Before the Yanks — The French Held the Argonne Dear

V.C. Scott O'Connor, 1917

If you look at a map of Eastern France you will see how the forest of the Argonne, with its crumpled hills, lies astride of the great road that leads from Verdun to Chalons, and you will understand at once why the Hun, eager to capture Verdun and drive another wound into the side of France, fought so hard for a foothold in this difficult country. It was a desperate business this fighting in the Argonne mud and the Argonne valleys and woods, with mine and countermine, with the bayonet and the hand-grenade; a bitter, relentless, obstinate struggle of man against man, trench against trench, of assaults and counter-attacks; of bloody and terrible contests, of which only the distant sound, like the murmur of a city afar off, has reached the ears of our people. But the French know what the Argonne fighting has been, and they know that they have won, as at Verdun, by dint of their pluck and tenacity,—the bull-dog courage that has hitherto been the special characteristic of the island soldier.

That is why the French are proud of the Argonne. And those of us who love this gallant people, who have known them of old as the embodiment of all knightly and chivalrous qualities, from the days of St. Louis to this present hour, rejoice with them in this fresh exhibition of the undying qualities of the race. Verdun and the Argonne, these are in a special sense a monument to the new France.

It was not my fortune to see Verdun. The fierce blow at the Hun, which was to drive him with an unmistakable significance from Douaumont and Vaux, was on the eve of its accomplishment, and the curtain was down between Verdun and the Argonne. But we got some little way on the road.

Travel Route of Narrator

From Chalons we made straight for St Ménehould, only stopping at l'Epine, where a company of French infantry were drawn up in the Place before the church-a stout hard-bitten lot of men under the command of a young officer of fine proportions, with the air of one who would lead them anywhere. The war has had rather a curious effect in this way: it has withdrawn, as it were, the mask under which the Napoleonic soldier has hidden himself for a hundred years. When you see these men in their blue uniforms marching out to fight, these remarkable-looking men who lead them, you understand in a flash what is meant by the military tradition of France. The palimpsest runs clear.

The church beside this little company of men was a beautiful thing in stone, with its sculptures without and its solemn peace within; and I could not resist looking in at the ceremonial that was afoot within its walls, the lights gleaming like stars amidst its gloom, the robed priest before the altar, the kneeling women at prayer. For these also are an inextinguishable part of France.

At St Ménehould we entered the forest-clad hills of the Argonne, and the road carried us through the beauties of the autumn woods to the village of Les Islettes, scarred by shell fire and maimed by the proximity of war. Had we gone on to Verdun we should in a few moments have been at Clermont, 12 miles in a line from the famous fortress; and from Clermont, had we gone north, we should have travelled upon "the road to Varennes."

But we had another destination to-day. Crossing the miniature valley of, the Biesme, which bisects the Argonne from north to south, we ascended the farther ridge and drove the car along the road that runs through the forest to the French entrenchments.

Upon either side of us the trees rose like a wall, somber where the firs stood in sentinel line, golden where the autumn colors marked the passing of the year. Under our wheels the mud was churned into a cream-the mud of the Argonne.

We had come into a land of the forest-dwellers. Deep in the glades were the huts of the French infantry. In a clearing by the roadside spread the graves of those who have died here in the Argonne. Even in these quiet days this sacred spot is the daily target of the German shells.

It stands at a cross-roads where the traffic meets, and the dead you see have to be buried. It is their comrades assembled for the last tribute that the shells seek out at these solemn moments.

A little farther through the forest and we are close up against the Four de Paris and the enemy's lines. And here, seen from within, is the little world in which the soldier of the Argonne has his being.

In these woods there are the huts in which he must live till the war is over, or the line of battle has advanced across the Rhine.

The ground in which they are imbedded is a puddle, and a glimpse into their interiors shows a long double line of beds and cubicles lost in the gloom of the farther distance, with rifles and accoutrements and the personal belongings of each soldier hanging from the walls and wooden posts.

Each bed is raised above the ground, its framework of wire spread tightly across from post to post, and on it a layer of sacking and blankets.

In this place a man can be warm and dry and sociable; but it is a hard life, redeemed only by the love of country, the pride of beauty, the contrast with harder things–sickness and wounds and death, –redeemed also for many by the ties of comradeship and fellowship in danger; for others, the solitary, made difficult by the fortuitous character of this very association. We are proud of our public schools, but there is no public school like the barrack behind the fighting line for its discipline and its lesson of human equality. A man who rises out of these dim surroundings into the light of acceptance by his fellows, as one who is better than themselves, is surely a man.

The French soldier has more to put up with than our own. His pay is microscopic; his comforts are reduced to the minimum necessary for bodily efficiency; his amusements, if any, are provided by himself. In places like this, where he must pass a year or more of his life, there is no Y.M.C.A. to cater for his larger needs; no place of common meeting where books and papers can be read or letters written; concerts and similar entertainments do not appear to be organized. A frugal hardness is the predominant note of the French arrangements.

On the other hand, the habit of games is not ingrained in the Poilu; the smack of the football is seldom heard behind the front of battle. The more active indulge themselves in gymnastics, and these are encouraged from a military point of view. I saw groups of men busy in this way in the Argonne. But gymnastics are not games. They do not help a man to forget himself in the same way. Is there any solvent for care like a twelve-minute chukker on the grass-the rush after an elusive ball?

