A House Divided: French Canada and the First World War–Video

Presented by Jesse Alexander of the Western Front Association

What Was Japan Up To in Siberia?

Some of the 70,000 Troops Japan Sent to Siberia

By John D. Beatty and Lee A. Rochwerger

Introduction 

Beginning in January 1918, the largest and best-known Japanese WWI-related campaign, referred to as the Siberian Intervention (Shiberia Shuppei in Japanese), was the largest international conflict that Japan had ever entered into up to that time. Of the ten Allied powers that sent troops to Siberia, the Japanese sent the largest contingent, stayed the longest, and were the only ones with specific instructions from their government about their mission—to create a separate and independent Siberia as a buffer against whoever controlled the government in Moscow after the ongoing Russian Civil War. Those reasons, however, were poorly articulated to the Japanese public. After several atrocities, ballooning debts, and shortages traceable to the project—that in the Taisho period (1912–25) were not hidden as they would be later—public opinion turned against it. When logistical, public, economic, and international pressure became irresistible, the last Japanese forces were withdrawn in October 1922.

Japan in the Great War 

As an ally of Great Britain since 1902, Japan declared war on the Central Powers in August 1914, knowing that she could also pick up some German Pacific territories on the cheap—at least without major bloodshed. At this stage in Japan's industrialization and modernization, nothing was “cheap.” 

In November 1914, British diplomats asked for Japanese 15 divisions to the Western Front. Since that figure constituted more than half of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) at the time and would have required some two million tons of shipping capacity, the effort was stillborn. On 17 February 1915, Japanese sailors trained as infantry went ashore with their French and Russian allies in Singapore to round up Indian mutineers from the British Army. Japanese naval forces escorted Allied convoys in the Mediterranean from April 1917 until the end of the war. In August 1917, the French enquired about deploying Japanese divisions to the Balkan front. For a number of reasons, including the imminent collapse of Russia, the Japanese demurred. In January 1915, Japan, trying to take advantage of Europe's distraction, issued their Twenty-One Demands to China that would have turned China into little more than a vassal. The United States, Britain, France, and Russia took great exception to the power grab. A watered-down version, known as the Thirteen Demands, was accepted by China in May. The Twenty-One/Thirteen Demands crisis caused great concern in Britain about the future of the alliance with Japan. It also angered Japanese militarists who were beginning to see foreign policy as their responsibility. 

When the Russian Revolution began in 1917, Japan became concerned about stability in Siberia. Lenin's Decree on Peace on 8 November 1917 seemed to indicate that the Reds were taking charge of Russia. By the end of 1917, after the collapse of the Italian front and troop withdrawals from Mesopotamia, Britain was asking for Japanese land troops anywhere. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918 was greeted with alarm in Tokyo, as it was negotiated by the Bolsheviks.

The Decision to Intervene 

Between Lenin's Decree and the beginning of peace talks between Russia and Germany, IJA Vice Chief of Staff Tanaka Giichi formed a Siberia Planning Committee in February 1918. Their goal was to scratch out plans for detaching Siberia from Russia and whoever won the coming civil war over the levers of power in Moscow. Always frightened of a vengeful Russian state that would take away her hard-won gains in East Asia, the plan was made the more urgent by Japanese fear and hatred of communism. While General Uehara Yūsaku, Chief of the IJA General Staff, saw an expedition as an opportunity to rid Japan of an old enemy. Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo of the Privy Council and Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake were more cautious, not wanting more disfavor in the West after the Twenty-One/Thirteen Demands crisis.

While the Japanese military planned, their allies dithered. While the Triple Alliance and the U.S. wanted to restart an eastern front against the Germans, they were indecisive about exactly how and lacked the manpower in any event. Already overextended in Europe, Allied manpower was a big problem for them. So were the tons of weapons, ammunition, and equipment intended for the Imperial Russian armies that were just sitting in warehouses in Russia. This material became another Allied goal for the intervention. Gradually they hit on a scheme to land at Murmansk, Archangel, and Vladivostok to secure the supplies and the connecting railways. Manpower would be supplied by the Czech Legion that was made up of some 50,000 ethnic Czech and Slovak soldiers, former members of Austro-Hungarian and German forces captured by the Russians. The Czech Legion was already fighting Russian Reds alongside the Whites.

But official Japanese action only followed the earlier direct action by Japanese officers. Japanese sailors went ashore in Vladivostok on 30 December 1917 to quell riots between workers' soviets and local authorities that threatened Japanese businesses. Two Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) battleships under Rear Admiral Kato Kanji arrived at Vladivostok on 12 January 1918, two days ahead of a British cruiser out of Hong Kong. In April 1918, Japanese sailors went ashore at Vladivostok again, this time to prevent supplies from falling into German hands. At the same time, IJA commanders in Manchuria were arming anyone willing to fight the Reds. These actions alarmed the West enough to finally act.

