Nijinsky's War

Vaslav Nijinsky (1890?–1950) in Les Orientales, 1911

 By Asst. Editor Kimball Worcester

The legendary Russian dancer epitomized the shocking modernity of the 20th century in the decade preceding the guns of August 1914 before sinking into irremediable schizophrenia in the 1920s. Nijinsky's sensual fire and unprecedented talent blazed through Russia, Europe, South America, and the United States. He revitalized ballet both as an extraordinary male dancer and as a choreographer. His career was short but profound, and he is remembered for truly important milestones in the history of ballet: Le Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring), Petrushka, L'Après-midi d'un faune, Schéhérazade, and Le Spectre de la rose.

Report of the May 1913 Debut of Rite of Spring

In June 1914, Nijinsky and his new wife, Romola, a Hungarian, were living in Vienna, where their daughter Kyra was born on the 18th of that month. With the outbreak of war some weeks later, the family was interned as non-combatant prisoners of war (in effect, enemy aliens) in Budapest, at the house of Kyra's mother. Nijinsky's Russian citizenship kept them there for two years.

In the meantime, Nijinsky's former impresario, Serge Diaghilev, was in the United States, trying to arrange the dancer's extrication from Budapest so he could tour the then neutral U.S. Such prominent international figures as King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Queen Alexandra of Great Britain, and Pope Benedict XV are said to have interceded on Nijinsky's behalf. By 1916 a prisoner exchange was arranged through the United States, and Nijinsky, his wife, and daughter were released to join Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes in the States.

 A Young Nijinsky with Sergei Diaghilev

The tour was not a success. Nijinsky and Diaghilev could not resurrect their previous partnership (which had been severed upon Nijinsky's marriage in September 1913), and American audiences were as yet insufficiently "modern" to withstand the force and genius of Nijinsky's dance and choreography. The horrors of the Great War and of Nijinsky's enforced peregrinations during it have been cited as just some of the contributors to his mental descent. He ultimately spent the last 30-odd years of his life largely in institutions. Nijinsky died in 1950 in London.

"Achilles in the Trench" aka “I saw a man this morning” by Patrick Shaw-Stewart

Patrick Shaw-Stewart (1888–1917) was born in Wales son of a British general. He attended Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he excelled academically and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College. Associated with the socialite and aristocrat Lady Diana Cooper, Shaw-Stewart was part of her “corrupt coterie” and wrote her many intimate letters full of erotic allusions to Greek and Latin literature. Already a highly successful banker before war broke out, Shaw-Stewart joined the army in 1914 and served with Rupert Brooke in the Royal Naval Division; he was even present at Brooke’s burial in Skyros.

While known as a “war poet,” Shaw-Stewart wrote only one poem, “Achilles in the Trench” which was penned in a period of rest before fighting at Gallipoli and published after his death. The poem contains allusions to Greek literature, notably Homer’s Iliad. Shaw-Stewart was killed at Cambrai in 1917 and buried at Metz-en-Couture.  (The Poetry Foundation)

Men of the Royal Naval Division at Gallipoli

I saw a man this morning

     Who did not wish to die

I ask, and cannot answer,

     If otherwise wish I.

 

Fair broke the day this morning

     Against the Dardanelles;

The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks

     Were cold as cold sea-shells.

 

But other shells are waiting

     Across the Aegean sea,

Shrapnel and high explosive,

     Shells and hells for me.

 

O hell of ships and cities,

     Hell of men like me,

Fatal second Helen,

     Why must I follow thee?

 

Achilles came to Troyland

     And I to Chersonese:

He turned from wrath to battle,

     And I from three days' peace.

 

Was it so hard, Achilles,

     So very hard to die?

Thou knewest and I know not—

     So much the happier I.

 

I will go back this morning

     From Imbros over the sea;

Stand in the trench, Achilles,

     Flame-capped, and shout for me.

Eyewitness: Adolph Hitler—To the Front, October 1914

8 October 1914: Hitler's List Regiment Departs Munich
 for the Front

 

And thus at last the day came when we left Munich to fall in and do our duty. I saw the Rhine for the first time as we were ​traveling beside its gentle waves on our way westward to protect it, the German stream of streams, from the greed of our old enemy. When the gentle rays of the first sun glinted down upon us through the delicate veil of morning mist from the Niederwald Monument, the old Wacht am Rhein roared from the endless transport train into the morning sky, and my breast was ready to burst.

