New Jersey, USA, and the Great War

World War I Memorial, Atlantic City

When the United States entered World War I on 6 April 6 1917, New Jersey joined other states in sending resources—human and material. But, as has been the case frequently in the history of the Garden State, its unique location on the busy Atlantic coast and diverse mixture of residents and resources led to other significant contributions to the national effort. From the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in 1914 until the 1918 Armistice, New Jersey was deeply involved in the war and America's national efforts.

Two notable events that preceded America's entry into the war are linked to the state of New Jersey.

• Prior to becoming president of the United States in 1913 and overseeing the American entry into World War I, Woodrow Wilson graduated from Princeton, served as the university’s president, and was elected the 34th governor of the State of New Jersey.

• On 30 July 1916, railroad cars packed with ammunition blew up at the Black Tom depot in Jersey City, killing seven people and spewing shrapnel that tore holes in the Statue of Liberty. The incident was part of a German plan to destroy military supplies for the Allies. (Article) 

Damage at Black Tom

Mobilizing the State

From the United States’ entry into the war in April of 1917 to the conclusion of hostilities, over 141,000 New Jerseyans served, including more than 1,000 women. New Jersey lost 3,836 people to combat, disease, and accident. Eight New Jerseyans were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, two of them posthumously.

What is now designated the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (New Jersey) in Burlington County has been serving America's Armed Forces since 18 July 1917, when its predecessor, Camp Dix, was officially established as a training and staging camp for troops destined for the battlefields of Europe. Camp Dix rapidly became one of the nation's largest military reservations as the 78th, 87th, and 34th Divisions and many smaller units trained for the war.

25,000 Men Training at Camp Dix in 1918

"Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken"

The City Hoboken proved to be one of America's most valuable assets during the Great War. The war’s effects were immediately felt there, home to major European shipping companies and numerous immigrants and foreign nationals. At the 1914 outbreak of war, the British Royal Navy acted quickly to blockade Germany. British warships rounded up German merchant vessels or drove them to port. 

A number of German ships were in port in Hoboken, the American home of the Hamburg American and North German Lloyd steamship lines. The ships would remain stuck in port until the American military seized them in 1917. At dawn on 6 April 1917, U.S. Army soldiers seized the German ships as they sat in port. Two weeks later the German shipping companies’ piers were taken over by the government and army encampments were established there. The prize ships of the Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd lines were turned into massive troop transports.

Hoboken's AEF Memorial

Soon after America's declaration of war, Hoboken was declared the main point of embarkation for the United States Expeditionary Force, as the forces heading to fight the war in Europe were called. Hoboken took a proud place in the American war effort, but many of the city’s residents and business owners would face hardship during the war. According to the 1910 U.S. Census, Hoboken had a total population of 70,324 people, of which 10,018 were German-born. Over the course of the war, many of Hoboken’s Germans were detained, evicted from their homes, lost their jobs, or saw their businesses shut down. High-level employees of the German shipping companies were among those arrested shortly after America’s entry into the war.  

Camp Merritt at Tenafly, NJ, a transit center, was under the control of the New York Port of Embarkation. It was created to assemble the troops leaving for France via nearby Hoboken and the other New York docks. Over 1.6 million men were sent to France via this route, including over a million through Hoboken and a comparable number would return after the Armistice.

The first convoy carrying American troops to war left Hoboken on 14 June 1917. Fourteen transport ships, carrying 11,991 officers, enlisted men, and civilians departed the city. A total of 936 voyages to France and England were made from Hoboken during the war. Many troops were brought overseas in German ships that had been captured in Hoboken. Among these ships was the USS Leviathan, formerly the Hamburg-American liner Vaterland.

General Pershing on a Postwar Visit to Hoboken to
Show His Appreciation

The Industrial Contribution to Victory

Companies, such as Johnson & Johnson, DuPont, Singer, and E.R. Squibb, produced essential munitions, uniforms, and medical supplies in New Jersey that sustained the United States and its allies during the war. As demand for military supplies increased, New Jersey’s strong industrial infrastructure made the state the largest supplier of munitions in America by 1918. 

