A Dozen Fresh Images from the Collection of the Musee de l'Armee des Invalides, Paris

 

A Spahi  in a Trench, Bailly Sector (Oise), 27 September 27

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934), President of the Republic,
Views Damage Caused by a Zeppelin Bomb in Paris

75 mm Field Gun Model 1897

Castings for a Facial Reconstruction

Traditional Headgear of Battalion Chief Giraud of
the 4th Zouave Regiment

Spad S.VII  “Vieux Charles” of Captain Georges Guynemer

Anti-Prostitution Poster  
Soldier, the homeland is counting on you; keep all your strength for him. Resist the seductions of the street where illness as dangerous as war awaits you. It leads its victims to decay and death without use, without honor.

Statuette of Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929),
Reduction of the Statue on the Champs-Elysées

Foch's Marshal Batons

Battle of the Marne at Tracy-le-Mont on 14 September 1914

Model of a Trench

Eagle of Champagne (Trench Art?)

The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War

Order This Work HERE

By Samuel Hynes

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014

Laurence M. Burke, USMC National Museum, Reviewer

Originally Presented at H-Net, August, 2015

The centennial of the First World War seems to have brought little popular interest in the conflict in the United States. Perhaps this is because the centennial of the United States’ participation in the war will not happen until 2017, or perhaps it is because the American public knows much less about WWI. There has been, however, a slow but steady production of books about the war for the past several years. A recent addition to the topic is Samuel Hynes’s latest book, The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War. In it, Hynes looks at the most romanticized aspect of the conflict—the war in the air. Specifically, the book is about the American experience of the war in the air. In some ways, The Unsubstantial Air is an attempt to do for the US aviators of WWI what Hynes did in his own memoir, Flights of Passage (1988), which described his experience of WWII as a Marine Corps aviator serving in the Pacific theater.

Hynes is a professor of literature, not history, and the book reflects that. There is no central argument, no historical analysis. Instead, The Unsubstantial Air synthesizes numerous diaries, letters, memoirs, and other documents from US WWI aviators to achieve a sort of composite experience of what it was like to transition from civilian to military aviator during the war. The result is part John Keegan’s The Face of Battle, part cultural anthropology. He takes us inside the heads of these young men: what were their thoughts, their motivations, their fears, their hopes? Most especially, what was their experience of the First World War?

Hynes organizes his book thematically, following the order of someone  wanting to become a military aviator, beginning with the process of reading about the war, and being inspired to sign up for the aviation service once the United  States enters the war. Next is the experience of ground school, then traveling to Europe, basic flight training, and advanced flight training (with separate chapters for the pursuit, observation, and bomber pilots). Hynes then addresses actual combat, with chapters for the three actions in which the US Army participated, before finishing with a chapter about the end of the war and its aftermath.

Hynes’s chapters on the advanced training by specialty tells us a little bit about the emergence of doctrine regarding the roles of pursuit, observation, and bombardment aviation during the war, but only a little. His three chapters on the different US battles are even thinner regarding the progress of the fighting—this book is about the aviators’ perception of those battles, which was often fleeting, fragmentary, and uninformed.

Still, Hynes’s synthesis achieves a completeness of the experience that few single-source narratives can achieve. Soldiers’ letters home convey one sense of the war, while diaries express another. A somewhat fuller experience emerges if both letters and diaries can be put together by an editor, or when the soldier writes a memoir, but there are still likely to be holes. By collecting multiple authors’ documents, Hynes is able to connect incidents and experience that individuals skip over or mention only in passing. The synthesis of multiple sources also accomplishes a sort of “thick description.” This is something occasionally accomplished by individuals, most often in their letters home, when they are attempting to explain something to their correspondents. By combining multiple voices, however, Hynes gives us thick description even where none exists in the original sources.

Hynes’s sources include a few US naval aviators, but these appear entirely within the training portion of the book, the exception being occasion quotes from naval aviator Kenneth MacLeish. MacLeish, as part of his training with the British, served for a time in a Royal Naval Air Service squadron (later, after amalgamation of the RNAS and the Royal Flying Corps, it became a Royal Air Force squadron) flying Sopwith Camels on the northern end of the Western Front. But Hynes never gets to describing the naval aviators’ war—flying hours of anti-submarine patrol off the coasts of France, Britain, Ireland, and Italy. On the one hand, this is understandable. There is only so much one can say about the monotony of flying ASW patrol. But that is no less the experience of war than some of the army aviators Hynes does write about, who are stuck in non-flying jobs, or who go on a patrol over the lines and never see an enemy plane. On the other hand, naval patrols over the North Sea, the English Channel, and the Adriatic Sea faced the possibility of aerial combat with enemy aircraft, just like the army’s observational squadrons. This sort of flying also carried its own dangers and dramas—for instance, being forced down at sea and waiting for hours, hoping that your plight will be known and you will be rescued soon. Hynes does not give us this aspect of the aviators’ war.

Hynes is primarily interested in the frontline flyer’s experience of the war. There are few citations from anyone higher than squadron commander. Hynes quotes some of Elmer Haslett’s combat flying experiences from Haslett’s memoir Luck on the Wing (1920), but the quotes are from a time when Haslett was merely a squadron operations officer and nothing from his time as aviation operations officer for I Corps. The only senior officer identified as such is Billy Mitchell. Hynes is uncritical of Mitchell and the claims made of his importance to WWI US aviation, whether Mitchell himself is making them or whether others are doing so. It is not clear to me if this is simply how Mitchell appeared to the aviators Hynes is interested in or if Hynes himself is a fan of Mitchell.

