On the other hand, British colonels do not command brigades or any other group of soldiers. Typically, they are staff officers.

Here is my list of POW generals culled from the "List of British Officers Taken Prisoner Aug 1914–Nov 1918":

From the British Expeditionary Force:

Brig-Gen C. D. Bruce (1862–1934), 27 Brig, 9 (Scottish) Div, a New Army unit. Captured at Hulluch Quarries, Battle of Loos,  26 Sep 1915. His was the first K-1 formation to see action on the Western Front. An old China hand, he had previously commanded the British Weihaiwei Regiment (1907–13), which was raised locally to defend that enclave on the Shandong Peninsula. Postwar he lived in Shanghai, sometimes working as a police advisor. He published several works of non-fiction including a comprehensive history of the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment, which recruited in Yorkshire.

Brig-Gen C. Bradley, 1916. I’ve not found any information about this officer. Bear in mind that most of these brigadiers were Temporary at the time of their capture and there is no available list of officers by Temporary rank.

Brigadier-General Victor Arthur Seymour Williams

Brig-Gen V.A.S. Williams CMG (1867–1949), 8 Can Brig, 3 Can Div. Wounded and captured (the CG, Maj. Gen. Malcolm Mercer was killed) during a whirlwind German assault during the Battle of Mont-Sorrel, 2 Jun 1916. He was subsequently released in a POW exchange. Before the war he was in turn the adjutant-general and the camp commandant at Valcartier during the formation of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Promoted to major general after the war, he was subsequently the Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police (1922–1939).

Brig-Gen Vivian Telford Bailey CMG DSO (1868–1947), 142 Brig, 47 (1/2nd London) Div, a unit of second-line Territorials. Wounded, then captured north of Delville Wood on 23 Mar 1918,during Operation Michael. 

Brig-Gen Frederick Stuart Dawson CMG DSO (1873–1920), 1 S. Afr Brig att  9 (Scottish) Div. Captured at Marrières Wood, 24 Mar 1918.  Fought a heroic rearguard blocking action, plugging the gap between armies and delaying the German advance for seven hours, surrendering only when ammunition was exhausted; his brigade had been reduced  from 1,880 to 500 men, only 100 of whom were unwounded.

Brig-Gen Edward Bellingham CMG DSO (1879–1956), 118 Brig, 39 Div, a K-4 “Pals” unit. Captured on 28 Mar 1918 during the during the Battle of Rosières. He was a professional soldier and a baronet in the Irish Peerage. He served in the Royal Air Force in WWII.

Brig-Gen James Dick-Cunyngham CB CMG DSO (1877–1935), 152 Brig,  51 (Highland) Div, a firstline Territorial unit. Wounded and captured at Le Cornet Malo, 12 Apr 1918. Youngest son of a Scottish baronet. He was only in this command for six days. Postwar he served in both the Territorial Force and the Indian Army, and was promoted to major general in 1932. He kept a diary of his POW days which can be read HERE.   

Brig-Gen H. Rees CMG DSO (1882–1948),150 Brig, 50 (Northumbria) Div, also a firstline Territorial unit, captured near Craonnelle during the Blücher-Yorck offensive, 27 May 1918. A regular officer, he was only 34 when he became a temporary brigadier. After his capture he was brought back to Kaiser Wilhelm II on the Plateau de Californie. Wilhelm restricted his questions to those of a personal nature, not seeking any military intelligence. Rees later said Wilhelm stated that he thought Britain and Germany should be friends and noted his admiration for the fighting abilities of British soldiers. Rees’s meeting with Wilhelm was even photographed. Rees later stated he was "furious" about being forced to meet the Kaiser and had felt "humiliated." 

From the British Salonika Army:

Brig-Gen H. Ravenshaw CMG (1869–1920), General Staff, was a passenger on the SS Caledonia when it was torpedoed by U-65 in the Mediterranean, 4 Dec 1917.  Long associated with the Devonshire Regiment, he was recalled to active duty and assigned the command of  the1st Battalion, Connaught Rangers, which was part of the 7th (Ferozepore) Brigade, 3rd (Lahore) Division, Indian Army. He later commanded the 83 Brig, 28 Div and then the 27 Div. He was returning to the UK from Salonika but instead spent the remainder of the war in Austro-Hungarian captivity. In 1920 he died under mysterious circumstances in South Africa.

From the Indian Army:

Maj. Gen. Townshend (center) and the 6th Division Staff
(Most of the Officers Were Likely Captured at Kut)

Maj-Gen. C.V.F.  Townshend KCB DSO (1861–1924) CG 6 (Poona) Ind Div. Surrendered at Kut-al-Amara 29 Apr 1916. His remarkable period as a prisoner of war reads like a novel. After the surrender, Townshend and his entourage were whisked off to Istanbul by boat, auto and train, where they were met at the station by a military honor guard. He was billeted in a confiscated villa on the island of Prinkipo (now Büyükada) in the Sea of Marmara, a short distance from Istanbul. He had servants, good food, plenty of books, breezy sea air, and even received permission to bring his wife and teenage daughter to join him, but they refused. An Ottoman Navy launch was available, he had the freedom of Istanbul, and was a frequent guest of the Sultan. Gen. Enver Pasha was a special pal. Enver called Townshend "Lieut. General," and he took to using  that rank, which promotion he should have gotten when he was put in command of a force larger than a division. 

Townshend regarded himself as the exclusive representative of British interests in Istanbul, and that the negotiation of the Armistice of Mudros was largely his work. However, at one point he spent four months trying to convince Enver that, if repatriated, he would be a tireless and valuable advocate for the Ottoman cause at Whitehall. Townshend never concerned himself with the plight of his soldiers, which he must have known about, even denying that they had been force-marched. 

