AEF Places: Then and Now

This is an article I put together about 2004 with contributions from the readers of my Doughboy Center website. MH

Wilson Avenue: Paris

The Marines passing in review on 4 July 1918, were honoring the naming of a Paris street after President Wilson. They are crossing the Place d'Iena, which is a few blocks from the Arc de Triomphe. The round building is currently the Guimet National Museum of Asiatic Art. (photo taken July 2004)

Contributed by Doug Gangler

Pannes: St. Mihiel Sector

Photographed on 26 September 1918. Located about 5 miles from Montsec and 3 miles from Thiacourt. Captured by the 167th and 168th Infantry, on 12 September.
The two Regiments were part of the famed 42nd Rainbow Division, MG Charles T. Menoher commanding. On the right is Pannes in July, 2003.

Contributed by Doug Gangler

Cochem: Occupied Rhineland

Cochem is 24 miles SW of Coblenz and situated on the Moselle River. It was designated on 21 December 1918 as the HQ of the IV Corps, Third Army, the American Army of Occupation. Caption with the U.S. Signals Corps photo of 1919 states: "SGT MAJ Owens, 12th Machine Gun Battalion, and Miss R.D. Holmes, YMCA Worker, at the town and castle of Cochem on the Moselle River." Current shot taken July 2004.

Contributed by Doug Gangler

Chaumont: Department of Haute Marne

General Headquarters of the AEF, located sixty miles south of Verdun. Soldiers walking on the town's main street are wearing the GHQ shoulder patch.

Contributed by Michele Christides who's mother Oleda was stationed as a Signal Corps Hello Girl [Telephone Operator] at Chaumont.

Exermont: Argonne Forest

Exermont is a small burg in the Meuse-Argonne, about two miles east of Chatel-Chéhéry and six miles west of Montfaucon, that was the scene of terrific fighting in early October 1918. The two period U.S. Signals Corps photos were taken in rapid sequence on 7 October, and show first Doughboys of the 18th Infantry 1st Division [left photo] examining a German casualty in the road, then moments later heading for shelter from incoming shellfire (the front line was about 3 miles north at this time).

Death of a Caproni Bomber Pilot

Contributed by Ted Huscher

[Ed. Note. Aero-historian Ted Huscher  discovered the description  of this action in the photo-diary of Hungarian Cavalry Officer Pal Kelemen  and with help from Roberto Gentilli, has discovered the identities of the Hungarian fighter pilot who downed the Caproni bomber in this story, the number and crew members of the bomber, and the location of the incident, Fort Luserna, in Northern Italy.]

Wreckage of the Caproni Bomber at Millegrobbe
Near Fort Luserna

From Kelemen  Diary

Above us the big Caproni [Ca33 Ca1179] is seriously engaged with our little fighting monoplane [sic]. Our anti-air batteries send heavy charges against the sky without avail. The white smoke-clusters from the detonations spread and evaporate slowly on the sharply brilliant blue.

Our flier [top Hungarian ace Josef Kiss] gets nearer all the time to the clumsily maneuvering biplane, and the frequent cough of their machine guns can be distinctly heard on the earth. All of a sudden the Italian machine settles downward. Our wheels above it for a brief moment, then flies off northward [toward Ciré near Pergine Valsugana] while at ever-increasing rate the Caproni speeds toward the ground, its motor stopped, the wings wavering, and plunges to earth.

By the time I get there [a field near Fort Luserna] the body of the Italian flying captain [Gaetano Coniglio], killed by a machine-gun bullet, is laid out on the turf beside the plane. One wing [starboard] of the gigantic bird of war, bent and broken, has pierced into the earth and oil is filtering out of the riddled [port] motor.

Victor in the Air Action
Hungarian Ace Josef Kiss

The Italian officer is clad in a full leather suit, his faultless elegance disturbed only by the angle at which his cap is crushed over his clean-shaven face. A fine-worked silver wristwatch ticks on unshaken and the whole body stretched out at ease seems to be only sleeping.

We search his pockets; his portfolio is handed to me. Besides letters, bank notes, slips of paper, there is a double-folded card in a hard black binding: "Season ticket to the circus, Verona."

Insignia of the
5th Caproni Squadron 

Here on this barren shell-plowed field the circus is just a printed name on a piece of cardboard. The glittering lamps at the base of the box rows, the grubbed up carpet of the sawdust, the snapping whip of the ringmaster, the bareback rider in her tulle skirt and flashing jewels, and all the other endless delights of youth have been left behind forever by one young life. The other slender rakish officers in the box will wait tonight in vain for this comrade. But the music of the circus band will still blare and the floury-faced clown will turn somersaults with paid good humor on a velvet cover on the sand. And the ladies will flirt from afar, just as if he were there, as he was perhaps even yesterday.

I should like to slide the card back under the bloodstained shirt so that, as in pagan times when everything that served the hero followed him into the tomb, this property of his also should disappear from the face of the earth and there should be at least one place left empty in his memory, in the circus in Verona.

From Hussar's Picture Book: From the Diary of a Hungarian Cavalry Officer in World War I, by Pal Kelemen, 172-173, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1972.

Fort Luserna, Site of the Crash, Today

Ted Huscher's Further Research

By examining archival sources and references, Ted Huscher has discovered some additional details about this incident, which occurred on 25 August 1916. Caproni Ca33, Ca1179, was based out of Verona, and its commander, Capitano Gaetano Coniglio, who was KIA, was also the commanding officer of Squadriglia 5a. The aircraft was landed adroitly by his copilot, Tenete Guido Sobrero, who survived the crash, along with two other wounded crew members. This was Josef Kiss's second of 19 air victories, four (including Ca1179) of which were captured, making him the #5 ace for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ltn. Kurt Fiedler was Kiss's aircraft observer (the officer who rode in the back seat and fired the swivel machine gun) during the capture of Ca1179. Kiss had a forward-firing machine gun mounted on the top wing of his aircraft (a Brandenburg C.I26.29) that day. Kiss's aircraft received 70 bullet holes in the fierce aerial engagement.

