U-boat Assault on America: The Cruise of U-156

U-155, Class Sister of U-156, on Display in London
Postwar, Note Twin Deck Guns and Wide Hull to Carry
Cargo or Supplies

In earlier articles on Roads we have discussed the 1917-1918 U-boat assault on America during the First World War, HERE and HERE.  Our source article for these two articles focused on three U-boats that were active off the Atlantic Coast  (U-117, U-140, and U-151).  These boats were quite successful sinking or disabling over 50 Allied vessels during their time on station off of Canada and the U.S. They inflicted the damage via surface and torpedo attacks, by laying mines, or destroying vessels by various means after forcing their crews to stop and abandon ship. 

There was, however, a fourth U-boat, the U-156—specially designed for long-range operations—that also wrecked similar destruction and has also been officially credited by the U.S. Navy with sinking—by minelaying—one of the two U.S. Navy combat vessels lost during the war, the 13,680 ton armored cruiser USS San Diego.  [A little personal note here. The USS San Diego—originally the USS California—was built at San Francisco's Union Iron Works while my grandfather Tom Stack was working.]

USS San Diego,  Lost 19 July 2018

The initial investigation on the sinking of the cruiser concluded a mine had caused its sinking. Over the years, however, other theories emerged involving a torpedo attack or sabotage.  These suggestions raised enough doubts to trigger another very well resourced study a century after the San Diego was lost.  The online Smithsonian Magazine of 14 December 2018 summarized the results:

. . . A team of investigators from 10 government agencies and academic institutions spent the past two years researching to find the conclusive answer. Using archival documents, as well as 3D scans of the shipwreck, the team was able to create sophisticated models of how the ship flooded and how the explosion impacted its hull. Ken Nahshon, research engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division, tells Niiler that the results are consistent with hitting a mine. The flooding model also shows that the design of the ship’s coal storage compartments probably led to its quick sinking, not mistakes by the crew.

This story of the USS San Diego's sinking, as well as the story of the subsequent rampage by the U-156 has been somewhat neglected over the years. For the cruiser, this might have been because the loss of life for the ship was relatively low for the sinking of a large warship—6 killed and 6 injured—or because it was late in the war when the nation's eyes were focused on the Western Front.  As for U-156 , its subsequent operations mainly focused on an odd, undramatic selection of targets (discussed below), and it was mysteriously lost at sea and hardly anyone noticed it was gone at the time.

The U-156's and Its North American Mission

U-156 Commander, Kapitänleutnant Richard Feldt

U-156 was launched in April 1917 at the Atlas Werke in Bremen. It conducted two patrols during the war, the last under the command of Kapitänleutnant Richard Feldt to the coast of North America.  It subsequently was lost with all hands (77 men) on 25 September 1918. Like USS San Diego, it is believed that U-156 was destroyed by a mine.

As for  U-156’s activities the following is known. Enroute to the East Coast of America,  Skipper Richard Feldt stumbled across several targets of opportunity. Northwest of Scotland his U-boat stumbled across the unlucky 4,000 ton steamer Tortuguero and sank it.  Later on, two iron-hull sailing vessels the Marosa and the Manx King met the same fate. But the main mission involved hunting along the Canadian and American coast.   After arriving on station, the mines that sank the San Diego were laid apparently.   

U-156's subsequent record of sinkings seems to reflect a strategy of starving out America by attacking  the mostly small vessels of its coastal trading and fishing fleets.   This period of warfare involved the sinkings of 5 vessels that most people would consider "ships" (4 small freighters and 1 tanker).  The U-boats remaining list of  sinkings include, 1 tugboat, 6 small cutters or barges, and 19 fishing boats and trawlers.  This might have pleased the captain and crew and resulted in a lot of decals added to the conning tower, but the large number of sinkings seems more a tribute to the industriousness of Kapitänleutnant Feldt.  Committing one of Germany's most technologically advanced vessels to hunt fishing boats seems a misdirection of resources.  It was, though, something of humanitarian accomplishment by Feldt that he managed to sink over 30 vessels while only inflicting 6 casualties among all their crews.

Fishing Sloop E.B.Walters, Sunk by U-156,
25 August 1918

Such was the mission and fate of the last World War I U-boat to attack the American coast in World War I.  Its successors would return in the next war, however, seeking jucier targets and making a much bigger impact in 1942.

Sources: "The U.S.S. San Diego and the California Naval Militia," California Center for Military History; U-Boat Net; "We Finally Know What Sank the U.S.S. San Diego During World War I," Smithsonian, 14 December 2018

Sources: "The U.S.S. San Diego and the California Naval Militia," California Center for Military History; U-Boat Net; "We Finally Know What Sank the U.S.S. San Diego During World War I," Smithsonian, 14 December 2018

Thanks to WWI Centennial Commissioner Jack Monahan for suggesting this article.

National WWI Memorial — A Soldier's Journey: First Illumination Ceremony (Video)

Forward This to Someone Who Cares About America 

Why Were They Called Doughboys? — A Roads Classic

With today's completion of America's National World War One Memorial, I though it was a good time to bring back this one from the archives. MH

By Michael Hanlon (Your Editor/Publisher)

A. The Origins of Doughboy

For us today, and maybe for all Americans who will follow, the Doughboys were the men America sent to France in the Great War, who licked Kaiser Bill and fought to make the world safe for democracy. 

The expression Doughboy, though, was in wide circulation a century before the First World War in both Britain and America, albeit with some very different connotations. Horatio Nelson's sailors and Wellington's soldiers in Spain, for instance, were both familiar with fried flour dumplings called doughboys, the predecessor of the modern doughnut that both we and the Doughboys of World War I came to love. Because of the occasional contact of the two nations' armed forces and transatlantic migration, it seems likely that this usage was known to the members of the U.S. Army by the early 19th century. 

