Eyewitness: On the Slopes of Morte Homme — 1917

South Slope of Morte Homme

Avery Royce Wolfe (1898–1978) served in SSU 31 of the American Field Service (AFS) for three months in 1917. He hailed from Buffalo, NY, and went to Lafayette College. After the AFS was absorbed by the U.S. Army he subsequently served in the U.S. Army Ambulance Service. He received the Croix de Guerre for his service and turned out to be highly informative letter writer.

Dear Aunt Alice,

I am supposed to be out on guard duty tonight, but, as it is very quiet and very disagreeable outside, I have dropped into the barn, our headquarters, to tell you how much I appreciated your letter of the 9th of August, which I received only a few days ago. Our Section has just returned from active duty at the front. We evacuated the sector at the extreme left of the last big French drive, which you have probably read about in the papers. The attack itself was a great victory for the French, but it was rather hard on our section. We lost two of our cars from shell fire, and eight of our men are in the hospital suffering from the effects of German gas. The gas produces stomach trouble and a burning sensation in the lungs, both of which are very disagreeable. I myself, being blessed with a robust constitution, have completely recovered from the effects of the gas and am feeling fit and fine.

An AFS Officer Carrying a Wounded Poilu

During the two weeks of the attack, our Section carried over three hundred wounded from the front lines back to the triage hospitals. A large majority of them were German prisoners, as the casualties suffered by the French were very small, due to the excellent preparations for the attack by the artillery. Six thousand French guns of all calibers pounded the German lines for three days and nights before the French troops finally went over the top. The front lines now are to the north of hills 304 and Le Mort Homme, but the Germans still hold control of the sector by their occupancy of Montfaucon.

Although many Germans here captured, many more were needlessly killed due to their stupidity. They had built a system of tunnels in Le Mort Homme, which were very wonderful and an indication of their thoroughness. The main tunnel was about four hundred yards long, and lay about three hundred feet below the surface from the top of the hill. Here there were three sets of stairs that served as entrances, one at each end, and one in the middle. The main tunnel was about twelve feet wide and seven feet high. It was well timbered and was kept dry by a series of pumps. Numerous fans provided a good circulation of air, and these were driven by gasoline motored electrical motors that also furnished electric lights for the entire layout. Off the main passage had been constructed numerous rooms, the largest serving as a hospital and the next largest as officers quarters. These rooms were all nicely furnished with furniture that probably was obtained from the captured French cities. I should judge that the layout would furnish very comfortable quarters for several hundred men.

Avery

Avery Royce Wolfe, 1917
Recent College Student, New AFS Officer

From: Letters from Verdun: Frontline Experiences of an American Volunteer in World War I France;  Available HERE.  

While on Leave in Paris, Céline Utterly Breaks Down

Céline in 1915, Just before This Incident
("Real name Louis Ferdinand Destouches, is recognised in France as one of the country’s greatest writers, and a national disgrace" – The Guardian)

A Selection from: Journey to the End of Night

By Louis-Ferdinand Céline 

"Ferdinand, would you like to have dinner at Duval's? You like Duval's, don't you ... It would cheer you up ... There's always such a big crowd , . . Unless you's rather eat in my room . . ," She was being very considerate that evening.

We finally decided on Duval's. But we'd hardly sat down when the place struck me as monstrous. I got the idea that these people sitting in rows around us were waiting for bullets to be fired at them from all sides while they were eating.

"Get out!" I warned them. "Beat it! They're going to shoot! They're going to kill you! The whole lot of you!” I was hurried back to Lola's hotel! Everywhere I saw the same thing . . . The people in the hallways of the Paritz all seemed to be on their way to be shot and so did the clerks behind the big desk, all of them just ripe for it, and the character down at the door with his uniform as blue as the sky and as golden as the sun, the doorman, and the officers and generals walking this way and that not nearly so gorgeous of course, but in uniform all the same, all ripe to be shot, there'd be shooting from every side, no one would escape, not this one, not that or the other. The time for joking was past . . .

"They're going to shoot!" I yelled at the top of my lungs in the middle of the lobby. "They're going to shoot! Beat it, all of you! ..." I went to the window and shouted some more. What a disturbance! "Poor soldier boy!" the people said. The concierge led me gently to the bar, by suasion. He gave me something to drink and I drank quite a lot, and then the M.P.'s came and took me away, not so gently. There'd been M.P.'s at the Gallery of the Nations, too. I'd seen them. Lola kissed me and helped them to take me away with their handcuffs.

Then I fell sick, I was delirious, driven mad by fear, they said at the hospital. Maybe so. The best thing to do when you're in this world, don't you agree, is to get out of it. Crazy or not, scared or not.

There was quite a commotion. Some people said: "That young fellow's an anarchist, they'll shoot him, the sooner the better . . . Can't let the grass grow under our feet with a war on! . . . But there were others, more patient, who thought I was just syphilitic and sincerely insane, they consequently wanted me to be locked up until the war was over or at least for several months, because they, who claimed to be sane and in their right minds, wanted to take care of me while they carried on the war all by themselves. Which proves that if you want people to think you're normal there's nothing like having an all-fired nerve. If you've got plenty of nerve, you're all set, because then you're entitled to do practically anything at all, you've got the majority on your side, and it's the majority who decide what's crazy and what isn't.

Even so my diagnosis was very doubtful. So the authorities decided to put me under observation for a while. My little friend Lola had permission to visit me now and then, and so did my mother. That was all.

