Sassoon's Letter to The Times

Siegfried Sassoon was born into wealth and had led a privileged life before the war, with much hunting and cricketeering and some literary dabbling to pass the time. War brought something else out in him, though, and he fought with distinction with the 38th Welsh Division at the Somme. He earned the nickname "Mad Jack." In 1917 while on convalescent leave in England, advised by Bertrand Russell, he turned defiantly against the war. He tore the Military Cross ribbon from his uniform, tossed it in the River Mersey and sent this letter to The Times, where it was published:

Lt. Siegfried Sassoon.

3rd Batt: Royal Welsh Fusiliers.

July, 1917.

I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. 

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise

Sassoon was saved from a court martial for insubordination by the intercession of fellow Royal Welch Fusilier Robert Graves and was sent to Craiglockhart military hospital in Edinburgh to be treated for shell shock. There he met and encouraged fellow poet Wilfred Owen, who will be featured later in this issue. Both Owen and Sassoon would return to the field, but their subsequent writings would emphasize the sufferings and sense of betrayal felt by the common soldiers of the war. 

Editor's Note:  We have published over a dozen articles over the years on Sassoon and his writings. [He's just a fascinating subject, who produced a lot of material about the war.] If you are interested you can find them HERE.

Meet the First American Produced Tank, the Model 1917 (M1917) – Video

Matthew from the American Heritage Museum at Hudson, Massachusetts, here gives an excellent introduction to the first American produced tanks, the M1917, a  U.S. licensed copy of the French Renault FT, a compact World War I tank that pioneered the classic turreted layout still used today. The US Government placed an order for 4,440 tanks to be built, but only 950 were produced before the order was cancelled. A handful of them arrived in France just after the Armistice.

Horrible Histories: The Frightful First World War

By Terry Deary & Martin Brown 

Scholastic, 2007

Commentary by Esther MacCallum-Stewart

Nonfiction books for children deal more explicitly with historical events and are often more subversive than their literary counterparts. The former are seen as having a duty to represent history accurately.  The desire to reappropriate history through the best stories spawned a revisionist history trend in children’s writing. Pioneered by Terry Deary’s Horrible History  series, these books aims to present “history with the nasty bits left in!”

Deary’s titles include The Rotten Romans, The Cut-Throat Celts, The Vicious Vikings, and, of course, The Frightful First World War. The series is immensely successful, appealing to the prurient sense of humor of young readers. The subversiveness of these texts lies in their deliberate attempt to provide alternative readings of history. In fact, the books are well-researched and carefully themed to coincide with Great Britain’s National Curriculum modules. They are informative while overemphasizing the “horrible” aspect of each book. For example, The Frightful First World War describes the army order instructing soldiers to urinate on their socks and then breathe through the material during a gas attack, but there is also an amount of more traditional detail, thinly disguised as terrible events.

Alfred Leete’s famous recruitment poster of Lord Kitchener is drawn next to the entirely prosaic information that he died by drowning when the HMS Hampshire hit a stray mine on 5 June 1915; the famous slogan has been changed to read “Your country needs YOU! But I need a lifeboat”. 

Order HERE

This irreverent approach has done much to encourage the study of history in younger readers and the books are popular with schools and libraries. The Frightful First World War is particularly interesting because it presents such an uncompromising view of the war. Deary says that “the truth is pretty nasty” and this no-nonsense approach does much to provide a realistic account of the war. At the same time, the need to present interesting and unusual facts means that the book is naturally alternative in its approach.

Source:  "If they ask us why we died", Children's Literature and the First World War, 1970-2005; The Lion and the Unicorn, April 2007

The French Military Mission to Poland

Charles De Gaulle in Poland, 1920

Following an April 1919 agreement, Marshal Foch dispatched a military mission to Poland in an effort by France to aid the nascent Second Polish Republic after it achieved its independence in November 1918, at the end of the First World War. The aim was to provide aid during the Polish-Soviet War (1919–1921) and to create a strong Polish military to serve as a useful ally against Germany. It was an advisory body consisting of about 400 French officers attached to staffs of Polish units at various levels. Although the French mission was small numerically, its effect was substantial in improving the organization and logistics of the Polish army. The French staff worked in parallel with a smaller British mission to Poland.