As stated at the beginning of this review, The Unsubstantial Air is more about what the air war felt like to the participants, with no historical analysis or argument. For that reason, it may find greater appreciation among the aviation enthusiast community. That said, the book covers the broad experience of the path from untrained civilian to WWI military aviator more completely than any published single-author papers I have read (whether memoir, diary, collected letters, or some combination), although the synthetic voice means it loses the immediacy of such documents.

For the instructor, this book may be more useful in some sort of survey class than the published documents of an individual. For the researcher, it could be a resource for finding such records that speak to a particular issue. However, readers (or instructors) will have to provide the additional knowledge to put these experiences in historical context.

Laurence M. Burke

Source: Laurence M. Burke. Review of Hynes, Samuel, The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War. H-War, H-Net Reviews. August, 2015.

Le Mort de Chapman

Grave at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery

By Steve Ruffin

(Updated 1 August 2024)

Victor Emmanuel Chapman was the first American pilot to die in combat. He was born in 1890 in New York City, the son of a distinguished East Coast family. After graduating from Harvard in 1913, he traveled to France to attend the École des Beaux-Arts school of architecture in Paris. After hostilities commenced, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion, in which he fought for the next several months. In August 1915, he transferred to the French air service and flew many missions as a pilot for the French 1st Aviation Group, before becoming one of the founding members of the Lafayette Escadrille. 

With the Escadrille, in a wild aerial melee on 24 May 1916, Thénault, de Laage, Thaw, Rockwell, and Chapman were patrolling when they encountered a formation of 12 German airplanes. The dangerously impetuous Victor Chapman did not wait for an attack signal but simply dived on the large formation, forcing everyone else to follow suit. During the attack, Rockwell's Nieuport took a bullet to the windscreen, which sent glass and metal fragments into his face. Stunned and blinded by the blood, he made his way back to the aerodrome and landed safely. Fortunately, the wound was relatively superficial. After a few days of rest and recuperation in Paris, he was back in business. While Rockwell was fighting for his life, Victor Chapman was having a similarly unpleasant experience. Bullets whizzed all around him, into his airplane, and through his clothing, one of which grazed his arm. 

On 17 June, Victor Chapman once again impetuously broke formation and went hunting on his own. In a letter dated that same day to his own brother, Kiffin Rockwell explained what happened:

Chapman has been a little too courageous . . . He was attacking all the time, without paying much attention. He did the same thing this morning, and wouldn't come home when the rest of us did. The result was that he attacked one German, when a Fokker . . . got full on Chapman's back, shot his machine to pieces and wounded Chapman in the head. It is just a scratch but a miracle that he wasn't killed. Part of the controls on Chapman's machine were broken, but Chapman landed by holding them together with his hand. 

On the afternoon of 23 June, Victor Chapman took off from the aerodrome at Behonne, head still bandaged from his wound of six days earlier. He carried with him a package of newspapers, chocolate, a letter Balsley had just received in the mail, and some oranges that Victor had somehow managed to acquire. Chapman's plan was to join up with Thénault, Lufbery, and Prince, who had already taken off for a patrol over the lines, and afterward, as he told his mechanic, Louis Bley, "to take the oranges and chocolate to poor Balsley at the hospital, for I think there is little hope of saving him." Bley put the package in the airplane and shook hands with Chapman, who said, "Au revoir, I shall not be long." 

Exactly what happened to Chapman on this last mission will never be known, but a French Maurice Farman crew operating in the vicinity later reported a lone Nieuport desperately battling four enemy fighters northeast of Douaumont. They saw the Nieuport go down out of control and break into pieces in the air. It could only have been Chapman.

Victor Chapman

Victor Chapman's loss was a crushing blow to the squadron. The squadron's first fatality brought the grim reality of war painfully close to home—and as one of the most popular and courageous members of the squadron, his absence was keenly felt by his fellow pilots. However, given the reckless abandon with which Chapman flew, it was only a matter of time.

Those with whom he flew knew it, as did he himself. As he related to his "Uncle Willy"—William Astor Chanler—only three days before his death, "Of course I shall never come out of this alive." McConnell wrote of Chapman: 

Considering the number of fights he had been in and the courage with which he attacked it was a miracle he had not been hit before. He always fought against odds and far within the enemy's country. He flew more than any of us, never missing an opportunity to go up, and never coming down until his gasoline was giving out.

His machine was a sieve of patched-up bullet holes. His nerve was almost superhuman and his devotion to the cause for which he fought sublime.

Kiffin Rockwell was especially affected by Victor's loss, as he wrote to his brother on the day of Chapman's death:

Well, I feel very blue to-night. Victor was killed this afternoon . . .There is no question but that Victor had more courage than all the rest of us put together. We were all afraid that he would be killed, and I rooming with him had begged him every night to be more prudent. He would fight every Boche [German] he saw, no matter where or what odds . . . I am afraid it is going to rain to-morrow, but if not, Prince and I are going to fly about ten hours, and will do our best to kill one or two Germans for him.

