AEF Shoulder Insignia

The first official designation of the wearing of shoulder sleeve insignia came in a memorandum dated 15 October 1918, from GHQ AEF that “some distinctive cloth design which will be worn by every officer and man on the left arm.” It should be noted that while divisional insignia was approved during the war, it generally wasn't worn by the troops during the fighting, but became nearly universal during the post-Armistice period, while some of the men were on occupation duty and others were being kept busy awaiting transportation home.

The first U.S. Army patches were produced by sewing or gluing pieces of cloth together. Most of these early patches were made from material the soldiers either had at hand or could obtain easily, such as the brown wool from their U.S. Army blankets, shirts, or puttees (their wrap-around leggings). Most of the colored cloth came from discarded or captured French and German uniforms.

Click on Image to Enlarge

The first official "shoulder patch" as it is worn today was officially introduced into the U.S. Army in October 1918 by soldiers of the 81st Division who wore a hand-embroidered "wild cat" badge on their upper left arm. This reflected the fact that Wildcat Creek ran through Camp Jackson, South Carolina, where the division had been organized on 25 August 1917. The division adopted the name of the "Stonewall" Division after General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson of War Between the States fame. It was further agreed that since the majority of its personnel had come from all the Southern states surrounding South Carolina and were mostly from the mountains and other agricultural and sparsely settled communities, that the wildcat (which was common in the Carolinas) was adopted as the insignia of the division.

Early Versions of the 81st Division "Wildcat" Patch

The Caquot Type R Observation Balloon

Last Type R, USAF National Museum

Tethered balloons allowed World War I observers to see as far as 40 miles behind enemy lines to spot troop movements, chart trench systems, and direct artillery fire. The observation balloon most used by Americans was named for its designer, French engineer Lt. Albert Caquot. The hydrogen-filled balloon could lift two passengers in its basket, along with charting and communications equipment, plus the weight of its mooring cable, to a height of about 4,000 feet in good weather. Normal operations were between 1,000 and 4,000 feet. 

The Observer's View

During WWI, American balloon observers directed artillery fire at targets such as troop concentrations and supply dumps. They noted more than 1,000 enemy airplane sightings, 1,000 instances of military traffic on railroads, and roads and 400 artillery batteries.

Take-Off of an Earlier Design Somewhere on the Western Front
(Modified from original entry)

Caquot balloons were manufactured in great numbers in WWI; nearly 1,000 were made in the United States in 1918–1919. During World War II, the British produced Caquots once again, but in limited numbers. Manufactured in 1944, the balloon displayed at the USAF National Museum is believed to be the only survivor. The British used it for parachute testing and noncombat aerial observation and photography until 1960. The British Ministry of Defense, Royal Aircraft Establishment, presented the Caquot to the museum after it was located with the aid of American and British WWI balloon veterans in 1975. Assisted by the Goodyear Aerospace Corp. of Akron, Ohio, which had produced these balloons during WWI, museum personnel mended and sealed the balloon fabric and prepared it for inflation. It was placed on display in May 1979.

TECHNICAL NOTES:
Gas capacity: 32,200 cu. ft.
Length: 92 ft.
Diameter: 32 ft.

Sources: The USAF National Museum, Tony Langley Collection

Stonehenge – World War I – America: Connect the Dots

The Answer Is:

The Maryhill, Washington, Stonehenge War Memorial

The Maryhill Stonehenge is a replica of Stonehenge located in Maryhill, Washington, overlooking the Columbia River. It was commissioned in the early 20th century by businessman Samuel Hill and was dedicated on 4 July 1918 as a memorial to the citizens of Klickitat County,who would die in World War I. The memorial was completed in 1929. It is constructed of concrete. Because of its pre-Armistice dedication it is considered America's first memorial to the fallen of the war. Six names of Klickitat County soldiers were included at the monument immediately upon its dedication and seven more were added before the Armistice.

After a 1995 restoration of the site, Maryhill Museum Director Josie De Falla said that the memorial "assists in communicating what Sam Hill, a Quaker, felt so fervently: that it was imperative that future generations never lose sight of the loss of life, as well as the heroism and valor, which result from war" 

The HistoryLink.org website provides some interesting background on Sam Hill's inspiration for the memorial:

Sam Hill had visited Stonehenge on England's Salisbury Plain with Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916) in 1915. Kitchener was Britain's Secretary of State for War at the time and it was supposedly he who told Sam Hill, "Here the ancients 4,000 years ago offered bloody sacrifices to their heathen gods of war" (Tuhy, p. 190). At the time it was generally thought that Druids had constructed Stonehenge as a place for human sacrifice. This idea has since fallen out of favor (some archaeologists believe Stonehenge functioned as an astronomical calendar), but it had a powerful impact on Hill at the time. A Quaker and lifelong pacifist, Hill reasoned that modern warfare (like Druid sacrifices as he understood them) was a form of needless human sacrifice. Hill's biographer John Tuhy quotes Hill as later saying that he built the Maryhill Stonehenge "to remind my fellow man of [that] incredible folly" (p. 190).