After Brest-Litovsk, the Czech Legion refused German demands to surrender and refused to obey several pleas and agreements to evacuate, suspecting treachery. They fought their way onto the Trans-Siberian Railway, managing to clear key points of the railway by the spring of 1918. This got the attention of hard-pressed Allied planners still bleeding from the German spring offensives. By the end of June 1918, the Czechs under Mikhail Diterikhs, a White Russian general, had cleared Vladivostok of the Reds. Despite the preemptive actions of the Japanese, the Whites and the Czechs, the United States and the Entente committed to up to 7,000 men each in Siberia, but few seemed to know exactly what for—to secure what supplies and to rescue whom? Even if the politicians were clear in their minds what they wanted their soldiers and sailors to do, the mission was not clearly articulated to any military force under any flag except the Japanese. The Japanese generals finally got government and imperial approval for a 12,000-man expedition in August 1918. This number could be expanded,  it was made clear, if the mission extended beyond Vladivostok.

Sometime after the Deployment, the Allies
Paraded in Vladivostok

Landing and Occupation 

The first Japanese troops of the official commitment, commanded by General Otani Kikuzo, landed at Vladivostok in July 1918. By marching quickly along the railway as far west as Chita just south and east of Lake Baikal, Otani could plead for more help to shore up his porous lines. Tokyo complied, and by the end of October, Otani had by most accounts (the number is still in dispute) 70,000 soldiers and sailors in Siberia. In addition, some 50,000 Japanese civilian settlers and businessmen were dispatched, scattering as far west as Lake Baikal and Buryatia. Otani wasted no time in claiming that he was the commander of all non-Russian forces in Russia, a claim that no other nation's forces acknowledged. 

Aftermath 

The Siberian Intervention would cost Japan some 5,000 casualties, mostly to typhus and diarrhea. It had also cost about ¥1 billion (half the total national budget for two years), spun inflation out of control, and left the military with little to no leverage to direct foreign and military policy during the so-called Taisho Democracy when liberal and democratic government almost took hold. 

It also earned the enmity of Moscow because of Japanese support for their opponents, delaying diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union until 1925. Diplomatically the whole event was a fiasco. So great was the number of American and British officers and officials who were alarmed by the brutality, disingenuousness, and caprice of the Japanese that many in both the United States and Great Britain came to regard a future war with Japan within a generation as inevitable. 

In future postings on Roads to the Great War, we will present Beatty & Rochwerger's further discussions of  the performance, crimes, and ultimate withdrawal of the Japanese forces in Siberia.  MH

Life in Ireland During World War I

Poster from Loyalists Opposing Home Rule

Ireland in Turmoil

There was much turmoil in Ireland as the First World War approached. Labor strife was particularly evident in late 1913. The Dublin lock-out was a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers that took place in that city. The lock-out affected tens of thousands of Dublin families.The dispute, lasting from 26 August 1913 to 18 January 1914, is often viewed as the most severe and significant industrial dispute in Irish history. Central to the dispute was the workers' right to unionise. Although the workers organizations had been broken, he principle of union action and workers' solidarity had been firmly established. No future employer would ever try to "break" a union in Ireland. 

When World War I began in 1914, there was another festering crisis in Ireland over  Home Rule—a political movement from 1870 to 1922 that aimed to grant Ireland domestic control over its own affairs, such as education, health, and agriculture, within the United Kingdom. Unionists (opposed) and nationalists  (pro-home rule) were on the verge of civil war. Both sides stopped their campaigning for and against Home Rule and supported the British war effort. Ulster Protestants joined the British Army to show their patriotism. In return they expected to remain part of the United Kingdom when the war was over. Edward Carson insisted the Protestant Ulstermen be kept together in one unit. His request was granted and approximately 9,000 men from Ulster formed the 36th (Ulster) Division.

The nationalists hoped for Home Rule as gratitude at the end of the war. The nationalists were not allowed to form a division of their own like the Ulstermen. Not everyone in Ireland agreed with fighting for Britain. Arthur Griffith of Sinn Féin said, "Ireland is not at war with Germany. The only duty we have is to stand for Ireland’s interests." There was a banner in front of Liberty Hall in Dublin saying, "We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland."

Up-Scale Dublin Suburb Rathmines, 
Early 20th Century

1914 was the year after the Dublin Lockout and there was tension in the city. Some nationalists were busy planning a rebellion, seeing England’s difficulty as Ireland’s opportunity. There was also a sense that many people were happy with British rule. In 1911, King George V visited Dublin and thousands lined the streets to view his arrival. Many of the professional people who came out to see him had grown in political importance. Grand houses in places like Fitzwilliam Square were home to leading lawyers, businessmen and civil servants.

As well as that, during the 19th century, the wealthy began moving to suburbs such as Blackrock, Monkstown, and Rathmines. They built their lives around golf clubs, tennis clubs, yachting, and sailing. Houses were run with the help of servants who often lived in. Trams, horses and bicycles dominated transport, but cars were growing in importance.

Slums and poverty 

The former homes of the wealthy, especially on the north-side of the city, became home to thousands of the city’s poorest. These houses became known as tenements. Dublin’s slums were among the worst in Europe with thousands of manual and unskilled workers living in terrible conditions. A third of families lived in one room and in one case, five families were living in one large room.

The slums were disease-ridden and the death rate in Dublin at that time was 75 percent higher than in any British city. Those who had work worked very long hours for low wages. 