The year 1917 was a noteworthy one for Townshend. His noble aspiration was derailed, as his cousin, the elderly and ailing 6th Marquess Townshend, had managed to sire an heir. On the other hand, Townshend did  receive his long-coveted KCB;  the notice of which had to come to him via Istanbul’s German-language newspaper Osmanischer Lloyd. Also, the British investigation into the Kut catastrophe was concluded with the incredible finding that fault lay with just about everybody involved excepting Townshend. 

Major General Walter Delamain

Maj-Gen W.S. Delamain (1862–1932) KCB KCMG DSO, 16 (Poona) Brig, 6 (Poona) Ind Div.  Surrendered at Kut al Amara 29 Apr 1916. Long time Indian Army officer who was promoted to major general in recognition of his brigade’s successful occupation of Basra in 1914. He was senior in grade to Townshend. After the war he retired as a lieutenant general.

Brig-Gen U.W.  Evans, 17 (Ahmednagar) Brig, 6 (Poona) Ind Div. Surrendered at Kut-al-Amar 29 Apr 1916. A last-minute replacement, all of his previous service had been in the Royal Engineers.

Brig-Gen H.D. Grier, Chief Royal Arty, 6 (Poona) Ind Div. Wounded and surrendered at Kut-al-Amara 29 Apr 1916. Served with and previously commanded the 1st Indian Mountain Artillery Brig (10 pounders). 

Brig-Gen W.G. Hamilton (1858–1940) CB CSI 18 (Belgaum) Brig, 6 (Poona) Ind Div. Surrendered at Kut-al-Amara 29 Apr 1916. Also a late replacement, he had been the Assistant Quartermaster General for Indian Expeditionary Force D.

Major General Charles Mellis

Maj-Gen Sir C.J. Melliss (1862–1936) VC KCB KCMG, 30 Brig, 12 Ind Div attached to 6 (Poona) Ind Div. Surrendered at Kut-al-Amara 29 Apr 1916. A career Indian Army officer, he was promoted to major general in 1912, thus he was about three years senior in grade to Townshend. Melliss’s VC was awarded for deeds during the Ashanti Campaign of 1900. He fell ill during the Kut siege; he was in hospital at the end. Along with Townshend, he was evacuated to Baghdad by boat. Most of the garrison were force-marched all the way to Anatolia. When he was well enough to travel, he followed the same overland route, but as a general, he was allowed a travel party and given transport and better than average supplies. Along the way, they encountered dead and dying enlisted men who had fallen out from the columns of prisoners. Melliss took survivors he found with him; then at their next each stop he insisted that the rescuees be hospitalized. Here’s a LINK to a great article about him.  

While surrendering six general officers at Kut was the worst toll for the British in the Great War, during the Malayan campaign in 1942, at least 18 British and Australian flag officers were captured by the Japanese, including two lieutenant generals, two major generals, 11 brigadiers, one air vice-marshal and two air commodores. One other major general, the commander of the 8th Australian Division, Gordon Bennett (1887–1962) CB CMG DSO VD, who deserted and crossed the straits the night before the capitulation. He had been the highest-ranking Australian in Singapore. He  eventually got back to Australia and cooked up an incredible story.  

Lonesome Memorial #26: The Lone Tree of Loos

The Lone Tree of Loos Today

The Lone Tree of Loos was a solitary cherry tree in no-man's-land that served as a key topographical marker and grim memorial during the September 1915 Battle of Loos. Located north of Loos between the villages of Hulluch and Vermelles, it acted as a vital reference point on British trench maps and a devastatingly accurate target for German artillery. Its name inspired the series "Lonesome Memorials" for Roads to the Great War.

The 1995 Dedication Plaque

The tree was a prominent feature of Lone Tree Ridge, the site of a tragic assault by the Northamptonshire Regiment during the British Army's first use of poison gas in the war. Heavily shot to pieces by artillery, the tree was mostly cut down by  souvenir hunters. The solitary tree became a profound symbol of resilience and loss, eventually regrowing after 1918 and officially replanted in 1995 to commemorate the battle. A surrounding concentration of more conspicuous memorials, such as Dud Corner Cemetery and Loos Memorial, also honor the 60,000 casualties suffered in this area.

Souvenir Section from the Original Tree

Location:

The Lone Tree is located south of the Vermelles–Hulluch Road (Rue Jules Guesde), on an off-shoot named Chemin du Pont, at coordinates: 50.478250, 2.782073.  It is hard to see from a distance.

Outline of 1915–17 Loos Battlefield with Lone Tree Location

American Dreadnoughts at War

Firing a Broadside Over a Century Ago, the USS Texas Is  Today the World's
Only Surviving WWI Dreadnought Battleship

The legendary Great White Fleet, which sailed around the world from December 1907 to February 1909, had many achievements but came up short on one of President Theodore Roosevelt's list of objectives. In the matter of impressing foreign powers with America' naval power and readiness, all 16 battleships sent on the 43,000-mile voyage were already obsolete. For almost a year, the Royal Navy's revolutionary all-big-gun battleship HMS Dreadnought had been at sea. Other nations, including the United States, were attempting to play catch-up with dreadnoughts under construction, but they were a long way from active service. Consequently, to knowledgeable naval observers, the American fleet seemed less than "top-of-the-line." Reportedly, even Kaiser Wilhelm took to pointing out some of the ships' design flaws.

The Great White Fleet Enters the Golden Gate, 6 May 1908

The first U.S. Navy dreadnoughts, USS South Carolina (BB-26) and USS Michigan (BB-27) would not be commissioned until 1910. The Great White Fleet, had however, succeeded in building public and political support for an accelerated naval building program. Eight more modern battleships were built and launched before August 1914. In April 1917, when the United States officially entered World War I, the U.S. Navy had 14 dreadnought-type battleships active in its battle force. This was still behind Great Britain's 29 dreadnoughts (both battleships and battlecruisers) but close to catching up to Germany's total of 17.