Its first commander was General Paul Prosper Henrys, previously the commander of French forces in the Balkans. The French mission commanded considerable respect and influence through the activities of its 400 officer-instructors. These men were entrusted with the task of training the officer corps in the art of military science and in the use of French army methods. Among the French officers was a future president of France, Charles De Gaulle, who was an advisor at the Polish infantry school and received Poland's Virtuti Militari for his service. 

French-Trained Polish Cavalry During the Soviet War

The French-Polish interface, however, was not without tensions and problems.  President Józef Piłsudski generally viewed the French Military Mission to Poland with a mix of  pragmatic necessity and professional skepticism, while publicly maintaining that Poland must rely on its own self-sufficiency rather than foreign strategic dictation. During the critical 1920 Battle of Warsaw, Piłsudski rebuffed attempts by Western advisors to take strategic control, preferring his own operational plans and famously appointing General Maxime Weygand [who was part of an Allied diplomatic mission, not the military mission] only as an advisor to the Polish Chief of Staff rather than placing him in command of Polish troops.

Some of the mission's most important accomplishments include:

• Unifying the Polish Army's disparate types of units, training methods, and equipment from the former German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian origins into a single cohesive force.

• Assisting with the transit and subsequent integration of General Józef Haller's "Blue Army" (a 70,000-strong force formed in France) into the main Polish armed forces in 1919.

• Reorganizing the Polish general staff with the French system with standard section for operations, intelligence, and logistics.

• Advising on Polish strategy during the victorious war over Soviet Russia.

Piłsudski Decorating Foch

In gratitude, Polish leader Józef Piłsudski personally unpinned his own Virtuti Militari medal from his uniform to award Marshal Foch in 1921, who had unstintingly supported Polish independence. Foch was later awarded the prestigious Order of the White Eagle and, in 1923, was named a Marshal of Poland—becoming the only foreign national to ever hold that rank. France would maintain its mission to Poland through 1939.

What Are the Most Significant Finds of World War One Archeologists?

Last week, the wife and I were watching the excellent 4-part docudrama The Mummy of Tutankhamun that tells the story of archaeologist Howard Carter's long search for the Boy King's tomb. It was particularly engrossing for me since I had visited the Valley of the Kings site in 1989 and subsequently got to view much of the collection at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.  Given my interest in the First World War,  I naturally started asking myself:  "What about WWI + Archeology = ?"   I have a little feel for this since I've taken my WWI  battlefield tour groups to a few such sites over the years, but I've decided to do a little fresh "digging" myself.  Here's what I came up with. Of course, people have been exploring and excavating the war's battlefields probably before the Armistice came. What I've focused on here are fairly recent efforts.

Western Front

1.  The Carspach "Pompeii" Kilianstollen (Kilian tunnel)  (Alsace, France)

The Underground Shelter

The Discovery: In 2012, archaeologists excavating ahead of a road project near Carspach uncovered a collapsed 1918 German underground shelter. 

Significance: Often called the "Pompeii of the Western Front," the anaerobic, oxygen-deprived conditions preserved the remains of 21 German soldiers exactly where they sat when an Allied shell collapsed their tunnel. Personal items, boots, leather gear, and newspapers were left intact alongside the soldiers. The soldiers were reburied at the Illfurth German War Cemetery in Alsace.

2.  The Fromelles Mass Graves (Nord Department, France)

Sites of Original Burial and New Cemetery

The Discovery: Excavations led by archaeological teams at Pheasant Wood in Fromelles exhumed eight mass pits containing the remains of 250 Australian and British soldiers. 