Employment

A Guinness Barge on the River Liffey

There was no major industrial area in Ireland at that time except in north-east Ulster. Dublin’s employment depended on administration and commerce. Dublin Port was busy with many British goods imported into the country and the bulk of agricultural goods leaving through Dublin for foreign markets. Up to seven cattle boats a day left Dublin for England. Work in the port, construction and administration could not absorb the huge number of available workers.

Good jobs with employers such as Guinness were dreamed of, but were not a  reality for most people. Employment in Cork centered around the major breweries such as Murphy’s and Beamish and Crawford.  People living in the county depended on agriculture and fishing. Galway was a county in decline with a birth - rate below the average and no industrial base. Waterford was equally poor with evictions of families from their homes commonplace. It was a mainly rural county with only Dungarvan and Waterford City having a population greater the 2,000. Belfast was booming due to the shipyards, the linen mills and associated industries.

Irish Soldiers at War

Men of the 36th Ulster Division, 1917

The conflict saw over 200,000 Irishmen join the British forces. Official estimates put the number of Irish dead at about 35,000. The vast majority died in their prime on French and Belgian battlefields. World War I wiped out an entire generation of young men. The war was fought on a huge scale and the armies were vast with millions of conscripts. The Irish came from every Irish county and many villages and towns. Men from the working classes joined in vast numbers. Farmers prospered during the war due to price increases and there was little prospect of them joining. The numbers joining up slackened off after the Eastern Rising. Many Irish people joined English, Scottish, and Welsh regiments. Emigrants joined the armies of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and the United States. In addition, women served as nurses at the front line.  They signed up for different reasons:

• Some enlisted to escape poverty.

• Others to maintain family honour or traditions.

• Others joined for adventure.

• Others wanted to stop German aggression.

• Many joined because they believed it would ensure Home Rule after the war and others joined to prevent Home Rule.

Women Working in the National Shell Factory,
Parkgate Street, Dublin

The war affected Irish life in other ways. Agricultural prices increased as the war went on due to the demand for food to feed the huge British Army. Middle and upper-class women in Ireland as in other countries took up new roles. They worked as nurses or in charity work in support of war victims. Many women worked in munitions factories also. As the war continued, life began to improve in Dublin. Living standards rose and mortality rates fell with money flowing into the tenements in separation payments to soldiers’ wives. Every woman whose husband was at the front got an allowance collected at the post office. The army provided a new source of steady income for the vast number of unemployed, unskilled workers.

Main Street, Longford, Ireland, in the early 1900s

Home Rule and the Easter Rising

The outbreak of World War I may have postponed another war in Ireland. Moderate nationalist leader John Redmond of the Irish Parliamentary Party had achieved Home Rule with the Liberals agreeing to introduce it. Ulster Unionists, led by Edward Carson, rejected Home Rule and formed the Ulster Volunteer Force, a 90,000 strong well-armed force which intended to fight to prevent it. Nationalists founded the Irish Volunteers to support Home Rule.

In September 1914, Redmond urged nationalists to enlist and fight for Britain in the war. Two days before his speech, Home Rule was granted but it was not to be enacted until the war was over. Some of the Irish Volunteers who refused to support Britain planned a rebellion. They were joined by the Irish Citizen Army in staging a rising at Easter 1916. Redmond saw the rebellion as a ‘German intrigue’ and Carson saw the leaders as traitors. Both men urged caution in the treatment of the leaders and prisoners when the rising ended. The British authorities ignored Redmond and Carson and after the execution of the leaders, public opinion rejected moderate nationalism in favour of militant republicanism. The Irish Parliamentary Party continued to push for Home Rule, but the British authorities did not grant it. In the 1918 general election, the people switched to Sinn Féin and Home Rule was no longer an option.

Constance Markiewicz,  Co-Organizer of the
1916 Easter Rebellion
(See our article on the Easter Rising's 100th Anniversary HERE)

World War I, the Home Rule campaign, and the Easter Rising changed life in Ireland for decades to come. 

Excerpted from: World War I—The Great War; from the County Longford, Ireland, Library

Aftermath: By 1932 There Was a Growing Fear for the Future in Britain

It was over airpower!

Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin

[After the Great War], those making bold claims for airpower, [especially Italy's Giulio Douhet, America's Billy Mitchell, and Great Britain's Hugh Trenchard] gained degrees of legitimacy for a variety of reasons. The war had indicated that technological advancement could take place in a highly telescoped way. Many observers thus concluded that the technological development of air power would be fast and relentless—and offensive capabilities would outstrip defensive ones. Moreover, many assumed that some of the most daunting weapons of the war, including chemicals and gas, would be teamed with airpower. (Tami Davis Biddle, U.S. Army War College.)

One of the most important consciousness-raising attempts by politicians about the terrible realities of air warfare came in the speech by the Conservative leader Sir Stanley Baldwin to the House of Commons in 1932. Baldwin pointed out that no town was safe: "The question is: whose morale will be shattered quickest by that preliminary bombing?" Baldwin was content to ram home his point that rapidly evolving aircraft technology was a threat in and of itself: "I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through."