Escadrille Commander Capitaine Thénault wrote simply, "Glory to Chapman, that true hero! Men like him are the pride of a nation, their names should ever be spoken with respect." 

At a ceremony on 28 June 1916, Chapman was posthumously promoted to sergeant and awarded the Croix de Guerre.  Chapman's remains (it is believed) are buried at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery, and he is commemorated at the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial outside Paris.

Originally Presented in Over the Top, September 2016

Bwana General: The Secrets of von Lettow-Vorbeck's Success

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck was born on 20 March 1870 in Germany. His father was an army general who encouraged his son to start a military career. In 1888 he studied at the War Academy. Later he was posted to China during the Boxer Rebellion as adjutant of the commander of the German contingent. During this time he fought alongside British troops and had experiences that would be useful in the future. 

Additional key assignments were to South Africa where he worked as an independent Company and Detachment Commander and to German South West Africa (now Namibia) where he helped to suppress the Herero and Hottentot rebellion. Lettow-Vorbeck used these years to learn and train that bush fighting tactics he would later use against the British during the East Africa Campaign. Back to Germany he got command of the 2nd Marine Battalion. In this time he had the chance to study the relationship between naval power, ground troops, and expansionism, an experience that was rare at this time. Before he went back to German East Africa (now Tanzania) to become commander of the Schutztruppe (protection force) in 1913 he was commander of the Schutztruppe in Cameroon.

After his arrival in German East Africa, he used the time to inspect the country, learn about the colony and its people, about the infrastructure, and especially about the British neighbors in the British-ruled East Africa Protectorate (now Kenya). He inspected the border very closely and “once the war started, Lettow-Vorbeck defended German East Africa with skill, determination and courage.” His troops consisted of never more than 3,000 Germans and 12,000 African soldiers, known as Askari, and porters. During the war, Lettow-Vorbeck managed to hold out against a considerably larger force of British, Belgian, Portuguese, and African troops. 

An Askari Company of the Schutztruppe, 1914

It was obvious for him from the beginning, that it would be impossible to defeat the British with their settlements in East Africa and South Africa on the one hand and with the Royal Navy that controlled the sea and therefore the supplies to East Africa on the other hand. “Instead he decided that his greatest service to his country would be to occupy as many troops as possible, for as long as possible, in order to prevent them being used against Germany in other theatres of war.”

[For more information on the campaigns in East Africa, clice HERE to read the articles we've published on that subject over the years.]

By the last year of the war, however, Lettow-Vorbeck's force had been reduced to about 2,000 of his most hardened troops. This last year of the East African campaign thus saw little fighting but endless marches of the Schutztruppe, pursued by the British, Portuguese, and Rhodesian troops, who were never able to catch it. The Schutztruppe left a trail of scorched earth as it marched through several thousand kilometers of Portuguese East Africa, the southwestern part of German East Africa, and finally North Rhodesia, which it invaded in October 1918.  Although his Schutztruppe had not been defeated, Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered to the British 14 days after the end of the war in Europe.  

The war in East Africa was different to the war in Europe. No entrenched mass armies fought against each other, it was small scale engagement over large stretches of bush country and “the military commanders lived and fought with their troops”. This was necessary for three reasons.

*First, fighting a war in bush country with a relatively small amount of troops calls for a lot of movements and quick reaction times, especially when the enemy has a lot more troops and communication over distance is not reliable.

*Second, the coherence of the troops is very important and the combining of German Schutztruppe with African soldiers called for a very engaged leadership, especially with the burden of long and fast marches and no supply lines.

*Third, the commander had to be able to react to the disposition of enemy forces and to adapt quickly to changes of the enemy’s tactics, which can be done best while being in theater personally. 

In the case of L.-V.,  his leadership philosophy while living and fighting with the troops was successful. One adversary, General Crowe, who served under General Smuts made the comment: “Colonel von Lettow had undoubtedly gained the confidence of the forces under him.”

Monument on Hamburg Barracks Named in
Honor of Lettow-Vorbeck

The Keys to Lettow-Vorbeck's Success

Unquestionable Legal and Personal Authority

The governor of German East Africa (Heinrich Schnee) was the supreme military authority in German East Africa. At the beginning of the war the governor wanted the colony to stay independent, but Lettow-Vorbeck's plan was to engage the adversary and do as much harm as possible. In the end, Lettow-Vorbeck convinced Schnee, and after that he had the support of the command in Berlin and the governor in Dar-es-Salaam. Therefore, he had full legal authority.

On his relationship to the men he commanded—Lettow-Vorbeck had the experience of his postings to China, South Africa and Cameroons before he was appointed to East Africa. He also had experience as a commander of a Schutztruppe from his time in Cameroon. Because of these facts, his experience was never questionable.  He earned the respect and loyalty of his Askari troops in a number of way such by limiting the number of personal servants of  officers and convincing his officer corps not to claim any special comforts for themselves. Such measures help explain why almost all his African troops stayed with him throughout the entire war and shared all the hardships.

Skill at Matching Tactics to Strategy

Lettow-Vorbeck was a commander on the operational level, conducting guerilla warfare with regular troops with the mission of defending a German colony against the adversary while inflicting as much harm on Allied troops as possible. 