Independently, however, in the former colonies, the term had come to be applied to baker's young apprentices, i.e. dough-boys. Again, American soldiers probably were familiar with this usage, but were also possibly inclined to use it in a mocking fashion. The New World version of Doughboy was a linguistic cousin to "dough-head", a colloquialism for stupidity in 19th-century America. Judith Kerman, Professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University, points out that, in Moby Dick (Ch. 34ff), Melville nicknames the timorous cabin steward "Doughboy." This important 19th-century literary usage suggests a negative comparison of the steward's pale face to the darker faces of the sunburned whalers and "savage" harpooners. When Doughboy was finally to find a home with the U.S. Army it initially had a similar disparaging connotation, used most often by cavalrymen looking down [quite literally] on the foot-bound infantry. 

In examining the evolution of Doughboy these pre-existing streams of application need to be kept in mind. There is, however, an absence of literary citations clearly connecting either to the American military. Doughboy as applied to the infantry of the U.S. Army first appears, without any precedent that can be documented, in accounts of the Mexican-American War of 1846–47. 

B. The Doughboy as  an American Infantryman

The First Doughboys Capture Monterrey, Mexico

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang cites several sources from the war with Mexico showing Doughboy to be a nickname for infantrymen including: 

We "doughboys" had to wait for the artillery to get their carriages over. 

     N.J.T. Dana [An infantryman] 

No man of any spirit and ambition would join the "Doughboys" and go afoot. 

     Samuel Chamberlain [A Dragoon] 

Sources like these clearly put to rest both the oft-stated proposition that Doughboy as we mean it here was first applied in the Civil War and also the wilder suggestion that the usage was somehow a creation of the noted "Cavalry Couple", General and Mrs. George Armstrong Custer. Both the Civil War and the Custers did help in spreading the use of Doughboy. Clearly from the number of Civil War citations that can be identified, the term became known to a much wider audience because of the size and scope of the later conflict. The Custers, being the shameless self-promoters they were, probably can be credited for popularizing it as well because of its appearance in their published letters. 

Somewhere, however, on the march back from Mexico's Halls of Montezuma, any definitive evidence explaining the new use of Doughboy was waylaid. For the next 150 years, lexicographers from H.L. Mencken in The American Language to the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary would speculate on the reasons for the labeling of U.S. infantrymen as Doughboys. Despite their distinguished credentials, these authoritative sources, all have the same dual problem as the present writer: there are just  not a lot of reliable primary sources from that period and, of course, none of us were there. Absent the discovery of new material from the 1840s, an exploration into the origins of Doughboy has but one way to proceed—looking at the pros and cons of the plausible theories and weighing the evidence. There are four such explanations each with their school of advocates, each with weaknesses in either evidence or logic. 

U.S.  Infantry and Cavalry of the
Mexican-American War

The Baked Goods Theory: One suggestion is that Doughboys were named such because of their method of cooking their rations. Meals were often doughy flour and rice concoctions either baked in the ashes of a camp fire or shaped around a bayonet and cooked over the flames. This interpretation also suggests the baker's helper tradition of Doughboy. Samuel Chamberlain [quoted above] adhered to this theory in his memoir My Confessions. This has to be taken with some reservations, however. His memoir was written after the war in the 1850s and reworked by later editors. 

The weakness of the "Baked Goods" theory lies in the question as to why this would come to only apply to the infantry. Did artillery gunners and quartermasters prepare their food differently? Were the infantry the only soldiers who had to cook their own food in the field? 

The Button Theory: Adherents of this theory hold that U.S. infantrymen wore coats with unique, globular brass buttons. These buttons are said to reminiscent of the doughboy dumplings eaten by the soldiers and sailors of earlier days and which possibly had become part of American cuisine. In another variation, drawing additionally on the Baked Goods Theory, it is said that the product of the infantrymen's cooking efforts came to resemble the buttons on their uniforms. When I originally published this article, I could find no photos or illustration clearly showing the buttons on U.S. infantry uniforms, c. 1840s.

In February 2002, however, I was contacted by a museum which displays military uniforms, informing me that U.S. infantry uniforms of the period did, indeed, have globular buttons. I am still awaiting a confirming photos. Even if the claims about uniform buttons are validated, there is still a lack of primary evidence backing up the usage of Doughboy in accordance with this line of thinking. 

The Pipe Clay Theory: During the 19th century American enlisted men used a fine whitish clay called pipe clay to give "polish" to their uniforms and belts. It was a less than perfect appearance enhancer, however; in rainy weather the saturated clay came to look "doughy." Infantrymen would be more vulnerable to this effect as their comrades kicked up mud and dirty water from the many puddles they would march through. One reader has offered a variation on this from the memoirs of General Tasker Bliss. The general writes that flour [dough?] was used for this whitening function by the infantrymen along the Texas border from where the invasion of Mexico was launched. 

The Pipe Clay theory, championed in the 20th century by Mr. Henry Mencken, has plausibility, but lacks documentation. [General Bliss's variation is a singular report that might have been subject to distortion over time, so it also needs corroboration.] On the main point, shouldn't there be some description of troops marching in the rain, looking "doughy," to support this? Besides, the routes the infantry took in Mexico tended to be dry and dusty rather than wet and muddy and this leads us to the final of the four theories. 

The Adobe Theory: In a nutshell—in marching over the parched terrain of the deserts of Northern Mexico the infantry stirred up so much dust that they took on the look of the adobe buildings of the region—hence, [after a few phonetic adjustments] Doughboys. The cavalrymen who rode horses, the artillerists who rode caissons, and the quartermasters who rode wagons were all mounted above the worst of the dust cloud. It is also easy to visualize them collectively indulging in a little disparagement at the expense of their suffering colleagues. 

Americans Marching in Northern Mexico

This theory has possibly the best "fit" to the facts of the campaign in Mexico as known, yet it has no backing from the historical record. It appears to be the product strictly of 20th-century speculation. Nevertheless, it is the favorite theory of Doughboy chronicler Laurence Stallings and of this writer as well. The modern day Oxford English Dictionary Supplement takes a reverse slant and suggests that the marching infantry pounded their dirt pathways into dough, but that does not quite ring true to anyone who has visited Mexico. In the northern parts, if it's not paved, it's dusty. 