Significance: Supported by over 5,000 recovered artifacts, modern forensic archaeology and DNA profiling successfully identified hundreds of previously "missing" soldiers, closing generations of uncertainty for families. The soldiers were reburied nearby at the new Pheasant Wood Commonwealth War Grave Cemetery in 2014.  A museum is also included at the new site. Roads Article

3.   Yorkshire Trench Systems (Boezinge, Flanders)

What the "Diggers" Found

The Discovery: In 1992, Amateur researchers, known as the "Diggers" working on an industrial site near Ypres Canal site in Boezinge uncovered remarkably preserved wooden duckboards and wall supports buried deep beneath agricultural fields.

Significance: The woodwork and structural integrity of this Flanders trench system survived better than almost any other site on the Western Front, revealing improvised engineering details overlooked by standard military records. Remains of 200 soldiers were discovered during the digs.  The Yorkshire Trench can be visited today, as it is fully restored and open to the public

4.  Dig Hill 80 Project (Wytschaete "Whitesheet", Flanders)

A Century Later, the German Strong Point Had Been Long Forgotten

The Discovery: In 2018 in anticipation of a new housing project,  a team
 of archaeologists discovered a well-preserved German strongpoint at a ridge top near the village.

Significance: The archaeologists had stumbled upon was unique; a piece of the formidable trench fortress that had remained virtually untouched since that the end of the war. Farm buildings had been incorporated into the defensive trench system to create an almost impregnable redoubt that was taken only in June 1917, in the Battle of Messines.

5. The Glory  Hole Tunneling Site (La Boisselle, Somme)

A British tunnel at 80 feet depth  (Iain McHenry/La Boisselle Study Group)

Discovery: In 2011 a three-year investigation was conducted  in an area of intense mining and counter-mining operations near the enormous Lochnagar mine crater.

Significance: Researchers mapped and explored approximately 7 kilometers of WWI tunnels and trenches buried between 12 and 30 meters deep. Several remains of fallen soldiers were discovered and turned over to their nation's authorities for identification and reburial.

Dardanelles

6.  The Gallipoli Anzac Sector Battlefield Survey (Turkey)

A New Zealand Representative Marks a Battlefield Trench

The Discovery: A five-year (2009–2014) joint Turkey, Australia and New Zealand Historical and Archaeological Survey of the Anzac Battlefield mapped thousands of meters of intact trenches, collapsed tunnels, and dugouts that were previously unrecorded or known only through flawed wartime maps. Hundreds of artifacts have been discovered, so far.

Significance: It proved that large-scale non-destructive battlefield surveys can map close-quarters combat environments (where trenches were often only 10 to 20 yards apart) without disturbing sensitive war graves. An interesting discovery was that Ottoman frontline kitchens were much closer to the trenches than Allied kitchens, meaning Turkish soldiers often had access to fresh hot meals.

Italian Front

Dead Italian Soldier Exposed by Melting Snow

7. Melting Alpine Ice Discoveries (Dolomite Alps)

The Discovery: Receding glaciers and melting ice in the Italian Alps have exposed high-altitude Austro-Hungarian and Italian frontline positions.

Significance: Archaeologists have found exceptionally preserved wooden barracks, clothing, snow goggles, personal letters, and even perishable organic waste like food rations and latrine contents, offering a direct window into brutal high-altitude mountain warfare. Roads Article.

Eastern Front

8. Veretyičiv Hill (Carpathian Mountains Slovakia)

2017 Survey Defining the 1915 Battlefield

Discoveries:  Researchers surveyed high-altitude combat zones like Veretyčiv Hill and Kobyla Hill. Metal detection and geophysical surveys here successfully mapped hidden Austro-Hungarian and Russian rearguard firing lines, foxholes, and shell impacts in heavily forested terrain.

Significance: Because of the scale of WWII fighting, WWI-oriented archeology is still quite rare.

