The Importance of Fictional Works About the War, Part III of III

A true war story, if truly told, makes the 
stomach believe. 

Tim O'Brien

By Jane Mattison Ekstam

World War One novels represent another kind of truth: a truth which is based on sound historical research but which has been re-formed into a personal narrative with the aid of the imagination. Like the soldier, authors of World War One novels must also "miss a lot," but unlike the soldier, they are not troubled by jumbled pictures which may cloud the vision. There is no trauma, no fear of failing to tell "the hard and exact truth." The angles of vision are those determined by the writer and subsequently identified and interpreted by the reader of fiction. World War One novels contain a disproportionate number of characters (soldiers, nurses, etc.) who survive the war. This is a literary necessity, of course: on a very basic level, characters must live sufficiently long for their story to be worth the telling. There is, however, another, more important, function for the large number of survivors in novels: they have learned an important lesson, one that is as relevant today as it was 100 years ago, and must convey it. For life to be worth living one must identify and adopt a set of values which makes sense of and gives meaning to our daily existence. Many of the fictional survivors of World War One leave the war stronger than when they entered it and are as such sources of inspiration to the reader. They are not necessarily happy or successful but they know what they believe in and why. In most cases, this knowledge stimulates a renewed desire to live. These values are also important in death: if luck is against you, the conviction that you have acted true to your principles may be of some comfort. Finding such insight requires considerable courage.
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Survival, Values, and Belief 

A strong sense of right and wrong was particularly important for survival in a situation where the individual soldier was largely powerless. Most actors in the Great War were what Paul Fussell describes as modernist antiheroes, "the man things are done to, or the person whose power of action is severely restricted. The victim of mass conscription and military discipline is a version of Kafka's Gregor Samsa, Hemingway's Jake Barnes, Eliot's Prufrock, or Beckett's Krapp" (The Norton Book of Modern War, p. 12). Many of the war novels I have studied demonstrate that with a sound ethical foundation it became possible, at least for some, to transcend these limitations of the modernist antihero.

Since war is a time of confusion and ambiguity, all those involved—in whatever capacity and at whatever level—must work in what crime writer Jacqueline Winspear, the author of the popular Maisie Dobbs detective series, describes as "grey zones." Tim O'Brien argues: "For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel—the spiritual texture—of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls" ("How to Tell a True War Story," p. 181).

War in "spiritual" terms belongs to a realm where truth is no longer true, right is no longer right, and the boundary between good and evil is shrouded in a thick mist which allows one to enter but not to exit. If you do not know who you are or "why you're there," only ambiguity can result. The uncertainty that comes from ambiguity is dangerous for the soldier. Survival on the modern, industrialized battlefield of World War One would depend to some extent on luck but also on creating an ethical/spiritual basis which provided comfort, security, and a rationale for dealing with such danger and ambiguity. Memoirs, diaries, and letters of the Great War's soldiers often capture the ambiguity but usually fail to show how it was escaped from.

For fictional characters, however, the potential exists to show how the soldiers actually negotiated their way out of the mist: you cannot be certain that you will not be killed, but you can be sure of what you believe in, and you can hold on to this. Ambiguity is thus circumvented.

It is this ethical/spiritual struggle which modern World War One novels can illustrate clearly and convincingly. Well-written novels enable us to understand, on the human level, the sacrifices made in a war that proved to be the beginning of modern warfare. The novel is a powerful complement to firsthand accounts of the war. It is time for World War One novels to take their place alongside memoirs, autobiographies, and correspondence as invaluable sources of historical knowledge as well as unique explorations of the effects on, and consequences for, individuals taking part in war.

End of Part III.  Part I was presented on Roads to the Great War on Tuesday 2 June 2020 (HERE) and  Part II on 2 June 2020 (HERE).

Source: Originally presented in the Winter 2010 issue of Relevance: Quarterly Journal of the Great War Society

"Hellfire Jack" Norton-Griffiths and the Ploiești Oil Fields

Burning Romanian Oil Field, 1916

By James Patton

Born John Griffiths (he officially added the surname "Norton" by deed poll in 1917) to a minor public servant in 1871, Jack left home at 17, served a  short tour of duty in the Life Guards, then went to Africa and began working on heavy engineering projects, especially railroads. He served as an irregular in the Second Matabele War (1896) and the Second Boer War (1901–04), by the end of which he was a captain and a member of Lord Roberts’s bodyguard. After the war, his construction business boomed, and with his new wealth, he returned to the UK and secured a seat in Parliament in 1910, where he gained the sobriquet

"Empire Jack.”