New Jersey Women Supporting the War

As elsewhere in America,  New Jersey women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers, working in fields like aircraft, optical goods, rubber goods, photographic supplies, leather goods, and electrical goods. With increasing demands for workers to meet the needs of military production and European immigration curtailed during the war, New Jersey industries sent labor agents south to recruit African American workers. The recruitment effort continued following the war's end as the economy prospered during the decade of the 1920s.

Memorable New Jerseyans from the War

Governor Edge

New Jersey has the singular history among American states of having the same individual, Walter Evans Edge, serve as its governor in both World Wars. A considerable part of Edge's efforts in his first term as governor involved the mobilization for World War I and postwar planning. Despite being a partisan opponent of Wilson when he was governor, the Republican Governor Edge vigorously supported the president's efforts to build the new camps and put the state's economy on a war footing. In the next war, however, the most memorable aspect of his World War II service as governor would be his series of battles with the state's Democratic machine.

Thomas Edison kept busy during World War I. He became a vocal proponent of military preparedness, faced the challenges of rebuilding his West Orange factory after a disastrous fire, chaired the Naval Consulting Board and conducted research aimed at helping the U.S. Navy respond to submarine warfare. His oldest daughter, Marion, spent much of the war behind enemy lines as the wife of a German Army officer, while his son William fought for the Allies in France as a sergeant in the U.S. Tank Corps.

Flying Sergeant Ronald Wood Hoskier of South Orange left Harvard to become a pilot with the Lafayette Escadrille. He fell in action near St. Quentin in April 1917 and is buried at the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial outside Paris.

Joyce Kilmer, one of the most famous Americans to serve during World War I, called New Jersey home. Born in New Brunswick, the soldier/poet had earned national recognition for his popular poetry before the war. He was killed in action during the Second Battle of the Marne and is buried at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France.

Remembering the Sacrifice

The 313th Infantry, 79th Division Welcomed Home

Today there are over 160 World War I memorials in New Jersey, almost all installed during the interwar period. Recently,  New Jersey has been the main studio site for Sabin Howard, sculptor of the dramatic A Soldier's Journey, centerpiece of the new National World War I Memorial.

Historic Footnote

On July 1921, New Jersey was the site of the signing of the Knox-Porter Resolution by President Warren Harding to officially end American wartime involvement.

President Harding Signing the Resolution

Sources:   VisitNJ.org/WW1; Drew University archives; New Jersey History; NJ WWI Centennial; Monmouth Library 2015 Exhibit,  the New Jersey Almanac; Find a Grave; Hoboken in WWI

The Russian Revolutions of 1917 in Ten Steps

 

Third Anniversary Poster, "Down with Capitalism, Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!"

Telegram to the Tsar

Position serious. Anarchy in the capital. Government paralyzed. Arrangements for transport, supply, and fuel in complete disorder. General discontent increasing. Disorderly street firing. Part of troops firing on each other. Essential to trust someone who holds confidence of the nation with formation of a new government. There must be no delay. I pray God that in this hour responsibility will not fall on the wearer of the Crown.

Rodzianko, President of the Duma, 

26 February (11 March) 1917

1. January–February: Riots, Workers Strikes, Soldiers' Mutiny Trigger the February Revolution.

2. March: Tsar Nicholas II Abdicates.

3. March: Provisional Government Formed.

4. April: Lenin Returns from Switzerland and Publishes His April Theses.

5. June: Kerensky (Second Brusilov) Offensive Fails.

The war, it turned out, was an exam, and the tsarist government failed that exam again and again in the eyes of its citizens. Repeated efforts to alter the situation, from the very bottom to the very top of society, came to naught. The only real question was when and how the forces of opposition would finally get stronger than the forces of tsarist rule. What is astonishing in this regard is not that the tsarist government collapsed in 1917, but that it survived  1915.  