Hill asked Professor W. Wallace Campbell (1862–1938) of the Lick Observatory, who was in Goldendale to observe a total eclipse of the sun visible there on June 8, 1918, to decide where the altar stone should be positioned. The stone's placement and the plan for where the standing pillars would later be located were based on Campbell's calculations of where sunrise would be on the summer solstice.

Sources:  HistoryLink.org, Columbia Rivers Tourism

Holland "Howling Mad" Smith, USMC, in the Great War

Lt. Smith Before WWI

Holland McTyeire Smith became a notable leader and innovator in amphibious warfare during the interwar period. He would later command Marine forces in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War culminating with the conquest of Iwo Jima. He was highly controversial, criticizing the sister services and the Marine Corps at times. He earned the nickname "Howling Mad" Smith and was known to use his fierce temper as weapon. 

Born in Seale, Alabama, in 1882 Smith graduated from Auburn University in 1901 and then received a law degree from the University of Alabama in 1903. He joined the United States Marine Corps as a second lieutenant on 20 March 1905.

He was military commander of Puerto Plata on Santo Domingo's north coast when the United States entered the First World War in April 1917. Within a month Capt. Smith and his company were ordered to Philadelphia where the 5th Regiment was being formed for service in France.

Maj. Smith on the Western Front

He sailed with the first convoy of American troops in mid-June 1917 in command of the 8th Machine Gun Company. Early in 1918 he became, as a major, brigade adjutant of the 4th Marine Brigade. The brigade saw action in a quiet section of trenches near Verdun and then was plunged into the battle for Belleau Wood. Major Smith's role in all this was not dramatic. He had moved from being brigade adjutant to brigade liaison officer. As such he was next assigned to the staff of I Corps, First Army. From this perspective he saw Soissons, St. Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne.

In an article, "Liaison," which appeared in the September 1919 Marine Corps Gazette, he called liaison "the nerve center of command." Much of what he called "liaison" is now called "fire support coordination." ("The artillery cannot act efficaciously unless it is in intimate liaison with the infantry which it is supporting.") After being briefly with the Army of Occupation in Germany he came home in March 1919 to duty at Marine Barracks, Norfolk, Virginia. The following year he was sent to the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island. He found it "bogged down in obsolescence," particularly in the area of amphibious warfare.

Following his graduation, he was named to the Joint Army-Navy Planning Committee, a kind of forerunner of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed by the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Chief of Naval Operations. The planners were already quite certain that Japan was the most likely opponent and were devoting thought to a war in the Pacific. He was the first Marine to be so assigned.

Lt. General Smith on the Beach at Iwo Jima

Sources:  Fortitude: Bulletin of the Marine Corps Historical Program, Fall 1989; WWII Database

The Show Must Go On! reviewed by Jane Mattisson Ekstam

The Show Must Go On!

by John Mullen

Farnham: Ashgate, 2015

The Show Must Go On! was originally published in French in 2012. The aim of the book is twofold: to provide a taste of the atmosphere of wartime Britain and to review what British entertainment meant during the war. The texts of over 1000 songs have been analyzed and suggestions given for their success. In the process, a number of myths about popular entertainment have been dispelled. Many different genres are discussed in Mullen's study, including music hall, musical comedy, pantomime, army entertainment, and amateur entertainment in prisoner of war camps. Mullen also considers non-commercial songs such as folk songs and soldiers' songs. The analyses of several dozen individual songs are enhanced by the inclusion of internet links to the original recordings.

I'll Make a Man of You!

Maggie Smith's Music Hall Number from Oh, What a Lovely War!

Chapter 1 describes the entertainment industry in Britain in 1914, illustrating how aspiring singers, lyricists, musicians and showbiz agents reacted to the trauma of war. In chapter 2 the different songs are discussed from two viewing perspectives: genre and the songs themselves. Mullen demonstrates that "each genre has its specific artistic content, but also its own social rules and values, since, in wartime as at any other time, the musical show can define the person who attends it almost as much as it entertains them" (37).

Chapters 3 to 5 provide fascinating analyses of individual songs, focusing on their themes and what they say about the life and dreams of the audience. Chapter 4 discusses the representation of women in songs, demonstrating how the image of women changed to reflect their new roles in wartime. Chapter 5, which discusses the hundreds of songs about the war and life in wartime Britain, is particularly fascinating and is discussed in more detail below. The final chapter, while discussing non-commercial songs, including hymns and folk songs, focuses primarily on soldier songs that express the British soldier's view of the war, death and his superior officers. The six chapters are interspersed by short but fascinating portraits of popular music stars. Mullen claims that the concentration among historians on kings, queens, and elites must be nuanced by a study of how ordinary people lived and thought and how this is expressed in popular entertainment. The Show Must Go On! fills this gap.