But there is some joy for François in the co-operatifs, where the men assemble in hundreds, making shift in the mud and the wet of the yard, till their turn comes to enter the little shop and make their purchases. The storekeeper is a brisk, capable man trained to the job,  –  a Paris chemist or a grocer from some provincial town,-and as each soldier enters he reads from a slip of paper, on which he has made a list of the things he wants for himself and comrades – 12 pats of Norman butter, 6 packets of biscuits, 6 tins of sardines, 200 cigarettes, 2 bottles of good wine. There is evidently to be a small party in the barrack, and the purchaser goes off with his goods in a capacious knapsack, and a quiet look of contentment on his face.

A little extra food, a smoke, a gulp of wine- that is what it all comes to, and the Poilu plugs along, hardy, enduring, dutiful. He will be glad when the war is over, and he can go back to his mother or his wife, to little Jean and Marie, to the ancestral acre or the family shop; but meanwhile, for rich or poor, ignorant or cultivated, nobleman or peasant, priest or layman, there is the one pre-eminent call-his country, his beautiful France, must be saved, the brute that has fastened on her driven from her soil. Whisper in his ear the word "La Patrie," and he is stirred to the roots of his being. There is no love greater than this.

As to Glory and Honor and Empire, these are of a music to which his soul has been attuned through centuries of a splendid history; but they can wait. The first thing is to kill the Boche and drive him from the sacred hearth; and the knowledge that he is doing this is the consolation of the French soldier. In the first year of the War he used to ask when the War would end; he does not ask that question now. The granite is exposed. He knows the answer.

There are few places on the long French line where the destruction wrought by artillery fire is exhibited in a more contrasting form than here. One travels here for mile after mile through the forest, green in the spring-time, golden at this season of autumn, its soil carpeted with the brown tapestry of the fallen leaves, one's vision limited by the thronging trees. Here is a woodland as nature made it, rejoicing in its little valleys, its secret fountains and running streams; and there, as though it had been ravaged by a fire and swept by disease, upon the very edge of these secluded beauties, is The Desert of War.

A few trees stand out of it, gaunt and distorted, like criminals who have paid the price of their sins. The limbs and the skulls of dead men bleach in its precincts. There is nothing else. You must not look at it, except through a slit in a peep-hole, lest the enemy, suspecting your presence, should put a bullet through your enterprising head; and you must not think about it too much, lest its beastliness should obscure the ideals for which it is worth a man's while to die. And yet you must look at it well, and dwell upon every circumstance of horror and pain connected with it, lest you should ever be tempted by the illusion that war is a glorious and a splendid thing.

At an earlier period of the war the fighting on the Argonne was of the most bitter and obstinate description. To know how bitter and obstinate it was you must have been there or have spoken to those who went through it; but failing this you can learn something of the story from such a book, for example, as Jean Lory's Battle in the Forest. Mine and counter-mine, attack and counter-attack; artillery preparation; close trench fighting; men at handgrips; knife and bayonet, whole companies and battalions wiped out; the fierce will to win through, met by a fiercer refusal to make way; and in the end the triumph of the stronger will-the Huns' growing acceptance of failure.

The fight still goes on; the pioneers are busy on both sides making their tunnels–we went down into these–and exploding their mines. From trench to trench where they meet on the brow of that hill, men still shoot and slay each other at sight; it is still unwise to talk above a whisper as you move along the hidden ways within a few feet of the enemy; the air still resounds to the violent crash of the howitzer, the splitting roar of the 75; scarcely a day passes that some one is not killed or maimed. But in effect the battle of the Argonne is over, and the Hun has lost his tide.

 

Behind the trenches there is the post of the officer in command. The hills run down here on both sides, leaving a little valley between them; and in this valley there moves the life of the line in reserve. The dug-outs in which the officers and men live are caves that have been excavated in the valley slopes. Here is the Colonel's cave, with a little inscription beside it that speaks of the affection of his men. They have made it as comfortable for him as they can. It must always be a credit to a man in authority to be loved by those who work under him. It is the touchstone by which we judge him.

There is a fireplace in this cave, and a table and a bed, and the smallest of verandahs under the logs of the projecting roof in which you may suppose that he can sit on a quiet day. Upon the walls there are the wonderful maps which make all things plain, and sketches done by skilled hands. There is a telephone on the table.

Near by there is a cemented chamber, with an immensely solid roof, into which the commander and his staff can retire should the enemy's artillery become too violent. It is seldom used now. Beside this, again, there is the hospital, with its kitchen at the mouth of the cave, and its wounded men within, upon bunks fixed like racks against the wall. There is only a dim light here, and the men lie very still. Those who can be moved are sent very rapidly to a hospital at the base. "It is damp in here," says the Surgeon, "but we cannot help that. We do what we can to keep the place warm and dry."

Outside the blue infantry move amidst the gilded trees, the smoke of their fires rising slowly into the clearing of the sky. From time to time the shells burst in the road beyond, and the shrapnel bullets scatter with a noise like hail through the autumn leaves.

One or two fall at our feet.

Such is a quiet day in the Argonne.

Sources: The Scene of the War, V.C. Scott O'Connor, 1917; Images from War Illustrated and Sur le Vif  magazines,  Tony Langley Collection

Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe by James J. Sheehan

 

By James J. Sheehan

Mariner Books, 2009

Reviewed by Christopher Fish

Philadelphians looking at a new map of Europe following World War I

Originally Presented in The Stanford Review, 2009

In the post-World War world, the American and European outlooks on foreign policy have increasingly diverged. In particular, the dispute over Iraq and the difference in proposed strategy over the United States’ aggressive “War on Terror” have highlighted Europe’s more pacifist outlook. Stanford Professor former president of the American Historical Association James J. Sheehan, in Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe, digs into the root of these differences, examining the origin of the European “civilian state,” one which emphasizes domestic and economic affairs over militarism. He analyzes European history from the age of the violent preservation of national power to the peaceful creation of the European Union (i.e, from the end of the nineteenth century to the present).

