Recommended: Introducing War Artist Samuel Johnson Woolf

From Army History, Spring 2015

A Night March

By Sarah Forgey

The Army Art Collection recently acquired a number of pieces of important eyewitness artwork from World War I. An artist-correspondent, Samuel Johnson Woolf worked for Collier’s Weekly and spent four months embedded with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France, sketching in the trenches along the front and behind the lines. Upon his return to New York, Woolf immediately began a series of paintings based on his experiences, which were exhibited at the Milch Galleries in New York City and the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, gaining him acclaim as a war artist. . . 

First Aid Station at Seicheprey

Rather than focusing on the impersonal technological advances that changed the face of warfare forever, Woolf often concentrated on the human element. His paintings do not highlight the mechanized and anonymous carnage, fixating instead on the personal stories that he witnessed. Woolf’s sobering authenticity transported his American audience right to the heart of the conflict, as if they too were part of the harrowing events portrayed. . . 

Intelligence Officer Interrogating German Prisoners

Explaining his first few days in the trenches, Woolf said, “You may ‘go in’ thinking you will set to work at once, but so full of strange emotions does your life become that painting is out of the question.” He assisted with the wounded, drove an ambulance, pitched in with cooking when the cook was gassed, and even attempted to rescue some paintings from a local church before it was shelled. . .

Woolf’s 23 paintings are an important addition to the Army Art Collection, which contains very few eyewitness pieces from World War I. While there were officially eight War Department artists documenting the AEF, their work is under the care of the Smithsonian Institution. 

Sarah Forgey is the curator of the U.S. Army Art Collection.

To read her full article and see more of Woolf's paintings, visit:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26300397.pdf

Eyewitness to the Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

Count Franz von Harrach (1870–1937), a chamberlain and adjutant to Franz Ferdinand,  rode on the running board of the royal car serving as a bodyguard for the archduke. His account begins immediately after Princip fires his two shots.

The Archduke and His Wife Leave City Hall
Count Harrach Rides the Running Board

As the car quickly reversed, a thin stream of blood spurted from His Highness's mouth onto my right check. As I was pulling out my handkerchief to wipe the blood away from his mouth, the Duchess cried out to him, 'In Heaven's name, what has happened to you?' At that she slid off the seat and lay on the floor of the car, with her face between his knees.

I had no idea that she too was hit and thought she had simply fainted with fright. Then I heard His Imperial Highness say, 'Sopherl, Sopherl, don't die. Stay alive for the children!'

At that, I seized the Archduke by the collar of his uniform, to stop his head dropping forward and asked him if he was in great pain. He answered me quite distinctly, 'It's nothing!' His face began to twist somewhat but he went on repeating, six or seven times, ever more faintly as he gradually lost consciousness, 'It's nothing!' Then, after a short pause, there was a violent choking sound caused by the bleeding. It was stopped as we reached the Konak."

Source: Eyewitness to History

Mystery Solved: Celtic Wood, 9 October 1917

From a 2005 Australian Defence Department Document:

On this day LT Scott of 10 Bn led 84 men on a raid into enemy lines near Broodseinde. The main party was seen to enter Celtic Wood and were never seen again. Extensive investigations since that time have failed to fully account for the fate of LT Scott's party. A total of 37 soldiers are still not accounted for. This is the greatest mystery for the AIF in WW 1.

Dead and Exhausted Australian and German Soldiers After the Action of 9 October
(Australians from Another Battalion)

Subsequent work to solve this mystery is summarized in this 2011 news article I only recently discovered. MH

EVOCATIVE name, Celtic Wood. It conjures thoughts of ancient mysticism and pagan ritual. To many South Australian families last century, Celtic Wood was a place of haunting tragedy.

This speck on a Belgium map was where their husbands, sons, and brothers — including hardened veterans of Gallipoli — disappeared in 1917 as the Battle of Passchendaele reached its crescendo. Here the men of SA's Fighting 10th Battalion, AIF, charged into a little stand of trees in Flanders. Most were never seen again.

Of the 85 men to raid Celtic Wood, just 14 made it back to their lines. The rest vanished without a trace, as did any mention of the raid in the German official records, giving succour to talk of a covert German massacre.

One battlefield tour operator has described it thus: "The Germans had been raided at the same spot two nights before and probably took revenge on the 10th Battalion men by killing them and burying them in an unmarked grave."