As a member of my 2011 Italian Front World War I  tour group, Ted was able to make an evening side trip to Pergine Valsugana to visit the villa where the pilots of Fliegerkompanie 24 lived (now a hospital) from its perch overlooking the former location of their airfield (now a superhighway and warehouse/industrial district). From the tour groups vantage points during visits to Fort Belvedere and Fort Verena, Ted strained to see the likely landing place of Ca1179 near Fort Luserna, between the aforementioned forts. Fort Belvedere has a photo of the crashed Ca1179 displayed within its corridors.

Whence the Russian Army After Tannenberg?

Russian Prisoner Column, Post-Tannenberg

From David Stone's The Russian Army in the Great War, Univ. of Kansas Press, 2015

The sacrifices that Rennenkampf’s and Samsonov’s soldiers had made were not pointless. As they did not destroy the Eighth Army or occupy East Prussia, the Russian plan in that sense failed, but all the powers fell short in their initial hopes. As S. L. A. Marshall wrote, “All four of the Continental powers  suffered delusions; all tried at the same time to swing for a knockout blow; all four failed.” More importantly, the Russian invasion of East Prussia did make the German high command weaken its drive on Paris in order to shore up German defenses in the east. Russian troops on German soil had galvanized public opinion. Wilhelm Düwel, a Social Democrat and not inclined to take the kaiser’s word at face value, nonetheless warned of “semi-barbarians, who scorch, murder, loot, who shoot at Samaritans, who vandalize medical stations, and spare neither women not the injured.” Rumors of Russian atrocities drove refugees west toward safety and required immediate action.

Hans von Plessen, military aide to Kaiser Wilhelm, wrote in his diary “East Prussia . . . occupied by the enemy! The Russians burn and pillage everything!—We must make haste to finish up in the West as quickly as possible in order to come to the rescue of the East.”  The result was that two corps, the Guard Reserve and XI Corps with a cavalry division, went east on 26 August. Too late to have any effect on the invasion of East Prussia, they did weaken the German drive on Paris, a close-run affair where the presence or absence of two corps might have made a difference.

Russian Infantry Still Ready to March

Tannenberg was unquestionably a major defeat for the Russians, but its significance is easy to overstate. The cost to the Russian war effort was the devastation of the Second Army, the total destruction of two corps (XV and XIII) and partial destruction of another (XXIII) out of thirty-seven corps in the Russian order of battle, and the loss of 50–70,000 casualties and 92,000 prisoners of war. Foreign Minister Sazonov told an American correspondent that Russia had lost 165,000 men in three days.

Of Samsonov’s original corps, however, the I and VI remained largely intact in defensive positions along the Narew River, along with substantial remnants of the XXIII Corps; the II Corps was now part of Rennenkampf’s First Army. Thus half of the Second Army remained to screen the northern approaches to Warsaw against the very real chance that the Eighth Army might press south into Poland to relieve Germany’s hard-pressed Austrian allies. AustriaHungary begged Germany for such a step, hoping for a German attack on Warsaw or Siedlce. The German high command had no such intention, not while Rennenkampf’s First Army still remained on German soil. Evenwhile the remnants of Samsonov’s shattered divisions were being mopped up, the German high command ordered Hindenburg to clear East Prussia in preparation for a later offensive south into Poland.

While Rennenkampf’s First Army remained on German territory, the initial East Prussian campaign was not complete. Half of Samsonov’s army had been destroyed; his surviving corps had withdrawn back across the border to regroup. Rennenkampf, however, was still inching west into East Prussia, and now faced Hindenburg’s Eighth Army alone. At Zhilinskii’s urging, Rennenkampf had sent his cavalry ranging ahead toward the pocketed Samsonov. At the same time, Zhilinskii had sabotaged this rescue effort by instructing Rennenkampf to divert troops to screen Königsberg, whose garrison was utterly irrelevant to the campaign. In any event, the  cavalry sent to Samsonov’s relief were withdrawn by the end of August when Samsonov’s destruction became clear.  

This November 1914 French map shows Russian
 operations after Tannenberg.  Note the modest
advances in East Prussia; major advances
through Poland; and major advance through
Galicia, with a subsequent partial withdrawal; 
while holding A-H Fortress Przemyśl under siege.

The ongoing mobilization of reserves on both sides was already beginning to change the nature of the war, only weeks into the fighting. The initial battles in East Prussia had been fought by formations that had been forced to fight with open flanks, since the density of manpower and wide spaces of East European terrain meant that there were simply not enough units to maintain continuous fronts. The Russian mobilization system was beginning to tap into the country’s colossal human reserves. . . [The] key campaigns in late 1914 and 1915 were an enormous test for the Russian Empire, but also demonstrated that Russia’s resources of population and space made German victory difficult to achieve.

Private Harold Ross and the Staff of The Stars and Stripes

Background

The Stars and Stripes was the service newspaper of the American Expeditionary Forces, written, edited and published by men from the ranks. The first number was issued in Paris on 8 February 1918. The paper appeared weekly thereafter until 13 June 1919. It was one of the greatest aids in keeping up the spirit and morale of the men overseas and at the height of its popularity had a circulation of 522,000.

First Issue, 8 February 1918

By Alfred E. Cornebise

Certainly one of the most interesting of the characters drawn to the new paper was Pvt. Harold Wallace Ross, who later founded and for a long time directed the fortunes of The New Yorker magazine. Born in Aspen, Colorado, he had earlier served on The San Francisco Call and some 78 other American newspapers (one at a time), joining The Stars and Stripes editorial staff from the 18th Engineers (Railway).