Sheehan emphasizes that European states “were made by and for war,” and that throughout history, “war was as much a part of life as suffering and death.” In fact, the peace that came to the European mainland at the end of the nineteenth century was often seen as a cause for complacency and cultural decline, symbolic of the end of heroism. The vicious colonial wars seemed far removed from every day European life. At the same time, pacifist movements emphasized the destructive power of new weapons and mass armies, and states recognized that war would harm both the victors and the vanquished by destroying the global economy. Sheehan summarizes that while “all denounced wars of aggression” at the outset of World War I, “all were convinced that not going to war would risk their great-power status.” European states saw violence as an essential component of maintaining statehood.

Even after World War I, violence continued as an instrument of change and as a method to preserve colonial power. As communism and fascism attempted to provide stability in the post-war world, violence continued to remain important as a “transformative instrument,” essential to establishing a new order. The smothering of colonial rebellions suggested European desires to reassert their dominance. Disbelief that another war could arise after the horror of World War I could not mask the fact that “as long as one state stood ready and willing to fight,” war remained a danger. Fifty million dead in World War II and the devastation to the European population represented the final explosion within a violent Europe.

It was only in the stability paradoxically offered by the Cold War that European states could live in peace with one another; the “bipolar order imposed by the superpowers… eliminated the possibility of war among the European states.” World War II removed both the ability and the will to fight and the European empires shriveled; “by the 1960s, grandeur was no longer an important goal for European states.” Instead, Europeans turned to “material well-being, social stability, economic growth” as well as political and economic cooperation. Sheehan suggests that it was this decline of a culture of violence in Europe which helped result in the peaceful fall of the Soviet Union; “Gorbachev could afford to back down because he was confident that neither his foreign enemies nor his domestic opponents would kill him.”

Sheehan argues that the values of post-war European states, “made by and for peace,” prevent Europe from ever becoming a superpower. While in theory European countries could combine their military resources and become a form of federated political union, the priority of Europeans is not to forge a new European identity. The EU “does not need citizens who are prepared to kill and die” but rather “consumers and producers.” As a “super civilian state,” the European Union helps resolve the issues in which Europeans are most engaged—including economic well-being.

While Sheehan generalizes for all of Europe, his trends hold better for some countries than others. In Western Europe, popular opinion seems more often to oppose the United States and its perceived “imperialist” foreign policy, while Eastern Europe, until relatively recently subjugated by the Soviet Union, is more likely to advocate more aggressive policies. Certainly the reemergence of Russian expansionism, witnessed recently in Georgia, represents remnants of an imperialist mindset. In addition, while the “civilian state” is most pronounced in Europe, the United States has also emphasized domestic affairs, even if its foreign policy seems in general more aggressive than that of Europe.

Order HERE

In Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? Sheehan suggests that Europe will always be dependent on a superpower, since it will not become one itself. While Europe’s predominantly civilian focus represents a more “enlightened” view of the world, one in which violence has been overcome, such a focus is not necessarily a realistic outlook for countries that have not felt the devastation of two world wars. Not until all countries commit to rejecting the use of violence against each other can a foreign policy dominated by pacifism be justified; until then, diplomacy must be backed by the threat of force. While Europe can engage in international diplomacy, ultimately it relies on a larger power—usually the United States—to provide the forceful backing.

Christopher Fish

War Craft Exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Letter Opener Carved from Animal Bone by Prisoner at Notorious Wittenberg, Germany, POW Camp

The Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University has been running a fascinating program since February that includes many First World War artifacts. Titled War Craft, the exhibit focuses on what artworks and objects made in times of war reveal about the pain, peril, and life-changing experiences of conflict. The specimens presented range from "high" to "trench" art. The free program at Gallery 14 runs through 23 August 2026. Shown here are some of the pieces from the First World War. 

Fitzwilliam Museum

Highlanders Resting at the Front by John Singer Sargent

British Soldier's Carving on a French Franc

Paul Nash’s Rain, Lake Zillebeke

Tobacco Holder Found in Damascus

C.R.W. Nevinson’s That Cursèd Wood

Cigarette Lighter Made from Coins

Thanks to Paul Albright for bringing this exhibit to my attention. MH 

Madness of Courage: The Exceptional Achievements of Group Captain Gilbert Insall, VC, Pilot, POW & Escapee (Video)

Italian Irredentism and Italy's Decision to Join the Allies

An Irredentist Idealized Italy

This is the most concise and clear explanation I found on this subject. MH  

Matthew Stibbe, Sheffield Hallam University

Introduction

Italian irredentism was a movement that sought to bring under Italian rule various lands that were considered to be culturally, linguistically or historically Italian but were not included in the unified Italian Kingdom of 1870. Some of these territories remained part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918: the Italian-speaking areas of Tyrol (Welschtirol including Trento), Istria, Gorizia, Trieste and the Dalmatian coastline. However, irredentists also laid claim to Nice and Savoy in southeastern France, and the most extreme variants insisted that Italy would be geographically incomplete without Corsica, Malta, and the Swiss canton of Ticino.

Gabriele D’Annunzio Speaking at a Pro-War Rally, Rome, 1915

Irredentism before 1915

How much popular support the irredentists enjoyed before 1915, both within and beyond the Kingdom of Italy, is difficult to assess. Many of its leading advocates, including the then Paris-based modernist poet Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938), were openly hostile towards the Vatican, which limited the movement’s appeal to pious Catholics. The Lega Nazionale, established in Austrian-ruled Trento and Trieste in 1891, included irredentist elements alongside more moderate nationalists who merely sought greater political or cultural autonomy for Italian-speakers inside the Habsburg Monarchy. From the 1880s, successive governments in Rome showed more interest in colonial expansion in Africa than they did in the cause of Italia irredenta.