There was even talk of a supernatural event swallowing up the Diggers in this mystically named place. How else could so many Diggers disappear? After all, this was the Terrible 10th, so named for its proud fighting reputation forged since landing at the spearpoint of the Gallipoli assault.

The battalion's glory grew in the epic defence of Anzac Cove, and again in the trenches of France and Belgium, where two of its number had earned Victoria Crosses. How could men of this fine unit, the fledgling state's first battalion to sail to the Empire's war, disappear into thin air?

Celtic Wood has lingered as the greatest mystery of Australia's Great War. It is the nation's wartime equivalent of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Only this time, men rather than schoolgirls disappeared into the ether.

Great story. But the trouble is, like Hanging Rock, it's not true. Yes, men did disappear on that crisp dawn 93 years ago in Flanders's sodden fields. But they were not massacred by the Germans or taken by some malevolent mist. Rather, the fog of war was to blame.

ADELAIDE authors Robert Kearney and Chris Henschke — both veterans of their own wars — have riffled through the sepia pages of war diaries and action reports to piece together the real story of Celtic Wood.

What emerges is not a mystery, just a plain, old, garden variety Australian war tragedy. A story of brave men sacrificed to divert attention from the main British attack. A feint, just like Gallipoli's murderous charge at The Nek as depicted in Peter Weir's film, or the butchery at Fromelles. To understand how the myth sprang from kernels of truth – as myths tend to do — we must put ourselves in the 10th's waterlogged trench lines on 9 October 1917. 

Down here in the slosh the men were shelled and shot at for a week leading up to the raid. Wearied but not unbowed, they understood and accepted the task at hand — to charge into the wood, fight like hell for 30 minutes to make the Germans think it was a full-scale attack, blow up dugouts, then withdraw upon a flare signal. Much was stacked against them. Unlike an earlier successful raid on the same stretch of the German line, there would be no protective box barrage around their advance to shield them from counterattacks.

Instead, the shelling would roll forward in lines to replicate the method used in full-scale advances. And, unlike the earlier raid, the 10th would go over the top at dawn rather than midnight. In a further harbinger of the looming carnage, Celtic Wood was bristling with extra machine guns sent into the line after the previous raid.

"It's quite possible the German commander would've been told by his commander — don't let this happen again," Henschke says. "The Germans knew there was going to be an attack and they knew it was going to be at dawn."

Just to the north the 10th's cobbers from the 2nd Division would mount a larger attack to protect the flanks of the main British advance still farther to the north. "I have no doubt that (the 10th men) would've looked at the raid with great trepidation," Henschke says. "But it was mateship. They knew they had to help out their mates of the 2nd Division." Out they went into No Man's Land in the pre-dawn murk, ready to creep as close as possible to the shell bursts when their own artillery opened up. The German lines lay about 180 meters away down a gentle rise.

The barrage erupted and up the South Australians sprang, tramping through the mud behind their commander, Lieutenant Frank Scott, a 22-year-old railway porter from Gawler. But something was wrong.

Henschke says rather than the "rolling curtain of death" laid down to shield an attack, the barrage was light and scattered. Still, they fought their way into the wood (which was a misnomer given that months of constant shelling had turned the trees into mere leafless stumps).

"There's tree stumps and rubbish everywhere, there's craters metres wide and there's mud that in some places would've been knee deep," Henschke says. "As soon as they came under effective small arms fire, the sound would've been overwhelming. At that point it would've been extremely difficult to retain any control using voice command." Despite realising his force was outnumbered two to one, Scott ordered a frontal attack on a trench bristling with Germans, while he led a group around to attack it from the rear. "A fierce struggle ensued," battalion commander Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Wilder-Neligan reported.

"A temporary mastery was gained; the enemy commencing to retreat as soon as the fire from Lieutenant Scott's party was brought to bear from his rear. A desperate hand encounter followed, in which heavy casualties were inflicted upon the enemy."

Suddenly, the German artillery opened up, laying down a wall of explosions between the raiders and the Australian trenches. They were suddenly cut off.  German reinforcements joined the fray and the game was up.

With bullets buzzing all around, shells from both sides whistling past, and hand grenade explosions adding to the din, how Scott managed to arrange such a deft flanking maneuver is to his eternal credit.  "Once you start waving your hands around you become targets," Henschke says.

AND SO it came to pass. Soon all five Australian officers were dead or wounded. Survivors said Scott, a decorated veteran of Gallipoli and the Western Front Battle of Pozières in 1916, was shot through the head.