Ross was known for his energy but also for his rather abrasive character. It is noteworthy that later [his last superior, Major Mark Watson] recommended Ross and only one other enlisted man for the Distinguished Service Medal observing that his work stood out so conspicuously as to entitle [him] to special mention above even the admirable work performed by [his] associates. However, as it transpired that the DSM was rarely awarded below the rank of colonel, Ross did not receive his medal, but then Ross had never asked for credit, though Watson clearly felt that he richly deserved it.

Private Harold Ross

[A second key individual] was Alexander Woollcott, from New Jersey, who had been a drama critic for The New York Times. In the army, he had been safely ensconced in the registrars office of Base Hospital No. 8, when captured and borne off to Paris. But, when the war suddenly became warlike [its] last spring [1918], he was sent to the front, where he remained for the most part until the armistice was signed, serving as chief war correspondent of The Stars and Stripes and living in constant danger of death at the hand of some division that thought he was giving too much attention to the wretched craven divisions on either side. Soon others joined him in working the front, for it took many men to cover that fairly lively beat. Woollcott was later put in charge of the amusement column, which became a regular, rather lengthy, well-written feature of the paper.

These [two men along with Privates Hudson Hawley and John Tracy Winterich] long remained in charge of the papers editorial destinies. From December 1917 to April 1919, Ross functioned as probably the lowest paid managing editor in the history of journalism. The four were also responsible for nearly all of the editorials—which were unsigned—making it virtually impossible to ascribe authorship to any particular piece. Many of them are brilliant pieces of sparkling journalistic prose, some certainly attaining the level of essays of marked literary merit. The role that these editors played had another dimension also: They have helped make the world safe for democracy by serving as models for [the house cartoonists], as one account playfully recorded.

These four editors, sometimes joined by the cartoonists, for fourteen months of the paper's 16 ½ months of life, formed the main editorial board at Paris—not to be confused with the Board of Control at Chaumont—which x-rayed every article that came in, in the process of which they brought many limelight seekers and overzealous promoters to grief, shocked many a chaplain, Y.M.C.A. man and visiting congressman by their deafness to pleas that The Stars and Stripes should run a religious column . . . [or one] . . . entitled Happy Thoughts (or something killingly funny like that), enraged many a divisional publicity officer, and in general thumbed their collective noses at the martial universe. In so doing, they naturally worked always with one foot in the hoosegow, for practically every one of their callers and advisers ranked hell out of them. Their attitude was necessary, however, since they from start to finish . . . held the paper to its original intention of being by and for the enlisted man. Since the editorial staff were enlisted men themselves, who had done their share of KP along with everyone else, they insisted that they knew what the enlisted men wanted in their paper and that, by the shade of George Washington's spurs, they were going to give it to him (S&S: 13 June 1919).

Captain Guy T. Viskniskki, an assistant press officer of the AEF, was one of the founders of The Stars and Stripes. Having launched the publication, he became its first officer in charge and was [always] at some pains to emphasize the role of the enlisted men. Barring an officer or two, who had to be around to satisfy Army tradition, he once stated, the paper was produced by the men, many of the lowly, or buck, variety. He went on to explain: "A handful of enlisted men has written and illustrated the greater part of the paper--I believe, for its size, the most brilliant and erratic editorial staff ever possessed by an American newspaper. This fact did not dismay him because, in his view, the American private is the greatest man in the world at fighting or writing or anything." (S&S: 7 February 1919) To be sure, the officer-in-charge, as commander of the men attached to the staff, had something to say about the papers operations, but the enlisted editors mainly ran the production side of the sheet.

Many of the contributors to The Stars and Stripes went on to great journalistic achievement after the war. Harold Ross with the help of Woollcott would create The New Yorker and make it America's leading magazine. First Lieutenant Henry Grantland Rice, of the AEF's 115th Field Artillery, was, for a time, on the staff of The Stars and Stripes. A professional journalist in civilian life, he had worked on The New York Mail (1910–1911) and The New York Herald Tribune (1911–1930). After the Great War, he wrote the influential syndicated sports column, the "Sportlight." In his day, he was widely regarded as the "dean of American sportswriters." He was also a prolific versifier, and producer of documentary sports films. [Harold Ross's superior Major Watson would himself one day win a Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.]

The number of editors grew so as to keep up with the papers steadily expanding operations. Other prominent members later included Sgt. Seth T. Bailey, of the 162nd Infantry, part of the Sunset Division, and future editor and presidential press secretary Steve Early.

The Stars and Stripes was published every Friday from 8 February1918 to 13 June 1919. It would return for the Second World War and again be staffed by future notables of journalism like Bill Mauldin and Andy Rooney.

Source: By permission from The Stars and Stripes by Alfred E. Cornebise, Greenwood Press, 1984

A Short History of the First World War by Gary Sheffield

 

American Troops with German Prisoners
George Harding

By Gary Sheffield

One World Publications, 2014

Squadron Leader Paul Withers, RAF, Reviewer

Originally Presented in Air Power Review, 2023

In addition to [2024] being a year of commemoration, the centenary of the outbreak of the  Great War has provided an opportunity to revisit the origins of the conflict, the way it was fought and its broader impact on the 20th century. Undoubtedly, many new books will be released between now and 2018, but A Short History of the First World War provides an excellent broad overview that, despite its relative brevity, includes a great deal of insightful analysis.

Gary Sheffield is Professor of War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and has previously worked at the University of Birmingham and the Joint Services Command and Staff College. He is an acknowledged expert on the First World War, having written widely on the subject, and is one of a small number of revisionist historians who have helped debunk the popular myths about the conflict. His short history tackles an enormous subject, and his stated aim is to give the reader an "understanding of not only what happened in 1914-18 but how and why" (p.xiii).