Irredentism and Italy’s Involvement in World War I

Irredentism nonetheless featured in Italy’s involvement in the First World War in two distinct ways. First, at home pro-interventionist groups mobilized the specter of the “unredeemed territories” under foreign (Habsburg) rule in support of their cause. The April 1915 Treaty of London, which brought Italy into the war in May 1915 on the side of the Allies, secretly promised to meet most of their demands. Interestingly, though, Fiume (Rijeka), in Hungarian-administered Croatia, was not included. This led to a crisis in the early post-war era when D’Annunzio and his ultra-nationalist followers occupied the city between September 1919 and December 1920 in defiance both of the Treaty of St. Germain and the state authorities in Rome. The American refusal to meet all of the promises made under the Treaty of London – including territory in Dalmatia which was handed to Yugoslavia instead – in turn reinforced D’Annunzio’s (and later Fascist) claims of a “mutilated victory” (vittoria mutilata).

The Death of Battisti  Article

Second, the imagined irredentist threat in Trento and Trieste also impacted imperial military governance of these territories during the war. Tens of thousands of Italians under Habsburg rule were deported into the Austrian and Hungarian interiors after May 1915 and hundreds were interned as political suspects. The failure of the Austro-Hungarian Supreme Command to distinguish between moderate nationalists and irredentists, and the brutal execution of the former Reichsrat (Austrian parliamentary) deputy Cesare Battisti (1875–1916), who was captured in Italian uniform in July 1916 after the Battle of Asiago and court-martialed in his hometown of Trento, backfired. When the Reichsrat was recalled in May 1917, even pro-Habsburg politicians from Italian-speaking areas, like the Catholic deputy Alcide De Gasperi (1881-1954), were now willing to challenge the injustices of wartime imperial rule. That said, the end of Austria’s centuries-long dominion over Trieste, Istria, Gorizia and Tyrol south of the Brenner Pass only became inevitable in October-November 1918.

Italy in 1919 with (unmet) maximalist irredentist demands, map

Italian irredentism laid claim to the Italian-speaking areas of Tyrol (Welschtirol including Trento), Istria, Gorizia, Trieste, and the Dalmatian coastline, Nice and Savoy in south-eastern France. More extreme variants insisted also on Corsica, Malta and the Swiss canton of Ticino. This map shows maximalist irredentist territorial aspirations from after the First World War.

Conclusion

After the war, Liberal and Fascist governments in Rome remained suspicious of residual Austrophilism in the “redeemed” territories, and conducted a number of highly aggressive Italianization campaigns. For those on the receiving end of this, the victors had turned into oppressors. Even so, by no means all irredentists supported Benito Mussolini’s (1883–1945) centralizing regime after October 1922, and many opposed Fascism as a violent and anti-democratic movement which had little in common with their own more progressive and left-liberal outlook.

Source:  Matthew Stibbe:"Italian Irredentism", 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War

British Armor Innovation: From the Armistice to North Africa, 1942

Glasgow Detachment, British Tank Corps, 1921.
After the War the Tank Corps Was Quickly Reduced from 26 Battalions to 4 

By Kendrick Kuo,  Assistant Professor at the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College

In popular imagination, for example, the German blitzkrieg was a revolutionary innovation in World War II that restored the possibility of decisive victory, which had eluded European armies since the Franco-Prussian War. What is less known is that the British also innovated in armored warfare yet performed poorly on the battlefield [in WWII]. While the German Army mechanized its combined-arms tactics developed at the end of World War I, the British deployed armored brigades comprised almost entirely of tanks and expected them to fight with virtually no help from supporting arms. . .  In reality, rather than being a drastic departure from the past, German tactics and operations in World War II were an extension of the infiltration tactics that it developed to restore mobile warfare on the Western Front . . . 

My central claim is that innovation is more likely to weaken a service's effectiveness when growing security commitments outstrip shrinking resources. This wide commitment-resource gap exerts pressures to innovate in ways that cannibalize traditional capabilities before beliefs about the effectiveness of new ones are justified. When wartime comes, not only has the service lost proficiency in those older capabilities, but the new capability underdelivers, thereby creating vulnerabilities for the enemy to exploit.

Editor's Comment: Professor Kuo fully expands this argument in his full article, which is highly recommended and available HERE.

For readers of Roads to the Great War, however, I have excerpted his description of the process and decisions of the postwar British tank innovators, up to the desert campaign of 1942.

The blitzkrieg myth complements another misleading narrative: that British armor innovation failed because conservative army leaders suppressed a small group of prophetic tank enthusiasts, which resulted in weak army performance on the armor-dominated battlefields of World War II. But in reality, Britain's interwar army favored reform and mechanization. Inspired by futuristic visions of mechanical warfare, the British Army relied too heavily on armor organized in tank-only brigades as the decisive arm on the battlefield.

The British Army's size and expenditure experienced unrelenting downward pressure for virtually the entire interwar period, despite a heavy mission burden and growing international threats to its security commitments. To resolve this wicked mismatch, the army innovated all-tank mobile assaults that allegedly improved its effectiveness in assigned missions while also economizing the army's limited budget and personnel. The innovation process was characterized by radicalism, wishful thinking, and rushed development, all of which downplayed criticisms that contemporary tanks were mechanically unreliable and that armored assaults were susceptible to anti-tank countermeasures if they lacked the support traditionally provided by other arms.