To return to chapter 5, here Mullen explores the complexity of music hall songs, which are the result of different forces—economic, social, and political. While the profit motive is a key factor, for example, the music hall must attract a working-class audience with artistes who share common features and experiences with that audience and who can "express its condition and its problems'"(147). Behind songs of the war are contradictory ideological forces; alongside a general acceptance of the need to win the war, for example, was mistrust of the government and of employers. Songs fulfilled a variety of functions: they expressed dissent or popular patriotism, urged soldiers to join the war drive, acted as propaganda, helped unite the nation, restored morale, and expressed black humor. Above all, however, they gave voice to the dream of the end of the war and the return of loved ones.

The section "notable absences," also in chapter 5, is particularly fascinating because it demonstrates that "what is not sung about can be just as significant as what is sung about" (169). There are, for example, remarkably few songs expressing hatred against the Germans. The reason for this absence, Mullen suggests, is that anti-German xenophobia in Britain "was not consensual enough for sing-along purposes" (170). Also, traditionally music-hall songs are not aggressive and do not express negative emotions.

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Death and killing are also conspicuous by their absence because there was already sufficient death in the war and because the British war poets had been providing graphic scenes of death from the beginning. Music hall songs featured both the comic and tragic aspects of war. Home was the key value celebrated, leaving little space for death, empire, or even victory. In fact, the majority of the songs do not, as Mullen explains, speak of war at all. It is this discovery that he identifies as his single most original contribution to our understanding of the role of the music hall during the war.

The Show Must Go On! is written with passion and with the reader clearly in mind. Its style is elegant and accessible, the tone is persuasive, and the comprehensive bibliography impressive. The numerous extracts from a wide variety of war songs, the Internet links, and the "Political, Military and Cultural Timeline of the Great War" in the appendix bring home the spirit of the music hall to the reader and make it comprehensible. The Show Must Go On! is for everyone—as was the music that is its subject. .

Jane Mattisson Ekstam

100 Years Ago: Edith Cavell Executed by the German Military

Account by Reverend H. Stirling Gahan on the Execution of Edith Cavell

On Monday evening, October 11th, I was admitted by special passport from the German authorities to the prison of St. Gilles, where Miss Edith Cavell had been confined for ten weeks. The final sentence had been given early that afternoon. To my astonishment and relief I found my friend perfectly calm and resigned. But this could not lessen the tenderness and intensity of feeling on either part during that last interview of almost an hour.

Her first words to me were upon a matter concerning herself personally, but the solemn asseveration which accompanied them was made expressedly in the light of God and eternity.

She then added that she wished all her friends to know that she willingly gave her life for her country, and said: “I have no fear nor shrinking; I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me.”

The Execution Site:  Formerly a Rifle Range, Now a Memorial Cemetery

She further said: “I thank God for this ten weeks’ quiet before the end.” “Life has always been hurried and full of difficulty.” “This time of rest has been a great mercy.” “They have all been very kind to me here. But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards any one.”

We partook of the Holy Communion together, and she received the Gospel message of consolation with all her heart. At the close of the little service I began to repeat the words, “Abide with me,” and she joined softly in the end. We sat quietly talking until it was time for me to go. She gave me parting messages for relations and friends. She spoke of her soul’s needs at the moment and she received the assurance of God’s Word as only the Christian can do.

Nurse Cavell Quickly Became a Public Relations Catastrophe for Germany

Then I said “Good-by,” and she smiled and said, “We shall meet again.” The German military chaplain was with her at the end and afterwards gave her Christian burial. He told me: “She was brave and bright to the last. She professed her Christian faith and that she was glad to die for her country. She died like a heroine.”

Source: Source Records of the Great War, Vol. II; Images from Tony Langley and Steve Miller

The Assassination of Jaurès, Paris, 31 July 1914

Jean Jaurès was a socialist and French nationalist who found in the French Revolution a universal message. He was fervently antiwar and was the one man in the powerful socialist movement who could speak for European workers whatever their nationality. His oratorical power was legendary. In the summer of 1914, Jaurès tried to rally the forces of international socialism against going to war, but events were moving to fast for him to do anything about it. He was assassinated in a Paris café days before war broke out by a crazed nationalist fearful of Jaurès's power to prevent France from going to war.

Source: pbs.org

Recognizing German Aircraft, 1918

From the U.S. Air Force National Museum

Click on Image for Readable View 

Click to Enlarge

Finalist for the National World War One Memorial Design: Heroes' Green

We conclude our presentation of the five finalists for the design of America's World War One memorial with:

Heroes' Green

0329 Heroes' Green by Maria Counts of Counts Studio in Brooklyn, NY

Concept Statement

Major Design Features:

• Sculptured effect of landscaping and grading to provide shade and sweeping views and to create a civic amphitheater and dramatic promenade.