                                                                                    Joshua Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse  

6. July: Armed Demonstrations of Workers and Sailors in Petrograd. Lenin Flees. Kerensky Becomes Premier.

7. August: Kornilov Mutiny Suppressed.

8. September: Bolsheviks Gain Control of Petrograd Soviet.

9. October: Lenin Returns. Bolsheviks Seize Power, Arrest Members of the Provisional Government—the October Revolution.

10. October: Lenin Issues Decrees Calling for the Abolition of Private Ownership and an Immediate Ceasefire. 

Churchill and the Turkish Battleships

Sir Winston Churchill
First Lord of the Admiralty, 1911–1915

From:  The War to End All Wars by David Fromkin

On the outbreak of war, Winston Churchill briefly became a national hero in Britain. Although the Cabinet had refused him permission to do so, he had mobilized the fleet on his own responsibility in the last days of peacetime and had sent it north to Scapa Flow, where it would not be vulnerable to a German surprise attack. What he had done was probably illegal, but events had justified his actions, which in Britain were applauded on all sides.

Margot Asquith, the Prime Minister’s wife, once wondered in her diary what it was that made Winston Churchill pre-eminent. “It certainly is not his mind,” she wrote. “Certainly not his judgment—he is constantly very wrong indeed…” She concluded that: “It is of course his courage and colour—his amazing mixture of industry and enterprise. He can and does always—all ways puts himself in the pool. He never shirks, hedges, or protects himself—though he thinks of himself perpetually. He takes huge risks [original emphasis].”

Mobilizing the fleet despite the Cabinet’s decision not to do so was a huge risk that ended in triumph. In the days following Britain’s entry into the war even his bitterest political enemies wrote to Churchill to express their admiration of him. For much of the rest of his life, his proudest boast was that when war came, the fleet was ready.

At the time, his commandeering of two Turkish battleships for the Royal Navy was applauded almost as much. An illustrated page in the Tatler of 12 August 1914 reproduced a photograph of a determined-looking Churchill, with an inset of his wife, under the heading “BRAVO WINSTON! The Rapid Mobilisation and Purchase of the Two Foreign Dreadnoughts Spoke Volumes for your Work and Wisdom.”

Sultan Osman I Under Construction

The battleships were the Reşadiye and the larger Sultan Osman I. Both had been built in British shipyards and were immensely powerful; the Osman mounted more heavy guns than any battleship ever built before. Each originally had been ordered by Brazil, but then had been built instead for the Ottoman Empire. The Reşadiye, though launched in 1913, had not been delivered because the Turks had lacked adequate modern docking facilities to accommodate her. With Churchill’s support, Rear-Admiral Sir Arthur H. Limpus, head of the British naval mission, had lobbied successfully with the Ottoman authorities to secure the contract to build docking facilities for two British firms—Vickers, and Armstrong Whitworth. The docking facilities having been completed, the Reşadiye was scheduled to leave Britain soon after the Sultan Osman I, which was to be completed in August 1914. 

Churchill was aware that these vessels meant a great deal to the Ottoman Empire. They were intended to be the making of the modern Ottoman navy, and it was assumed that they would enable the empire to face Greece in the Aegean and Russia in the Black Sea. Their purchase had been made possible by patriotic public subscription throughout the empire. The tales may have been improved in the telling, but it was said that women had sold their jewelry and schoolchildren had given up their pocket-money to contribute to the popular subscription.  Admiral Limpus had put out to sea from Constantinople on 27 July 1914, with ships of the Turkish navy, waiting to greet the Sultan Osman I and escort her back through the straits of the Dardanelles to the Ottoman capital, where a “navy week” had been scheduled with lavish ceremonies for the Minister of Marine, Ahmed Djemal, and for the cause of British-Ottoman friendship.

Churchill, who was reckoned the most pro-Turk member of the Asquith Cabinet, had followed with care, and had supported with enthusiasm, the mission of Admiral Limpus in Turkey ever since its inception years before. The British advisory mission to the Ottoman navy was almost as large as the similar German mission to the Ottoman army, led by the Prussian General of Cavalry, Otto Liman von Sanders. The two missions to some extent counter-balanced each other. British influence was thought to be strong in the Marine Ministry. German influence was strongest in the War Ministry. In London little was known of Middle Eastern politics, but Churchill enjoyed the rare advantage of having personally met three of the five leading figures in the Ottoman government: Talaat, Enver, and the Minister of Finance, Djavid. He therefore had been given an opportunity to learn that Britain’s conduct as naval supplier and adviser could have political repercussions in Constantinople.