The strategy L.V.  adopted was to tie down as many British troops as possible both to do as much harm as possible to the adversary and by preventing their redeployment to other theaters more critical to the Central Powers. According to the force ratio between the Germans and British it was clear for Lettow-Vorbeck  from the outset, that it would be impossible to defend German East Africa against the British conventionally for an extended period of time. “The need to strike great blows only quite exceptionally, and to restrict myself principally to guerilla warfare, was evidently imperative," he later wrote.

The tactics to achieve this aim were absolutely different to those applied in Central Europe. There were no mass armies in Africa and no war out of trenches fighting for each single meter of ground. It was a guerilla war with small specialized fighting units,  agile, mobile, and highly motivated troops. Lettow-Vorbeck described his methods:

Knowledge of the desert improved, and in addition to patrols for destruction and intelligence work, we developed a system of fighting patrols. The latter, consisting of twenty to thirty Askari, or even more, and sometimes equipped with one or two machine-guns, went out to look for the enemy and inflict losses upon him. […] The influence of these expeditions on the self-reliance and enterprise of both Europeans and natives was so great that it would be difficult to find a force imbued with a better spirit.

Furthermore, it was necessary for Lettow-Vorbeck to adapt his troops and his tactics to the level  of supply and the terrain they had to operate in:

Expeditions through districts providing neither water nor food require a degree on experience on the part of the troops which could not possibly exist at that stage of the war. […] this conditions improved as the troops became better trained, and as our knowledge of the country, which was at first mainly terra incognita, increased.

Ability to Operate Independently

Lettow-Vorbeck operated with a near total  absence of communication with the headquarters in Berlin. He could not receive orders on a regular basis and not sent reports on a regular basis. But in a general sense—as both a former member of the German General Staff and as the army's most experienced colonial officer, and with his vast and specific issue of knowledge of the local environment, natives, and opposing forces in the adjacent colonies—he did not need a lot of direction. In his combination of mastery of details, enormous self-confidence, and independence of mind, he is a rare bird among generals of the Great War.  He brings Mustafa Kemal to mind.

Lettow-Vorbeck's Triumphal Return in Berlin

Lettow-Vorbeck returned to Germany on 2 March 1919 to a hero's welcome. He led the veterans of the Schutztruppe in their tattered tropical uniforms on a victory parade through the Brandenburg Gate, which was decorated in their honor. Fourteen months after his return to Germany, Lettow-Vorbeck commanded the troops that ended the Spartacist Uprising in Hamburg. He was well known in Germany after the end of WWI, and the Nazi regime wanted to use him for their program, which he strictly refused. This refusal caused a lot of inconvenience for him, and by the end of WWII he lived in near poverty. He recovered and was able to visit Africa and the site of his successes. Lettow-Vorbeck died with the age of 94 in 1964

Sources: "What Were the Keys to Success for Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and T.E. Lawrence," Capt S.W. Fliege, Canadian Forces College; "Lettow-Vorbeck", 1914-1918 Online; Wiki Commons

Where Did the Red Army Come From?

Red Army Soldiers Firing a Salute

The disintegration of the Imperial Army opened the way for the Bolshevik takeover of power.  Soldiers refusing to recognise the authority of their officers had deserted, mutinied, and formed committees to demand radical reforms and an end to the war. After the February Revolution in 1917, the officers blamed the Provisional Government for this collapse and did not intervene when Vladimir Lenin's (1870–1924) Bolsheviks overthrew it in October 1917. Many soldiers had reason to believe that the Bolsheviks would support their calls for demobilisation. However, the new government soon found itself facing internal and external threats for which it required an armed force to defend itself.

The Bolsheviks distrusted regular standing armies, which they associated with the social privilege and repression of the old regime. As socialists, they preferred a citizens’ militia made up of class-conscious proletarians. Therefore, in January 1918, the Bolsheviks first sought to build a voluntary army using the Red Guards—the politicized units of armed workers—as a core. Recruitment was to be based on political loyalty and social class.  However, only 20,000 volunteers answered the call up instead of the 300,000 hoped for. When hostilities with Germany resumed following the breakdown of the Brest-Litovsk peace talks, the new force was defeated at Narva in February 1918, forcing the Soviet government to sign a humiliating peace treaty.

Trotsky

Following this failure, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), the newly appointed commissar for war, oversaw a series of measures to create a regular army in the spring of 1918. These efforts continued following the outbreak of the civil war. Trotsky’s leadership during the civil war secured a Bolshevik victory and contributed to the successful consolidation of the communist government within Russia. As domestic and international counter-revolutionary forces began to unite against the Bolshevik government, newly appointed Commissar of War Trotsky transformed the peoples militia into the indomitable Red Army. Ignoring the heavy criticism of fellow party members, Trotsky implemented a series of military measures typical of the former tsarist regime. His reintroduction of ranks and abolishment of soldiers committees restored a strict hierarchical structure within the army and ensured the maintenance of Red discipline necessary to achieve Bolshevik victory. 

Recognizing that he lacked the tactical skills necessary to command the Reds, Trotsky recommissioned former tsarist officers to train his new army into a formidable fighting force. He ensured the loyalty of these troops by attaching political commissars to each army unit and reinstating heavy penalties for soldier desertion. Thus, the Red Army’s devotion to the Bolshevik cause can be attributed to the centralized and committed leadership of Trotsky. Within his propaganda train, Trotsky would travel from front to front providing supplies to the Red Army and boosting soldier morale with his inspirational oratory, making him a "symbol of victory and unifying factor at the fronts." The dedication and energy of Trotsky within his role as commissar of war ensured the Red Army victory over the Whites and the successful continuation of Bolshevik rule within Russia.