• Five 30-  to 40-foot embedded copper walls with WWI life-size imagery



• Tree Garden of 116 ginkgo trees, one for every thousand Americans, who died in the war.

Schematic Showing Key Points, Pathways and Grading Plan
(click to enlarge)

Jury Comments: The concept seamlessly blends memorial, park and garden into a new type of public space. There is a strong sense of movement through the space, balancing park-like qualities with memorial episodes and providing opportunities for integration of art as an integral part of the memorial experience. The sculptural landscape in itself is symbolic, memorable and will provide a welcome respite to the visitor. The inherent potential of “inventing” a new typology of civic space that works well as a memorial is the challenge.

Submit you comments at:  http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/stage-ii-finalists.html

We also invite commentators to share your observations with your fellow readers below.  MH

100 Years Ago: The Fall of Belgrade Signals the Coming Conquest of Serbia

German Celebration of Bulgaria's Joining the Central Powers

With the Allied loss in the Battle of Gallipoli and the Russian defeat at Gorlice, King Ferdinand signed a treaty with Germany and on September 23, 1915 and Bulgaria began mobilizing for war. Militariy, Serbia was exhausted by the fall of 1915. It has suffered huge military losses in turning back invasions of 1914 and was economically drained.  Further, a devastating typhus epidemic raged throughout the country.

When the combined armies of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Germany attacked, Serbian defenses collapsed. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans began their attack on 7 October, with their troops crossing the Drina and Sava rivers, covered by heavy artillery fire. Once they crossed the Danube, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians moved on Belgrade itself. Vicious street fighting ensued and the Serbs' resistance in the city was finally crushed on 9 October.

Serbian Defenders

Then, on 14 October, the Bulgarian Army attacked from two directions, from the north of Bulgaria towards Niš and from the south towards Skopje (see map). The Bulgarian First Army defeated the Serbian Second Army at the Battle of Morava, while the Bulgarian Second Army defeated the Serbians at the Battle of Ovche Pole. With the Bulgarian breakthrough, the Serbian position became untenable; the main army in the north (around Belgrade) could either retreat or be surrounded and forced to surrender. In the Battle of Kosovo the Serbs made a last and desperate attempt to join the two incomplete Allied divisions that made a limited advance from the south but were unable to gather enough forces, due to the pressure from the north and east, were halted by the Bulgarians under General Georgi Todorov, and had to pull back.

The Conquest of Serbia — 1915

Marshal Putnik ordered a full retreat, south and west through Montenegro and into Albania. What ensued was one of the great epics of military history, and with the help of the Allies, a reversal of fortune in 1918.

Source: Wikipedia

Ravage! A 2014 WWI Art Show at Leuven, Belgium

Here's another Centennial art show we missed last year.  From 20 March  until 1 September 2014, the Museum Leuven  hosted an exhibition on the destruction of art and culture in times of conflict. 

Leuven was the first town to fall victim to the war. German troops entered it on 20 August 1914. Five days later, shots were heard and the Germans thought they were being targeted by sharpshooters on the roofs. They shot hostages, fired on residents — killing 248 — and set fire to houses.

Ruins of the Leuven Library

More than 1,000 homes were destroyed. The university halls and an adjoining wing that housed the library were deliberately set alight. Hundreds of valuable books, some of them dating from the Middle Ages, were destroyed. News of the disaster immediately spread worldwide, thanks to American reporters on the spot, who compared the destruction of the Flemish town to the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco.

However, the centerpiece of the 2014 exhibit was sent from America.  Here's background information from the museum's website.  

The burning of Leuven University Library caused shock, indignation and outrage around the world. After the war, the Americans built a new library in Leuven. In gratitude, the Belgians gave the Americans an enormous tapestry (16 ½ feet high and 18 ½ feet) designed by Floris Jespers (1889–1965, Antwerp) in 1935. The work was intended to glorify American generosity towards Belgium. On the right, we see the Americans intervening on the battlefield; civilization — an Ionic capital — has been crushed under foot, but the American intervention manages to save cultural heritage from total destruction. Leuven University Library is clearly recognisable in the centre of the tapestry. 

American Warfare — Commission for Relief in Belgium, by Floris Jespers

The tapestry was first exhibited at the World Exhibition in New York in 1939. It was later formally presented to the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where it has since been stored in the archives. It is being exhibited here for the first time on Belgian soil.