We, the befogged wounded, were lodged in a secondary school at Issy-les-Moulineaux, especially rigged to take in soldiers like me, whose patriotism was either impaired or dangerously sick, and get us by cajolery or force to confess. The treatment wasn't really bad, but we felt we were being watched every minute of the day by the staff of silent male nurses endowed with enormous ears.

After a varying period of observation, we'd be quietly sent away and assigned to an insane asylum, the front, or, not infrequently, the firing squad.

Among the comrades assembled in that suspect institution, I always wondered while listening to them talking in whispers in the mess hall, which ones might be on the point of becoming ghosts.

In her little cottage near the gate dwelt the concierge, who sold us barley sugar and oranges as well as the wherewithal for sewing on buttons. She also sold us pleasure. For noncoms the price of pleasure was ten francs. Everybody could have it. But watch your step, because men tend to get too confiding on such occasions. An expansive moment could cost you dearly. Whatever was confided to her she repeated in detail to the Chief Medical Officer, and it went into your court-martial record. It seemed reliably established that she'd had a corporal of Spahis, a youngster still in his teens, shot for his confidences, as well as a reservist in the corps of engineers, who had swallowed nails to put his stomach out of commission, and a hysteric, who had described his method of staging a paralytic seizure at the front. One evening, to sound me out, she offered me the identification papers of a father of six, who was dead, so she told me, saying they might help me to a rear echelon assignment ... In short, she was a snake. In bed, though, she was superb, we came back again and again, and the pleasure she purveyed was real. She may have been a slut, but at least she was a real one. To give royal pleasure they've got to be. In the kitchens of love, after all, vice is like the pepper in a good sauce; it brings out the flavor, it's indispensable.

The school buildings opened out on a big terrace, golden in summer, surrounded by trees, with a magnificent panoramic view of Paris. It was there that our visitors waited for us on Thursdays, including Lola, as regular as clockwork, bringing cakes, advice, and cigarettes.

We saw our doctors every morning. They questioned us amiably enough, but we never knew exactly what they were thinking. Under their affable smiles as they walked among us, they carried our death sentences.

The mealy-mouthed atmosphere reduced some of the patients under observation, more emotional than the rest, to such a state of exasperation that at night, instead of sleeping, they paced the ward from end to end, loudly protesting against their own anguish, convulsed between hope and despair, as on a dangerous mountain spur. For days and days they suffered, and then suddenly one night they'd go to pieces, run to the Chief Medical Officer, and confess everything. They'd never be seen again. I wasn't easy in my mind myself.

In this Earlier October 1914 Photo, (Chovin Collection) a Wounded, But More Optimistic Céline (in Kepi) Is
Wearing His Recently Awarded Médaille Militaire

But when you're weak, the best way to fortify yourself is to strip the people you fear of the last bit of prestige you're still inclined to give them. Learn to consider them as they are, worse than they are in fact and from every point of view. That will release you, set you free, protect you more than you can possibly imagine. It will give you another self. There will be two of you.

That will strip their words and deeds of the obscene mystical fascination that weakens you and makes you waste your time. From then on you'll find their act no more amusing, no more relevant to your inner progress than that of the lowliest pig.

Beside me, in the next bed, there was a corporal, a volunteer like me. Up until August he had been a teacher at a secondary school in Touraine, teaching history and geography, so he told me. After a few months in the front lines this teacher had turned out to be a champion thief. Nothing could stop him from stealing canned goods from the regimental supply train, the quartermaster trucks, the company stores, and anywhere else he could find them.

So he'd landed there with the rest of us, while presumably awaiting court martial. But since his family persisted in trying to prove that he had been stupefied and demoralized by shell shock, the prosecution deferred his trial from month to month. He didn't talk to me very much. He spent hours combing his beard, but when he spoke to me it was almost always about the same thing, about the method he had discovered for not getting his wife with any more children. Was he really insane? At a time when the world is upside down and it's thought insane to ask why you're being murdered, it obviously requires no great effort to pass for a lunatic. Of course your act has got to be convincing, but when it comes to keeping out of the big slaughterhouse, some people's imaginations become magnificently fertile. . . 

In the place and situation we were in, friendship and trust were out of the question. No one revealed any more than he thought useful for his survival, since everything or practically everything was sure to be repeated by some attentive stool pigeon. 

From time to time one of us disappeared. That meant the case against him was ready and the court-martial would sentence him to a disciplinary battalion, to the front, or, if he was very lucky, to the Insane Asylum in Clamart.

More dubious warriors kept arriving, from every branch of service, some very young, some almost old, some terrified, some ranting and swaggering. Their wives and parents came to see them, and their children too, staring wide-eyed, on Thursdays.

They all wept buckets in the visiting room, especially in the evening. All the helplessness of a world at war wept when the visits were over and the women and children left, dragging their feet in the bleak gas-lit corridor. A herd of sniveling riffraff, that's what they were; disgusting.

To Lola it was still an adventure, coming to see me in that prison, as you might have called it. We two didn't cry. Where would we have got our tears from?

"Is it true that you've gone mad, Ferdinand?" she asked me one Thursday.

"It's true," I admitted.

"But they'll treat you here?”

"There's no treatment for fear, Lola.”

"Is it as bad as all that?”