The British Army faced the challenge of bridging a wicked mismatch between expanding commitments and shrinking resources—a gap that persisted for most of the interwar period.  The army had expansive imperial, domestic, and continental obligations at this time.  It had to police and defend an empire at its territorial zenith, having grown from one-fifth of the world's landmass before World War I to one-quarter of the globe.  At home, the army had to contain an Irish insurgency movement and quell what were perceived to be coordinated labor strikes that posed a political challenge to the government.  Finally, the army had continuing obligations in Europe, most significant of which was upholding the Locarno Pact to guarantee the common borders between Belgium, France, and Germany.

Royal Tank Corps crew with their Vickers Medium (Interwar)

To meet these wide-ranging security commitments, the army had fewer soldiers and less money than before World War I. . . CIGS, Field Marshal Sir George Milne (1926–1933), described how the army was operating at full capacity, with fewer infantry battalions than before World War I, while trying to match its Locarno obligations and respond to unrest in China, the swaraj movement in India, policing Palestine and Iraq, and an anti-British Egypt.  “The Army is pared to the bone,” Milne warned, and “our army is so small that it is incapable of fulfilling our international obligations.

To resolve the wicked mismatch, the army found an innovative solution in a new capability that I call “armored maneuver.” The idea was that a mobile force, consisting almost entirely of tanks, could maneuver on the future battlefield with impunity and land a decisive blow against the enemy's rear areas. This new capability allegedly solved the army's wicked mismatch by improving combat effectiveness in great wars, small wars, and internal security, while requiring fewer men and less money than the army's existing force structure. But experimentation with prototype forces yielded worrying results, and critics raised plausible concerns about enemy countermeasures and mechanical unreliability. Nonetheless, the army remained wedded to a futuristic vision of armored warfare.

British armor innovators shared an overarching idea of armored warfare as mobile all-tank operations with little need for supporting infantry and conventionally towed artillery.  Maj. Gen. J. F. C. Fuller and Capt. Basil Liddell Hart were the key spokespeople for armored maneuver, though other figures in the Royal Tank Corps—namely, George Lindsay, Charles Broad, and Percy Hobart—were the implementers. Together, they argued that tanks were the optimal combination of protection, mobility, and offensive power.  As such, armored maneuver promised to be a panacea for the army's wide-ranging security commitments and a substitute for the traditional capabilities associated with the combined-arms offensives of the Western Front. Armor radicalism demanded a high degree of creative destruction.

Armored maneuver allegedly increased the army's effectiveness in all its assigned missions, whether it be great wars, small wars, or internal security.  In the next great war in Europe, armored maneuver would prevent another bloody Western Front. Battles would begin with an armored clash for “tank supremacy” in which infantry, artillery, and horsed cavalry would play “the part of interested spectators” and “do next to nothing.”  Fast tanks would exploit into the enemy's rear and paralyze the enemy's communication and command centers, plunging the opposing army into psychological disarray. The traditional arms would come into play only after the battle had been decided: as armored forces moved forward “by a series of bounds,” the traditional arms would occupy conquered territory and garrison “a chain of fortified depots” established behind the advancing tank forces. 

In small wars, the main challenges were that military garrisons were usually located far away from disturbances and rebels had growing access to small arms. But tanks could allegedly travel far without relying on supply lines, do so quickly across various terrains, and counter small arms fire.  Mechanization functionally reduced the size of empire. Finally, for policing and internal security, tanks dispensing nonlethal chemical gases offered a discriminating and less escalatory way to disperse riots. 

Armored maneuver could allegedly do these things at cheaper cost than the traditional capabilities developed in World War I. In the final year on the Western Front, the British Army was integrating infantry, artillery, and armor capabilities, with the aid of aerial spotting and surprise, to penetrate German defensive positions held in depth and to do so with acceptable losses.  Heavy counter-battery artillery fire was followed by a tank-supported infantry advance under cover of a creeping artillery barrage that included both high-explosive shells and smoke shells to suppress enemy resistance.  This became the standard way of war enshrined in British doctrine after 1919. 

In contrast, innovators touted armored maneuver as an efficient substitute for the difficult and demanding tasks associated with implementing combined-arms principles.  Fuller and Liddell Hart proposed a “new model army” in which mechanical vehicles performed all primary land combat functions. “The tank is likely to swallow the infantryman, the field artilleryman, the engineer and signaler,” Liddell Hart wrote, “while mechanical cavalry will supersede the horseman.”  Moreover, light tanks, fast cruiser tanks, and heavy tanks could allegedly coordinate better than the current arrangement of inter-arm cooperation.  Conversely, hitching tanks to slower elements such as infantry would be “tantamount to yoking a tractor to a draught-horse” and having them “operate together under fire” would be “equally absurd.” 

By reducing troop requirements and mechanizing the remainder, a remodeled army could “produce, within the limits of the money available, a military organization of the highest efficiency and with powers of efficient development along the economic line.”  With stagnant army budget estimates for the foreseeable future, “new mechanized units” were touted “in place of, not in addition to the old infantry and cavalry units,” or else there would be “no real reduction of cost, nor modern efficiency.”  Substitution was not only economical, it would improve the army's combat power. In a great war, a new model division had equivalent fighting value to four or more current divisions and to “almost any number of present-day divisions” if fighting a small war.

J.F.C. Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart
Revolutionary British Interwar Military Theorists

The British Army experimented with armored maneuver during two training seasons in 1927 and 1928, which featured the world's first fully mechanized combat brigade—the Experimental Mechanized Force, later renamed the Experimental Armored Force. These experiments should have tempered excessive faith in the promises of armored maneuver, but they did not.