Stern View of a Wyoming-Class Dreadnought

Valuable assets to the balance of naval power, most of the nation's dreadnoughts found service of some type during America's 19 months of war, but they never fought a surface battle.  Ironically, the old ships of the Great White Fleet that were activated for service found a wide range of uses similar to the newer dreadnoughts, like training, convoy escort, and carrying troops. 

Most of the new dreadnoughts would have to wait a quarter-century for major action, some of it tragic. Five would be deemed obsolete before the Second World War came. I thought it appropriate, in any case, that Roads to the Great War recognize their service in the First World War. These all-big-gun capital ships belonged to seven distinct classes commissioned between 1910 and 1916.

South Carolina Class (two ships):

Officers and Crew of USS Michigan, 1918

USS South Carolina (BB-26)

Prewar performed neutrality patrols on the American side of the Atlantic.  In September 1918 became first U.S. dreadnought to escort a convoy part way across the Atlantic. On return trip, lost its port propeller on 8 October. Post-Armistice transported U.S. troops home from Europe. She was sold for scrap on 24 April 1924 and subsequently dismantled.

USS Michigan  (BB-27) 

Michigan had similar duties to South Carolina and also lost a propeller (starboard) when returning home. Also repatriated American troops after hostilities. Michigan was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 10 November 1923 and broken up for scrap the following year.

Delaware Class (two ships):

Japanese Vice-Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō, Victor of Tsushima, after
Visiting USS North Dakota, 1911

USS Delaware  (BB-28) 

When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, Delaware was initially tasked with readiness training off the East Coast. Late in the year, she was deployed to Europe as part of the U.S. Navy's Battleship Division Nine, under the command of Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman. The force arrived on 7 December and was assigned to the 6th Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet. In July 1918, Delaware was withdrawn from overseas service and returned to the United States, where she received an enthusiastic welcome. Delaware was transferred to the Boston Navy Yard, decommissioned on 10 November, and disarmed. She was then sold on 5 February 1924 and subsequently broken up for scrap.

USS North Dakota (BB-29) 

Admiral Rodman specially requested North Dakota not be deployed to Europe. He felt her turbine engines were too unreliable for the ship to be deployed to a war zone.  From 1917, she was employed as a training ship for gunners and engineers. Postwar, North Dakota made a second trip to Europe, primarily to ports in the Mediterranean Sea. During the visit, the ship was tasked with the return of the remains of the Italian ambassador, Vincenzo Macchi di Cellere, who had died 20 October 1919 in Washington, DC. In 1925 North Dakota was converted into a radio-controlled gunnery target ship and eventually sold for scrap in 1931.

Florida Class (two ships):

USS Florida While Serving with Grand Fleet, 1918

USS Florida (BB-30) 

Florida and her sister ship Utah took part in U.S. operations at Vera Cruz in 1914. The two ships landed a total of about 1,000 sailors and marines, who suffered nearly 10 percent casualties. In December 1917 she  joined Battleship Division Nine, which was deployed with the British Grand Fleet. Following training exercises with the British fleet, 6th Battle Squadron was tasked with convoy protection duty on the route to Scandinavia. Following the end of the war, in December 1918, the ship escorted President Woodrow Wilson on his trip to Europe to participate in the peace negotiations. Florida was decommissioned in 1931 and scrapped the next year in Philadelphia.

USS Utah (BB-31) 

After America's entry into the war, Utah trained engineers and gunners in Chesapeake Bay.  On 30 August 1918,  she departed for Bantry Bay, Ireland, with Vice Admiral Henry T. Mayo, commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet aboard. After arriving in Ireland, Utah was assigned as the flagship of Battleship Division 6, commanded by Rear Admiral Thomas S. Rodgers. Division 6 was tasked with covering convoys in the Western Approaches against possible attacks from German surface raiders. Utah served in the division along with Nevada and Oklahoma. Utah also escorted President Wilson on his voyage to France, later returning to New York and regular peacetime duties. The ship performed a variety of duties for the Navy following the First World War and in 1931 was converted to a  radio-controlled target ship, to replace the older North Dakota. Utah also took on the role of  a training ship for anti-aircraft gunners. She was sunk at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Attempts to salvage Utah were not successful. Today, her rusting hulk remains in Pearl Harbor, partially above water, a war grave for the 58 crew members who perished in the attack. The site is now part of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial.

Wyoming Class (two ships):

USS Arkansas (l) & USS Texas (r) Transiting the Panama Canal, February 1919

USS Wyoming (BB-32) 

Early wartime duties for Wyoming focused on training engine-room personnel for the expanding American fleet around Chesapeake Bay. Later assigned to Battleship Division 9 at Scapa Flow, Wyoming and the other U.S. battleships trained with the Grand Fleet for three months. Wyoming  helped escort a convoy to Norway and subsequently patrolled the North Sea, watching for a sortie by Germany's High Seas Fleet, and covered the North Sea minelaying operation. On 14 October, Wyoming replaced the damaged New York as Admiral Rodman's flagship. Postwar, Wyoming served as an escort ship for the High Seas Fleet on its journey to internment at Scapa Flow. After joining the escort detail for President Wilson's arrival, Wyoming sailed for New York, arriving on Christmas Day. Wyoming remained on active duty throughout the interwar period and trained thousands of gunners during WWII.  She was decommissioned in 1947 and sold for scrap.

USS Arkansas (BB-33) 

In 1914 Arkansas participated in the U.S. intervention in Mexico. Relieving USS Delaware, she served as part of Battleship Division Nine, which was attached to the British Grand Fleet. She was transferred to the Pacific post-WWII. Arkansas served in the European Theater at Normandy and the invasion of southern France and then in the Pacific theater. Arkansas was subsequently expended as a target in Operation Crossroads,  the nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in July 1946.