The Red Army Disarms a Contingent of the Czeck Legion

The debate over the regular army also influenced measures to ensure party control over the army and raise the revolutionary consciousness of its rank and file. The position of commissar was introduced to ensure the political loyalty of commanders (in particular, of military specialists) and to strengthen their authority over the troops. Orders from commanders required the countersignature of a commissar. The Bolsheviks mobilized Communist party members into the army to bolster its resolve. They created special forces units (chony), largely autonomous elite units of local party workers that often operated alongside secret police (Cheka) troops. A Political Administration of the Red Army (PUR) was founded to supervise the commissars and coordinate the party work in the army.

The move toward a mass army in 1919 created enormous supply problems. In a vicious circle, the lack of supplies led to large-scale desertion and the need for further conscription, which in turn further strained supplies. Punitive measures alone proved ineffective. The Bolsheviks employed amnesties and introduced welfare support for the families of Red Army men to tackle the problem. There was particular suspicion towards the former Tsarist officers like Alexei Brusilov. These deserted no more often than did other Red commanders. However, the impact of their disloyalty was often great as they included graduates of the General Staff Academy in important positions. Some even managed to set up secret organisations within the Red Army to help the Whites.

Artillerymen of the New Red Army, 1918

Despite these difficulties, the Bolsheviks forged the Red Army into a tool capable of maintaining its power in Russia and keeping most of the former Empire’s territory under its control. At its height in October 1920, it was, on paper, 5.5 million strong, although only about 700,000 of these were active fighters. Certainly, the failings of its opponents, who, indeed, faced many of the same problems, helped it triumph. However, the creation of the Red Army also demonstrated the Bolsheviks’ superior state-building abilities. Combatting desertion, for example, required the establishment of a documentary regime to determine who had been called up. The support given to the families of Red Army men redefined the relationship between the soldier and the state, transforming military service into a contract between the two.

Thus, the creation of the Red Army in the midst of the Civil War had far-reaching consequences for the emergent Soviet state. It also had fateful repercussions for the ruling party and the army itself, militarising the former and subjecting the latter to extensive party control. In the party, military service became a central marker of political loyalty, a wartime ethos of sacrifice and obedience emerged, and even the language of politics acquired a distinctively military tone.

Source: Christopher Gilley, University of Hamburg in 1914-1918 Online; Tsfx.com.au

Countdown to America's Entry Into the Great War—A Roads Classic

By Burton Yale Pines

It was America’s declaration of war on Germany on 6 April 1917 that transformed the Great War into a true world war. For 31 months neutral America had been watching Europe’s great powers pulverizing each other. Now America was joining that battle. Here is a countdown of events and policies that brought America onto Europe’s battlefields:

4 August 1914 Just hours after the war’s outbreak, President Woodrow Wilson in a proclamation to the nation declares “a strict and impartial neutrality” for America. He forbade Americans to “take part, directly or indirectly” in the war. Two weeks later, in a message to the Senate, he added that the U.S. “must be neutral in fact as well as in name.” Neutrality was almost universally popular, backed by 878 of the nation’s 897 major newspapers. One of 1915’s most popular songs was “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.”

Early August 1914 Britain cuts the two trans-Atlantic telegraph cables linking America to Germany, thus giving London almost total control of all news reaching the U.S. from Europe. Tight British censorship kept from American readers reporting critical of the Allies or sympathetic to Germany. Meanwhile, through its War Propaganda Board, Britain launched what became an unprecedented massive propaganda campaign in the U.S. aimed at bringing America into the war by portraying Germans as barbaric Huns and aggressors.  

October 1914 onward America begins extending credit to Britain, France and Russia, allowing them to purchase American war materiél, food, and other goods. Though Germany too was eligible for credit, it received almost none, since Britain’s near-total warship blockade stopped American ships from reaching German ports (even though, as a neutral, the U.S. had legal and traditional rights to trade with all nations). The booming trade between America and the Allies ignited a huge demand for the output of America’s farms and factories and for the financing to pay for that output. As these sectors became increasingly dependent on sales and loans to the Allies, they became a huge and powerful interest group in Washington and across the nation pushing to help the Allies.   

7 May 1915 German U-boat U-20, firing a single torpedo, sinks the ocean liner RMS Lusitania, drowning 1,198 passengers, including 128 Americans. This was widely denounced in the U.S. as an outrage and a confirmation of the British assertion that Germany was a criminal nation that had to be defeated. The sinking reinforced in the public mind the view that the German submarine was a barbaric weapon, going far beyond warfare’s accepted rules by allowing an unseen foe to attack without warning.  

13 May 1915 Britain’s Bryce Commission, headed by James Bryce, Britain’s former very popular ambassador to the U.S., releases its report (in 30 languages) accusing German soldiers of committing obnoxious atrocities in Belgium and France. The report cited, among other incidents, the crucifixion of a Canadian soldier, decapitations of war prisoners, gang rape, sexual mutilation of Belgian and French women, and the bayoneting of Belgian infants. This report, writes historian Thomas Knock, “created a sensation [in the U.S.] Germany would never fully recover from the revulsion that swept the U.S.” (In the postwar years, historians fully discredited the Bryce Report, finding that it was almost entirely propaganda and was based on concocted evidence and fabrications.)