C. From Chapultepec to the Rhine

For the next 70 years following General Scott's capture of Mexico City, Doughboy, despite its uncertain origins, was used—sometimes mockingly—as a nickname for the American infantryman. It appears in firsthand accounts from the Civil War, the campaigns on the frontier and the Philippine Insurrection. "Doughboy Drill" became synonymous with close-order infantry drill and supplies of prophylactics for soldiers on pass became euphemistically  known as "Doughboy Kits." 

Doughboys of the Great War

Yet when the Great War and America's entry into it came, the usage of Doughboy changed dramatically and we are left with some additional Doughboy mysteries. In a mere 19 months, Doughboy became the universally popular nickname of all the American troops sent to Europe pushing "Yanks" [recall that in the hit song "Over There" it was the "Yanks" who were coming...] and the newspaper publisher's inspiration of the moment, "Sammies", [after Uncle Sam] to the sideline. 

Most interestingly, in World War I, Doughboy became generalized in application, no longer limited to the infantry. All the army combat branches, aviators, logistical support troops and even the U.S. Marines [to their chagrin] were individually and collectively labeled Doughboys. 

It seems to have been a bottoms up movement. In their letters home and their diaries volunteers, draftees and national guardsmen of every specialty just began referring to themselves as Doughboys. Their overseas newspaper, Stars & Stripes, freely used and advocated the term as well. I was also once shown a quote indicating that General William Siebert, influential first commander of the 1st Division (which was the first large unit "over there") and later chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, strongly encouraged the usage of Doughboy. 

And there is one final puzzle or maybe a bit of magic about the use of Doughboy from the Great War up to today. Doughboy has come to belong exclusively to the 4.7 million Americans who served in the Great War. The Army continued using some of the slang terms like "Doughboy Drill," but the troops of the 1920s and '30s, for the most part, did not use the term to describe themselves, nor did the public. In the Second World War, the Doughboys' sons, called to arms in stupendous numbers, would be alternately known as the Yanks and GIs. Possibly the sad Bonus Marcher incident of the early 1930s [the veterans were all former Doughboys] played a role in de-popularizing the usage, but maybe America just decided the name "belonged" to the boys of the First World War. 

Eleven years after I wrote the original version of this article I was asked to be the master-of-ceremonies at an event at the National World War I Memorial in Kansas City honoring Mr. Frank Buckles, who was the lasting surviving American to serve in the military in  World War I. It was a very moving experience for me and a real honor. Mr. Buckles, wasn't present for the ceremony, though, as he was unable to travel by then. His family, however, was well represented.  I was very pleased to hear from them that Mr. Buckles always referred to himself as a Doughboy.

Sources and thanks: This article originally appeared in my website The Doughboy Center in 1998. It has been updated numerous times since then. A special thanks to the 200+ people who have written me over the years with constructive suggestions for the article and the thousands who have thanked me for making this material available. This article is cited in a number of books and websites (often without attribution, but that's OK). Also, I must remember a Great War Society Member, the late Gerry Devereux, who kept asking me why Doughboy became so darn popular in the First World War, forcing me to write the original piece.  MH

Meet Sabin Howard— Sculptor and Creator of A Soldier’s Journey

A Soldier's Journey is not a glorification of war, but a memorial to healing and to the human potential to rise to the occasion.

Sabin Howard, Sculptor

Studio Model of "The Ordeal" Section of
A Soldier's Journey

Sabin Howard is the acclaimed master sculptor of A Soldier’s Journey, the sculptural heart of the National WWI Memorial to be dedicated in Washington D.C. on 13 September 2024. Howard grew up in New York City and in Torino, Italy. He studied art at the Philadelphia College of Art and then earned his MFA from the New York Academy of Art. For twenty years, he taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels. He has been elected to the board of the National Sculpture Society. He has received numerous commissions and has shown his work at more than fifty solo and group shows. His style of figurative sculpture has been called both neo-classical and neo-realist.

After thousands of hours of working from life models in the studio, Howard designed and with his talented staff  created the monumental bronze, A Soldier’s Journey, that memorializes the courage and sacrifice of our veterans in WWI, and in all wars. Previously he has created an illustrious body of work, including three heroic scale pieces, Hermes, Aphrodite, and Apollo, as well as many smaller pieces. His works are owned by museums and private collectors all over the world. Sabin is also the author of the book The Art of Life with his wife, Traci L. Slatton.

All images on this page can be enlarged 
by right clicking on them.

Hermes by Sabin Howard, 2005 (Dynamic, no?)

A Soldier’s Journey  contains 38 separate figures, spread over 58 feet of wall 10 feet high. They collectively portray the experience of one American soldier—"Everyman"—in the war that was "To end all wars." Starting from the left, Everyman takes leave from his wife and daughter, charges into combat, sees men around him killed, wounded, and gassed, and recovers from the shock to come home to his family.

The massive relief sculpture will be displayed to the nation for the first time Friday 13 September with Sabin and lead project architect Joe Weishaar in attendance. The audience will get to see A Soldier's Journey, the central and final piece of the city-block-sized National World War One Memorial dedicated in a unique First Illumination ceremony. The sculpture will be even more dramatic, at night with lighting.

The Artist in His Studio

The selection of Sabin Howard to create the centerpiece for the National Memorial is complex and and quite modern sounding  as recounted by the one man who had a ringside seat to the process, the project's lead architect, Joe Weishaar:

When I was first short-listed as a finalist in the competition, it was only me. At the very first meeting that I had with the Commission, and really anyone in DC, they took a look at the submission and said, "It looks like you've got quite a bit of sculpture here...so...how are you going to do it?"  

I went back home to Chicago and began the search for a sculptor on Google (like you do when you're 25). By this point in the process, the WWI Commission had published all of the other 364 entries from the first round of the competition on their website. I had seen a remarkable drawing of two soldiers huddled together in one of the other entries and thought to myself that I needed to find someone who had talent like that. 