New York Class (two ships):

USS Texas en route to Its Final Anchorage at Galveston

USS New York  (BB-34) 

The New York Class was the first U.S. battleship  was designed to carry the 14-inch/45-caliber gun. Arriving off Mexico on 4 May 1914, New York served as the flagship for the Special Service Squadron, the force occupying and blockading Veracruz. Deployed to the European Theater as flagship of Battleship Squadron Nine, later re-designated Sixth Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet. During her service with the Grand Fleet, New York was frequently visited by royal and other high-ranking representatives of the Allies. The Duke and Duchess of Atholl visited the ship in May 1918. They were followed by King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium on 9 July; His Majesty King George V on 20 July; and Crown Prince (later Emperor) Hirohito of Japan and his staff on 3 November 1918. 

New York, on 14 October 1918, struck a submerged object while entering Pentland Firth en route to Scapa Flow. She docked at Rosyth, on 15 October 1918, and the squadron flag was temporarily shifted to Wyoming. With those repairs completed, Rear Adm. Rodman returned to New York on 21 October.  New York, with Vice Adm. William S. Sims in command, took up her position in column with the entirety of the Grand Fleet in the Firth of Forth on 21 November 1918 to accept the surrender of the High Seas Fleet. After serving with distinction throughout WWII, New York was designated as a target ship, surviving two atomic detonations and was sunk by gunfire on 7 July 1948.

USS Texas (BB-35) 

When the battleship Texas was commissioned, the United States was entangled in the Mexican Revolution, and the ship was deployed to Veracruz to support the occupation there.  In 1917,  Texas shipped out for the First World War under the command of Captain Victor Blue, Texas’ longest serving commanding officer. Unfortunately, she ran aground on Block Island shortly after leaving Long Island Sound. As the crew lightened her load over several days and worked to get her free, sailors on passing ships would shout “Come on, Texas!” which stuck as the ship’s motto through the rest of her career. Texas later made it across the Atlantic to join the Grand Fleet in January 1918. In 1919, Texas was used in an early naval aviation experiment. On 10 March, a Sopwith Camel was successfully flown off a ramp constructed on top of Turret #2, making her the first American battleship to launch an aircraft. From 1925 to 1927, Texas was heavily modernized.  

When the Second World War broke out in Europe in 1939, Battleship Texas was assigned to neutrality patrol, escorting merchant ships across the Atlantic. Texas continued her patrols until late 1942, when she took part in Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa. On 6 June 1944, D-Day, Texas was assigned to support the landings of the Army Rangers at Pointe du Hoc and the landings at Omaha Beach. Texas was straddled by dozens of near misses from artillery and was eventually hit at 13:16. A 240 mm German shell struck the top of the conning tower, wrecking much of the navigation bridge above. Texas later supported Operation Dragoon (the invasion of southern France) and the assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After the war, the Texas transported troops home from the Pacific Theater during Operation Magic Carpet. After the war, she would be donated to the State of Texas and for many years would be anchored at the San Jacinto Battleground. The ship is now undergoing a massive restoration program in Galveston, Texas, in anticipation of a 2027 reopening.

Nevada Class (two ships):

USS Oklahoma from the Air, Post WWI

USS Nevada  (BB-36) 

Nevada was a leap forward in dreadnought technology; four of her new features would be included on almost every subsequent US battleship: triple gun turrets,[c] oil in place of coal for fuel, geared steam turbines for greater range, and the "all or nothing" armor principle. These features made Nevada, alongside her sister ship Oklahoma, the first US Navy "standard-type" battleships.  She joined the Atlantic Fleet in Newport, Rhode Island on 26 May 1916.  During the last few months of World War I, Nevada was based in Bantry Bay, Ireland, to protect supply convoys that were sailing to and from Great Britain.  Her interwar service was much like the other American dreadnoughts including undergoing a modernization program in the 1930s.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Nevada was the only battleship to get underway during the attack, making the ship "the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal and depressing morning" for the United States. Still, the ship was hit by one torpedo and at least six bombs while steaming away from Battleship Row, forcing the crew to beach the stricken ship on a coral ledge. The ship continued to flood and eventually slid off the ledge and sank to the harbor floor.  Nevada was subsequently salvaged and modernized at Puget Sound Navy Yard, allowing her to serve as a convoy escort in the Atlantic and as a fire-support ship in five amphibious assaults (the invasions of Attu, Normandy, Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa).

At the end of World War II, the Navy decided that, due to age, Nevada would not be retained as part of the active fleet and she was instead assigned as a target ship for the atomic experiments at Bikini Atoll in July 1946 (Operation Crossroads). The ship was hit by the blast from atomic bomb Able, and was left heavily damaged and radioactive. Unfit for further service, Nevada was decommissioned on 29 August 1946, and sunk for naval gunfire practice on 31 July 1948.

USS Oklahoma (BB-37) 

After suffering a serious fire during her construction, Oklahoma was commissioned at Philadelphia, on 2 May 1916. In 1917 she experienced another refit which delayed her deployment to the war zone.  On 13 August 1918, Oklahoma was assigned to Battleship Division Six  and departed for Europe alongside Nevada. Division Six division remained at anchor, tasked to protect American convoys coming into the area, but was only called out of the harbor once in 80 days. Oklahoma departed 14 December, for New York City, and then spent early 1919 conducting winter battle drills off the coast of Cuba. On 15 June 1919, she returned to Brest, escorting Wilson on a second trip, and returned to New York, on 8 July.

On 7 December 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, several torpedoes from torpedo bombers hit the Oklahoma's hull and the ship capsized. A total of 429 crew died; survivors jumped off the ship 50 feet (15 m) into burning oil on water or crawled across mooring lines that connected Oklahoma and Maryland. Some sailors inside escaped when rescuers drilled holes and opened hatches to rescue them. The ship was salvaged in 1943. Unlike most of the other battleships that were recovered following Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma was too damaged to return to duty. Her wreck was eventually stripped of her remaining armament and superstructure before being sold for scrap in 1946. The hulk sank in a storm while being towed from Oahu, Hawaii, to a breakers yard in San Francisco Bay in 1947.