8 June 1915 William Jennings Bryan resigns as secretary of state, protesting that Wilson’s extremely tough response to Germany over the Lusitania sinking was unfairly one-sided because it ignored Britain’s similar violation of international law by its blockade keeping American and other neutral ships from Germany. Jennings had been the Wilson cabinet’s most fervent and committed champion of neutrality; he was replaced at the State Department by strongly pro-Allies Robert Lansing. Reflecting Lansing’s views is his September 1916 diary entry that America should “join the Allies as soon as possible and crush the German Autocrats.”  

President Wilson at a Preparedness Event

August 1915 The Preparedness Movement bursts into public awareness as the press extensively covers the 1,300 New York businessmen, professionals, and notables who descended on the town of Plattsburgh, New York, for five weeks of grueling military-like training to prepare themselves for possible military service. By spring 1916, scores of similar “camps” for middle-class men had popped up across the nation, while parades, rallies, and other events warned the public that America was woefully unprepared for war. Reinforcing this tale of military vulnerability were a host of best-selling books (such as America Fallen and Defenseless America) and blockbuster (silent) movies ("The Battle Cry of Peace"). Though taking no sides in Europe’s Great War, the Preparedness Movement got Americans thinking seriously that their nation ultimately may go to war. 

July 1916 London blacklists 87 American firms, violating their rights to commerce under international law. Congress and the press demanded that Wilson take action against Britain to defend America’s freedom of the seas and its right, as a neutral, to trade with anyone. But he did nothing, tacitly acquiescing to the British blockade. By contrast, demonstrating America’s increasing tilt away from neutrality, Wilson continued to insist that Germany abide strictly by international law.   

31 January 1917 Germany notifies the U.S. that, on the following day, its U-boat commanders have orders to attack all ships in the war zone around Britain and France as retaliation against the Royal Navy’s blockade of Germany. Three days later, Wilson breaks diplomatic relations with Germany. With their new battle orders, the U-boats began patrolling the high seas for Allied ships and in the war zone for all ships. Within days, an American merchantman was sunk; by mid-March three more were torpedoed. 

Tsar Nicholas II

March 1917 The collapse of Romanov rule in Russia makes it politically  easier for Wilson to support the Allies, removing from the Allied camp the repressive tsarist regime that was extremely strongly opposed by such key American constituencies as liberals, Progressives, Jews, Poles, and other East and Central European immigrant groups.  

2 April 1917 Woodrow Wilson asks a special session of Congress to send him, for his signature, a declaration of war against Germany. In his address, widely regarded by many historians as one of the great presidential orations, strangely missing was any litany of alleged wrongs committed by Germany against America to warrant America’s going to war. All he could point to, and did repeatedly, was a single German action: the violation of American neutrality by the U-boats. Instead of justifying war as a way to stop Germany from allegedly harming America (and to punish Germany for that), Wilson described his call for war as an opportunity to improve the world by, introducing a phrase that became one of the most famous in American history, making “the world safe for democracy.”

6 April 1917 The House of Representatives votes 373 to 50 for war against Germany, following a Senate vote two days earlier of 82 to 6. A messenger then sped this joint declaration down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, where Wilson, at 1:18 p.m., signed it. Immediately a Navy lieutenant ran out onto the White House lawn and by hand waves sent a prearranged message to another officer waiting across the street at a Navy Department window. At once, the signal was relayed to every U.S. Navy ship and shore installation: “W...A...R.” 

Our contributor, Burton Yale Pines (1940–2019), was the author of the award-winning America’s Greatest Blunder: The Fateful Decision to Enter World War One. Burt and I became friends when he joined my 2014 Centennial tour of the war's first battlefields in Belgium and France. He was a great traveling mate and later contributed several contributions to my publishing outlets. MH

What a Busy Little Farm!—Ferme d'Hurtebise Was the Site of Five Battles

Looking Toward Paris Today 
Ferme d'Hurtebise on the Chemin des Dames
(Also See Map Below)

I've driven by the little farm on the Chemin des Dames shown above maybe two dozen times, but I've always been in too much of a rush to stop here. There is just so much to see in the area—major historical sites like the Caverne du Dragon, Plateau de Californie, and Craonne of the famous song. Of course, I also missed some big clues that should have triggered further historical research about what had transpired at the farm. There's a big statue of Napoleon about a mile to the east of here, and  there used to be a French tank from World War II overlooking the "Lady's Way" somewhere nearby that has since disappeared. What has kindled my new interest in Ferme d'Hurtebise is the discovery during a search for candidates for my "Lonesome Memorials" series of a significant monument adjacent to the farm. I'd never viewed it before since it's not visible from the main road. This led to more discoveries about what had happened at the farm. That turned out to be a much bigger tale than the monument's. 

Note the figures include a Napoleonic soldier and and World War I Poilu as well as the dates 1814 and 1914. This suggests, of course, that the farm was the site of significant fighting both years. A little focused research turned up surprising information on other battles fought on this same site in 1915, 1917, and 1940.  Why was this apparently insignificant little farm repeatedly a locale for major warfare?