14–18: Understanding the Great War reviewed by Jim Gallen

14-18: Understanding the Great War

by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker. Trans. Catherine Temerson

Hill and Wang, 2002

Soldiers of the Great War

The Centennial is bringing a flood of new and re-issued books on World War I. 14–18: Understanding the Great War is a re-issue of a 15-year-old work written by two French historians who specialize in this war that brought so much suffering to their homeland. The translation from the French by Catherine Temerson provides English readers with a French viewpoint on the cataclysm. Interpretations of historical events vary over time, and this book offers current readers the war as interpreted a decade and a half ago focusing on the French experience, yet not to the exclusion of other belligerents. It is less history than interpretation. It helps the reader understand the war through the understandings of those who fought it, lived through it, and commemorated it. Chapter by chapter the authors examine how civilized societies turned into brutal warriors, collectively and individually, and how they dealt with this transformation.

From these pages I did pick up new facts of interest. Australia was the only significant belligerent not to adopt conscription. (For Ireland, a conscription law was passed but was never put in effect; no one in Ireland was drafted into the British Army.) Most armies were dominated by peasants, and countless war memorials listing the dead and tombs of the unknown arose in the wake of the Great War. Even in defeat German soldiers were hailed as the heroes who kept the enemies from their land. Hence was born the myth of the undefeated Reich.

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The Great War expanded our vocabulary and provided precedents against which later atrocities would be measured. In my view, a fairly balanced study of the Armenian Massacre, but one with which both the Armenians and the Turks may take exception, is presented, as the Turks sought to remove civilians potentially sympathetic to the Ottoman Empire's Russian enemies. The Armenians were deported to areas where they were viewed as posing less of a threat. Their route was accompanied by starvation and massacres before the survivors were "concentrated" in camps, popularizing a term that had first arisen during the uprising in Cuba in the 1890s. The attack on a whole Armenian people gave us the word "genocide." Allied propaganda would identify the Turks as worthy partners of the Germans who perpetrated atrocities in Belgium. Hitler would later minimize the significance of his own crimes by asking: "After all, who still talks about the annihilation of the Armenians today?" The magnitude of the struggle was unprecedented with Germany's loss of 15 percnet of its soldiers and France's 16 percent being dwarfed by Serbia's 37 percent.

The war seeped into every fabric of society, even reversing the progress in table manners as men stepped back to more primitive lives. The neat wars of the past between professional armies were replaced by total war as masses were inducted into the military and entire nations were channeled into support of the war effort. Civilians turned soldiers who had never fought before found themselves hating enemies they did not know, picking off perfect strangers and cleaning trenches of the frightened and wounded. What would they report about their service? Although uniformed personnel suffered most of the casualties, civilians found themselves bombarded, expelled from their homes and forced to work for their country's invaders. How do they reconcile their loyalty to homeland with their acts of self-preservation? How did the war affect the people's faith and how did men of the cloth and their flocks pray to the same God for help in killing their fellow men? How did individuals and nations assuage their grief and with what rituals did they conduct their mourning?

Authors Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker raise and try to answer these questions and more and thereby help readers appreciate why the Great War evolved the way it did and the impact it had, and continues to have, on the world to this day. At times they run counter to modern trends that characterize soldiers as innocents who recognized their shared humanity more than their national hatreds. The writing flows so well that I would not have known that it was a translation had I not been told. This is a book that makes the reader ponder the swirling passions and events of the Great War.

Suffering Serbian Soldiers During Their Retreat

What we see will depend on our own knowledge and experience. At times I concluded that the American Civil War anticipated the course of World War I and its aftermath. Didn't both involve the whole populace, leaving every family with an empty chair and survivors bitter at their enemies? Were the Turkish fears of Armenian treachery any more or less justified than later American suspicions of Japanese-Americans? Did the respective deportations vary more in degree than in initial motivation? At the end of this work I felt that I was aware of some currents flowing below the surface of battle and politics that so often dominate other tomes. Understanding will require more study and reflection. 14–18: Understanding The Great War is a good read early in the Centennial as it will help readers appreciate some of the thoughts they will encounter in future histories.

Jim Gallen

HMS Dreadnought at War

When the great struggle finally came, Dreadnought was a bit "long in the tooth." Serving in the Third Battle Squadron of the home fleet for most of the war, the ship did accomplish a singular feat of arms. On 18 March 1915 she rammed and sank U-29. in the North Sea. HMS Dreadnought thus holds the distinction of being the only battleship to sink a submarine in combat.

Recommended: Comparing the American Civil War and the Great War

I just discovered this excellent article at the New Yorker.  It's a topic I wrote on years ago, but, of course, this is much better written.