Then came a cold, wet night in Flanders and we marched through it in silence. When day began to break through the mist, we were suddenly met with an iron greeting as it hissed over our heads. With a sharp crack, it hurled the little pellets of shrapnel through our ranks, splashing up the wet soil. Before the little cloud was gone, the first “hurray” came from two hundred voices in response to this greeting by the Angel of Death. Then the crackling and thunder began; singing and howling, and with feverish eyes, everyone marched forward, faster and faster. At last, across beet fields and hedges, the battle began—the battle of man against man.

From a distance, the sound of song reached our ears, coming closer and closer, and jumping from company to company. Just as Death began to busy himself in our ranks, the song reached us too, and we in turn passed it on: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt!” (“Germany before all, Germany ahead of everything in the world”.) Four days later, we went back to camp. We even walked differently. Seventeen year-old boys now looked like men. Maybe the volunteers of the List Regiment (The Second Infantry Bavarian Regiment) had not really learned to fight, but they did know how to die like old soldiers.

That was the beginning.

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

June 1940: Langemark Cemetery, Flanders

Note: Hitler's inexperienced unit was  part of the assault near Ghelhuvelt Chateau that commenced on 29 October 1914. He was not part of the "Student Battalions" that attacked near Langemark earlier. Hitler did, however, visit the Langemark Cemetery on his June 1940 victory tour before signing the 1940 Armistice.

Christina Holstein's Verdun Battlefield Studies

 

Author, Guide, Historian Christina Holstein Describes
the Operation of a Gun Turret Atop Fort Douaumont

Published by Pen & Sword, 2008–2025

Reviewed by Editor/Publisher Mike Hanlon 

About the Author

Throughout the 13 years I personally led battlefield tours to the Western Front, I regularly invited Christina Holstein  to join us for a day at Verdun.  When she was available, she always captivated the group and, at the end of the day, I was invariably surprised about how much fresh information I had absorbed about the 300-day struggle. 

Once, when reading one of Christina's books, something clicked in my mind regarding a quote about American Civil War battlefields. I looked it up and found it was from Gettysburg hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.  I think she shares something of this attitude about Verdun.

In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate the ground. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not, drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field to ponder and dream.

British born, our author lived and worked in Luxembourg for 30 years, during which she fell in love with the Lorraine, which drew here to its most famous historical site, the city of Verdun and the surrounding battlefield. Christina eventually became a recognized authority on the 1916 battle. The Verdun tourism bureau recommended her to travelers, and she appeared  on or assisted a number of media outlets from the BBC to the Wall Street Journal. Having spent decades gathering information about the great battle, she decided to begin publishing what she had learned. Through Pen and Sword, publishers of the Battleground mega-series, she found the perfect outlet. So far, they have published seven of her works, and I'm hoping more are on the way.

The Holstein Method

Each of the works focuses on a major aspect of the fighting in and around Verdun, not only in 1916, but also during the opening of the war and afterward in 1917. They are somewhat overlapping with respect to time and were not published sequentially, following the war's chronology. Each volume, though, has a well-written narrative that does adhere to the actual chronology of the event(s). The books are highly illustrated, with photos both from the war and from the author and her circle of battlefield enthusiasts with a multitude of helpful maps and graphics. For example, the 203-page Fort Vaux volume features nearly 200 photos and 22 illustrations.

Besides having the best qualities of  illustrated historical works, the books of the VERDUN series are also superb travel guides. As is typical, the Fort Vaux volume includes numerous tips for the traveler and three very detailed walking tour itineraries, with maps, and a similar driving tour.

In summary, each of these books is packed with information. I think a lot of credit must go to the publisher. Their layout work is outstanding.

Who Should Read the VERDUN Series?

• Anyone who has read an overview history of the battle like Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory and craves to learn more about it.

• Anyone who might have visited the battlefield on a brief tour and finds that the experience has mysteriously lingered with him and wants a deeper understanding of what transpired there.

• Anyone who has heard things like, "the longest battle of WWI"  or "the Stalingrad of the Great War" or "They Shall Not Pass," and wonders just what that was all about.

• Fortification aficionados (Verdun is deeply about forts.)

• The sort of person that loves tromping  around old battlefields to smell them, and feel them, and envision what it might have been like for those who fought and died there.