A Monumental Tribute to Tommy—The Hauntings—Is Visiting Albert

 

A new "Tommy" statue recently arrived in Albert, France. It is a magnificent, 6.5-meter-tall (23-foot) scrap-metal sculpture officially named The Hauntings. It was installed in June 2026, on the Place d'Armes, directly in front of the famous Basilique Notre-Dame de Brebières.

Created as part of the town's commemoration of the 110th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme by artist Martin Galbavy and blacksmith Chris Hannam of Dorset Forge & Fabrication, the statue is meticulously crafted from hundreds of pieces of scrap metal. The installation is temporary for Albert. In 2027, it will be transferred to Arras for the commemoration of the 1917 battle fought in that sector.

My Favorite French War Poem

Relief

By Charles Vildrac (Trans. Christopher Middleton)

Poilu
Charles Huard

In our place

Fresh Troops have come

Sent up the line

As bait for death

Met face to face.

We needed all night to make our escape

All night and its darkness

Sweating, frozen, to cross

The martyr forest and its swamp 

That shrapnel scourged.

All night in which to crouch,

Then to run line the wind,

Each man picking his moment,

Trusting to nerve and instinct

And his star.

But beyond the last entanglement,

Out of it all, on the firm road,

Met together, with no delays,

In the glow of the first pipes lit,

Then, mates, O lucky winners, 

Then what stumbling voluble joy?

That was the joy of shipwrecked men

With hand and knees upon the shore,

Who laugh with an agonized happiness

As they recover their treasure again;

All the treasure of the vast world,

And of memory unplumbed,

And of the thirst that can be quenched,

And even the pain you feel

In the shoulders since all danger passed.

And the future! Ah, the future!

Now is smiling, in the dawn:

A future of two long weeks ahead,

In a barn at Neuvilly.

All the apple trees in blossom!

I'll put blossoms into my letters.

I'll go and read in the middle of a field.

I'll go and have a wash in the river.

The man who is marching in front of me

Whistles a song that his neighbour sings

A song that is far away from the war:

I hum it too, and savour it.

Yet: to think of those killed yesterday!

But the man who has tripped

Between death's legs and then

Recovers himself and breathe again,

Can only laugh or only weep:

He has not the heart to mourn.

Today's first light makes all too drunk

The man who finds himself alive;

He is weak and is amazed 

To be dawdling so along the the road.

 

And if he dreams it is of the bliss

Of taking off his boots to sleep

In a barn at Neuvilly.

 

________________________ 

Charles Vildrac (1882–1971), born Charles Messager, was a prominent French poet, playwright, and essayist. Before World War I, he was celebrated for his humanistic philosophy and his role in co-founding the Abbaye de Créteil, an utopian community of artists and writers. Despite his pacifist convictions, Vildrac reported when he was mobilized in August 1914. He was sent to the front lines as an infantryman and stretcher-bearer and witnessed the horrors of front line combat, while losing close family members, including his cousin.

U.S. Naval Aviation vs. the U-boats

Navy Blimps Escorting a Convoy

Editor's Introduction:

The U.S. Navy aviation entered World War I as a tiny force of just 54 obsolete aircraft and 48 pilots, but expanded rapidly into a major anti-submarine patrol network operating 44 stations globally by the 1918 Armistice. Naval aviators flew seaplanes, dirigibles, and kite balloons on more than 22,000 patrols across 3 million nautical miles, targeting German U-boats threatening Allied supply shipping. By the Armistice, the U.S. Navy was operating  over 2,100 aircraft, 15 airships, and 215 kite balloons.

_________________________________________

The primary role of naval aviation in WWI was anti-submarine warfare. The first recorded attack on an enemy submarine by a U.S. naval aviator was made by Ens. John F. McNamara on 25 March 1918, while serving at the Royal Navy Air Station, Portland, England. Although his attack was successful enough to warrant special commendations from the Secretary of the Navy and Adm. Sims, the later evaluation was “possibly damaged.” This was typical of the 30 recorded attacks on enemy U-boats during the war. On the score sheet U.S. naval aircraft did not receive credit for a single sinking. There was, however, considerable interference with U-boat operations, especially in the last year of the Great War.