Source: The Blitz Companion

The Searchers: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War by Robert Sackville-West

 

From The Times, 19 September 2021

Robert Sackville-West’s new book is compelling and often horrifying. His subject is the First World War and its aftermath. The “searchers” of his title were initially the bereaved, who tried to get news of their lost loved ones (Where and how did they die? Were they perhaps taken prisoner and still alive?) by interviewing their surviving comrades, often in hospitals and casualty clearing stations. In the early months of the fighting you needed money—and courage—to cross the Channel and pursue your search in the war zone. Rudyard Kipling and his wife were there, looking for their son, John, killed at the Battle of Loos. So, too, was Lord Robert Cecil with his sister-in-law, Violet Cecil, looking for her son who, like John Kipling, was an 18-year-old second lieutenant in the Guards. . .

Throughout the 1920s hundreds of thousands of visitors made pilgrimages to the battlefields, and Thomas Cook and other travel companies ran tours. Many were shocked by the post-apocalyptic landscapes, still littered with the debris of war. The ghoulish work of exhumation and reburial was still going on, and there were moments of horror. One woman picked up a discarded boot as a souvenir, only to find there were human bones still in it. It seems, though, from Sackville-West’s closing pages, that the devout far outnumbered the sensation-seekers. Some mothers brought little bags of earth from home to sprinkle on their sons’ graves. But the many whose sons or husbands had no known grave had to be content with making a lead-pencil tracing of their name on the list of the lost, which they would take home and treasure. These are among the many images that linger in the mind from Sackville-West’s remarkable book.

Order HERE

D-Day, H-Hour for the Blue Ridge Division at the Meuse-Argonne

The 80th Division Moving into Opening Position

The assault on September 26 surprised the Germans and disrupted their defense, but this situation was only momentary. From that day on the fighting was probably unsurpassed during the World War for dogged determination on both sides. Each foot of ground was stubbornly contested and the hostile troops took advantage of every available spot from which to pour enfilade and crossfire into the advancing American troops.

American Armies and Battlefields in Europe

Shoulder Patch, 80th Blue Ridge Division 

By Major Gary Schreckengost, U.S. Army, Ret.

Lt. Otto Leinhauser, the son of German immigrants from Philadelphia, PA, and a platoon leader in the division's 313th Machine Gun Battalion remembered the preparations:

At Midnight the artillery opened up and such a night you never saw. We are opposite south of Béthincourt. The horizon, as far as you could see, was just one blaze or continuous line of flashes of every caliber, and the war was terrific. This continued until 0530. when the barrage started, and the infantry left the trench. Just multiply all that racket by about ten and then add more and you will have just the noise the artillery made. Our machine guns, of which there were 120, all opened up at 5:30 A.M. and then hell was let loose. You couldn't hear yourself think.

This epic opening bombardment was fired over a 20-mile front. Some 3,200 French and American artillery pieces delivered a rain of steel upon the German lines—far more than the German artillery preparation for Operation MICHAEL, the early-spring offensive that was to end the war before the Americans arrived in force. As the artillery roared, at 0330 hrs., the battalion commanders read the following message from General Cronkhite to their company commanders:

To the Members of the 80th Division: For over a year we have been learning how to fight. Within the next few hours, we shall have a chance to apply what we have learned. We form part of a vast army, consisting of over 300,000 Americans and an equal number of our French Allies. No enemy can withstand you, men from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. You are fighting for everything that makes life worth living, the safeguarding of your families and homes, and that personal liberty so dearly earned and so tenaciously maintained for over a century. Go at them with a yell, and regardless of obstacles or fatigue, accomplish your mission. Make the enemy know that the 80th Division is on the map: make him know, when he faces you in the future, that resistance is useless.

80th Division at H-Hour, 26 September 1918

At 0430 26 Sept, "H-hour-minus-one," just as the drizzle grew into light rain, sappers from the 305th Engineers, reinforced by soldiers from the reserve battalions of the 160th Infantry Brig. began by crawling forward into "no man's land" through the rusty metal briar patch and into the corpse-lain swamp that had separated the French and the Germans for almost a year now, with wire cutters, picks, and shovels, marking infiltration paths with white engineer tape for the infantry to follow at daylight. They were covered by the artillery, which was still firing interdiction, harassing, or counter-battery barrages north of the Béthincourt-Forges Road.

With the 75s now firing a standing barrage north of the creek, the Gas Regiment laying clouds of masking smoke, and the 155s and machine guns firing interdiction barrages on known or suspected Hun mortar or artillery batteries miles behind the front line, Majors O'Bear and Holt, the respective commanders of the lead attack battalions of the 319th and 320th Infantry blew their whistles to advance. They were echoed by the company commanders and the platoon leaders, who were all holding Browning .45 caliber automatic pistols over their heads and yelling either, "Over the top lads! Over the top!" (just like their British brethren and trainers had done in Picardy) or "Up and At "Em!" which was the American handle and the men climbed from Trenches (or Tranchées) "Alsace" and "Kovel" and advanced into the Forges bottomlands.

The Division's First Obstacle: Forges Creek

Eyewitness: Marching to Jerusalem

Turkish Defenders Around Gaza Were Well Equipped 
with Machine Guns

 

By H.P. Bonser, Royal Engineers

After a spell in the Signal School at Cleopatra Camp, I was drafted to the 74th Divisional Signal Company which was then being formed. My first experience of war was at the Second Battle of Gaza when we were in reserve.