"It's worse, Lola. My fear is so bad that if I die a natural death later on, I especially don't want to be cremated. I want them to leave me in the ground, quietly rotting in the graveyard, ready to come back to life . . . Maybe . . . how do we know? But if they burned me to ashes, Lola, don't you see, it would be over, really over ... A skeleton, after all, is still something like a man . . . It's more likely to come back to life than ashes . . . Reduced to ashes, you're finished! . . . What do you think? . . . Naturally the war . . .”

"Oh, Ferdinand! Then you're an absolute coward! You're as loathsome as a rat . . .”

"Yes, an absolute coward, Lola, I reject the war and everything in it ... I don't deplore it ... I don't resign myself to it ... I don't weep about it ... I just plain reject it and all its fighting men. I don't want anything to do with them or it. Even if there were nine hundred and ninety-five million of them and I were all alone, they'd still be wrong and I'd be right. Because I'm the one who knows what I want: I don't want to die.” "But it's not possible to reject the war, Ferdinand! Only crazy people and cowards reject the war when their country is in danger . . .”

"If that's the case, hurrah for the crazy people! Look, Lola, do you remember a single name, for instance, of any of the soldiers killed in the Hundred Years War? . . . Did you ever try to find out who any of them were? ... No! ... You see? You never tried ... As far as you're concerned they're as anonymous, as indifferent, as the last atom of that paperweight, as your morning bowel movement . . . Get it into your head, Lola, that they died for nothing! For absolutely nothing, the idiots! I say it and I'll say it again! I've proved it! The one thing that counts is life! In ten thousand years, I'll bet you, this war, remarkable as it may seem to us at present, will be utterly forgotten . . . Maybe here and there in the world a handful of scholars will argue about its causes or the dates of the principal hecatombs that made it famous ... Up until now those are the only things about men that other men have thought worth  remembering after a few centuries, a few years, or even a few hours ... I don't believe in the future, Lola . . .”

When she heard me flaunting my shameful state like that, she lost all sympathy for me ... Once and for all she put me down as contemptible, and decided to leave me without further ado. It was too much. When I left her that evening at the hospital gate, she didn't kiss me.

[In September 1915,  Céline was declared unfit for military duty and was discharged from the army.] 

Click HERE to Order

See our earlier excerpt from Journey to the End of Night, "Goodby, Colonel", HERE

Anniversary of the Postwar Circuit des Champs de Bataille

By James Patton

In 1919–starting 106 years ago today–a bicycle race was staged that ran through the former Western Front.  Lasting two weeks, it was the brainchild of Marcel Allain, editor of Le Petit Journal, at the time one of France’s largest newspapers.

Note the Cobblestone Streets

In those days newspapers often organized sporting events to boost their circulation. Nowadays TV networks do much the same thing.  An outstanding example of such an event is the venerable Tour de France, first run in 1903 under the sponsorship of a predecessor of the French sports newspaper L’Équipe. 

A problem with planning this race was, since the battlefields had been off-limits to civilians for years, no one at Le Petit Journal had any idea of what the conditions were like.

Click on Image to Enlarge

The Route

So Tour de France organizer Alphonse Steines (1873–1960) was hired to reconnoiter, and he mapped a course that he said was hard but possible: it would start in Strasbourg and breeze through Luxembourg to Brussels, then head west to Flanders to join the old front near Diksmuide. It would then follow the line through Ypres, Lille, the Somme,  Amiens, Cambrai, St. Quentin, the Marne, the Argonne, Verdun and St Mihiel, ending back in Strasbourg. This route was 2,000 km long and would consist of six stages of about 300 km each, plus a seventh shorter run. There would be a rest day between each stage and an extra day off in Paris. Riders had to carry all of their kit with them—no helpers were allowed. Stages had to finish around 1600 hrs so that results could be published in the next morning’s edition, so the riders often had to start at 0300 hrs. 

A Belgian Competitor in the Argonne Sector

On 28 April, 89 riders set off from Strasbourg–most of them were attracted by the prizes, about £1,500 for the overall winner and £300 for each stage winner. Most of the  entrants were French or Belgian war veterans. None were British because stage racing wasn’t allowed in the UK. No Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, or Bulgarians of the former Central Powers were eligible.

The first two stages went through Luxembourg and Belgium in territory little affected by the war. At Stage 3 the course entered into the battlefields and some areas designated "Zone Rouge" by the French government—meaning land so war-damaged it was not fit for habitation or cultivation. In 1919, this zone covered 1,200 square km of northern France. In his 2019 book Riding in the Zone Rouge author Tom Isitt recounts:

It was across this brutalised land that the riders raced. Gale-force winds, freezing temperatures, and driving sleet greeted them as they turned south from Diksmuide and headed for the Salient. Ypres was nothing but a pile of rubble and the riders struggled past Hellfire Corner and up the remains of the Menin Road at a snail’s pace. On to Bapaume, via Cambrai, the roads were entirely made of smashed and broken cobbles... for 120 km.

Even the Main Roads Were Rough

It was dark by the time the leading riders reached the Somme, and with no lights on their bikes (and no moonlight either) they had been riding slowly and blindly through the wind, sleet, and sticky mud between Bapaume and Albert. The winner of that stage finished in Amiens at 2300 hrs, 18 hours, and 28 minutes after he set off from Brussels.

Some of the riders had to abandon this stage altogether, and others spent the night sheltering in old dugouts before resuming the next day. The last man into Albert had spent a grueling 39 hours cycling through terrible conditions.