The Collection: 

(Note – these are presented in historical sequence, not the order of publication.)

Approach of the German Army – 

The Battle of the Marne – Creation of the 

St. Mihiel Salient – Heroic Fort Troyon

The Keystone – Douaumont Falls! – Stalemate 

on the Right Bank –  The Wider Battlefield

The Stronghold Retaken

An Unintended Battle – Goose Ridge –  Cote 304 

Mort Homme – An Unforgetable Monument

A Modest Trapezium – Raynal in Command
Siege, Surrender, Retaken – The French Rear

Walk in The Steps of the Combatants on the
Ridges, Ravines and Forts of the Battlefield
– Visit Centre Verdun

Col. Driant at Bois des Caures – 

Damloup Battery – Fleury Village

Rebuilding Morale – It's an Artillery War
 La Voie Sacrée—Setting the Stage for 1918

Order Any of These Titles HERE

The Thankful Villages

By James Patton

This story begins with the Great Survey of the realm ordered by William the Conqueror in 1086. His agents visited every shire, compiled a list of property there and calculated the duties owed to the crown therefrom.  This manuscript was originally known as the Liber de Wintoni (The Book of Winchester), where it was originally kept.

The name Domesday Book came into use in the 12th century because its determinations were deemed complete and final, like those described in the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31 et seq.). 

The manuscript is now held at the National Archives in Kew, London. It was first printed in full in 1783, and internet access became available in 2011. 

Then enters into this story Arthur Mee (1875–1943), a  self- described “Journalist, Author and Topographer.” His most famous work was The Children’s Encyclopedia (1908–64). In America it was called The Book of Knowledge, and every elementary school had at least one set.  

In 1936, Mee began his The King’s England series, which ran to over forty volumes, covering every parish in every shire. The publisher advertised it as the new Domesday Book.

Arthur Mee

In Enchanted Land (1936), the introductory volume to The King's England series, Mee wrote that a “Thankful Village” was one which had lost no one who served in the Great War. He was using the term village instead of parish, which was actually the basic unit of settlement in the UK at the time. In the course of his research, he identified 32 Thankful Villages. Through subsequent research, that number now stands at 53, with several contenders still being researched. 

What now follows is extracted from a BBC presentation on 10 November 1917.

‘What seems like it should have been a cause for celebration was actually a source of embarrassment and shame for many.

Edward and Ann Jameson experienced a lot of heartbreak. Four of their 13 children died at a young age, then they watched four sons head off to fight the Germans. It seemed unlikely that they would all survive.

The eldest, Makepeace, was 23 years old when war began. He was wounded twice in 1916 and later hospitalized with influenza, but he survived. His youngest brother, Joshua, 16 at the outbreak, joined up later and was struck by shrapnel which remained in his leg for the rest of his life. With their brothers Michael and Ted all four came home, along with a fifth villager, Arthur Taylor.

So their home, Hunstanworth, a cluster of farms, houses and a church high in the moors of County Durham, had become one of the lucky few—a Thankful Village.

Distribution of Thankful Villages

But as a blanket of grief shrouded thousands of communities, the Thankful Villages experienced a different emotion—shame.

"They were surrounded by villages where people were not returning," said the Rev. Michael Hampson, the vicar at St. John the Baptist Parish in Arkholme-with-Cawood, Lancashire.  His parish is also on the list. All 59 villagers who went to war, out of 320 inhabitants, survived. It’s one of only two Thankful Villages in Lancashire.

"For example, just up the road in Whittington, the big landowning family there (the Dawson-Greenes) lost two generations in the war.

"That was typical around the country. For the Thankful Villages, it was almost as if they had not joined in the sacrifice. They celebrated the peace but felt like they had not paid the price." That feeling of shame lasted for decades.

"We started talking about it around the millennium and still then there were people saying 'no, we should not shout about this, we do not want to blow our trumpet over our embarrassing privilege'," the Rev. Hampson continued.

"There was a self-imposed silence and censorship; it was felt that it would be quite wrong to celebrate that as some kind of triumph."

Perhaps in part for this reason, it is only relatively recently that any attempt to find all the Thankful Villages has been made, the work being led by historians Norman Thorpe, Rod Morris, and Tom Morgan.