Anyway, back to my Google searching. I Googled everything, sculptor, American sculptor, living American sculptor, because until that last addition of the word "living", I was getting results for Italian renaissance sculptors, then dead American sculptors like Daniel Chester French, and on and on. When I added in "living", suddenly I was directed to the National Sculpture Society's website and they listed something like 400 contributing members. I sat down with a legal pad and went website to website for hours. 

Sabin was grouped with the S's rather than H's for Howard, but when I came to his website, I saw the drawing from that first submission that he had done. At that point, I threw my legal pad over my shoulder and cold called him. He was out, so I left him a long email. He called me back about 2 hours later just ecstatic and we hit it off pretty much immediately. I met him in person at his studio 11 days later and paid him out of my own pocket to do the drawings for the competition entry. 

Sabin Howard Has Stated That This Sculpture of
a British Tommy by Charles Sargeant Jagger
at Paddington Station, London, Influenced His Design
 of A Soldier's Story More Than Any Other Monument.

Edwin Fountain, vice chairman of the World War I Centennial Commission, who took the lead in organizing the effort to build the new memorial of the, has worked closely with Sabin from start to finish of A Soldier's Journey and has this to say about him:

Lead architect Joe Weishaar’s selection of Sabin Howard as the sculptor for the WWI Memorial was serendipitous. Sabin’s skill and artistry were evident from the outset, and during the competition he instinctively presented themes that we would want reflected in the memorial, but he had never before undertaken a project of this scale or emotional intensity.  Once he and Joe were selected, he elevated his craft and his art in ways that I don’t think even he anticipated.  His prior work had not involved the kind of kinetic energy, raw passion, inter-locking figures, and narrative structure that he brought to “A Soldier’s Journey.”  It is evident that he was inspired by his feeling of service to veterans, and by his mission to create a unifying image of national service and sacrifice.  Watching him work has been awe-inspiring, and I believe “A Soldier’s Journey” will go down as one of the most admired works of American art in our history.

 

Sabin Howard Sculpting One of the Figures of
"The Ordeal" Shown Above
(Yes, our Doughboy-1918 model is checking out his cell phone.)

 

The First Illumination event on 13 September will be made available worldwide via online streaming. This will give the opportunity to experience Sabin Howard's magnificent creation as a unified artistic and patriotic work.

Sign-up HERE for the service.

Sources: Worldwar One Centennial Commission; Sabin Howard Website; EIN Presswire

Meet Joe Weishaar — Lead Architect of the National World War I Memorial

Click on the Images Below to Enlarge Them

Lead Architect Joe Weishaar with Some Final Details for His Winning Design

Born and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Joe Weishaar remembers once standing on the Champs Elysees in Paris as a University of Arkansas student and thinking, "What in the world is a kid from Arkansas doing here?" Later, Joe would be a 25-year-old architecture intern with a Chicago firm when he was inspired to take an improbable shot that would bring his talents into the world's limelight. 

Joe says he came across the competition for the design of a World War I Memorial for America's capital on an online site at the end of May in 2015 and saw an opportunity. As he recounts what followed, "It would be fair to say that up to that point I knew little about the war." Nonetheless, he had an instinctual feel for what was needed and cranked out a design in about three weeks, working late nights and on weekends. Eventually,  364 other applicants from around the world—artists, architects, and design firms, large and small—would also make submissions. After sending his proposal off, Joe recounts he completely forgot about it for the next two months. When he was notified he was  one of the five finalists for the design competition, he was surprised and thrilled.

The Jefferson Memorial by Joseph Weishaar
(Painted During the WWI Memorial Construction)

_______________

Recently, I had the opportunity to have an online exchange with Joe, during which he answered some of my questions about what happened next after his selection as a finalist:

MH: I understand is you did not have a lot of detailed knowledge about the war when you became a finalist. Did you then do a crash course study of WWI?

JW:  I did read a few of the classics, All Quiet on the Western Front, A Farewell to Arms, and The Guns of August. A lot of the things I learned came from going to various presentations of the WWI Commissioners and listening to their conversations. That got me through about 99% of everything I needed to know. The only time it completely failed was one particular event when I was put on the spot and asked to stand up and speak at a symposium for historians on the Treaty of Versailles. That did not go well. . . So much more of the research actually revolved around looking at WWI paintings, photographs, and getting an understanding of what life was like before and after the war. I actually got to a point several months into the process, (after winning in 2016 and starting on the real memorial) that I had to put the books down. It became incredibly overwhelming thinking that the memorial needed to be good enough to live up to the sacrifice of all of the young men and women in the war.  [Looking back] I think the memorial would need to be 10x bigger to encompass all of the history and stories that I came across for it to actually convey to the American people just how critical this war was to the world that they live in today. 

MH:  You went (amazingly to me) from a one man show, to a project team with an architectural firm, a famous artist, consultants, etc. How did this come about? 

JW:  It was crazy. . . As an unlicensed designer (not yet legally allowed to call myself an architect), there was really no way that I could compete with the other teams, or even carry out the project.  I had to have someone who could take on that role. [After several other attempts, friends in another firm]  called me back and said, "Hey, so there's this guy we know in Baltimore. He was in our wedding and he's a partner at this firm called GWWO Architects. They're good people.". I contacted them up, told them what I wanted to do, and they agreed to sign on to the project on the spot. I didn't know it at the time, but they already had an incredible relationship with all of the agencies in DC and had already earned much respect for turning out wonderful projects with the National Park Service. As soon as I showed up at the next meeting and said I had signed GWWO on to the team, I got lots of head nods of approval. At that point, it felt like people actually started to take me seriously, and we had a hope of winning. [Other key additions to the design team included sculptor Sabin Howard and landscape architect the David Rubin Land Collective.]

MH:  What lessons have you drawn from your successful experience as the Lead Architect for our National World War One Memorial?