Sheffield’s analysis is set out in broadly chronological order with significant consideration given to the wider global conflict, expanding the aperture beyond the war fought in the trenches of Flanders and France. He starts with a balanced argument on the causation of the war, analyzing the international system and the roles of "nationalism," "imperialism," and "militarism" in bringing the world to the brink of conflict. He unpicks a range of arguments but ultimately concludes that the blame lay at the door of "the leaders of two aggressor states" Austria-Hungary and Germany (p.27).

The bulk of the volume focuses on the conduct of the war itself. He examines how the initial large-scale, rapid mobile battle on the Western Front aimed at achieving a quick and decisive German victory soon bogged down into the stalemate of trench warfare that was to last for almost the entire war. On the Eastern Front, France’s key ally Russia suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the Germans during the Battle of Tannenberg, while during the same period, in the late summer of 1914, the Russians inflicted 300,000 casualties on Austria (pp. 40-41). This breadth of outlook gives the reader the true context of the war. The losses on the Western Front were horrifically large during the various set-piece battles, but study of the broader conflict highlights its scale beyond northwest Europe. As Sheffield develops his study into 1915, in addition to the Western and Eastern Fronts, he examines the Turkish Front,  particularly the Dardenelles campaign, and looks at some of the lesser-known parts of the war in Italy, Serbia, and Salonika. He provides an interesting analysis of the general strategy of attrition. While the received wisdom is that it was ineffective and profligate, Sheffield reviews the evidence and suggests that in fact "controlled attrition" is a viable strategy and that "such attrition was costly in human life but ultimately effective" (p. 54).

The year 1916 saw some of the battles that typify the general understanding of the conflict, Verdun and the Somme, but also the most significant naval battle of the war, Jutland. With more than 250 ships involved, this battle ensured that the German Grand Fleet returned to port for the remainder of the war. However, victory came at the cost of the Royal Navy absorbing significantly greater losses in terms of tonnage than did the Germans. Sheffield goes on to examine the "Year of Strain: 1917," including Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele, as well as the first large-scale tank battle at Cambrai. He also considers the cumulative effect of trench warfare and the impact of widespread mutinies within the French Army. The examination of the actual conflict concludes with the decisive year of 1918, leading up to the Armistice.

Throughout the book, the author intersperses the main argument with more detailed examination of topics such as the international system, biographical information on the key commanders, the revolution in military affairs, morale and discipline, and the U-boat war. Of specific interest to the air power audience, he includes sections on "The Beginnings of War in the Air," "The Air War Intensifies," and "The Air War Away from the Western Front."

The third part of A Short History of the First World War deals with total war and the broader impact on the societies of the belligerents. Sheffield considers total war to be one where all the resources of a state—human, economic, and technological—are devoted to waging war (p. 128). Beyond mass mobiliaation, he considers the impact of the industrialization of warfare and the establishment of "total war economies." In considering the wider impacts, he examines the implications for Irish independence and the triggers for the Russian Revolution.

Order This Work HERE

The book ends with an epilogue that firmly establishes the implications of the First World War for the remainder of the century. He challenges the common assumption that the punitive nature of the Versailles Treaty inevitably led to the Second World War, arguing that the world "economic crisis fatally undermined the Weimar Republic" (p. 175). He also considers two of the legacies of the Great War that still shape modern conflict—the Sykes-Picot agreement and the Balfour Declaration.

At a mere 239 pages, Sheffield tackles a massive subject in an extremely readable and engaging style. The fact that it is so wide-ranging inevitably means that it lacks depth in some areas, and some aspects of the war necessarily did not make it into the book. However, the "big-and-small map" approach is more than compensated for by Sheffield’s insightful analysis. This book should whet the reader’s appetite to study the Great War in more depth. Sheffield offers a section on further reading tht reviews some of the best literature on the subject. Of these, I would particularly recommend Sheffield’s Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities (Headline, 2001). For an excellent study on one of the Great War’s iconic of battles, the Somme, read William Philpott’s Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century (Little, Brown, 2009).

In this short introduction, Sheffield provides the reader with insight into to the global nature of the conflict and examines its prosecution across the land, sea, and air domains. For the air power audience, it establishes the context that led to air power emerging as both an independent and an integrated form of warfare. It is highly recommended as a primer for those  looking for a broad scholarly overview of the conflict but also acts as a very useful general reference. A Short History of the First World War sets a basis for any study of modern warfare in giving the reader an understanding of the transformative effect that the Great War had on the 20th century and beyond.

Paul Withers

War Story: Dundee, Scotland

The Dundee Law War Memorial Overlooking the City

Dundee—one of the eight major cities of Scotland—was declining economically at the time of the Great War. Once the  world capital of the jute industry, Dundee had become uncompetive against India. Nontheless, many of its 175,000 citizens were still employed in the textile and ship-building industries. In the midst of the July Crisis of 1914 the city was thrilled to receive a morale-boosting royal visit from King George V and his family. Soon afterward the city responded to the call to arms enthusiastically.  Over 30,000 of its sons enlisted in the various forces and  more than 4,213 would die in service.

4th Battalion in the Trenches

At the beginning of the First World War, many Dundonian men  joined the 4th (City of Dundee) Battalion, the Black Watch. This local territorial infantry unit almost entirely consisted of men from the city and its immediate surrounding areas. The battalion came to be known as Dundee’s Own. They played a major role in the early battle of Neuve Chapelle and Loos. Losses were so great that the 4th Battalion was merged with the 5th Battalion of the Black Watch for the remainder of the war.  During the Second World War Dundee again provided manpower for the Black Watch and a memorial to soldiers of the 4/5 Black Watch was dedicated to the fallen in 1959 atop the peak of Powrie Brae.

Dundee’s contribution to the First World War effort was widely recognised but it was also a leading center for the anti-war movement. At the time an anti-war newspaper, Forward, noted that Dundee "was fair hotchin’ wi conchies."