Lt. Colonel Norton-Griffiths

In 1914, before there was a New Army, he was the first wealthy man to raise a battalion at his own expense, the 2nd King Edward’s Horse (2/KEH), and he was made a major and second in command. King Edward’s Horse began in 1901 as a Yeomanry regiment known as the 4th County of London (Sharpshooters). Subsequently it was an Imperial Yeomanry unit made up of Britons or persons of British ancestry from other parts of the Empire and it was re-titled from "Sharpshooters" to "King’s Colonials," then became the King’s Overseas Dominion Regiment, and finally King Edward’s Horse in 1910, assigned to the Special Reserve. 1st King Edward’s Horse claimed to have suffered the last British KIA of the war. It was disbanded in 1924, but its traditions continue in a Masonic organization.

As for Maj. Norton-Griffiths, because of his background, he was quickly seconded to the Royal Engineers. He helped start the tunneling war in the Ypres Salient, which earned him the additional nickname of “Hellfire Jack.” He also earned a promotion to lieutenant colonel and received a DSO. Without him, 2/KEH served dismounted with the 56th (London) Division, then with the 1st Mounted Division until seconded to the CEF Cavalry Brigade in 1915 as an augment to the Fort Garry Horse. Later placed in reserve, the regiment was in Ireland during the Easter 1916 troubles and disbanded in August, 1917. 

Much more could be written about his tunnel war, but this article is about another, equally fantastic, exploit of "Hellfire Jack."

From The War Illustrated 13 April 1918:

"Smoke-Clouds of Destruction" by Hamilton Fyfe, an American reporter—

"What is war," Napoleon asked, "but a game of barbarians?" Savage and senseless, save from its own distorted view-point, acts of war must always be.

It was on a sunny November day that I first saw in Bucharest my old acquaintance "Jack" Norton-Griffiths — "Empire Jack" his constituents used to call him. He was looking at the ruins of a building wrecked in the early morning air raid. At first I did not recognize him, in uniform with red tabs, but I found that being a Staff colonel had not a whit changed his jolly, kindly, care-free nature, nor diminished his immense energetic capability by any job of "militarism."

He had been sent out to see that the Germans got as little as possible out of Romania, either in the way of oil or grain. Already it was clear that the Romanian Army could not save the country from invasion. Help was looked for from Russia, but the Russians could not send it in time…

By the end of November it was clear that the oil-wells must either be destroyed or presented to the enemy. Already they had been left untouched too long. The Romanian Government urged that they should be left a little longer. But now Colonel Norton-Griffiths had his orders. Off he went to Ploiești , the capital of the oil country. He called together the British engineers and managers who had longest experience and those who were reputed to possess the longest heads.

He got valuable advice also from American oil-men. There was general agreement that the only way to seal up a well, so that it could not be used again, was to drop the dipping machinery into it upside down. Wherever such a thing had happened by accident, it had been found impossible to get the machinery out.

Then the colonel got to work. He is by the way, the founder and head of a very big contracting firm which makes docks, digs canals, [and] builds harbors all over the world. Now he proved that he was no less competent at destruction than at construction. A "destroying angel," the oil people nicknamed him. One mine manager of a poetical turn, described him to me as being "in love with ruin."

A great deal of oil was pumped or run off from the reservoirs into shallow basins, where it was set on fire. It did not explode. It did not blaze up. It burned sullenly, giving off a dense black smoke. All over the country the dense black smoke rolled in sinister, slowly-moving clouds. At a place called Targovistca, twenty miles away, it was thick enough to blot out the daylight and make dark night at four in the afternoon.

As I look back, those days of destruction are like a nightmare in my memory. A nightmare lit up by huge flares of burning petrol, lakes of petrol, rivers of petrol, and always above them dense, black stinking smoke.

Nothing in the war has made a deeper impression on my mind. The lurid sensationalism of it, the hurry in which it was all done, with the query lurking at the back of everyone's thoughts: "Can we do it in time?"

. . . It was a perilous job they were engaged in. There were dangers of falling roofs or walls, dangers of fire, dangers of suffocation. And added to these, there was danger in the threatening mood of the population.

German Soldiers at a Damaged Oil Derrick

By the same author, for a German magazine, Illustrate Berliner Zeitung—

"Just in Time"

If the oil would not light up quickly the colonel took bundles of blazing straw and flung them into it. He was seen swinging sledge-hammers against the oil-refining machinery, "He ought to have been killed a hundred times," said an admiring American. "Why he wasn't, I cannot understand." His example made all his assistants work like three men apiece.