First, the experimental force failed to achieve assigned mission objectives despite being organized according to armored-maneuver principles. Col. George Lindsay, inspector of the Royal Tank Corps, actively lobbied for armor-centric formations to economize personnel and money, as opposed to a prototype all-arms mechanized division. CIGS Milne sided with Lindsay (“Colonel Lindsay is on the right lines and we have now to decide how to translate his ideas into action”) and offered command to Fuller (though he declined).  The 1927 and 1928 training seasons culminated in large exercises that pitted the experimental force against a more traditional opponent. In 1927, opposed by an infantry division and a horsed cavalry brigade, the Experimental Mechanized Force failed to take a high-ground location. In 1928, the same infantry division, augmented by a tank company, an armored car company, a cavalry regiment, and an artillery brigade, successfully stalemated a combined force of the Second Cavalry Brigade and the Experimental Armored Force.

Second, given the tight resources, the mechanized formations lacked adequate and appropriate equipment, which limited the reliability of experimental data. Milne recognized that the army wanted “to make certain experiments and we have not had the money to do what we really intended.” The prototype units lacked suitable, reliable, and streamlined vehicles to conduct the desired exercises, and they struggled to field them in adequate numbers. 

Third, the exercises were designed to highlight the vulnerabilities of armor. Maj. Gen. Sir John Burnett-Stuart served as the director of the maneuvers. He openly admitted that the armored force's 1928 exercises were “deliberately planned to bring out its limitations rather than to make a display of its powers.” 

Criticism of armored maneuver centered on enemy anti-tank countermeasures and unreliable tank mobility. Post-exercise assessments repeatedly emphasized the need for greater supporting fire in any tank attack on enemy defenses because armored maneuver was vulnerable to enemy anti-tank weapons and artillery.  Similarly, a general staff memorandum on army training criticized the failure to secure proper fire support to suppress enemy anti-tank fire before assaulting a position, violating the “correct principles” established during World War I.  It warned that mechanized forces must not be allowed to “upset all our preconceived notions of war.” Tank mobility was also a perennial issue. Burnett-Stuart cautioned that tanks could not traverse all terrain and that their mobility was still in the developmental stage.  The experimental force lost many of its medium tanks from breakdowns even on short trips.

These criticisms were highly plausible. In World War I, British tanks were indeed vulnerable to German countermeasures in the form of field guns, anti-tank rifles, armor-piercing machine gun ammunition, and minefields. In the interwar period, British tanks could not survive a direct hit by the shell of even a small-caliber, high-velocity gun (technology that was already available). Moreover, much like the tanks in World War I, interwar models had trouble traversing difficult terrain and often broke down. When the War Office dispatched an armored “Mobile Force” to Egypt during the Abyssinian crisis, it had the newest light tanks, yet struggled with so many broken tracks that it was nicknamed the “Mobile Farce.” 

Instead of altering the radical trajectory of British armor innovation, however, the experiments somehow confirmed the theory of armored maneuver. Instead of conceding that traditional capabilities of infantry cooperation and indirect artillery fire support were necessary, armor innovators argued that tank mobility sufficed as a form of protection. First, exercise umpires allegedly overestimated the effectiveness of anti-tank weapons. The representative white and green flags used to fortify defenses in the exercises were “cheap to provide and easy to wave” but “an effective weapon, complete with tractor and ammunition trailer” was “an expensive item,” such that no “infantry division could be provided enough to form the immense circular screen that would be necessary for its protection.” 

Second, European armies in the next great war would allegedly be smaller than in the last one, and therefore would have exposed flanks.  Even if anti-tank weapons were lethal, an armored force could use its incredible mobility to maneuver around obstructions, which in turn precluded the need for infantry cooperation to establish bridgeheads and clear localities.  A few years later, when crystal sets (a rudimentary form of radio) made possible the tactical control of a mobile force, Liddell Hart declared the dawn of new “anti-anti-tank gun” tactics with which a “few scattered guns” could “easily be overrun by a tank force in its onward surge.” 

Vickers Medium Tanks of the Experimental Mechanized Force

Finally, critics simply needed greater faith in the principle that “he who applies a novel device by a novel method has oftenest attained revolutionary results in history.” Liddell Hart attributed the mechanized force's defeat in the 1927 training season to the commander's imprudent fear of enemy attack. The problem was not the enemy, but that the mechanized force was too concerned about security; its maneuvers were not bold enough. The 1928 exercises revealed nothing that reasoning—“the cheapest form of experiment”—had not already made self-evident: “that the present composition of the force is fundamentally unsuitable” and the “obvious truth that armored and unarmored vehicles do not coalesce.”  The solution, Liddell Hart reiterated, was an all-tank force with streamlined vehicles. Whereas concerns about anti-tank weapons and unreliable mobility arose from the army's own practical experiences in World War I, armored maneuver was based primarily on deductive logic and theoretical leaps into an uncertain future.

Armor innovators quickly succeeded in entrenching their mechanizing agenda. Top army officers endorsed the ideas behind armored maneuver and empowered known armor radicals to design and train mechanized formations. The historian David French observes that “by the end of the 1920s the British had virtually abandoned the attempt to create permanent, all-arms formations incorporating a balance of tanks, infantry, and supporting arms.” Attempts to temper armor radicalism in the 1930s failed; and armored maneuver principles guided how British armor organization and doctrine developed in the lead-up to World War II.