Curtiss N-9 Seaplane (Primarily Used for Training)

The first attack from a U.S. Naval Air Station was from Ile Tudy, France, which, perhaps because of its location, had more anti-submarine action than any of our overseas stations. Two coastal convoys passed through its sector daily, one bound north, the other south. Around Penmarch Point, the water was deep near shore, free of reefs and sandbars and ideally suited to submarine operations. A majority of the “allos” received at Ile Tudy were from this area. The operating routine was described by the station historian. “The sector was marked off into 25-mile squares, subdivided into squares of five miles. By this means planes were able to report position every half hour and be quickly and accurately located. Communication was maintained with shore bases by radio and pigeons, and with vessels by message buoys, phosphorous buoys, Very pistols and the blinker system. . . .

“A section of two planes escorted each convoy. As the sector was too long to be covered entirely by two planes, it was necessary to send out another section to relieve the first, when the convoy was approximately halfway through the area. This necessitated using at least eight planes per day for convoy work alone. In addition, there was always a section known as the ‘Alert’ ready to take the air from daybreak to dark in response to any ‘allos’ received. When the convoy was picked up, the planes would first circle over it. Then while one plane would remain around the convoy the other would fly as far as 10 to 15 miles ahead, zigzagging broadly on both sides. This plane would return, again circle the convoy, repeating the same maneuver again and again. Before leaving a convoy, the planes circled a last time in its neighborhood. In this way the convoy was well protected from surprise.”

U.S. Battleships Departing the Firth of Forth with
Observation Kite Balloons Aloft

On 23 April 1918, a convoy escort of two Donnet-Denhaut seaplanes, piloted by Ens. K. R. Smith and R. H. Harrell, QM1c, saw the first action. They joined the southbound convoy of about 20 ships, approximately six miles north of Penmarch Point. As the weather was very foggy, they first flew to the rear of the convoy to look for stragglers, then flew a wide circle toward the main body. Shortly after, they sighted a suspicious wake, apparently being made by a submarine moving at good speed, and went in to attack. Smith dropped two bombs, the first landing on the fore part of the wake and the second ten feet ahead. The explosions created a heavy disturbance in the water followed by many air bubbles and appeared so successful that Harrell did not drop his bombs. Instead, he marked the spot with a phosphorous buoy and circled. Smith then flew to a destroyer, USS Stewart, and dropped a message buoy. Stewart arrived in the target area, followed soon after by the French gunboat Ardente, and dropped three depth charges. The pilots circling overhead saw small pieces of wreckage, particles of sea growth and large quantities of oil coming to the surface, and shortly after returned to their base. The oil was still visible from the air as late as the sixth of May. Ens. Smith and his observer, Chief O. E. Williams, were officially credited by the French naval authorities with a submarine, were cited in the Order of the Day and awarded Croix de Guerre with Palm.

The North Sea coast of England, where NAS KILLINGHOLME was located, was also a favorite sub-hunting ground. In the month before the station was under U.S. command, Ens. J.J. Schieffelin attacked a submarine which, possibly because of damage, surfaced after he left the scene and was sunk by gunfire from British destroyers. Ten days later he was again in action. While he was en route to the Whitby area, extremely rough air over Flamborough Head bounced his plane so hard that one of the suspending bomb hooks was bent and he was forced to jettison half his bomb load. Off Whitby, he sighted a surfaced submarine and attacked. His one bomb exploded under the stern of the submarine, kicking it clear of the water and exposing its rotating screw to view. The sub then disappeared under water at a steep angle. Later that day, after he had directed surface craft to the position, a submarine surfaced in the general area only to be rammed and sunk by the destroyer HMS Garry. There was initial confusion over whether this submarine was the one attacked by Schieffelin, but later information confirmed that his submarine returned to base in damaged condition. The evaluation of both attacks was “probably seriously damaged.”