"The last seen of Scott he was trying to fight his way out with his revolver," a survivor reported. Another recounted, "His belt and revolver were brought in by one man whose name I don't know, but his body was left in no man's land, and as far as I know was not buried." Like Scott, 2nd Lieutenant Albert Rae, 21, of Kilkenny, was an original Anzac who wrote a graphic account of the landing at Anzac Cove.

"We clicked the old bayonets on and there was such a yell, and off we went," Rae wrote of his hand-to-hand fight with the Turks. "Everybody was swearing. You never heard such language, but Mr. Turk did not wait for us. The few that did stay got a foot of steel through them."

Rae survived Gallipoli to be killed at Celtic Wood. In the confusion, 2nd Lieutenant Walter Wilsdon, of Farrant St., Prospect, was cut off from his men. "On our return Lt. Wilsdon was reported missing," a comrade reported. "I think that it is possible that he was wounded and captured."

It was a forlorn hope, for Wilsdon too was dead. With all the officers struck down, it was left to Sergeant William "Old King" Cole — another Gallipoli veteran — to fire the flare signaling the withdrawal. "Cole, just as he was firing the flare, was killed," Henschke says. With the situation hopeless, the survivors were left to run the gauntlet of the shell bursts to safety or lie doggo in craters to crawl back under the cover of night.

"I am only able to account for 14 unwounded members of the party," Wilder-Neligan wrote after the action. This one line sowed the seed for the myth. Historians both professional and amateur mistook it to mean only 14 men — full stop — made it out of the wood. This error laid the fertile ground for talk of mysteries and massacres. "I thought, 'Hang on, there's always wounded blokes'," Henschke says. Kearney and Henschke say a massacre was almost impossible.

They reason that after the raid the British gunners opened up with a heavy barrage to avenge the defeat, while the Germans continued to rain down shells on the battlefield.  So no organised party of Germans could have made it into the area where Scott made his stand, let alone shepherd a string of prisoners out of the wood.

The shelling blew the wounded and slain raiders to smithereens, rendering them "Known Unto God". As for the mystery, well, that is solved by rudimentary detective work.

By cross-referencing all the available records and building on Kearney's earlier research for his 10th Battalion history, the authors say they can account, beyond a reasonable level of doubt, for every one of Scott's party.

Looking West Toward Where Celtic Wood Once Stood

"We've pieced a story together from the after action reports, the war diaries and the eyewitness statements from the Red Cross files," Henschke says. "We've only used eyewitness accounts that are able to be verified. Anything that was hearsay we haven't used. We hope to change (the misconception) by showing the result of the raid wasn't a great mystery, but it was simply a raid with a very high proportion of casualties.

"And all the casualties were accounted for through the military system. So you're waiting for this big administrative machine to say 'He's in hospital in France', or 'He's in a hospital in England'. It is a story of a typical small unit action that went wrong."

At the end of the killing, the 10th's valour under fire was for nothing. The general advance stalled in the mud and the only objective captured by the British was a village on the far north of the line, for which the Battle of Poelcappelle is now called. As for Celtic Wood, a week later the Germans withdrew 500 meters and the area became No Man's Land. Today all the trees are gone.  Celtic Wood is no more, just like the myth.

Article from Sunday Mail (SA), 24 April 2011

Eyewitness at the Somme: "It Was No Simple Matter to Work Amid Blood"

Senior Physician Richard Schwarz 1st Battalion, 121st Reserve Infantry Regiment (26th Reserve Division) 

Our regimental medical dugout was located in the Soden Redoubt, on an elevation between Beaumont Hamel and Serre, with an expansive view of the Ancre Valley and the ridges of Thiepval and Pozieres on the other side of the river to the south. All through the week long bombardment preceding 1 July there was conspicuously little service for the medical people to perform. During this time we had only 35 wounded of the 1st Battalion to look after. Nearly all these arrived at our dugout in the nighttime hours. Excellent construction of the field positions in our division stood the test splendidly. Likewise, in spite of numerous nighttime gas shellings, we treated only six gas cases, one of which, unfortunately, could not be saved. Greater  numbers of gas casualties were avoided due to frequent  instruction and practice in the use of the gas mask. 

The principal work of the doctors and other medical personnel began the morning of 1 July, soon after the  English infantry's great frontal attack. At 8:30 the first  lightly wounded streamed in. Not until the afternoon  and evening were the stretcher bearers able to bring in the badly wounded, some of them with horrible head, lung and abdomen injuries, in addition to smashed bones of every conceivable type. We were thrust into uninterrupted, feverish activity. It was disquietingly  overcrowded in our confined dugout, and no simple matter to work amid blood, perspiration and foul odors tainting the air. 