JW: If the final memorial gets people just a little bit interested and sparks some nugget of wanting to learn more about America's experience in the war, then I think my work will have been a success. . .  I had to actively engage with the world and listen to the things that people said were meaningful so I could convey that into architecture. The biggest lesson I learned is that we don't build memorials for the dead. We build them for the living. We build them to protect and preserve our memories and our stories and to remind ourselves to try and do great things with our lives. Also, I want to stress how much of a collaboration this project was. Honestly, we had so many people with valuable input contribute to this project that it's sometimes hard to say who did what.

_______________

In January 2016, out of all the applicants to design the National WWI Memorial Joe Weishaar and his new design team were chosen. The jury praised his concept, "The Weight of Sacrifice," as “elegant and absolute,” and a “deceptively simple concept” that "remediated a problematic site, Pershing Park, located just a block from the White House."

The Winning Proposal—Overhead View

Edwin Fountain, Vice Chairman of the World War I Centennial Commission, who took the lead in organizing the effort to build the new memorial, has worked closely with Joe for the past eight years and has this to say about him:

As a young architect (in training), Joe did not have the ego that would have led him to a grandiose design concept. Rather, Joe won the competition with an astutely simple design that respected the original Pershing Park site and harmonized well with the surrounding built environment, while incorporating the opportunity for a monumental sculpture that would convey the accomplishments of Americans in World War I. He then assembled a team of talented design partners including master sculptor Sabin Howard and led them collaboratively to deliver a site that successfully integrated memorial and urban park elements in an elegant setting that does honor to our WWI veterans.

The Winning Proposal—Ground View

Today Joe Weishaar is an architect based in Atlanta, Georgia, with Smith Dalia Architects, but will be in attendance at the First Illumination ceremony on Friday 13 September, when he and his consulting artist, Sabin Howard, get to see Howard's masterful relief sculpture, A Soldier's Journey the central and final piece of the Memorial, dedicated.

The First Illumination event on 13 September will be made available worldwide via online streaming. This will give the opportunity to experience Sabin Howard's artwork as a unified artistic and patriotic work.

Sign-up HERE for the service.

Tomorrow:  Meet Master Sculptor Sabin Howard, creator of A Soldier's Journey, on Roads to the Great War.

Sources: Worldwar One Centennial Commission; Univ. of Arkansas; Arkansas Democrat Gazette 

The Lie About the War, An Early Critique of War Literature

Canadian Gunners in the Mud, Alfred Bastien

The Lie About the War

By Jerrold Douglas

Faber & Faber, 1930

Conservative historian and publisher Douglas Jerrold, a man once described as "an uncompromising controversialist" [he would actively supported Franco in the Spanish Civil War], in 1930 found himself quite dissatisfied with the literature—both fictional and memoirs in the form of novels—taking the war as its subject. Jerrold had served with the Royal Naval Division at Gallipoli and on the Western Front and thus had his own strongly held views of what the war was all about. 

He published a scathing volume titled The Lie About the War that grouped together such "best sellers" (which are now rated the war's "classics") as All Quiet on the Western Front, Good-Bye to All That, Under Fire, The Secret Battle, Storm of Steel, The Enormous Room, and the Spanish Farm Trilogy and described what he saw as their common and central flaw. I believe the excerpt below captures the heart of Jerrold's argument. Incidentally, in the 1950s Jerrold became better known for publishing an equally powerful rejection of the works of mega-historian Arnold Toynbee. 

These books all reflect (intentionally or otherwise), the illusion that the war was avoidable and futile, and most of them reflect the illusion that it was recognized as futile by those who fought it. It is this obsession of futility, not any special depth of sympathy or  humanitarianism which accounts for the piling up of the individual agony to so many  poignant climaxes remote from the necessities or even from the normal incidental  happenings of war. The suffering, the horror and the desolation is presented always and  brutally as without a meaning so far as the declared purposes of the struggle are conceived,  because these declared purposes are, to the writers and critics of the moment, either so many  impudent and deadly frauds or so many irrelevancies, to the achievement of which the  blunders and crimes of the military were only so many obstacles. . . 

Now these writers are too gifted not to know that if the sufferings of the war were really futile and superfluous or its incidents irrelevant, the sufferings would in themselves be utterly without significance. These writers know as well as I do that the only possible tragedy of the  war, considered as war, lay in its inevitability, that to deny the element of fatality must be to  deny that it was a tragedy at all. Yet to accept the element of fatality would be to invest the  war with a grandeur which these novelists are determined to deny it. Hence the frantic  attempt to get the dramatic quality out of every kind of struggle except the struggle of one  army against another and so to get a significant novel without having to admit that it was a  significant war. . . 

The struggle of the coward against fear, of the artist's sensibility and refinement against progressive brutalization, of the brave man  against exhaustion, of the 'line' against the staff, of the amateur against the professional soldier, of the individual against authority,  all lead up to and are subservient to the ultimate and wholly mendacious struggle of the man of peace against war [in Remarque's  words:] "the fighting, the terror, the mastery, the power and the tenacity of the vital forces of the individual man faced with death  and annihilation." To put it another way; perhaps gaining in vividness at the expense of exact analysis, the real tragedy of the war is being falsely reported as the death of so many men whose duty it was to live, whereas the real tragedy was that duty offered no  alternative but death. And it was for this reason that death was accepted, not in fear, not in sullen indifference or in open or  suppressed revolt, but deliberately and in the face of countless opportunities of evasion.  

 

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This is where the crime against mere veracity begins to show. To establish the dramatic quality of the secondary and sometimes  wholly imaginary struggles which make up the tale of these unmilitary epics, every essential fact is falsified, either objectively or by  an illegitimate technique... 

A French critic [Jean Norton] has accumulated a catalogue of objective errors in some of the more popular works. I hesitate to follow in his footsteps because it is impossible to establish a negative. What is happening today is precisely what happened in 1914 in the matter of the German 'atrocities' in England and in 1919 of French 'atrocities' in Germany. A grotesque legend is being built  up on a slender basis of hearsay. 