Near Paris the roads and weather both improved, but only 24 of the original riders were left.  The course passed through Reims, but skipped most of the 1918 battlefields near the Marne. The Chemin des Dames was entirely off-limits. The American sites at the Argonne Forest and St. Mihiel were passed through fairly quickly.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Results

The last challenge was  in the Vosges – going through the pass known as the  Col du Ballon d’ Alsace (1,171m), which was also a featured spot  on the Tour de France. It was a significant climb for a heavy bike with only two gears and the riders found that there was still a lot of snow up there near the top. They had to dismount in waist-deep snow and carry their bikes slung over their backs for several kilometers.

The final stage on 11 May was 163 km along good roads. The Belgian professional racer and non-war veteran Charles Deruyter (1890–1955), winner of the most stages and grand champion, made the last run into Strasbourg in five hours. His career would last through 1927, but he would win no more solo races.

It had been an arduous journey since the opening day when the riders had set off with their eyes dazzled by the prizes. After two weeks, only 21 of them remained. There had been instances of cheating, mounting bad publicity about the course conditions, and no uptick in newspaper sales.

Champion Charles Deruyter

It was seen as such a failure by both the riders and the organizers that they never ran it again. It was supposed to be a tribute to the millions who died in the war, but instead it became merely an example of bad planning and bad luck.

Extracted from an article by Dr. Martin Purdy of the Western Front Association. You can read  the whole article HERE.

Order Tom Isitt’s book HERE:

 

Beau Geste: Clemenceau, Wilson and the Fourteen Points

 

The Victors' Table at Versailles

By Robert Hanks, Ph.D., University of Toronto

Presented at the 2009 Joint WFA-USA and Great War Society Seminar

Recently, I responded to an inquiry about Clemenceau's biting comment on Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, "Even the good Lord contented Himself with only ten commandments, and we should not try to improve upon them."

Georges Clemenceau was one of the most famous and biting wits of his age. His observations, jokes, sallies, and jests impressed even the most hardened generals and politicians. This ability to impress senior leaders accounts for a great deal of his charisma. His impact on his peers in the council chambers was so great that many of his aphorisms have subsequently become embedded in the historical literature, yet have been repeated over and over again without reference to their original context. As a result, historians have often reduced Clemenceau to a few stock phrases or jokes, and have lost sight of his complex character and policies. The quotation in question is a typical case in point. It was attributed to Clemenceau by many participants at the Paris Peace Conference (Colonel House, etc...), and is generally interpreted as proof that Clemenceau was a cynical old school diplomat who was opposed to Wilsonianism.

In fact, the phrase in question was first attributed to him well before the Paris Peace Conference began. Set in fuller context, it sheds light on his complex relationship with both the United States and Woodrow Wilson. Inter-allied tensions did not begin in January 1919, as many books assume, but rather had their roots in Clemenceau's personal relationship with the United States, and in the diplomatic and strategic quarrels of the First World War.

Clemenceau considered himself to be a practical idealist. He had considerable respect for the USA. As a young student during the Second Empire, he was influenced by the principles of the American Revolution, which, of course, he believed had originated in the French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He admired Abraham Lincoln, supported the Union during the American Civil War and actually lived in the United States for most of the period between 1865-69.

In terms of temperament, Clemenceau greatly admired the action-oriented, rugged individualism of Theodore Roosevelt. Conversely, he had little respect for Woodrow Wilson's brand of academic idealism. In particular, he was greatly irked by Wilson's assumption that Wilsonianism had a monopoly of international morality. In Clemenceau's view, France had been living under the shadow of German militarism since 1871. There was thus no question in his mind that France was fighting a just defensive war in 1914. In the period prior to the American entry into the war, he criticized Wilson's mediation attempts on the grounds that France and Germany were not equally culpable. 

Clemenceau Viewing Dead Germans at Château-Thierry with American Doughboys

Clemenceau's thinking about the United States and Wilson was partly revealed by a column he wrote after the American entry into the war in his newspaper, L'Homme Enchaine, which was reprinted in the New York Times on April 5, 1917. In this Clemenceau wrote that the American intervention in European affairs was "one of the greatest revolutions in history," comparable in importance to the Russian Revolution in March.  

He presciently predicted that the American army would have a decisive impact on the war in spite of the U-boats. He made amends to his previous criticisms of Wilson by praising the latter's idealism, and expressed the hope that mankind would evolve peacefully toward a more "equitable organization of labor." However, he added two important caveats. First, he was not convinced that mankind was "heading straight toward the society of nations." Second, he reminded his audiences that great principles for which America and Wilson now stood had originated in Europe. 

Clemenceau paid careful attention to the White House after taking power in France in November 1917. When the Fourteen Points were proclaimed in January 1918, he accorded them the highest importance. According to Bertrand Favreau, when Clemenceau's assistant, Georges Mandel, received news of the Fourteen Points at 3:00 in the morning, he immediately rushed to wake the Tiger. During the twenty months that Clemenceau's government held power, this was apparently one of the three occasions on which Mandel deemed it necessary to wake Clemenceau in the middle of the night. 