The Dundee Law Today

At the end of the Great War, Dundee decided to honour the sacrifice of over 4,000 citizens by building the memorial on the Dundee Law, the hill that is the highest point in the city. The unveiling ceremony took place on 16 May 1925. Its simple inscription states: TO THE MEMORY OF DUNDEE MEN WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR 1914-1918. 

There is a beacon at the top of the Law memorial which is lit on important dates to remember, such as 25 September, to commemorate the 1915 Battle of Loos, and 11 November, Armistice Day. 

 The 4th Battalion, the Black Watch, in the Attack, 1915
 by Joseph Gray

Joseph Lee, a 40-year-old journalist joined the 4th Black Watch, fought and survived the war, including a year as a prisoner of war, and became a respected war poet.  From his "The Green Grass".

The dead spake together last night,

And one to the other said:

‘Why are we dead?’

They turned them face to face about

In the place where they were laid:

‘Why are we dead?’

‘This is the sweet, sweet month o’ May,

And the grass is green o’erhead –

Why are we dead?

‘The grass grows green on the long, long tracks

That I shall never tread –

Why are we dead?

‘The lamp shines like the glow-worm spark,

From the bield where I was bred –

Why am I dead?

The other spake: ‘I’ve wife and weans,

Yet I lie in this waesome bed –

Why am I dead?

Quoth the first: ‘I have a sweet, sweetheart,

And this night we should hae wed –

Why am I dead?

Sources: Dundee's Hidden Histories; Public Art Dundee, Great War Dundee; Discover War Poets

The Scope of Suffering and Traumatization During World War I

Mealtime in the Trenches by Otto Dix

Maarten Van Son et al.

The years of World War I, 1914–1918, were a time of immense suffering, not only among warring soldiers, but also among civilians in the various countries at war and in surrounding countries to which displaced people fled. In addition to the suffering of the countless refugees from the war zones, there was increasing hunger and shortage of all kinds of essential commodities throughout many countries (Van Bergen, 1999; Whalen, 1984), along with extensive environmental damage and the total destruction of civil infrastructures. In all involved countries there was immeasurable mourning and grief for the myriad dead. 

For combat soldiers themselves, especially those in the trenches, suffering did not consist only of physical or mental wounding. There was also constant misery produced by the intrinsically horrific conditions in the trenches, as illustrated in a 1918 issue of the French trench journal Le Filon (quoted by Van Bergen, 1999, p. 10): 

Fighting a modern war means to entrench yourself in a hole filled with water and to sit in it for ten days without moving, it means looking and listening and keeping a grenade in your hand, it means eating cold food and sinking in the mud and carrying your food through the dark night and wandering hour after hour around the same point without ever finding it, it means being hit by grenades which come from God knows where–in short: it means privation. 

This picture easily extended to include torment due to the constant presence of vermin, and the need to function despite chronic lack of sleep, exhaustion, cold, thirst, hunger, poor rations, complete lack of sanitation facilities, inadequate medical care, and high rates of disease (e.g., dysentery, trench foot and other severe skin disorders, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and the deadly Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918). There was the constant stress of seeing fellow soldiers being killed or wounded, of the stench and sight of unburied decomposing bodies, of hearing unheeded screams for help from the wounded trapped in no-man’s land, and of helplessly watching the wounded drown in mud without the possibility of being rescued. Soldiers lived in trenches for weeks or months at a time, and more often than not, furloughs were extraordinarily brief or entirely absent; thus, there was no relief from the dreadful existence in the trenches. Finally, fear was an ever-present experience. In this war especially, with its unprecedented reliance on massive bombardments and static trench warfare, confrontation with death was inescapable. 

Gilbert (1995) reports that the defeated Central Powers lost 3,500,000 soldiers on the battlefield. The victorious Allied Powers lost 5,100,000 men. Gilbert also reported that, on average, this was more than 5,600 soldiers killed each day of the war. The fact that 20,000 British soldiers were killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme is often recalled with horror. On average, a similar number of soldiers were killed in every four-day period of the First World War (p. 541). 

American Soldier Suffering Shell Shock

How about the mental casualties, also referred to as soldiers with shell shock, neurasthenia, war neurosis, or the German term, Kriegsneurosen? After the war, a witness stated, ‘‘under conditions such as existed in France it is inevitable for the man to break down at one time or another’’ (War Office Committee, 1922, p. 5). During the initial stages of the war this insight did not exist among the upper army echelons. In fact, many military authorities were so prejudiced or ignorant about mental casualties that, for example, the official British military position was that shell shock and malingering were impossible to separate, therefore, both should be dealt with in army prisons (Stone, 1985, p. 250). Some ‘‘shell shocked’’ soldiers even received court-martialed death sentences for ‘‘desertion’’ (Babington, 1983, 1997). 

However, it became increasingly difficult to ignore the scope of mental breakdown following the mass devastation of the Battle of the Somme, in particular among the British forces (Bogacz, 1989; Feudtner, 1993; War Office Committee, 1922). Such breakdowns could be caused not only by acute trauma but also by accumulating stresses and strains of life in the war zone. Rivers (War Office Committee, 1922) remarked on these latter cases: 

‘‘These were the men who, especially in the early stages of the war, after some shell explosion or something else had knocked them down badly, went on struggling to do their duty until they finally collapsed entirely’’ (p. 55).  

It was believed, even by Freud (1919), that with the end of the war ‘‘most of the neurotic diseases that had been brought about by the war disappeared’’ (p. 1). Reality was quite different, with long-term psychiatric disability for  thousands of soldiers on all sides of the Great War. In 1917, the German  psychiatrist Robert Gaupp concluded that Kriegsneurosen (war neuroses)  constituted the largest category of wounded soldiers in the German army: more than 613,000 men. Entire German companies suffered from constant vomiting or unceasing fits of crying (Van Bergen, 1999, p. 211). The numbers within the British ranks are less clear, but one thing is certain: the official number of 80,000 is a vast underestimation (Van Bergen, 1999). 