The European war crisis, however, propelled the newly built Turkish vessels into significance in both London and Berlin. The Reşadiye and Sultan Osman I were battleships of the new Dreadnought class. As such,they overshadowed other surface vessels and, in a sense, rendered them obsolete. By the summer of 1914 the Royal Navy had taken delivery of only enough to give Britain a margin over Germany of seven dreadnoughts. Since the European war was expected to be a short one, there seemed to be no time to build more of them before battle was joined and decided. The addition of the two dreadnoughts built for Turkey would increase the power of the Royal Navy significantly. Conversely, their acquisition by the German Empire or its allies could decisively shift the balance of forces against Britain. It was not fanciful to suppose that the Reşadiye and Sultan Osman I could play a material role in determining the outcome of what was to become the First World War. 

Early in the week of 27 July 1914, as the First Lord of the Admiralty took precautionary measures in the war crisis, he raised the issue of whether the two Turkish battleships could be taken by the Royal Navy. The chain of events which apparently flowed from Churchill’s initiative in this matter eventually led to him being blamed for the tragic outbreak of war in the Middle East. In turn he later attempted to defend himself by pretending that he had done no more than to carry into effect standing orders. The history of these matters has been confused ever since because both Churchill’s story and the story told by his detractors were false. . .

HMS Erin (Former Reşadiye) at Sea

His version of the matter implied that he did not single out the Ottoman vessels, but instead issued orders applicable to all foreign warships then under construction; he wrote that the arrangements for the taking of such vessels “comprised an elaborate scheme” that had been devised years before and had been brought up to date in 1912.

This account was not true. Seizing the Turkish warships was an original idea of Churchill’s and it came to him in the summer of 1914. During the week before the war, the question of taking foreign vessels was raised for the first time on Tuesday, 28 July 1914, in an inquiry that Churchill directed to the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg, and to the Third Sea Lord, Sir Archibald Moore. “In case it may become necessary to acquire the two Turkish battleships that are nearing completion in British yards,” he wrote, “please formulate plans in detail showing exactly the administrative action involved in their acquisition and the prospective financial transactions.

[After consultation with the Foreign Office]  the Attorney-General advised Churchill that what he was doing was not justified by statute, but that the welfare of the Commonwealth took precedence over other considerations and might excuse his temporarily detaining the vessels.  A high-ranking permanent official in the Foreign Office took the same point of view that day but placed it in a broader and more practical political perspective. “I think we must let the Admiralty deal with this question as they consider necessary,” he minuted, “and afterwards make such defence of our action to Turkey as we can.”

On 31 July the Cabinet accepted Churchill’s view that he ought to take both Turkish vessels for the Royal Navy for possible use against Germany in the event of war; whereupon British sailors boarded the Sultan Osman I. The Ottoman ambassador called at the Foreign Office to ask for an explanation, but was told only that the battleship was being detained for the time being.

Toward midnight on 1 August Churchill wrote instructions to Admiral Moore, in connection with the mobilization of the fleet, to notify both Vickers and Armstrong that the Ottoman warships were to be detained and that the Admiralty proposed to enter into negotiations for their purchase.

Main Batteries of HMS Agincourt (Former Sultan Osman I)

[Editor's Note: The two ships would subsequently have remarkably similar and unspectacular careers.  Reşadiye was renamed HMS Erin and joined the Grand Fleet in September 1914.  At the Battle of Jutland it was the only British battleship not to fire her main guns. After the Washington Naval Conference the ship was listed for disposal and was broken up in 1923.  Sultan Osman I was renamed HMS Agincourt and also joined the Grand Fleet in September 1914. During the Battle of Jutland Agincourt fired 144 twelve-inch shells and 111 six-inch shells during the battle, although she is not known to have hit anything. She was also eventually disposed of as a result of the arms treaty.

Source:  The entire text of The War to End All Wars is available on-line HERE

The Remains of Company D: A Story of the Great War

Click HERE to Order

By James Carl Nelson

 St. Martin's Griffin, 2010

Reviewed by Bruce Sloan

The Remains of Company D is journalist and author James Carl Nelson's tribute to his grandfather and fellow Doughboys who fought in the first, and all the subsequent major battles of the AEF. It follows the story of the men of Company D, 28th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division, from enlistment to combat and beyond. Nelson spent years researching, interviewing surviving family members, and familiarizing himself with the Great War and Company D's history. As the Library Journal's reviewer aptly stated, "The author's meticulous and persistent research in tracking down the descendants of the combatants to uncover their letters and diaries makes his work the standard for research into the story of the American Expeditionary Force.”