Clemenceau's reaction to the Fourteen points was one of official solidarity and private frustration. Publicly, he adopted a stance that reflected his belief that the Fourteen Points had their roots in the French Enlightenment. As David Stevenson has written, he authorized his foreign minister, Stephen Pichon, to tell the Chamber of Deputies on 11 January 1918 that Allied war aims were in accord in substance if not in form. To show support for Wilson, Pichon added that France claimed only the frontiers of 1870. Privately, however, Clemenceau was less flattering. In a conversation with President Poincaré on 13 January, he was as scathing toward Italian territorial pretensions, which were based on old school diplomacy, as he was on Wilson's "intemperance." In particular, he was irritated by Wilson's use of the term "Associated Power" to distinguish the United States from the Allies and by Wilson's propensity to reserve full independence for himself while denying similar independence to the Allies.

Clemenceau aired these grievances to the Supreme War Council in  March 1918. In the words of the British recording secretary, Colonel Hankey: "Clemenceau said 'President Wilson is listening to what we say, but doesn't tell us what he thinks – a very favorable position for him.' He said a good many other very shrewd things about President Wilson's claim to be a co-belligerent but not an ally, and to run and [sic] independent policy all over the world, while protesting if the allies made any independent announcement. I duly recorded his rather witty sallies."

Clemenceau and Wilson, Side by Side

The very soul of bureaucracy—Hankey's sense of humor was somewhat lacking—he either did not record Clemenceau's jokes, or when he did, he failed to capture the essence of their wit. It is a bit of a mystery what the Clemenceau witticisms were, although according to Frances Stevenson, he objected vociferously to the presence of a junior American diplomat, Arthur Frazier, at the deliberations of the SWC by furiously exclaiming: "Taking notes for President Wilson! No doubt the Kaiser would also like to send a shorthand writer to these meetings!"

As far my researches indicate, the first report on Clemenceau's joke about Wilson having four points more than God surfaced in October 1918. After six terrible months of fighting in 1918, Britain and France were counting on the AEF to relieve much of the burden they were carrying. Their expectations were too high, and they were consequently bitterly disappointed by General Pershing's failure to achieve a dramatic success in the Argonne offensive in September-October 1918. Both Lloyd George and Clemenceau were bitterly critical of Pershing at this point. Their pique at the USA was worsened by Wilson's attempts to mediate an armistice between the Allies and Bulgaria. In Clemenceau's view, Wilson had no right to intervene in this affair because he had not declared war on Bulgaria.

Furthermore, it was his position that armistices should be negotiated only by the local military commander-in-chief, who in this case, was the French general, Franchet D'Esperey. Clemenceau won this argument against Wilson, thus setting an important precedent in inter-Allied circles for Marshal Foch's armistice negotiations with the Germans.

Reports of the Tiger's complaints about Wilson soon crossed the channel. The British political insider Lord Esher thus recorded in his diary on October 14, 1918 that "Clemenceau said: 'God was satisfied with Ten Commandments. Wilson gives us fourteen.' " A slightly different version of this story made the rounds of London's clubland a fortnight later. On 1 November 1918, the Manchester Guardian reported that when a draft of Wilson's Fourteen Points was presented to Clemenceau, he was reputed to have said: "Quatorze points, mais cela est un peu fort. Le bon Dieu n'en avait que dix." (trans: "Fourteen points: that's a bit much. The good Lord had only ten.")

This short piece cannot do justice to all the vicissitudes of Franco-American relations during the First World War and the ensuing Paris Peace Conference, but hopefully it has clarified the provenance of a famous phrase. From this, a few larger conclusions may be drawn. Clemenceau had sympathy for the idealism behind the Fourteen Points, for in his opinion, American ideals were based upon the universal ideals of the Enlightenment. However, he was frustrated by Wilson's interpretation and application of these principles, particularly when they threatened French prestige and interests. He expressed these frustrations through various jests and insults at numerous points during the course of crisis-filled 1918. These tensions, and the aphorisms which they produced, later had a great impact on the conduct and character of the Paris Peace Conference.

Sources and Thanks: This piece is based on my dissertation: Culture Versus Diplomacy: Georges Clemenceau and Anglo-American  Relations During the First World War,  University of Toronto, 2002. 

Desperate Fighting: One Destroyer's Night Actions at Jutland

HMS Spitfire in 1915

As darkness fell, Grand Fleet Commander of the Grand Fleet Admiral John Jellicoe headed south to keep himself between the Germans and their home bases. He put his light craft in the rear of the battle squadrons. A desperate Scheer eventually turned for home and, as a later study of the battle described it, what was a converging ‘v’  turned into an ‘x’ as the Germans crossed astern of the British – and then into an upside down ‘v’ as the High Sea Fleet won clear. [But] they did not go unopposed.

A series of ferocious encounters ensued, which resulted in another British armoured cruiser blowing up, together with an old German battleship. When there was no other sensor but the human eye, the result was a form of seaborne hand to hand combat. The Royal Navy's destroyer HMS Spitfire was in the middle of the action and the near-blind conditions.

The Doomed HMS Black Prince

Stoker Henry Albert Wishart of the Spitfire’s crew later described a confused encounter with a burning cruiser, believed to be HMS Black Prince, during the night : 

Suddenly there was a cry from nearly a dozen people at once, ‘Look out!’  I looked up, and saw a few hundred yards away, on our starboard quarter, what appeared to be a battle cruiser on fire, steering straight for our stern….. To our intense relief she missed our stern by a few feet, but so close was she to us that it seemed that we were actually under her guns, which were trained out on her starboard beam.  She tore past us with a roar, rather like a motor roaring uphill on low gear, and the very crackling and heat of the flames could be heard and felt.  She was a mass of fire from fore-mast to main-mast, on deck and between decks… flames were issuing out of her from every corner…. Soon afterwards, about midnight, there came an explosion from the direction in which she had disappeared.