The lightly wounded mostly arrived with field dressings  already in place. They were adjusted by our medical  NCOs and if necessary, changed. After being given some coffee, sausage and bread, these people were sent  off in small groups with directions to the main medical station behind Miraumont. With Dr. Broemser I  attended the severely wounded on our makeshift  operating table. Broken bones were examined, blood  vessels stopped from hemorrhaging and dressings applied. Several casualties with crushed or fractured skulls died in the dugout. We could only ease their passing by administering morphine or chloroform. 

We were especially concerned about hastening transport of the head, lung and belly cases to the rear. This could not begin, however, until the night of 1-2 July. The division surgeon, Generaloberarzt Dr. Bihler, had detailed for our use 12 men and a very efficient corporal from the [division's] medical company. These brave people carried the badly wounded through  communication trenches from Soden Redoubt to  artillery positions in a hollow near Beaucourt. It was a  laborious, dangerous job. That first night one of these  stretcher bearers was killed and two were wounded. 

 

Corpsmen and Stretcher Bearers in a Quieter Period

From the medical company wagons were dispatched forward under shell fire along the Mirauumont-Beaucourt road, in order to fetch the non-walking  wounded deposited in the artillery hollow. Often there was a delay or blockage in transport, which was understandable during a day of heavy combat along the division's extended front, and we doctors must  thankfully recognize and appreciate what obstacles the  medical company people overcame in those days and nights. 

In the Soden Redoubt dugout we rendered assistance to more than 200 wounded within the battle's first 48 hours — over 140 of our own and some 70 English. From 3 July on, access to the wounded became more difficult. As a curiosity it should be reported that, on 6 July, we treated the last wounded Englishmen who, since the morning of 1 July, had been marooned without help between the lines.

Source: This Carnival of Hell, published by Blue Acorn Press in 2010. 

Eyewitness: Second Ypres, April 1915

Canadian soldier Fred Adams wrote the following letter on 2 May 1915, to his aunt after experiencing the first German gas attack of the First World War near Ypres, Belgium. The Canadians were able to hold the line during that attack, but suffered heavy casualties. Adams was originally from Cobourg, Ont. More than 6,500 Canadians were killed, wounded or captured in the Second Battle of Ypres.  [A Canadian soldier named Fred Adams was taken prisoner in this battle and died shortly afterward.  I have been unable, however, to confirm if he is the same Fred Adams who wrote this letter. MH]

22 April 1915

2 May 1915

Dear Aunt: 

This is the first day they have allowed us to write letters since this battle began and I have no doubt you are anxious to hear from me. 

Well, we have lost an awful lot of our fellows, and to those of us who are left it seems just a miracle that any of us came through alive. How I did not get hit I do not know, but I was one of the lucky ones that got through it without a scratch, although I got several bullet holes through my clothes. 

About two brigades of Canadians held about five times as many Germans. It would have done you good to see the boys. I did not see one show the white feather, but each had a set face and went right at it. 

We held the Germans and charged them back until they started to use that awful gas, and they forced the French on our left to retreat. So we had to retreat too or we would have been cut right off. It was just a nightmare, a hell, retreating across the ground, with the Jack Johnsons digging great holes and the shrapnel raining down upon us, and the bullets striking everywhere. 

We could see the boys falling everywhere, and it was just awful to hear them cry out. Thank goodness the Artillery and English reinforcements came up when they did and drove the Germans off. 

Our machine gun sergeant is to be recommended for the V.C. He sure is a brave man, and he is very badly wounded. Our machine gun wiped out hundreds of Germans. 

Poor Tom Smith of Cobourg. Tom is gone. I am very sorry for Mrs. Bolster, but Major Bolster died a brave death. He was the last of his company to leave the trench and he had a smile on his face. We have lost two of our guns and there are only eleven of us left out of the section. 

Well all the boys did the best they could and I for one am ready to do it again, only I hope the war will soon end, for the sake of the poor parents, wives and sweethearts of all the soldiers. 

Still I thank God that I am spared and always pray that He will soon end the war. 

With Love. 

FRED. 