Company D's involvement in the battles of Cantigny, Soissons, St. Mihiel, and the Argonne are well researched and written, from the perspective of history and of the soldiers themselves. The men come alive in the book, displaying their strengths, weaknesses, and incredible bravery. Continuing the attack when friends were falling or being blown apart; fighting on after being wounded; charging massed German machine guns; lying wounded in a shell hole until found at night; or single-handedly capturing fixed positions, these Doughboys showed their mettle.

 

Two Doughboys of Company D
Future Senator Sam Ervin and the Author's Grandfather, John Nelson

Finally, The Remains of Company D covers  the war's aftermath for those who survived and the effort to determine what happened to those who fell in the service of their country. Sam Ervin later served in Congress and gained fame during the Watergate hearings. Nelson's grandfather John, wounded at Cantigny , never fully recovered. Marvin Stainton, who couldn't wait to get in the war, fell in the Argonne when the war was nearly over, his remains undiscovered until 1924.

Although  many descendants of the soldiers were interviewed, there was very little of the combat they could tell, as those who were really in it did not talk while they were still alive. At first this reader felt that Mr. Nelson was slightly overindulging in prose and supposition, but further into the manuscript, it became clear that this was the result of his developed understanding of the individuals and their character.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson, for a very readable and fascinating slice of history. It definitely held my interest.

Bruce Sloan 

WWI Illustrations via the Recently Threatened Getty Villa Museum

The beautiful and sometimes controversial Getty Villa museum—modeled on the Villa dei Papiri of  Herculaneum that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD—came close last week to meeting a fate worse than its predecessor two weeks ago. The gorgeous building and grounds, and 44,000 Greek and Roman antiquities came under attack by the Pacific Palisades fire (77% contained as I write on 24 January). Wise design features, recent brush-clearing efforts, well-prepared staff, and much good luck are credited with saving the works from the fire that, otherwise, devastated the nearby neighborhood.

I've visited the replica Roman villa three times over the years and have always been thrilled by what feels like passing through a time portal. When I heard about its recent crisis I started looking online to refresh my memories of those visits, and I discovered some World War One material—shown below—that is new to me.  Apparently the museum sponsored a centennial program for the war in 2014, so these are probably not on display now.  In any case, though, if you're ever in the LA area I would recommend a visit to the Villa, although it's now closed indefinitely. If forced to choose, it's a pleasanter, human-scale experience than the more famous Getty Center in Brentwood and far less arduous to navigate. 

Click on Images to Enlarge

The Evil Genius, the Emperor, 1914

 

Henri Zislin (French, 1875–1958)

The Parents, 1922–1923

Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945)

The Ribbon of Victory, 1919

Louis Charles Bombled (French, 1862–1927)

Massacre, 1914–16

Henry de Groux (Belgian, 1867–1930)

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1917

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880–1938)

Wilhelm's Carousel, 1914

Kazimir Malevich (Russian, 1878–1935)

I Have You, My Captain. You Won't Fall, 1917

Paul Iribe (French, 1883–1935)

Quiet Heroes, 1915

Waldemar Rösler (German, 1882–1916)

After the Execution, 1915

Paul Iribe, (French, 1883–1935)

After the Big Mine: The View from Hawthorn Ridge by John Masefield

Hawthorn Ridge Mine Detonates at 0720 hrs, 1 July 1916

Readers know that I love discovering personal connections (for friends, readers and myself) to the First World War.  So you can imagine how thrilled I was to discover I share a resume line with a one-time Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.  Yes, the great writer, poet, and P.L. John Masefield and I both have written battlefield guides.  A frequent visitor to America, whose citizens were puzzled by the point of the great Dardanelles adventure, Masefield was somehow recruited to write a 314-page book titled  Gallipoli  explaining (and justifying) the failed campaign.  Such was his success that a year or so later he was asked to do something similar on the Battle of the Somme.  He terminated his work on this project when he discovered he would not be allowed to present the full details of what a blood-letting that struggle turned out to be.  He had, though, completed his description of the terrain and positions of the contending forces and published it at the end of 1917 as a 152-page book, The Old Front Line. [Both works are available at Project Gutenberg, by the way.] Below is an excerpt in which he beautifully describes how things looked from Hawthorn Ridge immediately after the mine detonation shown above.