Curtiss HS-2L: The Major Patrol Flying Boat for Hunting German U-boats

NAS LOUGH FOYLE in northern Ireland, which guarded the north entrance to the Irish Sea, made its first attack 19 October 1918. Ensign George S. Montgomery, in seaplane LF-4, was escorting a 32-ship convoy when he sighted and successfully bombed a submarine apparently moving into position for an attack. Both bombs functioned, one striking 30 feet to the right of the periscope and the other ten feet forward. The assessment was “probably damaged” and the station history reported that “undoubtedly at least one ship in the convoy was saved by the timely bombing.”

Submarines did not always react passively to these attacks. On at least one occasion against a seaplane and once against an airship, the U-boats fought back. On 13 August 1918, four seaplanes, one piloted by Ens. J. F. Carson, left NAS DUNKIRK on patrol. A short distance off the coast, a large submarine was sighted proceeding on the surface at high speed. Since it carried no identification marks, Carson fired a challenging signal. At that point, the submarine apparently spotted the planes and opened fire with its four-inch gun. Five shots were fired, three passing close to Carson’s plane, and several pieces of shrapnel pierced his fuselage and wings. Carson immediately returned fire with his machine guns and moved into bombing position. The submarine cleared the deck and dived. As she went down, Carson dropped two bombs, one exploding in the swirl and the second slightly forward of it. The submarine reappeared, her bow projecting from the water at a sharp angle. Within four minutes she again submerged, sliding stern first under water. Carson was credited with a sinking by the French government and awarded the Croix de Guerre.

The airship involved was the AT-13 out of NAS PAIMBOEUF. On 1 October 1918, after escorting one convoy through the area, the airship turned to meet another. On the way, she fired two shots on a rock for target practice. On the second shot the firing spring broke, putting her only gun out of action and reducing her offensive capability to bombs. At about two-thirty, the convoy was picked up and the airship made the usual circle overhead. Then, as two storms were observed approaching from the north and northeast, the airship took a heading to pass between them. Shortly after, a suspicious object sighted to the north was investigated. While still a mile away, it was made out to be a submarine and when it opened fire there was no doubt that it was enemy. Thirteen shells burst near the airship but none struck her. The airship took up the chase to get into bombing position but the head wind was so strong that the submarine could not be overtaken. Signals by radio and Aldis lamp informed the convoy of the situation and the chase continued until the submarine disappeared in the darkness.

Sailors Grappling with a B-Class Blimp

Action against the U-boat was not confined to overseas waters. On a Sunday morning, 21 July 1918, the U-156 surfaced off Nauset Beach, Cape Cod, and began what has since been called the Battle of Chatham. It was tersely reported in the weekly Aviation Bulletin as: “Sunday morning off Chatham, German submarine of the latest type appeared. She had two 6-inch guns with which she shelled and sank some barges. Seaplanes were sent out and submarine submerged.” There was more to it. Details were reported by dispatch and telephone. The gist of it was that an enemy submarine was reported at 10:10, three miles off Coast Guard Station 50. Four minutes later, an HS-2, piloted by Ens. Eric Lingard, left the station, flew over the submarine at 400 feet and dropped a bomb which failed to explode. At 11:15, the C.O. of the station, Lt. Philip Eaton, USCG, took off in an R-9, reached the scene a few minutes later and bombed from 500 feet. The bomb hit about 100 feet off the starboard quarter. It too failed to explode. After firing four shots at the seaplanes, the sub submerged and was lost in thick smoke.

These are but a few of the 30 attacks reported by Lt. Cdr. Edwards. The evaluation of results was difficult, even as it was in a later war. The appearance of oil and sea growth on the surface after an attack was a common feature of reports in both wars. Then, as later, early assessments leaned toward the optimistic; postwar records gave the hard, cold facts. But more important than confirmed destruction was the extent to which naval aviators met the challenge of their first test in combat and presented a real threat to submarine commanders and kept them from their appointed tasks.

Source: Naval Aviation in World War I, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1969