Pennsylvania Class (two ships):

View from Bow of USS Pennsylvania, Post WWI

USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) 

The Pennsylvania class consisted of two super-dreadnought battleships built for the United States Navy just before the First World War. In service, the Pennsylvania class saw limited use in the First World War, as a shortage of fuel oil in the United Kingdom meant that only the coal-burning battleships were sent initially with  Battleship Division Nine. USS Pennsylvania was  sent across the Atlantic to France after the war for the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and were then transferred to the Pacific Fleet before being significantly modernized from 1929 to 1931. For the remainder of the interwar period, the ships were used in exercises and fleet problems.

Present at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Pennsylvania—in dry dock at the time—received only minor damage. After a refit from October 1942 to February 1943, Pennsylvania went on to serve as a shore bombardment ship for most of the remainder of the war. She was severely damaged by a torpedo on 12 August 1945, two days before the cessation of hostilities. With minimal repairs, she was used in Operation Crossroads, part of the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, before being expended as a target ship in 1948.

USS Arizona (BB-39) 

After being commissioned in 1916, Arizona remained stateside during World War I but escorted President Woodrow Wilson to the subsequent Paris Peace Conference. The ship was deployed abroad again in 1919 to represent American interests during the Greco-Turkish War. Two years later, she was transferred to the Pacific Fleet, under which the ship would remain for the rest of her career. In 1934, Arizona became a movie star. The ship was featured prominently in the 1934 James Cagney film Here Comes the Navy.

On 7 December 1941, the USS Arizona was bombed by Japanese aircraft at Pearl Harbor. A 1,760-pound armor-piercing bomb ignited the ship's forward ammunition magazines. The catastrophic explosion sank the battleship in just nine minutes, killing 1,177 crewmen and accounting for over half of the American lives lost that day. Because the damage was too severe to repair, the Navy salvaged parts of the superstructure and armaments but left the main hull resting on the harbor floor. The tragic event became a key rallying cry for the United States' entry into World War II. In 1958 President Eisenhower signed the bill authorizing the construction of the USS Arizona Memorial at the site of the sinking. There was a bit of a fundraising crisis at one point, but Elvis Presley contributed a concert that reignited contributions. The memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day 1962.

USS Arizona Memorial

 

Sources: WikiCommons, U.S. Navy Heritage Command, Wikipedia; Pearlhabor.org

World War One War Games – An Introduction

By Dana Lombardy

War games are useful tools, both for by military professionals and history enthusiasts who wish to study the past. Today, they come in two types: board games and electronic and digital. The interest in applying both kinds to World War One's strategies and battles is growing as is the sophistication of the games.

For the opening article in this series, I'd like to recommend to readers two World War One game reviews, one for a board game and a second one featuring a digital war game. These will help familiarize newcomers on how each type of game works, and how some of the major aspects of World War One are now being built into them.  In future articles, I'll present additional games and information on how readers can find other players and competitors, who share your interest in the Great War.

Fields of Despair: France 1914-1918  uses wooden blocks that hide the strengths of units until they engage in combat, simulating the “fog of war”. A video review can be seen HERE.

Fields of Despair Display Board

The Great War: Western Front  is a computer game for the PC described by  this reviewer as “quite possibly, the finest effort yet” to make a strategy video game about WWI. Read the game review HERE.

Note the two British heavy tanks in the lower half of the battlefield
display and the German A7V tank at the top

Our Series Contributor: Dana Lombardy is a Hall of Fame war game designer who created several WWI board games and a card game. His work can found at LombardyStudios.com

H.G. Wells Explains What a War of Attrition Is About

Editor's Introduction: In January 1916, H.G. Wells began a series for the Saturday Evening Post titled "What Is Coming"?  In his writings he accurately predicts that the Entente powers would eventually win a war of attrition.  However, what he does not factor into his analysis are the fall of the Russian Empire or the entry into the war of the United States. Consequently, he does not consider the possibility a state of the future where, a) Russia is out of the war, and b) the United States never joins the war.  This undermines much of the predictive side of Wells' articles, because by January 1918—even with the U.S. entry—the Central Powers appeared to be winning the war or, at least, still in possession of large swaths of their opponents territory. Of course, we know that all changes in 1918, but I'm just trying put Well's specific predictions to the side to focus on one remarkable excerpt from his series of articles.  That is his insightful explanation of how a war of attrition works on the nations entrapped in one, presented in the second article of his series. (The section I'm sharing, however, does reveal he believes it will be Germany that becomes exhausted first.) MH

The Rigors of a War of Attrition

Just how the people who use the word [attrition] so freely are prepared to define it is a matter for speculation. The idea seems to be a phase in which the production of equipped forces ceases through the using up of men or material or both. If the exhaustion is fairly mutual it need not be decisive for a long time. It may mean simply an ebb of vigor on both sides, unusual hardship, a general social and economic disorganization and grading down. The fact that a great killing off of men is implicit in the process, and that the survivors will be largely under discipline, militates against the idea that the end may come suddenly through a vigorous revolutionary outbreak. Exhaustion is likely to be a very long and very thorough process extending over years. A “war of attrition” may last into 1918 or 1919, and may bring us to conditions of strain and deprivation still only very vaguely imagined. What happens in the Turkish Empire or India or America or elsewhere may accelerate or retard or extend the area of the process, but is quite unlikely to end it.