By John Masefield

All that can be seen of it from the English line is a disarrangement of the enemy wire and parapet. It is a hole in the ground which cannot be seen except from quite close at hand. At first sight, on looking into it, it is difficult to believe that it was the work of man; it looks so like nature in her evil mood. It is hard to imagine that only three years ago that hill was cornfield, and the site of the chasm grew bread. After that happy time, the enemy bent his line there and made the salient a stronghold, and dug deep shelters for his men in the walls of his trenches; the marks of the dugouts are still plain in the sides of the pit. Then, on the 1st of July,  when the explosion was to be a signal for the attack, and our men waited in the trenches for the spring, the belly of the chalk was heaved, and chalk, clay, dugouts, gear, and enemy, went up in a dome of blackness full of pieces, and spread aloft like a toadstool, and floated, and fell down.

Find Hawthorn Ridge and Mine Site in Upper Left
Y-Ravine Is at the Top of the Gold Quadrilateral 

From the top of the Hawthorn Ridge, our soldiers could see a great expanse of chalk downland, though the falling of the hill kept them from seeing the enemy's position. That lay on the slope of the ridge, somewhere behind the wire, quite out of sight from our lines. Looking out from our front line at this salient, our men saw the enemy wire almost as a skyline. Beyond this line, the ground dipped towards Beaumont Hamel (which was quite out of sight in the valley) and rose again sharply in the steep bulk of Beaucourt spur. Beyond this lonely spur, the hills ranked and ran, like the masses of a moor, first the high ground above Miraumont, and beyond that the high ground of the Loupart Wood, and away to the east the bulk that makes the left bank of the Ancre River. What trees there are in this moorland were not then all blasted. Even in Beaumont Hamel some of the trees were green. The trees in the Ancre River Valley made all that  marshy meadow like a forest. Looking out on all this, the first thought of the soldier was that here he could really see something of the enemy's ground.

Location of Y Ravine and Newfoundland Memorial Park
from Hawthorn Ridge

It is true, that from this hill-top much land, then held by the enemy, could be seen, but very little that was vital to the enemy could be observed. His lines of supply and support ran in ravines which we could not see; his batteries lay beyond crests, his men were in hiding places. Just below us on the lower slopes of this Hawthorn Ridge he had one vast hiding place which gave us a great deal of trouble. This was a gully or ravine, about five hundred yards long, well within his position, running (roughly speaking) at right angles with his front line. Probably it was a steep and deep natural fold made steeper and deeper by years of cultivation. It is from thirty to forty feet deep, and about as much across at the top; it has abrupt sides, and thrusts out two forks to its southern side. These forks give it the look of a letter Y upon the maps, for which reason both the French and ourselves called the place the "Ravin en Y" or "Y Ravine." Part of the southernmost fork was slightly open to observation from our lines; the main bulk of the gully was invisible to us, except from the air.

A Surviving Section of Y Ravine

Whenever the enemy has had a bank of any kind, at all screened from fire, he has dug into it for shelter. In the Y Ravine, which provided these great expanses of banks, he dug himself shelters of unusual strength and size. He sank shafts into the banks, tunnelled long living rooms, both above and below the gully-bottom, linked the rooms together with galleries, and cut hatchways and bolting holes to lead to the surface as well as to the gully. All this work was securely done, with balks of seasoned wood, iron girders, and concreting. Much of it was destroyed by shell fire during the battle, but much not hit by shells is in good condition to-day even after the autumn rains and the spring thaw. The galleries which lead upwards and outwards from this underground barracks to the observation posts and machine-gun emplacements in the open air, are cunningly planned and solidly made. The posts and emplacements to which they led are now, however, (nearly all) utterly destroyed by our shell fire.