Originally published in Relevance, Spring 2011

The Leipzig War Crimes Trial: Precedent for Nuremberg

British Investigators and Witnesses Arrive for the Trials

In 1921 and 1922, a total of 12 “war crimes” trials were held before the highest German court, the Reichsgericht in Leipzig. The accused were former members of the imperial German armed forces suspected of having perpetrated war crimes. At first, in keeping with Articles 228 and 229 of the Treaty of Versailles, the Allied powers had planned that as many as 888 Germans accused of war crimes would be extradited and face trial in Allied courts. However, the German government succeeded in averting their extradition. Instead, it emphasized that it was willing to prosecute all Germans accused of committing crimes against nationals of enemy states or against enemy property, underscoring this promise with changes in German laws. 

The Allies acquiesced, and on 7 May 1920 they presented a much shorter list with the names of 45 suspects and the details of their alleged crimes. This roster had been winnowed down from the longer list that had included such notables as General Hindenburg, father of gas warfare Fritz Haber, and former chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. They were to be tried by the German Reichsgericht in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles that stipulated the arrest and trial of German combatants and officials defined as war criminals by the Allied governments. with both the trials and the verdicts coming under criticism from Germany and the Allies alike. The accused were treated like heroes by the German public, and all but seven were acquitted; these seven mostly received light sentences, four years incarceration in the most extreme case. Since no Allied personnel were charged or prosecuted, the complaint that the proceedings were one-sided "victor's justice" was irrefutable.

Reichsgericht Building, Leipzig, Site of the Trials

Nonetheless, some of the violations were quite serious, and the individuals involved should have been held accountable. Two of the trials involved the sinking of hospital ships, one of which was followed up by the machine-gunning of survivors in the water. Four cases involved large-scale abuse of POWs and two involved mistreatment of civilians.

Although largely regarded as a failure at the time, the Leipzig trials were the first attempt to devise a comprehensive system for prosecution of violations of international law. This trend was renewed during the Second World War, as Allied governments decided to try, after the war, defeated Axis leaders for war crimes committed during the war, notably with the Nuremberg Trials and International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

Sources: Western Front Association; Encyclopedia.com; Encyclopedia 1914-1918 Online

John A. Lejeune, USMC, Part II: Division Commander on the Western Front

At His 2nd Division Command Post

Part I was presented yesterday's Roads to the Great War

Lt. Gen. John Archer Lejeune, 75, ex-commandant of the Marine Corps (1920–29); [died] in Baltimore. Chunky, lion-headed, seam-faced, barrel-chested, he joined the Marines in 1890 later commanding the Second Division (a regular Army brigade and the 4th Brigade of Marines) from late July 1918 to August 1919. Under him the division captured 3,300 prisoners in the St. Mihiel offensive of Sept. 12-15, broke the Hindenburg Line in the stubborn Blanc Mont sector, and was in the forefront of the battle in the last days of the Meuse-Argonne offensive. 

Time magazine Obituary, 30 November 1942

Off to France

Until America's entry into the war in 1917, Lejeune remained uncomplainingly in Washington. But now, as one regiment after another shipped out, he fought his own campaign to get sent overseas. 

Finally, in June 1918, he reached France. The 4th Marine Brigade was fighting now in Belleau Wood, had stopped the Germans, Paris was saved, and the globe-and-anchor was suddenly familiar to the world. Although General Pershing would have preferred to assign Lejeune to rear-area duty, the superb action of the 4th Marine Brigade, combined with Lejeune's own professional reputation among senior Army officers, forced the c-in-c to change his mind. After a short tour as observer in a frontline division, Lejeune took command of the 64th Brigade. Three weeks later Pershing gave him the Marine Brigade. He had no more than taken over when General Harbord, commanding 2nd Division, was [appointed to command the critical Services of Supply]. With that, Brig. General Lejeune was given the division and another star. 

The artillery bombardment continued for four hours on that 12 September night in 1918. Then at 0500 the barrage rolled forward, a tight computation of 110 yards every four minutes, the signal for attached tanks to roll out and hit the barbed wire that over years had been groomed into hideously effective defenses, but the tiny tanks failed to cross the trenches. As their sprockets clanked aimlessly beneath their stranded bodies it was up to the infantry, as it generally is, and the infantry moved on in front of the armor. 

Success in Battle

Soldiers and Marines of the 2nd Division smashed against the wire, flung themselves on it while others clawed their way through. They surprised the German, captured and killed him, and sent him running until by early afternoon they had reached the second day's objective. They were out in front but not yet finished. For two days, battle surged fiercely around them. Then in a final effort they pushed through to their last objectives, altogether a superb fight accomplished with remarkably light casualties. 

2nd Division Battle Marker, Blanc Mont, Champagne

The St. Mihiel success dictated the 2nd Division's role for the rest of the war. After refitting, it spearheaded the French offensive that ended in the battle of Blanc Mont and the German withdrawal to the Aisne. For the final offensive of the war it spearheaded the American First Army's drive through Meuse-Argonne. On 11 November 1918, its forward units were fighting on the other side of the Meuse. In all, it suffered over 24,000 casualties, about 10 percent of the AEF total, and earned one of the most enviable combat records in military annals.

Lejeune's part in the division's accomplishments was enormous. In less than two months he had kept 28,000 men capable of spearheading three complicated  offensives, each decisive and two very costly in casualties. This was one of the greatest leadership feats in WWI and surprised American and Allied officers nearly as much as it did the Germans. Lejeune himself explained it as a triumph of unity and spirit, and it certainly was that. Achieving the unity and spirit was something else again. 

Tactically, Lejeune recognized at once that a coordinated offensive on a narrow front was the only way to beat the Germans. When he took command of the 2nd Division he immediately concentrated on developing a solid punch of infantry, artillery, and engineers. He rehearsed his units from platoon to division level and was not satisfied until every man in every unit realized what he was supposed to do and then did it. He demanded such perfection from his gunners that his infantry would not hesitate to follow a barrage at almost suicidal distance. This was called "leaning on the artillery" and meant that before an enemy recovered from a bombardment he was looking down the wrong end of the infantryman's rifle. 