Let us ask now which of the combatants are likely to undergo exhaustion most rapidly, and, what is of equal or greater importance, which is likely to feel it first and most. No doubt there is a bias in my mind, but it seems to me that the odds are on the whole against the Central Powers. Their peculiar virtue, their tremendously complete organization which enabled them to put so large a proportion of their total resources into their first onslaught and to make so great and rapid a recovery in the spring of 1915, leaves them with less to draw upon now. Out of a smaller fortune they have spent a larger sum. They are blockaded to a very considerable extent, and against them fight not merely the resources of the Allies, but, thanks to the complete British victory in the sea struggle, the purchasable resources of all the world. Conceivably they will draw upon the resources of their Balkan allies, but the extent to which they can do that may very easily be overestimated. There is a limit to the power for treason of these supposititious German monarchs that British folly has permitted to possess these Balkan thrones, and none of the Balkan peoples is likely to witness the complete looting of its country in the German interest by a German court with enthusiasm.

Germany will have to pay on the nail for most of her Balkan help. She will have to put more into the Balkans than she takes out. And compared with the world behind the Allies the Turkish Empire is a country of mountains, desert and undeveloped lands. To develop these regions into a source of supplies under the strains and shortages of wartime will be an immense and dangerous undertaking for Germany. She may open mines she may never work, build railways that others will enjoy, sow harvests for alien reaping. And for all these tasks she must send men. Men?

At present, so far as any judgment is possible, Germany is feeling the pinch of the war much more even than France, which is habitually parsimonious, and Russia, which is hardy and insensitive. Great Britain has really only begun to feel the stress. She has probably suffered economically no more than Holland or Switzerland, and Italy and Japan have certainly suffered less. All these countries are full of men, of gear, of salable futures. In every part of the globe Great Britain has colossal investments. She has still to apply the great principle of conscription, not only to her sons but to the property of her overseas investors and of her landed proprietors. She has not even looked yet at the German financial expedients of a year ago. She moves reluctantly but surely toward such a thoroughness of mobilization. There need be no doubt that she will completely socialize herself, completely reorganize her whole social and economic structure, sooner than lose this war. She will do it clumsily and ungracefully, with much internal bickering, but not so slowly as a logical mind might anticipate.

Germany then, I reckon, will become exhausted first among all the combatants. I think, too, that she will as a nation feel and be aware of what is happening to her sooner than any other of the nations that are sharing in this process of depletion. In 1914 the Germans were reaping the harvest of forty years of economic development and business enterprise. Property and plenty were new experiences, and a generation had grown up in whose world a sense of expansion and progress was normal. There existed no tradition of the great hardship of war, such as the French possessed, to steel their minds. They came into this war more buoyantly and confidently than any other people. Neither great victories nor defeats have been theirs, but only a slow vast transition from joyful effort to hardship, loss and loss and loss of substance, the dwindling of great hopes, the realization of ebb in the triumphant tide of national welfare. They are under stresses now as harsh as the stresses of France. . .  The concluding phase of a process of general exhaustion must almost inevitably be a game of bluff. Neither side will admit its extremity. 

Before the Yanks — The French Held the Argonne Dear

V.C. Scott O'Connor, 1917

If you look at a map of Eastern France you will see how the forest of the Argonne, with its crumpled hills, lies astride of the great road that leads from Verdun to Chalons, and you will understand at once why the Hun, eager to capture Verdun and drive another wound into the side of France, fought so hard for a foothold in this difficult country. It was a desperate business this fighting in the Argonne mud and the Argonne valleys and woods, with mine and countermine, with the bayonet and the hand-grenade; a bitter, relentless, obstinate struggle of man against man, trench against trench, of assaults and counter-attacks; of bloody and terrible contests, of which only the distant sound, like the murmur of a city afar off, has reached the ears of our people. But the French know what the Argonne fighting has been, and they know that they have won, as at Verdun, by dint of their pluck and tenacity,—the bull-dog courage that has hitherto been the special characteristic of the island soldier.

That is why the French are proud of the Argonne. And those of us who love this gallant people, who have known them of old as the embodiment of all knightly and chivalrous qualities, from the days of St. Louis to this present hour, rejoice with them in this fresh exhibition of the undying qualities of the race. Verdun and the Argonne, these are in a special sense a monument to the new France.

It was not my fortune to see Verdun. The fierce blow at the Hun, which was to drive him with an unmistakable significance from Douaumont and Vaux, was on the eve of its accomplishment, and the curtain was down between Verdun and the Argonne. But we got some little way on the road.

Travel Route of Narrator

From Chalons we made straight for St Ménehould, only stopping at l'Epine, where a company of French infantry were drawn up in the Place before the church-a stout hard-bitten lot of men under the command of a young officer of fine proportions, with the air of one who would lead them anywhere. The war has had rather a curious effect in this way: it has withdrawn, as it were, the mask under which the Napoleonic soldier has hidden himself for a hundred years. When you see these men in their blue uniforms marching out to fight, these remarkable-looking men who lead them, you understand in a flash what is meant by the military tradition of France. The palimpsest runs clear.

The church beside this little company of men was a beautiful thing in stone, with its sculptures without and its solemn peace within; and I could not resist looking in at the ceremonial that was afoot within its walls, the lights gleaming like stars amidst its gloom, the robed priest before the altar, the kneeling women at prayer. For these also are an inextinguishable part of France.

At St Ménehould we entered the forest-clad hills of the Argonne, and the road carried us through the beauties of the autumn woods to the village of Les Islettes, scarred by shell fire and maimed by the proximity of war. Had we gone on to Verdun we should in a few moments have been at Clermont, 12 miles in a line from the famous fortress; and from Clermont, had we gone north, we should have travelled upon "the road to Varennes."

But we had another destination to-day. Crossing the miniature valley of, the Biesme, which bisects the Argonne from north to south, we ascended the farther ridge and drove the car along the road that runs through the forest to the French entrenchments.