Eyewitness: At the Front Line at Anzac

Private Cecil Malthus

By Private Cecil Malthus, Nelson Company, Canterbury Battalion, New Zealand Brigade

We went to Quinn's Post by a safe and easy route, round by Anzac Cove and up Shrapnel Gully. In passing up several open valleys we gained a much better knowledge of our new position. Quinn's Post was the most advanced corner of our line and the furthest from the sea - much nearer the sea on the left than on the right. 

Approaching the Line

From the beach at Anzac Cove the way lay through deep and winding communication trenches which had cost the Australians weeks of incredible work. Then came the comparatively safe stretches of Shrapnel Gully, where the track was not overlooked by the enemy, except at a few points where sentries were always posted to warn the passers-by. These places were crossed at the double, however weary or loaded a man might be. Even so, they provided good shooting for the Turkish snipers, as the movement of traffic, though spasmodic, was almost continual. 

From there another deep sap emerged in Monash Gully, which was really the head of the mile-long valley traversing our territory and forming the main avenue of traffic. Monash Gully too was badly exposed to Turkish snipers, who had almost a clear line of fire from Dead Man's Ridge, back between Pope's Hill and Quinn's. Up the hill to the left of Monash Gully was Russell's Top, straight at the head of the gully was Pope's Hill, with deep ravines on either side of it, and on the right, just clinging to the summit of a steep cliff, was Quinn's Post. . . 

An Australian "Digger" in the Sector Digging In

Quinn's Post was reached by a long straight staircase made, in the absence of timber, out of faggots of brushwood. This staircase was of course too steep for mules, and all the stores had to be carried up by hand. To men stricken with dysentery the daily water and stores fatigue was a cruel task. Quinn's Post itself was subdivided into six little garrisons or separate commands, requiring each about twenty men to hold them, with a good many more in supports. Nos. 3 and 4. 

At the head of the staircase, were perhaps the scene of the strangest and most terrible struggle in all history. The Turkish trenches were only 7 yards away, and at one point in No. 4. we had a listening post just 6 feet from their line. One could step out through a gap in the sandbags and touch the Turkish parapet (but one was much better advised not to). Nos. 1 and 2 joined up with Courtney's Post on the right. They were 20 or 30 yards distant from the enemy and had the great advantage, very rare with us on Gallipoli, of being on slightly higher ground than the opposing Turkish trenches. Nos. 5 and 6 were literally cut out of the face of the cliff, and No. 6 ended abruptly on the brim of a deep gully commanded by Turkish trenches at the head of it, on Dead Man's Ridge, 50 yards away. 

Looking Toward Pope's Hill from Quinn's Post

The gully caused a break in our line, but over at Pope's Hill an oblique spur, strongly entrenched, partly enfiladed it. No. 6 could only be reinforced by men passing right along the trench from No. 5 and was thus a perilously weak position. If the Turks could have captured it and built up protection from enfilading fire, they would have dominated the whole valley and all our communications. They had only to gain a few yards and hurl our men into the gully.

For more information on the fighting at Quinn's Post, see our 2020 article HERE.

Sources: Gallipoli Association; C. Malthus, Anzac: A Retrospect (Christchurch: Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd, 1965), 68-71.

Eyewitness: In the City of Verdun on Day 1

A French Family Evacuating Verdun

On the morning of the 21st of February [1916], it was very quiet. Then at 7:15 am, the hissing sound of shell broke the silence of the dawn.  We heard one explosion, then ten, then a thousand. Shells were falling evey 3 seconds.

My regiment had to help evacuate the the last civilians from Verdun, as quickly as possibe. The constant explosions ran through the deserted streets. Until 4pm, shells rained down on the front line.  The nightmare had only just begun.

From a French Soldier

War Correspondents, 1914-1918—A Roads Collection

Correspondent Richard Harding Davis

From the Editor:  This is a representative listing, not inclusive of all the articles we have published on this top in Roads to the Great War. MH

Articles

The Value of War Correspondents

Illustrator-Correspondents at the Siege of Antwerp

Eyewitness: France Marches to War, August 1914 (Phillip Gibbs)

Dardanelles Diary: The View from Offshore

Reporting from a World War I Battlefield: the Champagne, September 1915 (E. Alexander Powell)

French Soldier by Georges Scott

Georges Scott: Portraitist of the Poilu

Nellie Bly, War Correspondent

In the Path of War: Destruction of Belgian Villages (Irvin S. Cobb)