Two Wars and the Long Twentieth Century

BY DREW GILPIN FAUST

Trenches, Petersburg, VA, 1864 (National Archives)

. . . A case can be made that the American Civil War anticipated, in important ways, the transformations that have so often been attributed to the years between 1914 and 1918. The Civil War might well be viewed as the beginning of a “long twentieth century”: in its introduction of a scale of death that came to be associated with a later era, in what Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox, historians of the First World War, have called warfare’s new combination of “industrial firepower and logistics with the fighting power and staying power that nationalism could generate”; in its mobilization of mass armies through the novel introduction of conscription; in its associated reliance on citizens both in battle and on the home front to sustain the conflict; and in a resulting emergence of new conceptions of citizenship and its privileges, which affected both the living and the dead. The violence of the American Civil War interrupted an age that saw itself as one of growing benevolence and humanitarianism, introducing a startling awareness of man’s capacities for destruction that found its terrible fulfillment between 1914 and 1918. . .

Read the full article here:

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/two-wars-and-the-long-twentieth-century

What Was Monty Doing in the Great War?

Contributed by Matt Church

Despite being best known for his heroics in World War II, Bernard Montgomery also saw action in the First World War. Montgomery began the war as a full lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in August 1914. At the time Montgomery was only 26 years old. He joined the Warwickshire Regiment in 1908 at Peshawar after passing out of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. The Royal Warwickshire Regiment crossed over to France in August 1914 and narrowly missed the Battle of Mons. On 26 August 1914 Montgomery's regiment counterattacked a German regiment and was left behind in the confusion that would become the Retreat from Mons. The regiment marched three days between the German cavalry screen and German main column, eventually making it back to the British lines. 

Montgomery later led his platoon in an attack on the village of Meteren on 13 October 1914. During the successful attack, Montgomery was shot in the chest and knee and evacuated to an Advanced Dressing Station. The doctors thought he had little chance of survival and a grave was dug. He eventually recovered and was evacuated to a hospital in England. After recovering from his wound, Montgomery returned to the front in 1916 as a brigade major and a member of the staff. He was present at the Battle of the Somme and began to develop his views concerning the distance between staff and troops. He believed the staff should serve the commander and troops, not the troops serve the staff. He was later attached to the 47th London Division and devised a system of information relay from the front to HQ using wireless sets, which he would improve upon during the North African Campaign in WWII. Montgomery started the war as a lieutenant and ended as a chief of staff.

References:

Montgomery, Bernard. The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

Finalist for the National World War One Memorial Design: An American Family Portrait Wall in the Park

We continue our presentation of the finalists for the design of America's World War One memorial with:

An American Family Portrait Wall in the Park

0263 An American Family Portrait Wall in the Park by STL Architects, Chicago, IL

Rendering

Concept Statement

Major Design Features:

• A  Family Photo Album of over 100 large-format images grouped according to four themes:  family, brotherhood, diversity, and national pride



• Six large bronze statues including the existing Pershing statue



• Dramatic nighttime lighting scheme

Distribution Pattern of the Four Themes

Jury Comments: The design concept is founded on paying tribute to the American men and women who participated in World War I through a memorial collage of photographs integrated into the park design. By seamlessly blending framed memories into the landscape, it provides an experience that is both park and memorial, open and inviting exploration. The park is organized by a northwest-southeast axis axis visually connecting the park to the Capitol. While this concept has the potential of a truly unique park, the thematic, technical, and curatorial issues of the story boxes will require resolution. The statuary design, scale and execution will need to be an integral part of the interpretive and memorial experience.

Designer's Concept in Partial Schematic Cross-Section

Submit you comments at:  http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/stage-ii-finalists.html

We also invite commentators to share your observations with your fellow readers below.  MH

Never Seen Images from the Austrian National Library

Well, I've never seen these before and I've viewed thousands of photos, posters and works of art from the Great War.  I discovered this on the hard-to-use, but high-quality Europeana Website.

Bank War Loan Poster

Future Emperor Karl Inspecting an Armored Train

Larger-Than-Life Emperor Franz Josef Inspiring His Soldiers

Lottery Ticket for the War Welfare Fund Sponsored on Empress Zita's Children's Day;
Four-Year-Old Crown Prince Otto Shown

Austrian Soldier Peers Out from Hut Overlooking Valsugana, Italian Front

Injured Soldier Writing with Help of Dr. Spitzy's Radialis Splint

A Child's Wildly Inaccurate Depiction of the Execution of Traitor/Patriot Cesare Battisti

Lieutenant Colonel William Barker, VC: Air Ace on Two Fronts

Whatever changed a Manitoba farm boy into one of the most decorated Canadian soldiers in two world wars? 

During his early years in Dauphin and Russell, Barker showed an aptitude for machinery and marksmanship but little ambition for education. Once war was declared he enlisted. The army trained Barker as a machine gunner, and sent his Canadian regiment to fight in the Flanders trenches. Within a year, Barker had obtained a transfer into the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) as a gunner-observer. Before he turned 22, Will Barker had exchanged the life of a lowly Canadian trooper for that of British officer. Flying had become his vocation. 