Upon either side of us the trees rose like a wall, somber where the firs stood in sentinel line, golden where the autumn colors marked the passing of the year. Under our wheels the mud was churned into a cream-the mud of the Argonne.

We had come into a land of the forest-dwellers. Deep in the glades were the huts of the French infantry. In a clearing by the roadside spread the graves of those who have died here in the Argonne. Even in these quiet days this sacred spot is the daily target of the German shells.

It stands at a cross-roads where the traffic meets, and the dead you see have to be buried. It is their comrades assembled for the last tribute that the shells seek out at these solemn moments.

A little farther through the forest and we are close up against the Four de Paris and the enemy's lines. And here, seen from within, is the little world in which the soldier of the Argonne has his being.

In these woods there are the huts in which he must live till the war is over, or the line of battle has advanced across the Rhine.

The ground in which they are imbedded is a puddle, and a glimpse into their interiors shows a long double line of beds and cubicles lost in the gloom of the farther distance, with rifles and accoutrements and the personal belongings of each soldier hanging from the walls and wooden posts.

Each bed is raised above the ground, its framework of wire spread tightly across from post to post, and on it a layer of sacking and blankets.

In this place a man can be warm and dry and sociable; but it is a hard life, redeemed only by the love of country, the pride of beauty, the contrast with harder things–sickness and wounds and death, –redeemed also for many by the ties of comradeship and fellowship in danger; for others, the solitary, made difficult by the fortuitous character of this very association. We are proud of our public schools, but there is no public school like the barrack behind the fighting line for its discipline and its lesson of human equality. A man who rises out of these dim surroundings into the light of acceptance by his fellows, as one who is better than themselves, is surely a man.

The French soldier has more to put up with than our own. His pay is microscopic; his comforts are reduced to the minimum necessary for bodily efficiency; his amusements, if any, are provided by himself. In places like this, where he must pass a year or more of his life, there is no Y.M.C.A. to cater for his larger needs; no place of common meeting where books and papers can be read or letters written; concerts and similar entertainments do not appear to be organized. A frugal hardness is the predominant note of the French arrangements.

On the other hand, the habit of games is not ingrained in the Poilu; the smack of the football is seldom heard behind the front of battle. The more active indulge themselves in gymnastics, and these are encouraged from a military point of view. I saw groups of men busy in this way in the Argonne. But gymnastics are not games. They do not help a man to forget himself in the same way. Is there any solvent for care like a twelve-minute chukker on the grass-the rush after an elusive ball?

But there is some joy for François in the co-operatifs, where the men assemble in hundreds, making shift in the mud and the wet of the yard, till their turn comes to enter the little shop and make their purchases. The storekeeper is a brisk, capable man trained to the job,  –  a Paris chemist or a grocer from some provincial town,-and as each soldier enters he reads from a slip of paper, on which he has made a list of the things he wants for himself and comrades – 12 pats of Norman butter, 6 packets of biscuits, 6 tins of sardines, 200 cigarettes, 2 bottles of good wine. There is evidently to be a small party in the barrack, and the purchaser goes off with his goods in a capacious knapsack, and a quiet look of contentment on his face.

A little extra food, a smoke, a gulp of wine- that is what it all comes to, and the Poilu plugs along, hardy, enduring, dutiful. He will be glad when the war is over, and he can go back to his mother or his wife, to little Jean and Marie, to the ancestral acre or the family shop; but meanwhile, for rich or poor, ignorant or cultivated, nobleman or peasant, priest or layman, there is the one pre-eminent call-his country, his beautiful France, must be saved, the brute that has fastened on her driven from her soil. Whisper in his ear the word "La Patrie," and he is stirred to the roots of his being. There is no love greater than this.

As to Glory and Honor and Empire, these are of a music to which his soul has been attuned through centuries of a splendid history; but they can wait. The first thing is to kill the Boche and drive him from the sacred hearth; and the knowledge that he is doing this is the consolation of the French soldier. In the first year of the War he used to ask when the War would end; he does not ask that question now. The granite is exposed. He knows the answer.

There are few places on the long French line where the destruction wrought by artillery fire is exhibited in a more contrasting form than here. One travels here for mile after mile through the forest, green in the spring-time, golden at this season of autumn, its soil carpeted with the brown tapestry of the fallen leaves, one's vision limited by the thronging trees. Here is a woodland as nature made it, rejoicing in its little valleys, its secret fountains and running streams; and there, as though it had been ravaged by a fire and swept by disease, upon the very edge of these secluded beauties, is The Desert of War.

A few trees stand out of it, gaunt and distorted, like criminals who have paid the price of their sins. The limbs and the skulls of dead men bleach in its precincts. There is nothing else. You must not look at it, except through a slit in a peep-hole, lest the enemy, suspecting your presence, should put a bullet through your enterprising head; and you must not think about it too much, lest its beastliness should obscure the ideals for which it is worth a man's while to die. And yet you must look at it well, and dwell upon every circumstance of horror and pain connected with it, lest you should ever be tempted by the illusion that war is a glorious and a splendid thing.

At an earlier period of the war the fighting on the Argonne was of the most bitter and obstinate description. To know how bitter and obstinate it was you must have been there or have spoken to those who went through it; but failing this you can learn something of the story from such a book, for example, as Jean Lory's Battle in the Forest. Mine and counter-mine, attack and counter-attack; artillery preparation; close trench fighting; men at handgrips; knife and bayonet, whole companies and battalions wiped out; the fierce will to win through, met by a fiercer refusal to make way; and in the end the triumph of the stronger will-the Huns' growing acceptance of failure.

The fight still goes on; the pioneers are busy on both sides making their tunnels–we went down into these–and exploding their mines. From trench to trench where they meet on the brow of that hill, men still shoot and slay each other at sight; it is still unwise to talk above a whisper as you move along the hidden ways within a few feet of the enemy; the air still resounds to the violent crash of the howitzer, the splitting roar of the 75; scarcely a day passes that some one is not killed or maimed. But in effect the battle of the Argonne is over, and the Hun has lost his tide.