Although, at least in Britain, many shell shocked soldiers were gradually able to work, they still experienced significant emotional difficulties: ‘‘The position in 1925 was that 60% were still affected with varying degrees of nervous anxiety, but the number who were unemployable had fallen to 20%’’ (Babington, 1997, p. 122). In 1929, British mental hospitals still housed 65,000 cases of  ‘‘shell shock’’ (Winter, 1979). In 1932, 36% of veterans receiving disability pensions from the British government were listed as psychiatric casualties of the war (Leed, 1979, p. 185). In 1939, 120,000 British veterans were receiving pensions or had been paid a final award for war-related ‘‘primary psychiatric disability’’ (Babington, 1997). Finally, in 1942, Thom reported that 58% (68,000 men) of all the patients being cared for in veterans’ hospitals in the United States were neuropsychiatric casualties of WWI (Thom, 1943; quoted by Leed, 1979). 

In contrast to the enormous attention military psychiatrists gave to acutely traumatized combat soldiers—with the explicit mission to get them back to the front as soon as possible—there are virtually no post-WWI psychiatric studies on chronically traumatized war veterans. As far as we know there was only one follow-up study. This 1920 American study consisted of 760 men out of a larger group of pensioners suffering from war neuroses, and revealed that more than 60% were troubled with symptoms of psychotic illness and nearly 40% were unfit for any form of employment (Salmon, 1921; quoted by  Babington, 1997). 

Night (Post WWI Berlin) by Max Beckmann

Nevertheless, psychiatry did learn one extremely important lesson: the development of mental disorders could be related directly to traumatic experiences. Whereas initial medical reports emphasized premorbid characteristics, including heredity, as the main factors in the development of these disorders, it was subsequently understood that every man had his breaking point. Hart (1929), ‘‘a veteran of five years working in ‘shell-shock’ hospitals  in England’’ (Shephard, 1999, p. 494), wrote: 

During the recent war a great mass of illness occurred which, christened at first by the misleading name of ‘‘shell shock,’’ came ultimately to be known as the psychoneuroses of war. This change of nomenclature was due to the rapidly won recognition of the psychological origin of these conditions. Indeed it may be said that, whatever else the war has done, it has at least conclusively demonstrated the existence and  importance of psychogenic disorder. (p. 64) 

The mental disorder most commonly associated with the Great War, was,  of course, shell shock. Myers was not the only WWI psychiatrist to explain  shell shock, or the war neuroses, in terms of a dissociation of the personality  (e.g., Brown, 1919a & b; Ferenczi, 1919b; McDougall, 1926; Simmel, 1919). 

For example, Brown (1919a) stated that ‘‘viewed from the psychological point of view, hysterical disorders all fall under one heading, as examples of dissociation of psycho-physical functions (walking, speaking, hearing, remembering certain experiences, etc.) following upon a diminution or loss of higher mental control’’ (p. 834). Likewise, Myers (1940) formulated the concept that the ‘‘ ‘functional’ nervous disorders are assignable . . . to a dissociated personality and its results’’ (p. 71). 

We believe that Myers’ (1940) distinction between what he referred to as the ‘‘emotional’’ or traumatized personality (EP) and ‘‘apparently normal’’ personality (ANP) provides a clear theoretical notion that greatly enhances our understanding of trauma-related dissociation. We would, however, emphasize that in no way is our intention to reify separate entities when using the term ‘‘personality.’’ Hart (1929) correctly stated that these pheonomena are ‘‘in reality absolutely devoid of any actual spatial aspect, and the introduction of a spatial metaphor . . . can only lead to erroneous deductions unless its purely descriptive and illustrative function is rigidly controlled’’  (p. 162). Structural dissociation is both a metaphoric and a theoretical construct, neither of which reflects complete reality, since all language—scientific or metaphoric—only approximates reality. 

Nonetheless, we are persuaded by clinical experience and growing empirical data that the clearest understanding of trauma-induced dissociation and its treatment to date is the view of ANP and EP as metaphoric descriptive labels of mental systems that have failed to integrate. The essence of this failure to integrate, i.e., dissociation, is represented in Janet’s definition of hysteria that was the 19th-century category of dissociative disorders in a generic sense: ‘‘A form of mental depression characterized by the retraction of the field of consciousness [involuntary and intense narrowing of attention] and a tendency to the dissociation and emancipation of the systems of ideas and functions that constitute  personality’’ (Janet, 1907, p. 332). The EP and ANP that Myers (1940) observed in traumatized soldiers constitute major examples of these dissociated ‘‘systems of ideas and functions.’’ They had their own sense of self, however rudimentary (McDougall, 1926; Mitchell, 1922), and exhibited a concurrent retraction of their field of consciousness that further reduced mental integrative capacity already impaired by dissociation. 

"Somatoform Dissociation in Traumatized World War I Combat Soldiers: A Neglected Clinical Heritagem" by Maarten Van Son et al., JOURNAL OF TRAUMA & DISSOCIATION; Vol. 1(4) 2000

6 April 1918: Woodrow Wilson's Most War-Like Speech

After President Wilson brought America into the war in April 1917, much of what he shared publicly about his war aims seemed to be a continuance of his January 1917 call for the belligerents to conclude a "peace without victory." With America's mobilization, including its economic strength and international political influence, the Allies clearly could never lose nor could the Central Powers ever prevail on the battlefield.  Things would ultimately be settled in diplomatic conference of some sort. 

Come New Year's Day of 1918, however, prospects did not seem hopeless for Germany. The 1917 campaigns had been filled with disappointments for the Allies. Italy was almost knocked out of the war at Caporetto, and the Russian Bolsheviks finally simply left the battlefield.  Germany, rather than seeking an advantageous settlement before millions of fresh Americans started arriving in Europe, decided to seek a military decision on the Western Front before the numeric tide turned irreversibly on the decisive battlefield in the west. The Great War now seemed fated to last far beyond 1918.