In September 1927, Milne praised the Experimental Mechanized Force because he was “perfectly certain that we are working on absolutely the right lines.” At the outbreak of war, a mobile force designed to operate across hundreds of miles could deliver “a swinging blow to come around the flank” and “carry out big operations and big turning movements.” Normally, this force would remain entirely armored because infantry became a liability in combat. Milne later proposed to the Army Council a future armored brigade with essentially the same blueprint as Liddell Hart's all-tank force. He also tasked Col. Charles Broad, a known supporter of armored maneuver, to compile primers on armored warfare. These envisioned tank brigades achieving decisive victory with numerically inferior forces comprised of light tanks for reconnaissance and medium tanks for striking, but they excluded other arms. When Milne's successor, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd, permanently established the First Tank Brigade in 1933, it adhered to an all-tank conception.  The director of staff duties observed that it could “safely be said that the general consensus of Army opinion was in agreement,” that the armored brigade was a commander's “most powerful offensive agent.” 

The 1934 trials with the First Tank Brigade represented the last serious attempt to temper armor radicalism. Hobart, now inspector of the Royal Tank Corps and commander of the First Tank Brigade, preferred an independent tank brigade concept, in which tanks would carry out deep penetrations with only the smallest attachments to avoid logistics problems and coordinating different arms. But Lindsay pushed for a mobile division concept that incorporated the tank brigade into an all-arms mechanized division. The two agreed to temporarily form a Mobile Force comprised of the First Tank Brigade, Seventh Infantry Brigade, a mechanized field artillery brigade, and other supporting arms—an armored division in all but name.  The Mobile Force was defeated by the un-mechanized First Infantry Division, which prepared significant defensive arrangements and used motorized units to block the Mobile Force's retreat with mines and anti-tank guns. Again, a more traditional force defeated the more innovative one. The Royal Tank Corps blamed the Mobile Force's poor performance on Lindsay's command, not on armored maneuver, and, as a result, Hobart's independent tank brigade concept eclipsed Lindsay's mobile division. 

Thereafter, the army designed its armored division for armored maneuver carried out by their main striking element—all-tank armored brigades. Tanks and infantry would be organized separately, cooperating only in particular operations and only at the divisional level. As the armored division evolved over the latter half of the 1930s, the already small representation of supporting arms shrank over time. In the final prewar model, the division contained only one infantry battalion, whereas four battalions eventually became standard in World War II. The Royal Tank Corps “dominated” the armored division, “committed to a machine-age vision that tanks by themselves could win battles.

A13 Cruiser, 5th Royal Tank Regiment, Libyan Border Jan 1941

The Desert Campaign

British armored maneuver and German combined-arms maneuver came head-to-head in the Desert War. Three months after Italy invaded Egypt in September 1940, Britain's Western Desert Force launched Operation Compass, a counterattack that resulted in a complete rout of the Italian Tenth Army as it retreated westward toward Tripolitania. In February 1941, the Afrika Korps under Lt. Gen. Erwin Rommel's command arrived in North Africa to make sure that Tripoli was not abandoned without a fight. Over the next two years, the Desert War unfolded across a 1,200-mile stretch of land between Tripoli in the west and Alexandria in the east.  

British military performance for the first sixteen months was poor—the army repeatedly failed to achieve mission objectives at acceptable costs—but then noticeably improved at the First Battle of El Alamein, the Battle of Alam el Halfa, and the Second Battle of El Alamein. My theory of harmful innovation expects, and the evidence shows, that British armor innovation helped undermine military effectiveness. When the principles of armored maneuver held sway, British forces were ineffective, but as British commanders gradually unlearned armored maneuver and restored traditional capabilities—specifically those associated with the infantry-artillery team developed on the Western Front—performance improved. . . 

British Army ineffectiveness can be traced to the radicalism of its armor innovation: the new capability failed to deliver on its promises, but the army could not rely on its traditional capabilities either. The central principle of armored maneuver was tank primacy—the mistaken idea that tanks would be war-winning weapons if they were unencumbered by the complicated tasks of cooperating with infantry and artillery. But British armored divisions conducting armored maneuver found that their tank numbers fell at an astonishing rate for the very reasons raised by interwar critics. Tanks' mechanical unreliability was a persistent problem throughout the conflict, as it had been in the interwar period.  The chief culprit, however, was the German use of anti-tank guns—a plausible countermeasure that armor innovators downplayed by appealing to tank mobility and surprise attacks. . .  But German combined-arms maneuver eschewed tank-on-tank engagements and instead emphasized anti-tank guns, as was done in World War I.

Turning Things Around

After the Battle of Gazala, the Axis forces' momentum weakened near a defensive line prepared by the Eighth Army that ran south from El Alamein. It was here that British forces began to show signs of improvement. . . What were the British doing that they had not done before? The evidence suggests that British military effectiveness improved as the army reversed innovation, unlearned armored maneuver, and restored traditional capabilities: an infantry-artillery team supported by tank forces. British commanders first restored traditional capabilities on the defense. The Eighth Army learned to coordinate and concentrate artillery fire to peel apart the all-arms organization of attacking panzer divisions. Infantry learned to defend themselves as they received more anti-tank weapons, and to act as forward infantry observers for artillery fire. And British armor learned to lure the enemy into combined-arms fire delivered by artillery, infantry, and tanks in hull-down position, as opposed to charging forward against attacking panzer formations.

Sources: "Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness," International Security (2022); History of the Royal Tank Regiment; Research Gate

Remembering a Veteran: James Montgomery Flagg, Poster Artist Extraordinaire

Flagg Painting Main Subject for His "Tell It to the Marines" Poster
11 August 1918, NY Times

Noted artist and illustrator James Montgomery Flagg was born on 18 June 1877, in Pelham Manor, New York. He painted dozens of memorable posters, book covers, magazine covers, and more, with the most notable being his interpretation of Uncle Sam. Flagg was a skilled artist from a young age, with his illustrations appearing in national magazines when he was just 12 years old. By the time he was 14 his work appeared in Life magazine.