The first task was to decide how to define what made up a "village.” Thinking small, they identified about 16,000 of them that existed in 1914. "We have always looked for a definite community, not just a few houses or an isolated farm with two or three cottages for the help,"  Thorpe said. "A church, a school, a village hall, any sign of a social unit is what we look for."

Michael Dunne-Willows, PhD (Newcastle), is a mathematician employed by the UK’s Office of National Statistics who has extensively studied randomness, particularly in relation to lotteries. His professional curiosity was piqued by the historians' research, so he agreed to try to calculate the likelihood that a ‘‘village” would lose no one in the Great War. Was it statistically probable there would even be some Thankful Villages?

Of the seven million British who went to war, about 880,000 died (6% of the eligible male population). Simple division yields the result that if one went to war there was about a one-in-eight chance of being killed. Crunching the numbers much further, Dunne-Willows endeavored to account for all of the unknown variables.

One area of uncertainty relates to questions about the individual circumstances of soldiers and villages. "Perhaps the village of residence played a role in which area soldiers were deployed to," explained said Dunne-Willows. "This would result in some villages having a higher or lower probability of being ‘thankful’. 

Somme Battlefield Memorial for the Accrington Pals

Perhaps the fact that often groups of friends—football teams and the like—enlisted together played a role in predetermining their survival." Probably the most well known example of how this skewed casualty figures is that of the Accrington Pals, the 11th E. Lancs, who lost 235 members within 20 minutes on the first day of the Somme. As the brother of one of the soldiers would later recall, "I don't think there was a street in Accrington and district that didn't have their blinds drawn and the bell at Christ Church tolled all the day."

After some clever mathematical manoeuvring featuring various N values and D quantities, Dunne-Willows arrived at an answer for how many Thankful Villages he reckons there should have been. 

That number is 22. Out of about 16,000.

As mentioned above, thus far Thorpe’s group has identified 53 Thankful Villages in England and Wales—none have been found in Scotland or Ireland as yet. Is Dunne-Willows’s  finding  a statistical anomaly? The faithful might call it a miracle.

Of course just because everyone came back alive, this does not mean they were unaffected by the experience.

A collection of coins belonging to John Hugill,  one-time blacksmith in Catwick, is testament to this. All 30 men who went to war from the East Yorkshire village gave him a coin which he nailed to his doorpost below a ‘lucky’ horseshoe. All of them came back but one man "left an arm behind", so Hugill cut a notch out of one coin to represent the lost limb.

Catwick's Luck Horshoe and Coins

There is one simple factor that the historians and the statistician do agree made a village “Thankful”—luck. "We have studied this from several aspects," Thorpe said. "The only conclusion we can reach is that the safe return of all those who served from a particular village was simple chance, like the casting of a die."

With the passage of time and the consequent change in attitudes, the Thankful Villages no longer feel shame. 

No Thankful Village sent more residents to war, as a percentage, than Knowlton in Kent.  The 12  who went—and came home—represented 31% of the 39 villagers, and in the Twenties the Weekly Dispatch declared Knowlton the “bravest village” in the realm and put up an impressive stone monument. While some of the other places do not even have a war memorial, today their “Thankful” status is recognized by signs, plaques, and marker stones. 

Between 2016 and 2018, English singer-songwriter Darren Hayman released a trilogy of albums inspired by and written in-situ at the then-54 Thankful Villages, including  Welbury, North Yorkshire, whose status is now in doubt.

Postscripts: Amazingly, 14 of the 53 Thankful Villages are also termed “Doubly Thankful,” having lost no one who went off to WWII as well. Arkholme, Butterton, and Catwick are among these.

Butterton's 15 Survivors of the First World War

To date there has been no effort to identify all of the WWII Thankful Villages. Since the number of those killed in WWII was less than half that of  WWI, it is likely that there would be many more than 53.   

The King’s England books are still available, published by The King’s England Press Ltd., who had acquired the rights from the original owners in 1989. 

Sources include the BBC, Staffordshire Live, The Western Front Association (UK), Sky History and the Daily Mail.