 

Behind the trenches there is the post of the officer in command. The hills run down here on both sides, leaving a little valley between them; and in this valley there moves the life of the line in reserve. The dug-outs in which the officers and men live are caves that have been excavated in the valley slopes. Here is the Colonel's cave, with a little inscription beside it that speaks of the affection of his men. They have made it as comfortable for him as they can. It must always be a credit to a man in authority to be loved by those who work under him. It is the touchstone by which we judge him.

There is a fireplace in this cave, and a table and a bed, and the smallest of verandahs under the logs of the projecting roof in which you may suppose that he can sit on a quiet day. Upon the walls there are the wonderful maps which make all things plain, and sketches done by skilled hands. There is a telephone on the table.

Near by there is a cemented chamber, with an immensely solid roof, into which the commander and his staff can retire should the enemy's artillery become too violent. It is seldom used now. Beside this, again, there is the hospital, with its kitchen at the mouth of the cave, and its wounded men within, upon bunks fixed like racks against the wall. There is only a dim light here, and the men lie very still. Those who can be moved are sent very rapidly to a hospital at the base. "It is damp in here," says the Surgeon, "but we cannot help that. We do what we can to keep the place warm and dry."

Outside the blue infantry move amidst the gilded trees, the smoke of their fires rising slowly into the clearing of the sky. From time to time the shells burst in the road beyond, and the shrapnel bullets scatter with a noise like hail through the autumn leaves.

One or two fall at our feet.

Such is a quiet day in the Argonne.

Sources: The Scene of the War, V.C. Scott O'Connor, 1917; Images from War Illustrated and Sur le Vif  magazines,  Tony Langley Collection

Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe by James J. Sheehan

 

By James J. Sheehan

Mariner Books, 2009

Reviewed by Christopher Fish

Philadelphians looking at a new map of Europe following World War I

Originally Presented in The Stanford Review, 2009

In the post-World War world, the American and European outlooks on foreign policy have increasingly diverged. In particular, the dispute over Iraq and the difference in proposed strategy over the United States’ aggressive “War on Terror” have highlighted Europe’s more pacifist outlook. Stanford Professor former president of the American Historical Association James J. Sheehan, in Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe, digs into the root of these differences, examining the origin of the European “civilian state,” one which emphasizes domestic and economic affairs over militarism. He analyzes European history from the age of the violent preservation of national power to the peaceful creation of the European Union (i.e, from the end of the nineteenth century to the present).

Sheehan emphasizes that European states “were made by and for war,” and that throughout history, “war was as much a part of life as suffering and death.” In fact, the peace that came to the European mainland at the end of the nineteenth century was often seen as a cause for complacency and cultural decline, symbolic of the end of heroism. The vicious colonial wars seemed far removed from every day European life. At the same time, pacifist movements emphasized the destructive power of new weapons and mass armies, and states recognized that war would harm both the victors and the vanquished by destroying the global economy. Sheehan summarizes that while “all denounced wars of aggression” at the outset of World War I, “all were convinced that not going to war would risk their great-power status.” European states saw violence as an essential component of maintaining statehood.

Even after World War I, violence continued as an instrument of change and as a method to preserve colonial power. As communism and fascism attempted to provide stability in the post-war world, violence continued to remain important as a “transformative instrument,” essential to establishing a new order. The smothering of colonial rebellions suggested European desires to reassert their dominance. Disbelief that another war could arise after the horror of World War I could not mask the fact that “as long as one state stood ready and willing to fight,” war remained a danger. Fifty million dead in World War II and the devastation to the European population represented the final explosion within a violent Europe.

It was only in the stability paradoxically offered by the Cold War that European states could live in peace with one another; the “bipolar order imposed by the superpowers… eliminated the possibility of war among the European states.” World War II removed both the ability and the will to fight and the European empires shriveled; “by the 1960s, grandeur was no longer an important goal for European states.” Instead, Europeans turned to “material well-being, social stability, economic growth” as well as political and economic cooperation. Sheehan suggests that it was this decline of a culture of violence in Europe which helped result in the peaceful fall of the Soviet Union; “Gorbachev could afford to back down because he was confident that neither his foreign enemies nor his domestic opponents would kill him.”

Sheehan argues that the values of post-war European states, “made by and for peace,” prevent Europe from ever becoming a superpower. While in theory European countries could combine their military resources and become a form of federated political union, the priority of Europeans is not to forge a new European identity. The EU “does not need citizens who are prepared to kill and die” but rather “consumers and producers.” As a “super civilian state,” the European Union helps resolve the issues in which Europeans are most engaged—including economic well-being.

While Sheehan generalizes for all of Europe, his trends hold better for some countries than others. In Western Europe, popular opinion seems more often to oppose the United States and its perceived “imperialist” foreign policy, while Eastern Europe, until relatively recently subjugated by the Soviet Union, is more likely to advocate more aggressive policies. Certainly the reemergence of Russian expansionism, witnessed recently in Georgia, represents remnants of an imperialist mindset. In addition, while the “civilian state” is most pronounced in Europe, the United States has also emphasized domestic affairs, even if its foreign policy seems in general more aggressive than that of Europe.

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In Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? Sheehan suggests that Europe will always be dependent on a superpower, since it will not become one itself. While Europe’s predominantly civilian focus represents a more “enlightened” view of the world, one in which violence has been overcome, such a focus is not necessarily a realistic outlook for countries that have not felt the devastation of two world wars. Not until all countries commit to rejecting the use of violence against each other can a foreign policy dominated by pacifism be justified; until then, diplomacy must be backed by the threat of force. While Europe can engage in international diplomacy, ultimately it relies on a larger power—usually the United States—to provide the forceful backing.

Christopher Fish