Canada's Golgotha or the Legend of the Crucified Soldier

Escape Artist: the Nine Lives of Harry Perry Robinson

Nellie Bly, Correspondent

Gustaf Hellström, Swedish Foreign Correspondent for Dagens Nyheter (The Daily News), Paris 1911-1917

Alan Seeger, War Correspondent

Conan Doyle Visits Wipers

Conan Doyle Visits the Italian Front

Treat 'em Rough: Letters From Jack the Kaiser Killer (Ring Lardner)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Takes a Break from His
Battlefield Touring

Book Reviews

American Journalists in the Great War

Amid the Ruins: Damon Runyon, World War I Reports from the Trenches, October 1918–March 1919

The AEF in Print

A Reminder: To search our archives for other articles on this topic, or to explore other World War One interests of yours, take advantage of the site search engine at the top left corner of every page on Roads to the Great War.

Eyewitness: Amiens, August 1918

Canadian Troops on the Attack

It is a great victory. The 2nd German Army has suffered a humiliating reverse, the extent of which, even yet, cannot be fully estimated, and much of its organization which covered the open country before Amiens has been, for the moment at least, practically destroyed.

I do not think that war has ever yielded such extraordinary stories of rout and the confusion of trained soldiers. General von der Marwitz no longer has Amiens by the throat. It is doubtful whether he has any kind of grip on his own bewildered men.

To-day we have advanced further. There must not be undue impatience at home if the progress does not meet with the hopes of the map-followers. This has been a “clean-out” enterprise, executed on very definite lines, and the men who directed it know what they are about. Do not look expectantly at Péronne and St. Quentin and demand a daily sensation. Without attempting to look into the future, there is plenty to occupy people at home in the story of what has happened. Thus far it is a most incomplete story—necessarily so. The outstanding feature, however, has been the complete success of the tanks, cavalry, and armored cars, in delivering the first shock to the enemy, and the superb following stroke of the infantry of the British Isles, Canada, and Australia. Never have the Germans been more completely dazed.

I have heard from many quarters to-day accounts of the wonderful scene as viewed front the air. When the horsemen and their rivals in armor swept across the Santerre plateau, driving terror-stricken Germans in front of them, they did the most amazing things. The headquarters of the 11th German Corps in huts at Framerville was charged by tanks and the Corps Staff pursued down roads and across fields, one general escaping capture by running like a hare.

Tanks Supporting the Advance, 8 August 1918

Tanks or armored cars—I am not sure which—captured a German ambulance train with its staff of doctors and women nurses. Other trains were attacked and set on fire, and one containing part of a Saxon division was destroyed, 500 men and 30 officers who survived being taken prisoner.

Never have I seen more striking evidence of the dismay and disorganization of a surprised enemy than on the battlefield I visited this morning. The story of headlong flight before the tanks and armored cars and the infantry advancing in their wake with dreadful deliberation is written plain on the plateau of Santerre, beyond our old front line.

From the forward machine-gun nests to the snug headquarters of the 11th German Corps at Framerville the fugitives left a trail of debris and booty dropped pell-mell. Deserted batteries confront you at the edge of ruined villages, and some of the fields are dotted with document strewn haphazard by fleeing staffs.

I passed through eight miles of reclaimed country and four villages which were held by the Germans until yesterday morning, and every yard of this journey revealed fresh proof of the consternation of the enemy and his inability to check the panic of his troops.

Manchester Guardian, 10 August 1918

_____________________

German Prisoners

On the other hand, the failure of August 8th was revealed to all eyes as the consequences of an open weakness. To fail in an attack was a very different matter from being vanquished on the defence. The amount of booty which our enemy could publish to the world spoke a clear language. Both the public at home and our Allies could only listen in great anxiety. All the more urgent was it that we should keep our presence of mind and face the situation without illusions, but also without exaggerated pessimism.

Paul von Hindenburg, German Supreme Commander

Four Works About the Marines in WWI Reviewed by James Thomas

• The Tower at the Edge of the Wood, Bois Belleau Seventy-Five Years After,  B.J. Omanson.  Monongahela Press, Morgantown, WV, 2017.

• Three Early Booklets About the Battle of Belleau Wood, edited by B. J. Omanson. Monongahela Press, 2017.

• Seventy-Eighth Company, Sixth Marines, George H. Donaldson. Monongahela Press, 2017.

• A History of the 20th Co., 5th Regiment, United States Marines, Captain Francis Fisk. Monongahela Press, 2017.