Major General Lejeune and His 2nd Division Staff

Not wanting, not permitting, foolish mistakes, he took great pains to lead his officers away from them. He wrote about leadership later, and it would not hurt anyone today to read the advice given on pp. 307-309 of his book, The Reminiscences of a Marine (Dorrance and Co., 1930). Above all he demanded and gained esprit because "there is no substitute for the spiritual in war…If each man knows that all the officers and men in his division are animated with the same fiery zeal as he himself feels, unquenchable courage and unconquerable determination crush out fear, and death becomes preferable to defeat or dishonor." 

The basis of esprit was tactical ability sufficient for the individual infantryman to believe himself the best fighting man in the world. To give him identity, Lejeune authorized a division patch—a star surmounted by an Indian head—the first time in France that this was used. Henceforth, the 2nd Division became known as the Indian Head Division, its commander, Old Indian.

Old Indian was a soldier's general, and as such he stood at odds with the habitual aloofness practiced by senior officers of that day. Although the jet-black hair was said to stand on end and the soft brown eyes to shoot fire upon seeing a needless error, the same eyes could manage humor and understanding that in war can sometimes replace hot food and reduce pain and discomfort and fear. Once during an inspection he noticed a young replacement's unbuttoned uniform. Casually repairing the damage, he remarked, "You ought to keep these things buttoned, young fellow. General Pershing would give me the devil if I went around that way." 

The Victorious General Wearing the Indian Head
Patch of His 2nd Division

Some Basic Qualities

During the Meuse-Argonne drive he approached a group of his men who started to snap to. "Sit down," he ordered. "It is more important for tired men to rest than for the Division Commander to be saluted." On another occasion he was talking to an Army chief of staff who, because of the late hour refused to awaken the Army commander for a vital decision. Lejeune bluntly told him, "It is better to wake up one general than to have 25,000 sick and exhausted men march 35 miles, and I will do so myself." 

The same basic qualities appeared in his relationship with seniors. When General Gouraud, commanding the Fourth French Army, suggested breaking up the 2nd Division for the attack on Blanc Mont, Lejeune looked hard at the one-armed veteran and said, "General, if you do not divide the 2nd Division, but put it in line as a unit on a narrow front, I am confident that it will be able to take Blanc Mont Ridge, advance beyond it, and hold its position there." He won this round only to have General Naulin, his corps commander, order him to a frontal attack. Lejeune refused, instead persuaded Gouraud to let him attempt an enveloping action. Not only did the [double] flanking move work, it caused Marshal Pétain, never over generous with praise, to call Lejeune "a military genius who could and did do what  the other commander said couldn't be done." 

Postscript: In 1920, Lejeune began the first of two tours as  commandant of the Marine Corps. During this  period he won public support for the continued  existence of the Corps, developed the Fleet Marine Force concept, and paved the way for successful amphibious operations conducted in the Second World War.

Sources: Relevance, Spring 2011, by permission,  the Marine Corps Gazette. Originally published  April 1962. 

John A. Lejeune, USMC, Part I: Preparing for Command

John A. Lejeune

Leadership is the sum of those qualities of intellect, human understanding, and moral character that enables a person to inspire and control a group of people successfully.

 Lt. Gen. John A. Lejeune 

By Robert B. Asprey

The bombardment began at 0100, 12 September 1918. For nine days soldiers and Marines of the 2nd Division of American regulars had hidden in French woods to shiver in icy rain and curse the mud and slime and stench of war on the Western Front. 

Now their hour was at hand. As thousands of cannon threw lethal surprise at the entrenched enemy, the American units formed into long columns and with 12 other divisions—some 300,000 men—began the march forward into the black night.  On a hill above, a bulky figure watched the exploding shells, heard the muted  movements of the troops, and now and again listened to a hovering staff officer. This man  was Major General John A. Lejeune, USMC. He  commanded the 2nd Division. 

To Lejeune and to his staff the strain of the moment was immense. This would be the first time he led his division into battle, the first time an American Marine commanded a division in combat, and the first time an American army fought in Europe under an American commander-in-chief. To history the battle would be known as the St. Mihiel Offensive. On this night, though, Lejeune and his officers knew only that the 2nd Division was spearheading an attack against a massif  the Germans had been fortifying for four years. 

Whatever his thoughts, Lejeune looked calm. A man of medium height, he stood with wide shoulders braced against the wind. Now and again he slapped massive hands together  against the cold. Occasionally the shaded  light of a messenger's lamp emphasized the  long prominent ears that flanked a large head, or gleamed on a spot of jet-black hair  that fell in wide bangs over his forehead. Soft but alert brown eyes relieved some of  the fatigue suggested by a seamed face. When he spoke, a soft deliberate voice that  left little doubt of its southern origin fell easily on the listening group. 

Despite the moment, General Lejeune had some  reasons to be confident—or as confident as a man can be when so much is at stake on the poker table of war. The 2nd Division was a hot outfit. By the time he took command, it  had fought at Belleau Wood and Soissons; its ranks had been twice decimated and twice refilled; its deeds were famous throughout France; and its fighting qualities were recorded in stunned words in more than one German diary. 

All well and good, but when Lejeune took over in late July he had to fit 8,000 replacements into the business of war and had to reshape and train and inspire the division for the rugged fighting ahead. In 28 years of soldiering halfway around the globe, the 51-year-old commander had faced some difficult tasks. That this was the most difficult, he knew only too well. Using the lessons of the past, he had accomplished a great deal in six weeks. Six weeks was a short time to impose one man's will on the minds and souls of 28,000 men. Well, in a few hours he would know if he had succeeded. Until then, there was little to do but stand quietly by. 

John A. Lejeune came from a good Louisiana family whose fortunes were shattered by the Civil War, in which his father had fought on the Confederate side. Although he grew up amid the fires of reconstruction, his mother's teachings of tolerance and humanity and his father's prideful conduct in the worst years prevented the fires from burning scars on the young mind. Instead, from family and home and land he gained a pride of heritage he was never to lose. And later, when he used words like honor and duty and courage and love of country, people suddenly found themselves listening and believing in them, perhaps for the first time in their lives. 