In this gully barracks, and in similar shelters cut in the chalk of the steeper banks near Beaumont Hamel, the enemy could hold ready large numbers of men to repel an attack or to make a counter-attack. They lived in these dugouts in comparative safety and in moderate comfort.  When our attacks came during the early months of the battle, they were able to pass rapidly and safely by these underground galleries from one part of the position to another, bringing their machine guns with them. However, the Ravine was presently taken and the galleries and underground shelters were cleared. In one underground room in that barracks, nearly fifty of the enemy were found lying dead in their bunks, all unwounded, and as though asleep. They had been killed by the concussion of the air following on the burst of a big shell at the entrance.

Road to Serre, Known as "Artillery Lane"

One other thing may be mentioned about this Hawthorn Ridge. It runs parallel with the next spur (the Beaucourt spur) immediately to the north of it, then in the enemy's hands. Just over the crest of this spur, out of sight from our lines, is a country road, well banked and screened, leading from Beaucourt to Serre. This road was known by our men as Artillery Lane, because it was used as a battery position by the enemy. The wrecks of several of his guns lie in the mud there still. From the crest in front of this road there is a view to the westward, so wonderful that those who see it realize at once that the enemy position on the Ridge, which, at a first glance, seems badly sited for  observation, is, really, well placed. From this crest, the Ridge-top, all our old front line, and nearly all the No Man's Land upon it, is exposed, and plainly to be seen. On a reasonably clear day, no man could leave our old line unseen from this crest. No artillery officer, correcting the fire of a battery, could ask for a better place from which to watch the bursts of his shells. This crest, in front of the lane of enemy guns, made it possible for the enemy batteries to drop shells upon our front line trenches before all the men were out of them at the instant of the great attack.

The old English line runs along the Hawthorn Ridge-top for some hundreds of yards, and then crosses a dip or valley, which is the broad, fanshaped, southern end of a fork of Y Ravine. A road runs, or ran, down this dip into the Y Ravine. It is not now recognisable as a road, but the steep banks at each side of it, and some bluish metalling in the shell holes, show that one once ran there. These banks are covered with hawthorn bushes. A remblai, also topped with hawthorn, lies a little to the north of this road.

51st Highland Division Clearing Y Ravine,
13 November 1916

From this lynchet, looking down the valley into the Y Ravine, the enemy position is saddle-shaped, low in the middle, where the Y Ravine  narrows, and rising to right and left to a good height. Chalk hills from their form often seem higher than they really are, especially in any kind of haze. Often they have mystery and nearly always beauty. For some reason, the lumping rolls of chalk hill rising up on each side of this valley have a menace and a horror about them. One sees little of the enemy position from the English line. It is now nothing but a track of black wire in front of some burnt and battered heapings of the ground, upon which the grass and the flowers have only now begun to push. At the beginning of the battle it must have been greener and fresher, for then the fire of hell had not come upon it; but even then, even in the summer day, that dent in the chalk leading to the Y Ravine must have seemed a threatening and forbidding place.

Source: The Old Front Line by John Masefield, Published December 1917; Wikimaps;  Wiki Commons

First Neutral Ship Sunk in WWI? Not the Lusitania!

When I asked Google recently to identify the first vessel of a neutral nation to be sunk during in the Great War, the AI gizmo that now provides quickie answers at the top of your search results responded with RMS Lusitania, sunk 7 May 1915. This left me perplexed because Great Britain was decidedly not neutral during the war. So, I kept digging and discovered this Swedish collier that  clearly belonged to a company within a neutral nation and flew the flag of a neutral country. Plus, it was sunk befoe the Lusitania:

SS Hanna, Sunk 13 March 1915

Over a century later, though, the exact circumstances are still murky. Here's what the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre has to say about it:

The Swedish collier Hanna has variously been reported as being torpedoed and mined. The ship’s second officer claims to have seen the wake of a torpedo, but as no submarine was spotted, it is probable that the ship struck one of German cruiser SMS Kolberg’s mines as the ship was within the area where the minefield had been laid. Indeed, the ship’s first engineer, who had served in the Swedish navy for five and half years, was convinced that the ship had struck a mine. 