By 1918, Barker had been transformed into one of the best known soldiers in the allied forces. He received pilot's training after masterly service as a gunner-observer on reconnaissance flights over the German trenches (France, 1916). His airmanship was obvious when he began flying sorties, even in reconnaissance activity which relied upon teamwork. 

Quickly promoted to Captain (May 1917), Barker began to exhibit the same careful leadership that would win him the respect of pilots he led for the rest of the war. Not one pilot died while flying under Barker's command. No aircraft in his escort was ever shot down. Barker ensured his flights (and later his squadrons) were ready for danger. In later years, the same qualities made him insist that the newly created Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) equip its airmen with parachutes. 

Barker with His Sopwith Camel

Despite recognition, Barker wanted to be a "scout" and fly solo. When he was sent to England as an instructor in August 1917, he buzzed Piccadilly Circus and RFC headquarters until he was assigned to a scout squadron. Scouts were the romantic "knights of the skies" whose duels were avidly recorded in the press. Their reputations were won by the number of enemy aircraft they shot down, and Barker was among the best. His tally of 50 was earned in the same Sopwith Camel plane in the remaining wartime. Immediately given command, he is the only RFC scout never to have flown under another's instructions. 

Assignment to the Italian Front in October 1917 provided Baker the opportunity to establish his reputation as a scout. He was soon promoted to major, flying missions constantly both with his men and solo. When forced to rest, he angled an observation trip to the Western Front, determined to increase his combat tally. There, he barely survived attack by a large force of German fighters. Barker shot down three planes, but he lay in a hospital bed until war was over. 

William Barker died when a combat injury caused him to lose control of his test plane in 1930. His wartime record still stands in a blaze of glory. He was decorated both for exceptional devotion to duty and for extraordinary valor. He holds eight high honors, including the most distinguished military medals accorded by three countries: France, Italy, and Great Britain.

Source: Parks Canada News Release, updated 1 May 2015

America and World War I: A Traveler's Guide reviewed by Peter L. Belmonte

America and World War I: A Traveler's Guide

by Mark D. Van Ells

Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2015

In his introduction to this book, author Mark D. Van Ells, Professor of History at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York, rightly ponders the question of why Americans seem less interested in the history and memorials concerning World War I than in those of other wars. Van Ells's book goes a long way to encouraging such interest. Against the backdrop of America's war experience, this book surveys hundreds of relevant locations, memorials, and monuments ranging in size from small plaques to major battlefields and cemeteries, located in the United States, Canada, and Europe. To add a human element, the narrative is peppered with accounts from soldiers' letters and diaries and regimental histories.

Camp Dix Back Then (Now Fort Dix)

Much of the book covers the American military effort in Europe, but for those of us unable to travel overseas to view battlefields, Van Ells includes stateside locales that we might have a chance of visiting. Ports of Embarkation and training bases are covered in detail. The discussion of the fate of stateside training camps is particularly poignant. Many are still active military or National Guard bases (Fort Dix, New Jersey, and Fort Lewis, Washington, for example; there are lone monuments in busy business or residential areas to mark the locations of others. For some, all that remains to indicate that a military post once occupied the grounds are street names (Artillery Road and Warehouse Court at Camp Sevier, South Carolina, for example). Others, like Camp Cody, New Mexico, are gone forever, overtaken by desert and grassland, with not even a monument to commemorate its former existence.

The entire scope of America's military experience during the war is represented in the book. The sections on the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) touch on all the big battles and many minor ones. In addition, prominent U.S. military members like General Pershing, George Patton, and Alvin York receive special mention. Indeed, the breadth of coverage is so wide that mention will be made here of only some items that may be of special interest to the reader.

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One such topic is the coverage of the Army Air Service's Spruce Production Division, soldiers working in the Pacific Northwest to cut down, process, and ship the tons of spruce required for production of military airplanes. The author also devotes a chapter to the AEF's Services of Supply (SOS). These soldiers labored behind the lines in supply depots, rail yards, and lumber mills; victory was due just as much to them and their unglamorous work as to the brave Doughboys on the front lines. Of special note is the fact that Van Ells mentions the first U.S. military men killed in action during the war. Most histories, including this one, recount the episode on 3 November 1917, where three men of the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division, were killed in a trench raid. The author, however, also records an earlier, lesser-known incident where, on 4 September 1917, a German air raid on Base Hospital No. 5 in the Pas de Calais region killed Lieutenant William T. Fitzsimons and Privates Rudolph Rubino, Oscar Tugo, and Leslie Woods. Lieutenant Fitzsimons was the first American military man killed in action, and there is a memorial fountain in his honor in Kansas City, Missouri.