Just in time they got their work finished. The sound of the guns, magnified by the mountain echoes, had been coming nearer and nearer. Through the town wounded men and deserters and fugitives were flowing in solid streams. There was no hope now that the enemy could be checked before he had captured Bucharest and the oil region.

The well-to-do part of the frightened population had no thought but to flee. The rest for the most part, took a fatalist view. "Let the Germans come," they said to each other. "They can't harm us more than these foreigners have done."

On a Saturday the destruction was almost completed. It was, known that the Romanian Headquarters Staff had passed through Ploiești in flight. "Give it up now," the colonel was urged. The bombardment sounded very near.

“No," he said, "we'll make a clean job of it." They went on until the Monday. Then the remains of Avarescu's Army began pouring down from the passes they had held so bravely, and so much longer than they had been expected to hold them.

Only then did Colonel Norton-Griffiths give the word to quit…

It is estimated that Norton-Griffiths and his men destroyed about 60 % of the productive capacity and huge amounts of crude oil stockpiled pending the re-opening of the Black Sea to tankers. Ludendorff was said to call this action as a key turning point in the war. For his war service, Norton-Griffiths received a KCB and was titled as the 1st Baronet of Wonham in 1922. Later he was a director of the Arsenal Football Club, and in 1930 he died of a gunshot wound while in Egypt. Romanian agents were suspected, but it was ruled a suicide.

President Wilson Sees Combat! (The Homing Pigeon Named President Wilson)

The patriotically named “President Wilson” was one of the many homing pigeons that served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I. Born in France, his initial assignment was with the U.S. Army’s newly formed Tank Corps. He first saw action delivering messages for the 326th and 327th Tank Battalions commanded by Col. George S. Patton in the St. Mihiel Offensive. Assigned to the forwardmost squad in the advance, soldiers released him from the turret of a tank to fly back to the pigeon loft with a message conveying the locations of enemy machine gun nests. Artillery could then be brought to bear before the infantry advanced.

President Wilson

Following this action, President Wilson supported an infantry unit, most likely the 78th Division, which conducted operations in the vicinity of Grandpré during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. On the morning of 5 October 1918, his unit came under attack and heavy enemy fire. The unit released President Wilson to deliver a request for artillery support. Flying back to his loft at Rampont some 40 kilometers away, he drew the attention of German soldiers, who fired on him in an attempt to shoot him down. Despite this challenge, President Wilson managed to deliver the lifesaving message within 25 minutes, an unmatched AEF speed record. When he landed, his left leg had been shot away and he had a gaping wound in his breast.

President Wilson survived his wounds and retired to the U.S. Army Signal Corps Breeding and Training Center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where he led a quiet life until his death on 8 June 1929. After his death, he was preserved and mounted and presented to the Smithsonian Institution. In 2008, the Smithsonian returned him to the U.S. Army, and he is now on exhibit at the Pentagon, just outside the office of the Chief of Staff of the Army.

Source: U.S. Army Artifacts; Center for Military History

Great War Graphics

Our contributing editor Tony Langley has a wonderful collection of graphic art that supplemented photography in the publications of all the belligerents.  Here are some selections from Tony that range from (what's called today) photo-realism to fiction and from serious to silly.

A French Poilu Gets a Hot Meal

                                A German Depiction of Defending Against an Attack

   A French Drawing of a German Shrapnel Shell

A Deep Dug Out

Sink a Lot of Ships and You Get Chicks

Crime: The Murder of the Tsar and His Family by Bolsheviks

The Royal Family, c. 1910/11

The mounting pressures of World War I, combined with years of injustice, toppled the rule of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917. Forced to abdicate, he was replaced by a Provisional Government committed to continuing the war.

Increasing losses at the front and the fear of a German advance on Petrograd eroded what little support remained for the war and undermined the Provisional Government's authority. Capitalizing on this situation, the Germans secretly transported the exiled Vladimir Lenin in a sealed train from Switzerland to Russia in the hope he would inflame the turmoil. German expectations were realized on the night of 6–7 November when Trotsky managed the Bolsheviks' successful attempt to grab the reins of power in Petrograd. Anti-Bolshevik forces (the Whites) immediately took up arms to oust the Communist regime and Russia was plunged into a brutal civil war. The following March the Communist regime signed a treaty with the Germans ending Russia's participation in World War I.