SMS Nassau

 

In a subsequent encounter, the Spitfire collided with the German first ever Dreadnought, SMS Nassau.  Nassau had contributed to the gunfire which eventually resulted in the sinking of the Black Prince. In the collision Spitfire’s superstructure was flattened by the blast when the battleship fired her 11-inch guns overhead. There were nearly seven metres of Nassau’s side plate left on her upper deck when the destroyer broke free. Spitfire made it home and served out the war after repairs as did Nassau.

Click Image to Enlarge

Survivor: HMS Spitfire After the Battle

Sources:  Stories of the Fallen; "Firepower: Lessons from the Great War Seminar Series", presented by Rear Admiral James Goldrick, Royal Australian Navy 

Siberian Briar Patch, Part III: Time for AEF Siberia to Depart

 

Back in Vladivostok

Washington was not deterred by news of these clashes. Indeed, during this time Wilson clearly stated whom the "Amerikanskije soldaty" were fighting for. Five days after the "Romanovka Massacre," Secretary of State Robert Lansing ordered the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Roland Morris, to travel to Kolchak's (provisional) capital, Omsk. His instructions were, first, to meet with Kolchak's Supreme Council, though "not involving any present recognition of Kolchak, leaves us free to take a sympathetic interest in Kolchak's organization and activities," and second, "to impress upon the Japanese Government our great interest in the Siberian situation and our intention to adopt a definite policy that will include the 'Open Door' to a Russia free from Japanese domination." When Morris finally reached Omsk he described the situation as "extremely critical." On the same date, Wilson pronounced to the Senate the necessity and reason for an expeditionary force in Siberia, which was maintaining order on the Siberian railways on which "the forces of Admiral Kolchak are entirely dependent."

By this time, however, the end of the White effort in Siberia was already in sight. Kolchak's army was demoralized. The Czech Legion was soon to quit the fight and begin to plan (once again) their exit from Russia, and the Trans-Siberian became increasingly congested with refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. To Morris, for the U.S. to properly assist Admiral Kolchak it would have to extend massive monetary and military aid to his flagging forces and reinforce the AEF by "at least 40,000 troops." This Wilson simply could not afford to do, even if those measures would ensure a Kolchak victory. Wilson's pragmatic wait-and-see policy allowed him (and his expeditionary force) to exit Siberia when all hope of successful counterrevolution had vanished. With the fall of Omsk in November, this time had clearly arrived and plans for a U.S. withdrawal were laid.

The U.S. Army Transport Thomas Returned Many of the American Troops to the Philippines

Rather than idealistic or misguided, Wilson's Siberian policy, as executed by General Graves, allowed the president to cautiously play the situation with a minimum political and military cost. Graves resisted British demands for wider action and Japanese calls for assistance while the latter was suffering heavy losses against Bolshevik forces. The argument put forward that Wilson decided to intervene under pressure to be a good ally is countered by the fact that U.S. actions in Siberia served to antagonize all parties involved, Russian and Allied. By the winter of 1919–1920 all American forces were pulled back to Vladivostok and departing Siberia.

During the Civil War, however, that force served its purpose. By limiting its activities in Siberia it avoided being engulfed in the civil strife while supporting counterrevolution. Arms and supplies could continue to be shipped inland, White and Allied forces could continue to control the territory (at least around the railroad), and the Japanese could be observed and left to their own costly counterinsurgency campaign. President Wilson, in the meantime, could continue to proclaim the honorable intentions of U.S. intervention into Russian internal affairs while campaigning in Congress for a League of Nations based on self-determination.

It Was Nothing Like This

Postscript:

In 1959 Russian and Siberian expert and author of a study of America's decision to intervene in Russia in 1918 George Kennan had this to say about the venture:

Viewed in their entirety, the American expeditions to North Russia and Siberia appear today as pathetic and ill-conceived ventures, to which Woodrow Wilson — poorly informed, harried with wartime burdens, and torn between his own instincts and his feeling of obligation to his Allies - was brought against his own better judgment. He did his best at all times to keep the American action from assuming the form of an interference in Russian internal affairs, and there is no suggestion more preposterous than that he was animated in these decisions by hostility toward the Russian people or by a desire to overthrow the Soviet regime with American forces. In both cases, his original decision was closely linked with America’s wartime concerns. Had there been no great European war in progress, neither expedition would ever have been dispatched.

That the expeditions were regrettable — that it would have been better, from the standpoint of American interests, had they never been sent — seems hardly open to doubt. That they reflected imperialistic motives and constituted a serious injury to the Russian people is a figment of the imagination of Soviet propagandists, useful to their political purpose but not to the development of historical truth.

Sources: Articles in the April and May, 2020, St. Mihiel Trip-Wire by Christopher T. McMaster, PhD; "American Troops in Russia: The True Record" by George F. Kennan, The Atlantic, January 1959.