It was a nightmare of interminable marching, thirst, and tiredness. On the third day of this commotion, I was on a cable wagon which was picking up a line in order to lay it again wherever needed.

September of this year (1917) found us on the borders of Palestine. The chief hardship was lack of water—a good wash was a luxury. Our final preparations for the advance took place in a sandstorm. For three days we were working with goggles over our eyes and handkerchiefs round mouth and nostrils.

The job was recovering and loading cable ready for the dash up. It was impossible to see a man 20 yards away; there was sand all over our perspiring bodies, sand on every mouthful of food we ate, and a sip of tepid water left sand on our lips. Half the fellows were suffering from dysentery pains and passing blood.

The storm ceased, and we had a clear and beautiful night. We washed, and we stretched ourselves under the stars utterly content with just the absence of physical discomfort. I have had the same feeling in miniature when a tooth has stopped aching. The noise of the bombardment added a pleasurable touch of excitement. We felt things were afoot.

Morning saw us setting off in earnest. Curiously enough, it was the drivers who suffered most from the sand, and it was a job getting men well enough to sit the horses.

My pal and I found ourselves riding in an eight-horse cable team. It was an exciting ride. Straight down the side of a wady and top speed at the opposite bank before the momentum was spent.

Destroyed British Tank at Gaza

About midday we clattered through Gaza, an untidy dilapidated Gaza from which most men had fled. Here and there a dark face peeped stealthily from a doorway, but, apart from the troops hurrying through, it was a place of desolation.

Yet I felt an indescribable sense of elation riding through this town heaped with the debris of war; an elation akin to those lines of Macaulay's about the thick, black cloud of smoke going up from a conquered town; an elation that seemed to have no basis in reason.

North of Gaza we off-saddled for a meal. We found a patch of grass on which both men and beast rolled for pure enjoyment. While we were eating a man and woman came trudging along the way. They were of village Bedawi type and looked hard-pressed. They sat down as though waiting for any leavings. The woman had a baby.

My pal and I had a half tin of condensed milk, and we slipped over casually, and soon had the baby sucking it off biscuit. The man grinned and nodded when we gave him the rest of the tin, but the woman looked at us without saying a word. Although she was Mohammedan, she made no attempt to draw her veil. She just looked at us. I don't think we fitted in with her notion of invading soldiers.

We trekked northwards, rigging up signal offices wherever we stopped until we settled down in the Wady Surar as a transmitting office to the divisions.

It was a mud and misery winter. Supply lorries were stuck fast in the mud, and supplies often scarce. Our Christmas Day ration was two biscuits, a tin of bully to four, and a tin of jam to seventeen men. We were sleeping in wet clothes, and even sleep was scarce, as pressure of work in the signal office necessitated us working all through every alternate night. I had the additional misery of neuralgia.

Three telegrams I handled that winter stick in my memory. One from General Allenby to the 60th Divisional General when Jerusalem was taken.

It read "Congratulations. Psalm 122, v. 2". I looked it up. "Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem." I thought it rather decent of Allenby.

Men of the EEF at the Lions' Gate, Jerusalem

The other two struck me by their contrast to one another.  One wet and shivery night I handled a telegram from a G.H.Q. general asking for his hot-water bottle to be collected from Fast's Hotel, Jerusalem, and forwarded by despatch rider, as the nights were chilly.  The next telegram was from 163rd Brigade reporting how many men had died of exposure during the last twenty-four hours.

Source: A Sapper at War, H.P. Bonser, Royal Engineers

"Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning" – A World War One Music Video

 

      Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning,

      Oh! How I'd love to remain in bed

      For the hardest blow of all is to hear the bugler call:

      'You've got to get up, you've got to get up,

      You've got to get up this morning!'

      Someday I'm going to murder the bugler

      Someday they're going to find him dead

      I'll amputate his reveille and stomp upon it heavily

      And spend the rest of my life in bed!

Commentary from the Library of Congress

Already a well-known songwriter when the war began, Irving Berlin, himself an immigrant whose family came from Siberia, was drafted into the U.S. Army in early 1918 and assigned to Camp Upton, located in Yaphank, Long Island, New York. There Berlin wrote a Ziegfeld-style revue featuring a cast of soldiers called Yip, Yip, Yaphank, which helped raise money to construct a camp community center. "Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," one of the show's hit tunes, expressed Berlin's distress over early morning reveille. Earlier it had been introduced by Eddie Cantor in the Ziegfeld Follies.

 

 Bonus Selection:I simply could not find a video of Eddie Cantor singing "Oh! How I Hate," but I remember watching Eddie singing this one on TV when I was a kid.  MH

Eugene Debs: Presidential Candidate and Wartime Criminal

Eugene Victor Debs (1855–1926) was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five-time candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. In the fateful presidential election of 1912, Debs won 901,1551 votes, which was six percent of the ballots cast.

Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for his antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio, on 16 June 1918. The prosecution of Debs was only one part of the massive repression of dissent during World War I directed at anti-war activists. In that speech, Debs made no reference to the war or President Woodrow Wilson’s conduct of the war. He confined his remarks to a general socialist critique of war as a product of capitalism. Nonetheless, he was convicted. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction and ten-year prison sentence in Debs v. United States (10 March 1919).