Two events in the spring further jolted President Wilson's estimation of the strategic situation.  On 3 March, the Central Powers concluded a draconian peace with Russia at Brest-Litovsk.  Later in the month, the German Army launched the first of five victory offensives, which initially proved alarmingly successful. Up to this point, with his public utterances—such as his January "14 Points" address—Wilson had been projecting his hopes of bringing the German leadership and/or the Dual Monarchy to sue for peace through political pressure. The recent events showed him the futility of this approach.

With the current battlefield posture, the German enemy was likely of a mind to consider new signals of moderation a sign of weakness.  Further, the Allies, who—with the end of the trench stalemate—were being driven toward the English Channel and needed a signal of America's firm "willingness to fight" resolution. The president decided to send a fresh set of signals to all the combatants in his next major speech, which is included below in its entirety. It was delivered on the first anniversary of America's declaration of war. Readers (I think) will find some of the themes and terminology positively un-Wilsonian. I've highlighted some passages that surprised me. MH

Address of President Wilson Delivered at Baltimore, 6 April 6 1918, for the Launching of the 3rd Liberty Loan

Fifth Regiment Armory, Baltimore, MD, 6 April 6 1918

Fellow Citizens: This is the anniversary of our acceptance of Germany’s challenge to fight for our right to live and be free, and for the sacred rights of free men everywhere. The Nation is awake. There is no need to call to it. We know what the war must cost, our utmost sacrifice, the lives of our fittest men and, if need be, all that we possess. The loan we are met to discuss is one of the least parts of what we are called upon to give and to do, though in itself imperative. The people of the whole country are alive to the necessity of it, and are ready to lend to the utmost, even where it involves a sharp skimping and daily sacrifice to lend out of meagre earnings. They will look with reprobation and contempt upon those who can and will not, upon those who demand a higher rate of interest, upon those who think of it as a mere commercial transaction. I have not come, therefore, to urge the loan. I have come only to give you, if I can, a more vivid conception of what it is for.

The reasons for this great war, the reason why it had to come, the need to fight it through, and the issues that hang upon its outcome, are more clearly disclosed now than ever before. It is easy to see just what this particular loan means because the cause we are fighting for stands more sharply revealed than at any previous crisis of the momentous struggle. The man who knows least can now see plainly how the cause of justice stands and what the imperishable thing is he is asked to invest in. Men in America may be more sure than they ever were before that the cause is their own, and that, if it should be lost, their own great Nation’s place and mission in the world would be lost with it.

I call you to witness, my fellow countrymen, that at no stage of this terrible business have I judged the purposes of Germany in-temperately. I should be ashamed in the presence of affairs so grave, so fraught with the destinies of mankind throughout all the world, to speak with truculence, to use the weak language of hatred or vindictive purpose. We must judge as we would be judged. I have sought to learn the objects Germany has in this war from the mouths of her own spokesmen, and to deal as frankly with them as I wished them to deal with me. I have laid bare our own ideals, our own purposes, without reserve or doubtful phrase, and have asked them to say as plainly what it is that they seek.

We have ourselves proposed no injustice, no aggression. We are ready, whenever the final reckoning is made, to be just to the German people, deal fairly with the German power, as with all others.  There can be no difference between peoples in the final judgment, if it is indeed to be a righteous judgment. To propose anything but justice, even-handed and dispassionate justice, to Germany at any time, whatever the outcome of the war, would be to renounce and dishonour our own cause. For we ask nothing that we are not willing to accord.

It has been with this thought that I have sought to learn from those who spoke for Germany whether it was justice or dominion and the execution of their own will upon the other nations of the world that the German leaders were seeking. They have answered, answered in unmistakable terms. They have avowed that it was not justice but dominion and the unhindered execution of their own will.

The avowal has not come from Germany’s statesmen. It has come from her military leaders, who are her real rulers. Her statesmen have said that they wished peace, and were ready to discuss its terms whenever their opponents were willing to sit down at the conference table with them. Her present Chancellor has said,—in indefinite and uncertain terms, indeed, and in phrases that often seem to deny their own meaning, but with as much plainness as he thought prudent,—that he believed that peace should be based upon the principles which we have declared would be our own in the final settlement. At Brest-Litovsk her civilian delegates spoke in similar terms; professed their desire to conclude a fair peace and accord to the peoples with whose fortunes they were dealing the right to choose their own allegiances. But action accompanied and followed the profession. Their military masters, the men who act for Germany and exhibit her purpose in execution, proclaimed a very different conclusion. We can not mistake what they have done,—in Russia, in Finland, in the Ukraine, in Rumania. The real test of their justice and fair play has come. From this we may judge the rest. They are enjoying in Russia a cheap triumph in which no brave or gallant nation can long take pride. A great people, helpless by their own act, lies for the time at their mercy. Their fair professions are forgotten. They nowhere set up justice, but everywhere impose their power and exploit everything for their own use and aggrandizement; and the peoples of conquered provinces are invited to be free under their dominion!

Are we not justified in believing that they would do the same things at their western front if they were not there face to face with armies whom even their countless divisions can not overcome? If, when they have felt their check to be final, they should propose favourable and equitable terms with regard to Belgium and France and Italy, could they blame us if we concluded that they did so only to assure themselves of a free hand in Russia and the East?

Their purpose is undoubtedly to make all the Slavic peoples, all the free and ambitious nations of the Baltic peninsula, all the lands that Turkey has dominated and misruled, subject to their will and ambition and build upon that dominion an empire of force upon which they fancy that they can then erect an empire of gain and commercial supremacy,—an empire as hostile to the Americas as to the Europe which it will overawe,—an empire which will ultimately master Persia, India, and the peoples of the Far East. In such a programme our ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity and liberty, the principle of the free self-determination of nations upon which all the modern world insists, can play no part. They are rejected for the ideals of power, for the principle that the strong must rule the weak, that trade must follow the flag, whether those to whom it is taken welcome it or not, that the peoples of the world are to be made subject to the patronage and overlordship of those who have the power to enforce it.