Siberian Briar Patch, Part II: AEF Siberia in Action

 

U.S. Commander William Graves and Staff with
Russian White Commander Grigoriy Semënov

The Military Mission

The military intervention into Siberia can be divided into three stages. These divisions are based more on official clarifications of duties, rather than any changes in military policy. A continuity, a consistency is present throughout the entire period of U.S. intervention, primarily to facilitate counterrevolution. The first stage is the period between the landing of U.S. troops and the acceptance by Washington of the Inter-Allied Railway Agreement (IARA) on 9 February 1919. The IARA imposed military control on the Siberian railways by clearly defining the respective responsibilities of the intervening forces on various sectors of the railway. For the Americans, this would confirm duties already assumed and create new ones.

Although obvious in whose interest the agreement worked, it was not until July that the purpose of the AEF was officially stated. During the summer of 1919, it was openly admitted that U.S. troops were in Siberia to maintain the supply line of the white leader, Admiral Kolchak. To the troops north of Vladivostok the latter was by that time an irrelevant technicality.

Japanese Troops Advancing in Force Against Red Troops

American troops had arrived at Vladivostok to much cheer, mostly furnished by themselves and the crew and band of the USS Brooklyn that had been stationed in the waters around Vladivostok since March. The Japanese commander, General Kikuzo Otani, greeted the Americans with more seriousness and urgency. By letter he advised Colonel Henry Styre, in temporary command whilst Graves was in transit, that Vladivostok was in peril of imminent invasion. The Americans were needed for the city's defense.

Unwilling to remain inactive and unable to verify Otani's story, Styre consented to join in what was later to be known as the Ussuri Campaign. The several companies sent to help "defend" the city caught up with the Japanese after six days hard marching and served as rear flank to the Japanese and Czech forces who were pursuing the Bolsheviki northwards up the Trans-Siberian. The campaign culminated at Khabarosk, 475 miles from Vladivostok, where the Stars and Stripes and the Rising Sun were raised together in a significant show of unity.

U.S. Major Samuel Johnson Commanding the
International Police Force of Vladivostok

Graves's first real examination of his troops came in October during a tour north of Vladivostok. He ordered back to Khabarovsk any troops he found west of the city that had continued to follow the Japanese in their pursuit of the Red Guard. Graves could "see no reason for keeping troops at any of these stations," although a number of troops were kept at important locations between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. U.S. forces elsewhere got off to a less auspicious beginning, but equally partisan in the widening civil war. The majority of the 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments (dispatched from Manila) marched east of Vladivostok to establish a tent camp at Gornastaya Valley. The International Police Force was also created at this time under the command of a Russian-born American officer, Major Samuel Ignatiev Johnson.

An additional 250 troops were sent to the Soucha coalmines, located 75 miles northeast of the city. The mines consisted of 12 shafts and served as the fuel supply for the entire Primorsk province and for the operation of eastern Siberian railroads. The Suchan mines were the fuel for intervention and counterrevolution. The Allies set about immediately to secure the continued production of its coal. One of the first acts of the Allied leaders was to reinstate the previous mine manager, recently run out of the area by mine workers. To Graves, the mines proved to be the "stormy petrel" of his entire Siberian adventure. Most American causalities would be suffered protecting the spur lines linking the mines with the Trans-Siberian.

Guarding the Siberian Railroads

Click on Image to Enlarge

The Railway Agreement of February formalized some of these winter arrangements and added others. Although finalized in February, it took an additional two months to sort out which Allied force would protect each specific sector. (See map above.) Some 550 U.S. troops became responsible for the line running immediately out of Vladivostok to the town of Nikolsk-Ussuri, 68 miles north. Nikolsk-Ussuri, a town of 52,000 inhabitants, served as the juncture of the Ussuri line continuing to Khabarovsk, and the Chinese Eastern Railroad which crossed Manchuria, later to reenter Siberia. At Spasskoe, continuing north, 1,700 troops were responsible for the length of line leading to the town of Ussuri and the 40-foot long bridge crossing the river Ussuri 217 miles from Vladivostok. Another 1,900 troops were assigned to guard a branch line from Ulgonaya to the coal mines at Suchan. Two thousand men were also stationed 1,700 miles west to maintain the stretch of line between Verkhe-Udinsk and Mysovaya, where the Trans-Siberian reached the network of 38 tunnels linking eastern and western Siberia.

U.S. Railroad Guard Detail

With the railway agreement practicably enacted, U.S. troops were immediately confronted by the dilemma of professed "non-interference" while participating in counterrevolution. Graves continued to maintain his "neutrality" regardless, which in essence was to keep his expeditionary force as disentangled from the mire of civil war as long as possible. In a proclamation given to his troops to distribute in their sectors he outlined that:

The sole object and purpose of the armed forces of the United States of America. . . is to protect the railroad and railway property and ensure the operation of passenger and freight trains through such sector without obstruction or interruption.

The proclamation initially left the partisan guerrillas wondering just who the "Amerikanskiy soldat" was. They soon made up their minds. As such order on the railroad only benefited one side, the U.S. soldiers soon became justifiable targets of the partisans. Just as it allowed supplies to roll to counterrevolution forces in western Siberia, Allied control of the railways made White control of the east possible. White representatives in eastern Siberia used order on the railroad to either starve or attack "Bolshevist" areas. "We are making this condition possible," Graves wired Washington, "by our presence here."