Bradley J. Omanson, poet, historian, and man of many talents, has done a great service to the study of World War I by bringing back into print several original accounts of the U.S. Marines in the Great War, as well as adding his own remarkable work tying them all together.  As a Marine myself—though of much later vintage—I took on the task of reviewing this little collection simply because they were about Marines.  Like Mr. Omanson’s grandfather, my great-uncle fought with the 6th Marines at Belleau Wood.   Perhaps they even knew each other.  Both told frightening stories to little boys of danger and adventure but never of the true horrors of the war.

Decades of growing up and “finding” myself followed, which included my own brief stint in my great-uncle's and father’s Marine Corps, leading ultimately to a career studying, among other things, the two World Wars of the 20th century.  This career included visiting France and her battlefields and cemeteries and being moved by the enormous emotional power of walking the ground where so many suffered.  Nothing experienced before, however, brought the sheer, raw pain as Omanson’s poem, The Tower at the Edge of the Woods.  Probably all readers will be moved by it, but for those who have seen that look he describes in the eyes of a wife, friend, or student it will be overwhelming.

As for the other books in the collection, students of the Great War will not be disappointed. The facsimile reprints are all quite good, and of course as primary source descriptions they provide both official and unofficial actual wartime experiences. 

First there is Three Early Booklets About the Battle of Belleau Wood.  This is a group of contemporary accounts of that battle.  It includes “When the Tide Turned: The American Attack at Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood in the First Week of June, 1918,” by Otto H. Kahn.  Kahn was an eyewitness to the battle and combined his experiences with official accounts.  “Bois-Belleau, Chateau Thierry: Remembrance from France; 24 Cartes Détachables by Marcel Delboy of Bordeaux,” is a set of remarkable photographs from the battlefield.  Last is “Belleau Wood and the American Army: The 2nd and 26th Divisions (June and July 1918) by Captain R. Andriot of the French Army.”  This is the work of a French officer describing the American participation in the battle with great admiration and respect.  Three Early Booklets also includes an addendum of photographs of the American cemetery at Aisne-Marne, taken during the 1920s, as well as maps of the area.

The second book in Omanson’s collection is Seventy-eighth Company, Sixth Marines, Fourth Brigade of Marines, Second Division, AEF Army of Occupation.  This is a reprint of a pamphlet written by George H. Donaldson in order to “furnish a reference to which members of the Seventy-eighth Company can turn, in the years to come, to freshen the memory of their experiences during the war, and their comrades in the Company.”  None of the men for which it was written are still alive, but it today provides a glimpse into the actions of a company of Marines who fought in the Great War.

Finally, and perhaps most impressive of the three, is A History of the 20th Company, Fifth Marines, 4th Brigade of Marines, 2nd Division (Regular) AEF.  This was also written shortly after the events it describes, by a Marine officer while the company was still in Germany after the end of the war.  Omanson not only provides an excellent reprint of the original, but he also added maps, field messages, operational reports and his own annotations and explanations to help a modern reader understand the context of the story.

Taken together, these works provide excellent descriptions, not just of the narrow actions of some of the American Marines who fought in France but a better understanding of the Great War itself.  Scholars and students and indeed anyone wanting to learn about the First World War should not miss the opportunities Omanson and his Monongahela Press provides with these books.

These works can be ordered at the website of Monongahela Press HERE.

Reviewed by James Thomas

Remembering a Veteran: Nurse Nora, Countess Kinsky, Red Cross

Nora, Countess Kinksy

Biography

Nora, Gräfin Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau (1888–1923)  was the sixth of nine children of an Austro-Hungarian family. Baroness Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, was her paternal aunt. In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Countess Kinsky became a Red Cross nurse and founded a hospital. For her work with the wounded and her language skills, she was chosen as an official Red Cross visitor to the German prisoner-of-war camps in Russia, infamous for their miserable conditions and high mortality. She recorded these experiences in her diary. 

On her travels through Russia and Siberia, the countess visited 16 POW camp and 15 labor camps, where she assisted in surgeries and other medical interventions under the most primitive circumstances. She was an eyewitness to the Russian Revolution before her return home in 1918. 

She married Ferdinand, Graf Wilczek and gave birth to her first daughter in 1921. She died in childbirth in 1923, along with her second baby. The countess's journal was published as Russian Diary: 1916-1918, with an introduction by her daughter. A biography entitled I Have Lived Too Short: The Story of Nora Countess Kinsky, by Monica Czernin, was published in 2005 and a documentary film called The Countess and the Revolution: Nora Kinsky, the Red Cross Baroness, was made in 2007.