Former Presidential Candidate Eugene Debs Leaving
the White House after His Pardon by President Harding

President Woodrow Wilson rejected pleas to pardon Debs after the war ended. Debs was ill while in prison, but ran for president in 1920 on the Socialist Party ticket, receiving almost the same number of votes as in 1912. 

On Christmas Day 1921, President Warren G. Harding pardoned him on the condition that he would get to meet Debs at the White House. Harding greeted him by saying, “I have heard so damned much about you.” Later in the day, Debs was greeted by many well-wishers at Union Station where he took the train home to Terre Haute, Indiana.

Debs spent his remaining days trying to recover his health, which was severely undermined by prison confinement. He made several speeches, wrote many articles, and finally in 1926 went to Lindlahr Sanitarium just outside of Chicago, where he died on 20 October 1926. His body was brought back to Terre Haute where it lay in state in the Terre Haute Central Labor Temple.

Sources: The Eugene Debs Foundation; Today in Civil Liberties History

Remembering a Veteran: Dr. Elsie Dalyell, OBE, Balkan Front Bacteriologist

Dr. Dalyell Before the War

By James Patton

Elsie Jean Dalyell (1881–1948), a pathologist, was born on 13 December 1881 at Newtown, Sydney, the second daughter of mining engineer James M. Dalyell and Jean, (née McGregor). Elsie was educated at Sydney Girls' High School, after which in 1897 she was hired by the Department of Public Instruction as a pupil-teacher. Sponsored by the Department, she completed the first year in arts and science at the University of Sydney but had to withdraw in 1905 due to a medical emergency. She recovered and left teaching, transferring to second-year medicine at the Women's College at Sydney, where in 1909 she received a Bachelor of Medicine (M.B.) with first-class honours, and then a Master of Surgery (Ch.M.) in 1910. 

Elsie was one of the first female resident medical officers at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, then served as a demonstrator in pathology—the first female on the full-time staff of the medical school. In 1912, she won the Beit Fellowship, becoming the first woman to earn this distinction in Australia. With this bursary, she was able to study pediatric gastroenteritis at the Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine in London.

She was caught up in the patriotic fervor of 1914 and joined Lady Wimborne's Serbian Relief Fund unit. She went to Skopje (Uskub) in Macedonia to help with the 1915 typhus and relapsing fever pandemic, which killed an estimated 150,000 people, including about 36 percent of the treating doctors. 

Skopje at the Time of the Great War

In Skopje, Elsie worked in the fever hospital, more than one mile from the town's main hospital. She wrote of her experience at some length:

Our building was meant for a barracks, but was hastily utilised for a hospital. The dining room is a clean bare cellar with a table and the inevitable packing cases as chairs. My own room (the last doctor in it had typhus) contains my bed, a packing case... my cabin trunk and a canvas chair. We have no sitting-room... I have over one hundred patients who suffer from every imaginable fever – typhus, typhoid, scarlet, diphtheria, and a dozen others not yet classified. The suffering of the sick and wounded and the appalling waste of life here are beyond description, but the hospitals are getting typhus under control. 

Four of our staff have typhus and all are recovering, but we are very shorthanded. Our staff consists of two men doctors and myself, and we feel that we need the strength of ten to get through the day's work. For the wards I wear a shapeless bag-like garment devised by myself. It has feet and legs and ties round the neck. Then I have a close white cap, a face mask, rubber gloves and boots. Yesterday I discharged a veteran Servian (Serbian) soldier, the scarred hero of a hundred fights and could find him no clothes but a Servian military coat and a split skirt made in London. He was thankful for even those, and with the addition of a blanket for overcoat set out for his home... The Servian soldiers are simply splendid, fearless and clever, and of fine physique... 

In spite of the fine situation, clear air, brilliant blue skies, with glorious snow-capped mountains in the distance, the terrible problem here is one of sanitation... in this fever-ridden country owing to the lack of sewage systems.... I must run and help look after 104 fresh patients. Some will have to go on the floor. Thank goodness the nurses are trained and skilful, and the orderlies are a credit to their colleges.’

Serbian Soldiers in Skopje

Dalyell was safely back in the UK, serving at the Addington Park War Hospital, Croydon, when Skopje was overrun by the Bulgarians in October 1915. In 1916 she joined the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service unit at Royaumont, France. Later she was allowed to join the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in Malta and at Salonika, where she was the bacteriologist with No. 63 General Hospital, situated in the Durband Pass. Press reports claimed that she was the first female to hold such a job.

She served in the British Salonika Force until July 1919, with a secondment in December 1918 to No. 82 General Hospital, attached to the occupation force in Constantinople, where there was a serious epidemic that proved to be cholera.

No. 63 Hospital on the Salonika Front

In June 1919, in the Birthday Honours List, she was appointed to the Order of the British Empire (OBE), the highest honour bestowable (at the time) upon an Australian female. She had also been Mentioned in Dispatches (MiD) twice by FM (then-Gen.) Sir George Milne GCB, GCMG, DSO, KStJ (1866–1948), commander of the British Salonika Force (1916–18), and she was also decorated by the Kingdom of Serbia.