Flagg went on to attend the Art Students League of New York before studying art in London and Paris. After returning to the U.S. in 1900, Flagg kept busy providing illustrations for many books, magazine covers, political cartoons, and advertisements. Among these works was a comic strip for Judge magazine featuring the character Nervy Nat. At the height of his career, Flagg was the highest-paid magazine illustrator in the country.

Flagg’s great claim to fame, however, came in 1916 when he re-imagined the way we saw Uncle Sam. A popular symbol of America for over a century, Uncle Sam was pictured in a variety of ways—including closely resembling Benjamin Franklin. But in 1916 Flagg illustrated Uncle Sam in a new way—as an elderly man with white hair, goatee, and red, white, and blue top hat. According to Flagg, he didn’t want to bother hiring a model, so instead based Uncle Sam on himself, aging his own  features. Flagg’s illustration was first shown on the cover of Leslie’s Weekly magazine on 6 July 1916, with the caption “What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” The following year the image was printed on thousands of recruiting posters declaring, “I Want You For US Army.”

The poster became the most famous poster in American history and more than four million copies were printed. It inspired countless young men to join the fight and defend America. The image was so popular it was used again during World War II. During  World War I, Flagg produced more than forty posters for the war effort, often carrying positive messages encouraging recruitment, buying war bonds, national unity, or increasing production. He went on to produce several more powerful posters for World War II. In addition to his magazine work and posters, Flagg also painted portraits. Among his subjects were Mark Twain, Ethel Barrymore, and Jack Dempsey. Flagg remained a productive artist up to his death in 1960.

Source: Mysticstamp.com, WikiCommons

Romano's Well, Gallipoli: A Sacred Spot for the Royal Naval Division

Insignia of the 63rd Royal Naval Division

During the Gallipoli Campaign (1915), Romano's Well was a stagnant, mosquito-infested water source in the "W" Beach and Cape Helles sector. It served as a vital but hazardous landmark and logistics point for British forces, particularly the Royal Naval Division (RND), which spent most of the campaign in the vicinity.  Romano's Well was situated between a shallow ravine  and the road running from Helles to Krithia. It was utilized by medical units (such as the 3rd Lowland Field Ambulance) to treat casualties and by water carts supplying nearby artillery batteries. Members of the Royal Naval Division dubbed the spot after a very famous and popular Edwardian-era Italian eating house and restaurant in London (Romano's in the Strand). 

The Well Head Today

Water was one of the greatest logistical challenges of the Gallipoli campaign. Because groundwater was close to the surface at Romano's Well, it provided abundant, naturally cold water even during the driest summer months. As the campaign deteriorated into grueling trench warfare, the well area became a contested, muddy stretch of land behind the front lines, often subjected to Ottoman shrapnel and artillery fire. 

Trenches of the Royal Naval Division, Cape Helles

Due to the brutal summer conditions on the peninsula, stagnant pools like Romano's Well quickly turned into breeding grounds for disease. Many soldiers in the RND sector fell ill due to the polluted water and the swarms of mosquitoes. As the campaign dragged into late summer, the risk of disease forced the Allies to chemically treat the well, causing it to lose its "charm."

One of the Original Romano's Well Cemeteries,
Well Visible on the Left

Nearby was once located two Romano's Well cemeteries, established for the fallen Allied soldiers of the campaign, including men from the Hood and Howe Battalions. Those graves have since been moved to the nearby Skew Bridge Cemetery, three quarters of mile to the south of the well.

Sources:  The Great War Forum; Thebignote.com; CWGC

Paths of Glory and Fear: Kubrick's Film and Chevallier's Novel Both Censored in France

 

Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory

By Jennifer Orthveillon

Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick. Two American names that have meant worldwide stardom and cinematic virtuosity across decades. But in France, the award-winning actor and director faced the opposite for almost twenty years. Made in 1957, Paths of Glory (adapted from the novel by Humphrey Cobb), the WWI film that chronicles the unjust deaths of three innocent soldiers accused of battlefield cowardice by corrupt leaders, was censored in France until 1975 due to its anti-war stance and criticism of France's military leadership. The film was also banned from American military bases in Europe. 

The title of the novel and film comes from a stanza from the 1751 poem by Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike th'inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Watch the film. It is stunning.

Order Here

We might guess that France didn't want Americans taking cinematic ownership of their role in the Great War. The film's events happen well before America's official entry. However, the French also censored their own WWI authors at different periods in history. For example, Gabriel Chevallier's book Fear, published in 1930, was censored in 1939 during WWII because it lacked the warring idealism that France needed to fight off the Germans. . . one more time. In a world where explicit combat violence can be viewed on T.V., Chevallier's descriptions of wounded and dead bodies do not fail to shock. “In 1939,” Chevallier wrote in his preface to a 1951 edition, “its author and publisher agreed to suspend sales. Once war has come, the time has passed for warning that it is a disastrous venture.” Critics today herald the book as one of the most accurate depictions of a WWI French soldier's experience. The book made its way onto American soil only recently—the first English translation appeared in 2014.

Read the book. It's eloquently stupefying.

While some works of art are quietly swept away by cultures over time, many WWI works were forced to disappear. In the next installment of this series in a few weeks, we will look at the ways the forced disappearance of certain WWI artistic works help us understand not just the real, horrifying backdrop of combat, but also something about the corrupt politics of commemoration and monument building following Armistice.

If you happen to watch the film or read the book, I would love to hear your comments. Why do you think these were censored?  Contact me HERE please.

Source: Originally presented at the World War One Centennial Commission's Website