Remembering a Veteran: Major Horatio Nelson Jackson, DSC, 313th Inf., 79th Division

The Old Soldier Looking Back

Horatio Nelson Jackson was an  an intrepid, path-making  American  figure of the Daniel Boone archetype before he ever served in uniform.  In the spring of 1903, on a whim and a 50-dollar bet, Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson set off from San Francisco in a 20-horsepower Winton touring car hoping to become the first person to cross the United States in the newfangled "horseless carriage." Most people doubted that the automobile had much of a future. Jackson's trip would prove them wrong. Driving a 1903 Winton Touring Car, he became the first man to cross the continent in an automobile. 

A minister's son, born in 1872, Horatio Nelson Jackson earned his medical degree at the University of Vermont in 1893 and practiced for a few years in the towns of Brattleboro and Burlington. Then, in 1899, he married Bertha Richardson Wells, the daughter of one of the richest men in Vermont, the founder of Payne's Celery Compound, a popular cure-all that was 20 percent grain alcohol. It was her money that allowed the newlyweds to make an extended tour of Europe, buy Providence Island in Lake Champlain for a summer residence, invest in mining opportunities, purchase race horses and then automobiles—all despite Jackson's having given up his medical practice in 1900 after a mild case of tuberculosis. And it would be her money financing his improbable journey across the nation.

All Aboard: Horatio, Sewall, and Bud

Horatio's Drive and Its Remembrance

He made the drive to win the $50 bet made at San Francisco’s University Club in 1903. At the time he didn’t own a car and had little driving experience. Also, he suspected that the lack of paved roads, especially in the western parts of the country, might prove difficult, so he hired a mechanic, Sewall K. Crocker, to travel with him. They set out from San Francisco on 23 May 1903.

They passed through Sacramento  and then veered north, in part because attempts by others had foundered in the deserts of Nevada and Utah. For guidance, Jackson borrowed maps from bicyclists he met along the way.

Challenges encountered and overcome included flat tires, car breakdowns, cooking gear falling (unnoticed) off the car, the need to cross streams using a block and tackle, lost money, and near starvation.

There Were Endless Challenges

Jackson was consoled on the journey by the presence of his dog, Bud, who wore goggles because the dust from unpaved roads bothered his eyes. Driver, mechanic, and dog reached New York City on 26 July 26 1903, 63 days after leaving San Francisco. After the trip, Jackson became a successful Burlington businessman—newspaper publisher, owner of the town's first radio station, president of a bank. 

In 1944, to preserve his moment in history, Jackson donated his car (as well as his scrapbook of newspaper clippings and Bud's goggles) to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. For the rest of his life, he never tired of telling anyone who would listen, the story of his great adventure crossing the continent with Sewall Crocker and the bulldog Bud, in a 1903 Winton called the Vermont. His 1903 Winton today sits in the National Museum of American History.

The Men, Dog, and Car Became National Celebrities 

Highly Recommended:  

Ken Burns produced a wonderful documentary about the adventure, Horatio's Drive, that can be streamed online.

15 Years After His Great Adventure, Horatio's
Family Saw Him Off to War

On to the Great War for Horatio

Already in his mid-40s when World War I broke out, he insisted on enlisting in the Army despite his age, and even arranged a personal meeting with an aging Theodore Roosevelt to seek the ex-president's intercession on his behalf, which he received. Jackson was placed on active duty as a captain in the Medical Corps. While serving with the 313th Infantry, 79th Infantry Division as a major he was wounded at the brutal fight for strongly defended Montfaucon during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, while caring for wounded men under fire. As General Pershing politely described it in his official report, "Montfaucon was held tenaciously by the enemy and was not captured until noon of the second day."

At war's end, he returned from overseas a wounded and decorated hero, having received the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart, as well as France's Croix de Guerre. Back in the United States, he helped found the American Legion, served as one of its leading officers for many years, and later ran unsuccessfully for governor of Vermont. Horatio Nelson Jackson died on 14 January 1955, at the age of 82.

Major Horatio Nelson Jackson's Distinguished Service Cross Citation:

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Major (Medical Corps) Horatio N. Jackson, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving with 313th Infantry Regiment (Attached), 79th Division, A.E.F., near Montfaucon, France, September 26-29, 1918. Constantly working in the face of heavy machine-gun and shell fire, Major Jackson was most devoted in his attention to the wounded, always present in the line of advance, directing the administering of first aid, and guiding the work of litter bearers. He remained on duty until severely wounded by high-explosive shells, when he was obliged to evacuate.

Sources:  PBS; American Legion; Find a Grave; Highway 50; Wikipedia

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