The Hanna was bound for Las Palmas with coal from the Tyne. Around 01:40 on 13 March 1915. A huge explosion quickly followed, which killed six of the eight men asleep in the forecastle. The explosion occurred near the foremast and the ship remained afloat for half an hour. The two survivors in the forecastle, although badly injured managed to escape. The Hanna began to sink immediately and the surviving crew took to the lifeboats. They were picked up by the steamer Gylier and landed at Alexandra Dock, Hull. 

The Case for a mine: On 16 December 1914, the German Navy had attacked several British ports and laid mines as part of their mission. As the German battlecruisers bombarded the streets of Scarborough, the light cruiser Kolberg was laying a minefield in the waters between Cayton Bay and Gristhorpe. Over three months, between 16 December 1914 and 13 March 1915, the mines would sink twenty ships and cause the deaths of 113 sailors; six times more than were killed on land during the bombardment.

The captain also reported that the night was so dark that it would have been impossible to see anything in the water. The German policy of sinking all vessels in the North Sea was not in force at this time, which suggests that a mine may have been the reason for the sinking.

Why a torpedo?:  The second officer was on watch and reported that he saw the wash from a torpedo on the starboard side. Consequently, some sources still report the sinking as due to a torpedo from a U-boat. I wasn't there, but that's not the way I'd bet.

Le Pèlerin, A French Catholic Magazine Covers the War — A Roads Classic

Contributed by Tony Langley

Le Pèlerin was a French weekly journal founded 1873 by the Roman Catholic Assumptionist order of priests. Naturally, during the Great War it covered its events extensively. Most of the work covered the troops and the fighting, but they also wanted to show the Church's support of the war and published a number of images and articles about priests (who were not exempted from serving and fighting) participating in the war.

Le Pèlerin was published by the Catholic press and as such was chronically underfunded. That meant a lot of amateur contributions, volunteer work, and underpaid professionals to do work the less technically adept could not perform. And it also meant pushing parishioners and Catholic schools to buy the magazine. Publications like Le Pèlerin were printed in the cheapest manner possible using a cheap off-set procedure with large rasters, almost like newspaper printing. They used photographs as covers and then hand-colored them to give a semblance of quality. The quality of this colorizing varied greatly.

In France, and to a large degree in Belgium, priests were not given religious deferments in order to avoid military service. They were called up in the same manner (in peacetime) as other civilians and had no special status as such. If they were a student at a university or other institution recognized by the state, they would be given student deferments (before the war), but afterward were drafted all the same. They received no special deferments or treatments as such. Nor were there military chaplains before the war.

In fact, when priests or candidate priests were called to service, they had a high chance of being the recipient of many a degrading task and were more than likely to be made fun of, have their noses rubbed in the crude and coarse way that soldiers lived in barracks or amused themselves when at liberty. Their comrades would be sure to teach them all the crude facts of life and pleasure when in some remote and dreary garrison town. This was often to a degree somewhat beyond the usual hazing inductees have to go through, as many French were vehemently secular and anti-religious in their outlook. 

During the war, however, due to the general feelings of national solidarity in adversity and the unity displayed by the Union Sacrée, the wartime coalition government of secularists and Catholics, less animosity was displayed by army authorities to priests in service. They were often given duties as stretcher bearers for instance and would act as unofficial chaplains of sorts. And the higher church authorities also cultivated their patriotic image. 

This worked fairly well, as the French could portray themselves as a Catholic nation, compared to the overwhelmingly Protestant make-up of Germany. Bavarians, though, were mainly Catholics, which is why there was often less animosity between the two in general.

Chowtime on a WWI German U-boat (Video with Food Historian Max Miller)

Editor's Note:  Max covers much more in this video than the soup recipe on the title slide.  MH

Then and Now: Wintertime on the Western Front

Click on Images to Enlarge

Reims Cathedral Today

U.S. Dressing Station, St. Mihiel Sector, Winter 1917/18

Ouverage, Verdun

Scottish Reserve Trench, 1918, Location Unknown

Vimy Ridge Memorial

French Troop Convoy, 1916

U.S. Somme Cemetery

British Light Rail Line, Arras Sector

Lochnagar Mine Crater, Somme Sector

German Prisoners Assembling a Nissen Hut

Sources: ABMC, Traces of War, National Archives, National Library of Scotland, WW1Cemeteries.com