Before discussing the five battles, let me share a little about the monument itself. The current monument was installed in 1927 to supersede the monument shown below that was dedicated in March 1914 on the centennial of Napoleon's partial victory in the Battle of Craonne. In that struggle his army opposed a combined army of Imperial Russians and Prussians led by the Prussian field marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. This first monument was destroyed very early in the Great War, probable during the September 1914 Battle of the Aise. By the end of the war, the farm was devastated and was later completely rebuilt.

Dedication March 1914

The Five Battles

1.  7 March 1814: The Battle of Craonne

See a discussion on this very complex battle and the role Hurtebise Farm played in the fighting at Napoleon-Empire.Net Needless to say, Ferme d'Hurtebise was on the front line. Bony managed to gain his final victory—abeit a controversial one—before his exile to Elba.

Napoleon Still Overlooks the Craonne Battlefield

2.  13–22 September 1914: First Battle of the Aisne

The German retreat from the Marne and following pursuit by the Allies led to a back and forth struggle for the heights overlooking the Aisne Valley.  Hurtebise farm (for reasons discussed below) became a key position. Violent fighting took place here 13–18 September with the 4th Zouaves taking the farm and the 12th IR defending. During these six days, the owners of the Hurtebise farm, the Adam family, took refuge in the cellar, refusing to leave their farm. They were eventually evacuated.  On 22 September German forces mounted a major assault on the position eventually taking possession of the farm which was on the front line for the remainder of 1915.

3. 25 January 1915: German Counteroffensive

After successfully defending against a French new year's offensive, the German army mounted a major attack to consolidate its dominant position on the heights, pushing back French troops towards the Aisne Valley below the Plateau de Californie. These battles were particularly deadly, with more than 2,000 killed (at least 850 Germans, 1,000 to 1,500 French.  Ferme d' Hurebise, now a pile of ruins, became a rear outpost until 1917.  Since Soissons to the west was also threatened, this period is sometimes known as L'Affaire de Soissons.

4. April–May 1917:  Second Battle of the Aisne (Nivelle Offensive)

The ill-fated French advance would reach Ferme d'Hurtebise again. The farm would pass from one camp to the other, with the armies never managing to stabilize their position on the highly coveted terrain. The 3rd Ludendorff Offensive of 1918 would be launched from the surrounding plateau.

5. 20 May 1940: Battle of France

During the French withdrawal a convoy of the 4th Armored Division was ambushed by a German Panzer column and virtually destroyed after intense fighting.

Post-WWI Destruction and Barbed Wire
Around the Original Monument

The Reason Why

In General

The Aisne heights, a commanding position, just 55 miles from the nation's capital, would be important to both invaders and France's defenders. But why so much action at this specific point?

The Specifics

Ferme d'Hurtebise is located at a unique geographical position. 

1.  It is on the major road along the Heights (the Chemin des Dames or D18 in today's system)

2. It is also on the only road that connects the Aisne Valley (southside) with the Ailette Valley on the northside.

3. As can be seen in these drone photos it sits on a plateau, something of a saddle, that can be turned into a strong position with clear views along the ridge and down into both valleys.

4.  It seems Ferme d'Hurtebise was simply destined to attract a lot of military attention should France ever go to war—as it did.

The Crossroads: Looking East Along D18 and
South into the Aisne Valley

Looking North into the Ailette Valley

End Game in the Sinai Campaign: El Arish, El Magdhaba, and Rafa

El Arish, Abandoned

Following the August 1916 defeat of the Ottoman advance at Romani, in accordance with his defense-of-the-canal-at-a-distance strategy, Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) Commaner General Archibald Murray ordered his forces to continue the advance eastward to the boundary of the Sinai Peninsula. This could only be achieved at the rate of construction of the coastal rail line and the parallel water pipeline given raids and spoiling tactics by the enemy. Leading the British advance was the "Desert Column" commanded by General Sir Philip Chetwode. Four months were required to complete the next 60 miles of infrastructure. By the end of November 1916, the EEF was positioned before the largest town on the Sinai, El Arish, where Turkish and German troops were dug in. It was time for organized fighting to resume.

On 20 December, General Murray gave orders to capture El Arish, planning to eventually push on from there to Rafah. The Turkish garrison there had noted the methodical advance of British infrastructure by aerial reconnaissance and knew that British naval dominance in the Mediterranean rendered them vulnerable from the sea as well. That same day, the Turks abandoned El Arish, with some heading back east toward Rafah and the Turkish border and others heading south and east toward Magdhaba, out of the range of British naval guns and water supplies. British planes spotted the evacuation, so the plans to capture the town by force were not needed. On 21 December, ANZAC cavalry units entered the town, and British engineers soon began improving the port to serve as an advance base for the British in the Sinai.

The Sinai Campaign

Magdhaba, an outpost 22 miles southeast of El Arish, was the scene of a subsequent action fought on 23 December 1916, when Turkish forces threatening the southern flank of the advancing EEF were attacked by Major General Harry Chauvel's ANZAC Mounted Division, which had the Imperial Camel Corps attached. The attack required a quick victory as Chauvel's men would be operating over 23 miles from the closest source of water.