Representing the Lister Institute and the British Food Mission, she went to Vienna in August 1919 to work as a senior researcher on a team studying deficiency diseases in children. She later described this group as "the most scientific infant clinic" with "the most highly trained staff in the world." In 1923 her team published what has been called "the most complete study of human rickets prophylaxis ever undertaken." 

In appearance she was of medium height and heavy build with broad forehead, light blue eyes, "cream" complexion and "apricot" hair. When in Vienna she adopted a mannish style of dress which, with minor seasonal variations, she wore henceforth. She read "omnivorously" and collected objets d'art, especially etchings.  All who knew her agreed that she was one of those rare beings whom it was a privilege to know.

In 1923,  at the conclusion of a lecture tour in the U.S., she returned to Australia. Ironically, there was no suitable professional opportunity for her in Sydney. Without personal means, her attempt at private practice in Macquarie Street failed. In January 1924 she signed on as a microbiologist in the Department of Public Health. She wasn’t accorded professional status, and there was little prospect of advancement. Her working  life was circumscribed by  performing endless Wasserman tests for syphilis about which disease, thanks to her war service, she was an acknowledged expert. Between 1925 and 1935 she was on the committee of Sydney’s Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children and was partly responsible for founding their venereal diseases clinic, which opened in 1927. 

Rachel Forster Hospital, Sydney 

Due to her declining health, Elsie retired in 1946. She died on 1 November 1948. In recent years, she has been honored by the University of Sydney with the establishment of the Elsie Dalyell Scholars Stream, a university-wide initiative for high-achievers.

Sources: Australian Department of Veteran’s Affairs and The Australian National University’s Australian Dictionary of Biography

In the Midst of Battle Pershing Reorganizes the AEF

 

The Commander of the AEF at Work

Editor's Introduction:  During the period of 8–18 October, when General Pershing's forces were battling well entrenched enemy forces on the Heights on both sides of the Meuse River, the rate of killed and wounded for the American components of the First Army was two to three times greater than for the overall battle. Over those 11 days, 13,200 Americans were killed and 41,800 gassed or wounded. This period tooked a tremendous toll on the General that also led to his re-evaluation of his approach to command and the organization of his forces. 

In one of the best works on the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Forty-Seven Days, Historian-Archivist Mitch Yockelson described how he approached this critical moment in what was the largest battle America had ever fought thus far in the nation's history:

Pershing's Mood

Pershing began to wonder if and when his army would finally break through the German lines. He didn't want Meuse-Argonne to turn into a lengthy battle as had the Somme, Verdun, or Ypres. Logistical issues had to be overcome, primarily the clogged roads that kept ammunition, food, and other supplies from reaching the Doughboys at the front. More troubling to Pershing was the performance of the division commanders. In his opinion, they lacked the energy and initiative to keep the attacks going. This was true of some generals, and Pershing had and would continue to replace them. But for the most part, they were good commanders who lacked experience leading large bodies of men. Much like Pershing, practically all of them had prior combat experience in Cuba and the Philippines, where they had led companies of a few hundred soldiers at most. 

. . . During one of his frequent trips to the front, Colonel John G. Quekemeyer, Pershing's Mississippi-born aide-de-camp, riding alongside the general in his Cadillac, watched as the AEF commander cover his face with his hands and mumbled, “Frankie...Frankie...My God, sometimes I don't know if I can go on.” Pershing was not one to openly express his feelings, but these were dark times. Perhaps his sadness triggered thoughts of that horrible day in August 1915 when he lost Frankie and the girls [his wife and young daughters].

Fighting on the Cunel Heights by Harvey Dunn

Pershing's dour mood was hardly concealed, and it worried the officers who saw him on a frequent basis. Frederick Palmer recalled that the general's skin had turned pale; the deep desert tan from the Punitive Expedition was now gone. His skin now had a ruddy gray complexion and his eyes were tired from an obvious lack of sleep. Colonel George C. Marshall also saw the anxiety the Meuse-Argonne was taking on Pershing and in his memoirs rattled off some of the key reasons. “Distressingly heavy casualties, disorganized and only partially trained troops, supply problems of every character due to the devastated zone so rapidly crossed, inclement and cold weather, as well as stubborn resistance by the enemy on one of the strongest positions on the Western Front.”

Marshall sided with Pershing that the “officers of high rank” were to blame for First Army's problems. He did not mention any names but implied that those “not in perfect physical condition usually lost the will to conquer and took an exceedingly gloomy view of the situation except when Pershing came around, then they `bucked up' for the period of his visit, only to relapse into further depths of despondency after his departure.” Marshall thought that Pershing “carried himself with an air of relentless determination to push the operation to a decisive victory. His presence inspired confidence and his bearing convinced those with whom he came in contact that the weak-hearted would be eliminated and half measures would not be tolerated.”  

Reorganization

Pershing had indeed taken on too much by running both the AEF and First Army. The weight of such a burden would have impacted any commander. But Pershing was also resilient and smart. On 10 October he announced a change that was in the best interest of his army and was destined to become the turning point of the Meuse-Argonne. Effective 16 October, he was stepping down as First Army commander and would hand over the reins to Major General Hunter Liggett. He would also add a Second Army to be led by III Corps's Major General Robert Bullard. Both were promoted to the rank of lieutenant general. Pershing would oversee both armies as an Army Group commander on par with France's Pétain and Britain's Haig. With the changes at the top, there was a need for corps commander replacements. John L. Hines was taking over III Corps for Bullard. Cameron was demoted from V Corps and took over for Hines at the 4th Division, and replaced by Major General Charles P. Summerall, and Dickman switched from IV Corps to replace Liggett at I Corps.