Prewar Marine Recruiting Poster

The Army almost got him, but in 1884 when his senator ran out of West Point  appointments, young Lejeune went to the Naval Academy. By 1890 the newly commissioned ensign had served as captain's clerk, had been cited for bravery during a disastrous hurricane at Samoa, had participated in a Hawaiian revolution, and, from working with Marine detachments aboard ship, had fallen completely and hopelessly in love with the Marine Corps. At this point, the Navy summarily placed him in the Engineer Corps. Not wanting any part of the Engineer Corps, the 23-year-old officer shyly but persistently approached various seniors until he had exhausted without success the Annapolis chain of command. He now displayed a polite tenacity, a personal flag that was to fly over his entire career. In this case, he went to Washington, called on Senator Chandler, and asked for his aid. In short order, Ensign Lejeune was talking to the Secretary of the Navy, who, favorably impressed, rang a ranking officer and concluded the proceedings with, "Commodore, I want this young man assigned to the Marine Corps." 

The Lean Years

Lejeune found himself in a 2,000-man Marine Corps, "all field officers and a large proportion of the captains being over fifty years of age." At Norfolk the Marine Barracks consisted of "a wretched wooden building containing, in addition to the mess hall, kitchen, etc., one big squad room in which all the men slept in two-storied iron bunks. Sacks stuffed with straw constituted all that the government furnished in the way of bedding, and barracks chairs were about the only articles of furniture. The ration cost only 14 cents a day." The one sergeant-major in the Corps drew $25 a month, privates $13, and the ranks were filled with foreigners, some of whom could scarcely speak English. 

Still, the old service was not a bad place to learn. Early in his career the shy lieutenant fell under the influence of Sgt Major John Quick, who "perhaps of all the Marines I ever knew approached most nearly the perfect type of non-commissioned officer. . . I never knew him to raise his voice, lose his temper, or use profane language, and yet he exacted and obtained prompt and explicit obedience from all persons subject to his orders." 

Later he found his model of a commander in noted Admiral John C. Watson, who deeply impressed him "by his courtesy, his kindness and his simplicity—qualities which I have learned to be the attributes of true greatness." 

On the surface, the early years of Lejeune's career differed but slightly from those of his contemporaries. Serving in a variety of posts and stations at home and abroad, he fought in the Spanish-American War, was promoted to captain, then to major and to lieutenant colonel. Underneath the surface, however, a marked difference appeared. Lacking the eccentricities of such fabulous old-timers as Cols Pope and Meade, the flamboyance of "Tony" Waller, or the showmanship of young Smedley Butler, the quiet Louisianan nonetheless made his mark on those with whom he came into contact. Invariably he made this mark because somehow his actions centered not on himself nor on his career, but on the good of the service. 

Typical was his behavior as a very young officer aboard USS Cincinnati. At the time, a small Navy group hoped to abolish Marine detachments from service with the fleet—thus eliminating the Marine Corps. After the ship's executive officer refused to assign his detachment to a battery, Lejeune wrote the commanding officer, presented his case and asked for "an increase in duties rather than a decrease." His request granted, he then and there decided that only by constant, outstanding service could the Corps continue to claim its place in the sun. Outstanding service meant "united, industrious, intelligent and conscientious performance of duty" until the efficiency of the Corps and thus its usefulness could not be questioned. 

Lejeune on His Way Up the Career Ladder

Leadership in Panama

Although this became his credo, he never lost sight of the human factor. When he took a battalion to Panama in 1903 the place was a hell-hole of yellow fever, malaria, dysentery, and smallpox—a jungle nightmare of mud giving way to occasional liberties in wretched towns built on booze, prostitutes, and gambling. Working closely with the  brilliant Colonel George Gorgas, Lejeune held disease to a minimum (although he himself caught malaria). He established a vigorous, highly competitive athletics program, arranged hunting parties, and otherwise kept his troops busy providing an increase in their own comforts. Yet, when men did return intoxicated from liberty, he turned a blind eye so  long as they went quietly to their tents. Lejeune's professional performance, enhanced by genuine humility and a brain like a faultless machine, brought him more and more to the notice of his seniors, a fact shown by his frequent trips to Washington for duty on special boards. His contacts there culminated in 1909 with an appointment to the Army War College, a rare honor and an experience he later judged to be the turning point in his career. His success was noted in a letter from the president of the College to the commandant, Marine Corps:

Lt. Colonel Lejeune has not only shown painstaking industry and steady application but has displayed marked ability and a high order of military intelligence in the work of the College course.... I consider him fit for high command or for duty as Chief of Staff of a department or division in the field and commend him to your consideration.

The Marine Corps owned no division. In fact, its highest field commands consisted of hodge-podge regiments and under-strength brigades scratched up from depots and barracks and mounted out from Philadelphia and New York. While commanding the Marine Barracks, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Lejeune led several of these forces in various Caribbean expeditions. Such was his continued performance of duty that in 1913 he very nearly became commandant. Although Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels finally selected Colonel Barnett, the incident began a lifelong friendship between Lejeune and Daniels that would have a lasting effect on the future of the Marine Corps. 

Lejeune and Key Staff at Vera Cruz, 1914
Sgt. Major John Quick (MoH), Future Generals Wendell Neville, John Lejeune, and Smedley Butler (MoH [2])

Lejeune's importance was now established. There remained a matter of exploiting his potential. After another year of field service, including command of the Marine regiment at Veracruz and promotion to colonel, he was called to Washington as assistant to the commandant. There he played a vital role in the preparation and execution of war plans in the years that saw the Marine Corps begin expansion to 75,000 men in 1918.

Part II will be presented in tomorrow's Roads to the Great War.

Source: Relevance, Spring 2011, by permission, the Marine Corps Gazette. Originally published April 1962.