Excerpt from Russian Diary, 1916-1918

September 22, 1916

Spent the day at Skotowo with the officers. A lack of order and discipline that is heartrending. The camp is not far from the sea, with a very beautiful view, but the barracks are too little, there is too little room for the number of prisoners, which doesn’t contribute to their good humor. 

We are with the Russian officers, as we were not permitted to dine with our compatriots, and they gave us meat from animals with mad-cow disease. The soldiers here are well and the noncoms quite likeable, which pleased me. This hospital made a good impression; the head doctor, Dr. Möstl, a good Viennese, whom the sick seemed to like. I found the morale of the officers worse than that of the soldiers. It’s natural, since they suffer more from captivity. The lack of occupation is terrible for them. I was touched by their pleasure at our arrival and the gratitude the prisoners showed for the least effort on their behalf. They seemed completely to forget that it issimply my duty.

The officers who accompany us, the commander of the camp Sokolov and Colonel Markosov, are bland and repellent.

Sources: National World War One Museum; Library Thing

Best Books on the Naval War, 1914-1918: A Reading List

Night Action

Contributed by naval historian Steve McLaughlin and the editors. Steve is the author of Russian and Soviet Battleships (Naval Institute Press, 2003) and co-author, with the late R.D. Layman, of The Hybrid Warship (Naval Institute Press, 1991). He has written extensively on the Russian and Soviet navies for the journals Warship (London) and Warship International. He is currently working on a study of the development of tactics in the Royal Navy, 1900-1918, and regularly contributes articles to Roads to the Great War.

****All of these works can be ordered from Amazon by**** clicking on the links down below.

1. Room 40: British Naval Intelligence 1914-18

Patrick Beesly, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. An indispensible history of how Room 40 broke the German naval codes and engineered the revelation of the Zimmermann Telegram.

2. The Fighting at Jutland: Personal Experiences of Sixty Officers and Men of the British Fleet

H.W. Fawcett & G.W.W. Hooper, Naval Institute Press, 2001. Originally published in 1920, this book brings provides a vivid account of the greatest battle between dreadnought fleets by stitching together Royal Navy eyewitness accounts.

3. The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command

Andrew Gordon, Naval Institute Press, 1996. A fascinating, lively, and massive investigation into British naval command both at Jutland and in the two decades that preceded the battle. Required reading for all students of the Great War at sea

4.  A Naval History of World War I

Paul G. Halpern, Naval Institute Press, 1994. Undoubtedly the best one-volume history of the war at sea, covering the activities of all the navies in all the theaters.

5.  The Naval War in the Mediterranean, 1914-1918 

Paul G. Halpern, Naval Institute Press, 1987. There was far more to the naval war in the Mediterranean than the chase of the and the disaster of the Dardanelles, and Halpern covers every aspect of it, including Japan's effort.

6. Luxury Fleet: The Imperial Germany Navy, 1888-1918 

Holger H. Herwig, Allen & Unwin, 1980. An overview of the German Navy by a leading scholar of Imperial Germany.

7. Naval Aviation in the First World War  

R.D. Layman, Naval Institute Press, 1996. The final work of the late Great War Society member, this is a probing examination of the role and impact of aviation in the war at sea.

8. From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919

Arthur J. Marder, Oxford University Press, 1961-1970. Still a brilliant history of the Royal Navy in all theaters, encompassing both policy and operations; its account of Jutland is one the most balanced and incisive.

9. The Russian Revolution and the Baltic Fleet: War and Politics, February 1917-April 1918

Evan Mawdsley, Barnes and Noble Books, 1978. An investigation into the causes underlying the collapse of the Russian Navy and its last battles.

10. Find and Destroy: Antisubmarine Warfare in World War I

Dwight R. Messimer, Naval Institute Press, 2001. An intriguing look at the U-boat war, focusing on anti-submarine measures; the author reaches the conclusion that the most effective weapon against the U-boat was diplomacy.

11.  The Naval Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1867-1918: Navalism, Industrial Development

Lawrence Sondhaus, Purdue University Press, 1994. A groundbreaking study of one of the most overlooked navies of the Great War.

12. The Starvation Blockades: Naval Blockades of WWI

Nigel Hawkins, Naval Institute Press, 2003.  While their armies tried to break the stalemate in the trenches in France, the navies of Britain and Germany were locked in a struggle to win the war by destroying each other's commerce and starving their opponent into submission.