Other command changes were not as significant but impacted the battlefield. Brigadier General Billy Mitchell would oversee both First and Second Armies' Air Service, while George C. Marshall would directly report to Liggett as assistant chief of operations for First Army. His job, which was still “to work out all the details of the operations,” as one staff officer put it, hadn't changed, so they were in a clear, workable order that could be “read in poor light, in the mud and rain.” 

Leaving First Army was a bold but necessary adjustment. Pershing apparently came to this decision on his own accord and consulted no one. “You never know what is in the C-in-C's mind,” one of Black Jack's aides wrote, “and how it is coming out. When it comes, it comes quick and definite—just like the outburst of a bombardment for an offensive which had been weeks in preparation.” Frederick Palmer added that Pershing “listened to many counselors; but the decisive counsels he held behind the locked doors of his own mind.” Palmer supposed that “those who thought they knew what he was going to do knew least.”

First Army needed a boost, and Hunter Liggett was the right commander to provide it. He had all the necessary traits to lead an army that was now more than a million men in strength. A brilliant tactician and corps commander, Liggett impressed Pershing and, for that matter, everyone else in the AEF and French Army. On the evening of 10 October, Liggett met with Pershing to discuss his new assignment. He recounted very little about the meeting, other than that the commanding general sounded optimistic, telling him “that if we and our Allies could keep up the gait the war would be ended by the close of the year.”

Two days later Liggett journeyed to Souilly by rail with Colonel Stackpole, and the men dined with Pershing and Colonel Hugh Drum on the train. Pershing made it clear he was still in charge and as army group commander would oversee operations. Sounding much like Foch, Pershing said from that point there would be no letup in the fighting. The next phase of MeuseArgonne would strike directly at the Kriemhilde Stellung, destroy enemy communications, and take Mézières; it was essentially the same battle plan since the one given on 26 September. Afterward, the party retired to Pershing's office for further talk about the next attack. Frederick Palmer was close by in a “stuffy little anteroom” at Souilly when Liggett emerged from the meeting, “his face glowing; his eyes sparkling as though he had seen a vision come true.”  

A few minutes later one of Pershing's aides scurried up the stairs to give his boss a message that had just come by telephone from Paris: the new German chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden, had provisionally accepted President Wilson's Fourteen Points for peace. Perhaps the war would soon be over. In theory, Pershing now had more time not only to run the entire AEF but also to devote to his roles a diplomat and politician, essential duties when dealing with the other Allied commanders. 

As the AEF endured a period of organizational changes, First Army had not let up in the fighting. The next phase of Meuse-Argonne started on 14 October [two days before the command changes were to officially take place].

Hunter Liggett, First Army's New Commander

Liggett at First Army

Now at the helm of First Army, Hunter Liggett quickly encountered the problems associated with command, the very ones that had kept Pershing awake at night. Leading I Corps had been comparatively easy since he had been concerned with only the divisions assigned to him. Yet now, after 13 days of almost continuous fighting, First Army had taken a severe beating, and casualties tallied somewhere around 75,000 killed and wounded. First Army hospitals were completely overwhelmed treating soldiers who were shot up or gassed. Adding to the misery of war was a widespread influenza outbreak. In the Argonne that autumn, cold, tired, and wet troops were especially vulnerable to the wrath of the “Spanish Lady.” First Army doctors reported almost 150,000 cases of the flu in mid-October, overwhelming the field and general hospitals.

Pershing had a mild bout with the flu the week before the Argonne jump-off but was able to weather the illness. A month later, he came down with a more severe case.

Lieutenant General Liggett immediately began to “tighten up” First Army, which was getting sloppy in regard to “inattention and carelessness in saluting and straggling,” among other problems that one AEF inspector pointed out. Straggling especially had gotten out of hand. Liggett claimed that roughly 100,000 troops had left their units during the first month of the battle. He was exaggerating, but the point was well made: too many soldiers were heading to the rear. 

. . . On Wednesday 16 October, Pershing met with Foch at his Bombon headquarters to go over the changes in American command. General Weygand was there, too, and as usual their conversation was uncomfortable and heated. It seemed that Foch had forgotten what he had told McAndrew and Conner the week before [about the slowness of the Americans advance], and lectured Pershing about the Americans' lack of progress in the Argonne, telling him that “results are the only way to judge by: that if an attack is well planned and well executed it succeeds with small losses; that if it is not well planned and well executed the losses are heavy and there is no advance.” Your change in command was not important," Foch pointed out, “so long as you keep things going at the front.”  . . .  

In seventeen days we have engaged twenty-six German divisions,” Pershing noted. “I shall continue my attacks until the Germans give way.” Pausing for a moment, Pershing asked, “Provided, of course, that this is Marshal Foch's desire?”

“By all means,” said Foch.  

Excerpted from Forty-Seven Days by Mitchell Yockelson (Order HERE)