Hospital Car on American Train

Even before U.S. sectors were chosen, U.S. troops north of Vladivostok were preparing for "anticipated...guerrilla warfare or general revolution with the recession of winter" due to the "unsettled political and economic conditions in eastern Siberia." As early as 14 March, partisans fired upon trains and "information was received that the partisans were recruiting for a vigorous spring drive against the Kolchak government." By late spring, U.S. forces finally settled in their allotted sectors, became swept up in that vigorous drive. Throughout March and April, attacks on rail freight, tack, and bridges increased. In May, Graves decided that to properly maintain "order" on the railways, U.S. troops would have to follow the attacking partisans into the surrounding countryside. The first active campaign began on 21 May in the vicinity of Maihe in the Ulgonaya-Suchan sector. Throughout the summer of 1919, the history of the AEF in eastern Siberia is one of skirmishes, attacks, and forays into the surrounding hills and valleys. On numerous occasions American combat patrols fought in conjunction with White Russian and Japanese forces. Over 200 U.S. soldiers were to fall in this partisan war. Twenty-five died on the morning of 25 June near the village of Romanovka during a dawn raid on their encampment.

Tomorrow: Siberian Briar Patch, Part III:  Time for AEF Siberia to Depart

Sources: Articles in the April and May, 2020, St. Mihiel Trip-Wire by Christopher T. McMaster, PhD

Siberian Briar Patch, Part I: President Wilson Sends the Army

August 1918: AEF Siberia Arrives in Vladivostok

After long consideration President Wilson decided that it was necessary to deploy American troops to Siberia [and also Murmansk and Archangel] in the midst of the Russian Civil War. His explanation for doing so are buried in an aide-mémoire (a diplomatic summary) of 17 July 1918 conveyed by the Secretary of State to the Allied ambassadors. The document (found HERE) covers all the fronts of the war.  Regarding any prospect for sending American forces, it makes a very good case for not doing so:

It is the clear and fixed judgment of the Government of the United States, arrived at after repeated and very searching reconsiderations of the whole situation in Russia, that military intervention there would add to the present sad confusion in Russia rather than cure it, injure her rather than help her, and that it would be of no advantage in the prosecution of our main design, to win the war against Germany. It cannot, therefore, take part in such intervention or sanction it in principle.

Yet the same paragraph also contained this rationale for sending armed forces to Russia.

Military action is admissible in Russia, as the Government of the United States sees the circumstances, only to help the Czecho-Slovaks consolidate their forces and get into successful cooperation with their Slavic kinsmen and to steady any efforts at self government or self defense in which the Russians themselves may be willing to accept assistance. Whether from Vladivostok or from Murmansk and Archangel, the only legitimate object for which American or allied troops can be employed, it submits, is to guard military stores which may subsequently be needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self-defense. For helping the Czecho-Slovaks there is immediate necessity and sufficient justification.

Armored Train of the Czech Legion

Such a vague example of the president's rhetorical flair was to become the actual orders presented to the man chosen to command the expeditionary force, Major General William Graves. "Watch your step," Secretary of War Newton Baker warned as he handed Graves the pale brown envelope containing the memoir. "You will be walking on eggs loaded with dynamite".

By the time of his arrival in Siberia the general felt he could decipher his instructions fairly well. According to the memoir the AEF was not to become embroiled in the civil war; hence the "non-interference" in Russian internal affairs outlined in the document. Implicit in his orders was aid to the Czechs, which meant, first, maintaining order in Vladivostok. This was achieved in the form of an International Military Police force comprising troops from 12 nations and that preformed its duties in an efficient and disciplined manner.

Second, for the Czechs to consolidate their forces the railway system had to remain operable. Acceptance of this duty immediately compromised any "neutrality" sought by General Graves. The Czech Legion was in revolt against the Bolsheviks and were active partisans in the civil war. To maintain the railway system, moreover, was not just aid to the Czechs; it would benefit the counterrevolution that depended upon the railway. Graves had little illusion about the role his troops played in Siberia. "As I see this question," he would wire Washington, "we become a party, by guarding the railroad, to the actions of this governmental class".

His interpretation of Wilson's memoir was to gain the animosity of his allies, who called for more direct action, the violent response from Red partisans, and numerous calls for his replacement in favor of a more forceful American commander. If, however, Graves were a more impulsive leader, Chief of Staff Payton C. March later wrote, "we would have had to send 100,000 men to get them out alive". Graves was instructed by March 1919 during the intervention to continue his policy until changed by the president. This the president, who could ill afford 100,000 men, never did.

Major General William Graves

The military intervention into Siberia can be divided into three stages. These divisions are based more on official clarifications of duties, rather than any changes in military policy. A continuity, a consistency is present throughout the entire period of U.S. intervention, primarily to facilitate counterrevolution. The first stage is the period between the landing of U.S. troops and the acceptance by Washington of the Inter-Allied Railway Agreement (IARA) on 9 February 1919. The IARA imposed military control on the Siberian railways by clearly defining the respective responsibilities of the intervening forces on various sectors of the railway. For the Americans, this would confirm duties already assumed and create new ones.

Although obvious in whose interest the agreement worked, it was not until July that the purpose of the AEF was officially stated. During the summer of 1919, it was openly admitted that U.S. troops were in Siberia to maintain the supply line of the White leader, Admiral Kolchak. To the troops north of Vladivostok the latter was by that time an irrelevant technicality.

Tomorrow:  Part II, AEF Siberia in Action

Sources: Articles in the April and May, 2020, St. Mihiel Trip-Wire by Christopher T. McMaster, PhD