On the 22nd, as Chauvel was receiving his orders, the commander of the Turkish "Desert Force," General Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein visited Magdhaba. Though Magdhaba was now in advance of the main Turkish lines, Kress von Kressenstein felt required to defend it as the garrison, the 2nd and 3rd battalions of the 80th Regiment, consisted of locally recruited Arabs. Numbering over 1,400 men and commanded by Khadir Bey, the garrison was supported by four old mountain guns and a small camel squadron. Assessing the situation, Kress von Kressenstein departed that evening satisfied with the town's defenses.

Captured Redoubt at El Magdhaba

When he arrived, Chauvel found that the defenders had constructed five redoubts to protect the town. Deploying his troops, Chauvel planned to attack from the north and east and to prevent the defenders from escaping, a Light Horse regiment. was sent southeast of the town. The 1st Australian Light Horse was placed in reserve along the Wadi El Arish. As the attack unfolded, it was met by surprisingly heavy artillery and machine gun fire. The frontal assault soon stalled with Chauvel's men pinned down on all fronts by heavy enemy fire. Lacking heavy artillery support to break the deadlock and concerned about his water supply, Chauvel contemplated breaking off the attack and went so far as to request permission from his immediate superior to break off the attack.

Nevertheless, the success in this hard-fought action was secured through a resolute assault with the bayonet by the 1st Light Horse Brigade, commanded by Brigadier Charles Cox, just as Chauvel ordered his force to withdraw. A mounted charge by the 10th Light Horse to secure vital water supplies nearby was also a vital contributory factor in the victory.

Encouraged by the apparent ease with which the garrison at Magdhaba had been destroyed, General Murray, and his staff now decided to mount a raid against the last significant Ottoman presence in the Sinai—the Ottoman garrison at Rafah. This involved much more risk than the attack on Magdhaba because Rafah was connected by road to Gaza, where the bulk of the Ottoman Fourth Army was gathering and the Sinai railway had not yet advanced far enough to allow large numbers of infantry to be brought across the desert from El Arish to attack Rafah. The British would once again have to rely on their mounted troops.

On 7 January 1917, the Anzac Mounted Division was ordered to assemble at Sheikh Zowaiid, 16 km from Rafah, to prepare for the attack. The commander of the EEF raiding force, General Philip Chetwode, also had at his disposal the British 5th Mounted Brigade, the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade, and a small British armored car detachment. Against this force the Ottoman Turkish garrison could muster three battalions of the 31st Infantry Regiment, a mountain artillery battery (four guns), and small cavalry and camelry detachments—a total strength of just over 2000 men. These troops were well entrenched just southwest of Rafah village, occupying a large earthen fort complex known as "the Reduit" which was protected by a semi-circle of three separate trench systems. There was little natural cover in the approaches to these defenses and Ottoman machine gun nests were well sited with good fields of fire. The only positive feature from the attackers’ point of view was the complete absence of barbed wire surrounding them.

Ottoman Prisoners at Rafah

After two days of preparation and reconnaissance, Chetwode’s force was ready to launch its attack. In the early hours of 9 January, his troops moved out under cover of darkness. The basic plan called for the complete and rapid encirclement of Rafah by horsemen and cameleers, followed by simultaneous assaults from all sides. The New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade was charged with carrying out the most daring part of this plan: sweeping around behind Rafah in a wide arc to cut it off from the road to Khan Yunis and Gaza, then attacking the Reduit from the rear.

Once all the mounted brigades were in position, the attack began at 0930. A half-hour artillery bombardment was followed by the first assaults on the Ottoman trenches. Most of the attacking troops had dismounted about 600 meters from the Ottoman lines. It quickly became clear that crossing this gap and overrunning the defenses would be no easy task. By midday, the attackers were more or less pinned down by the relentless artillery, machine gun and rifle fire. As the afternoon wore on the attackers made only slow progress in reaching and reducing the defenses, with the Ottoman Turks resisting fiercely. By now the danger that an Ottoman relief force would arrive from Gaza was increasing. Sure enough, just after 1600 hrs, scouts reported that Turkish infantry were advancing, Chetwode reluctantly decided that he had no choice but to call off the attack and retreat.

Just as Chetwode began to issue the order to retreat, the New Zealanders, who had swept through Rafah village that morning and been engaged in the fight for the Reduit and a small hill known as Point 265 ever since, finally broke through the Ottoman defenses. With two bayonet charges, they crossed the last of the open ground and captured both Ottoman positions after a brief hand-to-hand fight. This opened the way for the other attacking brigades to outflank and break into the rest of the Ottoman trenches. Chetwode quickly cancelled his order, and his brigade commanders renewed their assaults. Within an hour the Ottoman defenses had been completely overrun.

The last military threat in the Sinai had been removed for the EEF. The entire Sinai was now a safety buffer for the Suez Canal. This, however, was no longer a sufficient achievement. Due to the incredible losses being experienced on the Western Front, some of the British leadership, like David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill had begun once again to look to the east to gain strategic advantages over the Central Powers. Control of the Mediterranean, securing the lines to India, and access to oil, were now priorities. In 1917 the EEF would be asked to continue the pressure against the Ottomans by pushing into Palestine. In next month's Trip-Wire, we will examine the ensuing battles for Gaza and Beersheba, when the EEF broke through to Jerusalem.

Sources: Today in World War I; New Zealand History; Australian War Memorial; ThoughtCo; St. Mihiel Tripwire, Dec. 2021