These are just a few of the items covered in the book; as stated above, all the major battles and campaigns receive their full share of coverage. The author also includes special chapters devoted to the Navy, the Army Air Service, and African American soldiers. Of course not every spot visited by a Doughboy is memorialized, and often the author notes, as he did at the end of a description of a French rest camp, that "No plaques, statues, or historic markers indicate the area's former use."

Your Editor with the
Cantigny Doughboy

The book is not footnoted, so it isn't a scholarly historical work, per se — and there is also a strong "then and now" cast to it. It's certainly useful as a travel guide, and for those who are interested in a nice summary of US participation in the Great War, it will prove to be pleasantly diverting. The photographs of monuments are reproduced in a small format but are sufficient to give an impression of what's there. Appendices list American Battle Monuments Commission sites in Europe, worldwide memorials, museums, historical sites and historical societies, all with website addresses and other contact information. As an aid to exploring, the book also includes GPS coordinates for some areas. Van Ells performed diligent work in researching and ferreting out all these monuments and points of interest, both great and small. He deserves commendation.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks it became de rigueur among some Americans to make fun of France, sometimes good-naturedly but usually with mean spirits, for her perceived lack of willingness to assist the United States in fighting terrorism. Those who still persist in this notion should do well to consider this: there are monuments to Doughboys in many small French villages and the only people who are taking care of them with reverence and respect are the French villagers who, unlike some Americans, still remember what the Doughboys did for France nearly 100 years ago.

Peter L. Belmonte

The October St. Mihiel Trip-Wire

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Who was Brand Whitlock?

Brand Whitlock (1869–1934) was born in Urbana, Ohio. He became a journalist and worked for the Chicago Herald. He was later employed by John P. Altgeld, the reforming governor of Illinois. Whitlock also worked closely with Samuel Jones, the radical mayor of Toledo.

Whitlock became increasingly involved in politics and eventually served four terms as mayor of Toledo (1906–14). Like Samuel Jones, Whitlock developed a reputation as an honest and efficient mayor. In 1914 Whitlock accepted an appointment by President Woodrow Wilson as American Minister to Belgium, during which time he earned a nickname as Le Ministre Protecteur on account of his frequent appeals to German military authorities in occupied Belgium on behalf of condemned prisoners. 

He kept a detailed diary of the war years.  Here he describes Brussels after one year of occupation.

August 20, 1915. — One year ago today the grey horde entered Brussels; and now for a whole year we have had the experience, unique and terrible for an American who from infancy had been trained in liberty, of living under an irresponsible military despotism. We have seen that army swoop across this poor, dear little country, committing every crime, every abhorrence, every outrage. The effect upon the life of the Belgians has been death. A year ago there was a happy, contented population, laborious, peaceful. The Government of the free communes had made it, during the centuries, a liberty-loving, self-governing, democratic people. And for no reason, that grey horde came with fire and sword, laying waste the land, pillaging, looting, murdering, raping — it is even yet wholly inconceivable that in our day such a thing could be. History knows no such crime The rape of Poland was not so bad, because the internal dissensions of Poland were really responsible for that.

President Wilson with Whitlock—
Nieuport, Belgium, June 1919

And Brussels is so sadly changed. We have not heard the ring of a hammer or of a trowel in a year; what music it would be! The shops are depleted; there is no such thing for instance as a new hat; a new style; many things can scarcely be procured at all — soap, tooth-brushes, many medicines, cigarettes and so on. Prices have quadrupled. It costs us to live four times what it cost before the war. Butter, they say, will soon be impossible to obtain, and the chickens are disappearing, for there is no food for them. The streets are dead; no life in them — people dragging about, staring aimlessly, and every block a squad or a company of the grey — that dirty, hideous grey! — uniformed last reserves tramping stolidly, stupidly, brutally along, in their heavy hobnailed boots. The Germans have changed the aspect of the city. Once the most beautiful city in Europe or surely one of the most beautiful, they have destroyed its artistic appearance by the evidences of their taste. They have built kiosks for the vendors of German newspapers, books and publications everywhere, hideous things of clashing colors; and they have stuck up everywhere their garish red, white, and black sentry-boxes like monstrous barber-shop signs.

Today the country is bare, stripped to the bone. The atrocities the drunken, brutal soldiers committed in the early weeks of the war are not worse than those other Machiavellian or Borgian crimes they commit now, the attempts at slow poisoning and corruption of the minds of those they would enslave. We have no press, no post, no communications, no telephone (though that is not such a deprivation but a blessing rather!), no liberty whatever. All of those rights we claim in our bill of rights are all denied — only a reign of terror. It is a year I don't like to look back upon. I don't know how I have lived through it or how much longer this must be endured. And I am the most privileged man in Belgium, and my soul sickens every day and my heart grows hot with impotent rage at what these Germans do.

And yet how different today from that day a year ago! The city has been very still.