That programme once carried out, America and all who care or dare to stand with her must arm and prepare themselves to contest the mastery of the world, a mastery in which the rights of common men, the rights of women and of all who are weak, must for the time being be trodden under foot and disregarded, and the old, age-long struggle for freedom and right begin again at its beginning. Everything that America has lived for and loved and grown great to vindicate and bring to a glorious realization will have fallen in utter ruin and the gates of mercy once more pitilessly shut upon mankind!

The thing is preposterous and impossible; and yet is not that what the whole course and action of the German armies has meant wherever they have moved? I do not wish, even in this moment of utter disillusionment, to judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what the German arms have accomplished with unpitying thoroughness throughout every fair region they have touched.

What, then, are we to do? For myself, I am ready, ready still, ready even now, to discuss a fair and just and honest peace at any time that it is sincerely purposed,—a peace in which the strong and the weak shall fare alike. But the answer, when I proposed such a peace, came from the German commanders in Russia, and I cannot mistake the meaning of the answer.

I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. All the world shall know that you accept it. It shall appear in the utter sacrifice and self-forgetfulness with which we shall give all that we love and all that we have to redeem the world and make it fit for free men like ourselves to live in. This now is the meaning of all that we do. Let everything that we say, my fellow countrymen, everything that we henceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to this response till the majesty and might of our concerted power shall fill the thought and utterly defeat the force of those who flout and misprize what we honour and hold dear. Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide whether Justice and Peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether Right as America conceives it or Dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one response possible from us: Force, Force to the utmost, Force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world, and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust.

Sources:  "President Wilson and the War Aims of the United States" by Klaus Schwabe;  U.S. Department of State

July Fourth 1917: America Marches Over There and Over Here

Westminster Bridge, London

By Stuart Irwin

The Fourth of July holiday is an occasion for the United States of America to celebrate and commemorate the birth of the nation. It is interesting to recall how this holiday was celebrated during the years America participated in World War One. The entry of the United States into the war provided a massive boost to the Allied powers and marked a significant moment in the conflict.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the July 4 holiday excited much interest among the Allied powers. In 1917, the Times of London claimed that "[t]here have been many memorable Fourths of July in the past one hundred and forty-one years, but never one so pregnant with the drama of great events as this." For example, by the order of the king, the stars and stripes flew from Victoria tower.

16th Infantry, Paris, France

The celebrations in France were even more extravagant. The New York Times reported on July 4, 1918 that "Paris Avenue du Président Wilson street sign Paris turned out today as almost never in its history to celebrate the Fourth of July. The French capital not only extended a royal welcome to the Americans here, but made a thorough holiday of the day on its own account." The events included American troops marching through the city, where they were welcomed by "[c]rowds of people that jammed every available inch of space and every window in the buildings along the line of march, on roofs, and even in trees, cheered themselves hoarse." Most notably, a ceremony was held to mark the renaming of Avenue du President Wilson.

US Navy, Duluth, Minnesota

Such displays of American patriotism highlight the sense of gratitude and unity in purpose that was felt by the Allied powers. Indeed, the Times offered an eloquent narrative of the significance of having America enter the war:

They will have their reward not only in helping to save civilization from its present agony, but in an America ennobled by sacrifice, strengthened by a new consciousness of unity, made more efficient for all the purposes both of war and peace, and broadened by contact with world-wide interests and problems. The political balance of the universe shifted when General Pershing’s troops landed in France, and America, in entering the war, has also entered the world – to play in it, we are very sure, side by side with the Allied democracies, a vigorous and inspiring part. 

Liberty Loan Float, Nyack, New York

Source: U.S. National World War One Centennial Commission

Field Marshal Edmund Allenby on the Death of Lawrence of Arabia

Only Known Photo of Both Lawrence and Allenby

BBC Radio Interview, 22 May 1935 

I have lost a good friend and a valued comrade. Lawrence was under my command, but, after acquainting him with my strategical plan, I gave him a free hand. His co-operation was marked by the utmost loyalty, and I never had anything but praise for his work which, indeed, was invaluable throughout the campaign.

He was the mainspring of the Arab movement. He knew their language, their manners, their mentality; he understood and shared their merry, sly humor; in daring, he led them; in endurance, he equaled, if not surpassed, their strongest.

Though in complete sympathy with his companions, and sharing to the full with them their hardship and danger, he was careful to maintain the dignity of his position as Confidential Advisor to the Emir Feisal. Himself an Emir, he wore the robes of that rank and kept up a suitable degree of state.

His own bodyguard–men of wild and adventurous spirit–were all picked by Lawrence personally. Mounted on thoroughbred camels, they followed him in all his daring rides; and among those reckless desert rangers, there was none who would not willingly have died for their chief. In fact, not a few lost their lives through devotion to him and in defence of his person.

The shy and retiring scholar, archaeologist, philosopher, was swept by the tide of war into a position undreamt of. His well-balanced brain and disciplined imagination facilitated adaptation to the new environment; and there shone forth a brilliant tactician, with a genius for leadership.

Such men win friends–such also find critics and detractors. But the highest reward for success is the inward knowledge that it has been rightly won. Praise or blame was regarded with indifference by Lawrence. He did his duty as he saw it before him.

He has left, to us who knew and admired him, a beloved memory; and to all his countrymen, the example of a life well-spent in service.

Lawrence thought highly of Allenby and said of him, "(He was) physically large and confident, and morally so great that the comprehension of our littleness came slow to him". Allenby would die in May 1936.

The photo was found on Biosphere and the Lawrence quote on Wikipedia.