Site of the Murders
Damage Due to Investigators Searching for Bullets

Against this backdrop of political chaos, the tsar and his family were initially kept as prisoners at Tsarskoe Selo and then transported beyond the Ural Mountains to Tobolsk for some months, finally ending up in the town of Ekaterinburg in the spring of 1918. The seven members of the imperial family and their small retinue were confined to the house of a successful local merchant, N. N. Ipatiev, which had been commandeered by the Bolsheviks for this purpose.

By mid-July, a Czech contingent of the White Army was approaching Ekaterinburg and the sounds of gunfire could be heard in the distance by the royal prisoners and their Bolshevik captors. The arrival of their potential liberators sealed the fate of the tsar and his family.

During the early morning hours of 17 July the tsar, his wife, children, and servants were herded into the cellar of their prison house and executed.

Sources: "The Execution of Tsar Nicholas II, 1918," Eyewitness to History, (2005); Beinecke Collection Yale University.

Affluence on the Eve of War: Europe's Booming Economy

A Selection from: Volker R. Berghahn, Europe in the Era of Two World Wars, 2005

Berlin, 1912 by Paul Hoeniger

From 1895, the world economy entered a boom period that, with a few short recessions, lasted until just before World War I.

Here are a few statistics relating to Europe’s basic industries on which the prosperity of the new branches could be built. These figures also reflect the changing economic balances between the nations that were also affected by the dynamics of industrial expansion. In Britain, then the leading industrial country, annual iron production reached 6.5 million tons in the early 1870s, four times that of Germany (1.6 million tons) and more than five times that of France (1.2 million tons), with Russia trailing far behind at a level of 375,000 tons. By 1913 annual production of the German empire had not only increased almost tenfold (14.8 million tons), but it had also overtaken that of Britain (9.8 million tons). France’s production had grown fourfold, but with 4.7 million tons the country was not that far ahead of Russia (3.9 million tons). As to coal mining, Britain was able to double its production between 1880 and 1913 and thus retain its lead over Germany (191 million tons, plus 87.5 million tons of lignite). In annual steel production, however, there was a marked change. In 1890, Britain was still well ahead of Germany (3.6 millions tons versus 2.2 million). In 1913, however, the Germans outproduced the British by a factor of three (18.6 million versus 6.9 million).

The expansion of industry—especially after 1895—left agriculture well behind. Thanks to rapid population growth, demand for agricultural produce rose in most regions of Europe, but farming was no longer as profitable as it had been in the 1850s and 1860s. In the years before 1914, the largest gains could be made in the industrial and commercial sectors. Agriculture fell behind. This development is reflected in the migratory patterns from the rural parts to the urban centers and the momentous growth of the industrial cities. They attracted millions of workers who were hoping to find a better life than their current one as land laborers on the large estates in East Prussia, Italy, and Ireland, or as smallholders on farmsteads that could barely support a family. Millions more Europeans emigrated to North America and other parts of the world.

Finally, the rapid expansion of domestic and foreign trade has to be considered. The volume of European exports doubled between 1870 and 1900 and (except for two brief recessions in 1900–1901 and 1907–1908) followed an upward trend. By 1913, two-thirds of trade took place among the nations of Europe. Some 13 percent of all goods went to North America. Import and export figures doubled and trebled. Africa and Asia participated in this internationalization of the world economy to the tune of 15 percent.

However, as will be seen when we look more closely at the age of imperialism and colonialism, the terms of trade with the European powers were extremely unfavorable and largely imposed by the metropolitan countries, often accompanied by ruthless methods of political domination. However much Europe as a whole benefited from the dynamic expansion of its industries and its global trading relations, the gains were very unevenly distributed among the domestic populations. It was above all the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie that was able to accumulate wealth. Their lifestyles and urban residences began to compete with those of the nobility, especially at the many smaller courts of Central Europe. There is the description of the British prime minister William Gladstone, who was quite used to the splendor of British upper-class social life in London. 

Having attended a party at the residence of the Berlin private banker Gerson Bleichroeder, he gave the following description of what he had seen: “The banqueting hall, very vast and very lofty, and indeed the whole mansion is built of every species of rare marble, and where it is not marble it is gold. There was a gallery for the musicians who played Wagner, and Wagner only, which I was very glad of, as I have rarely had the opportunity of hearing that master. After dinner, we were promenaded through the splendid saloons—and picture galleries, and the ball-room fit for a fairy-tale, and sitting alone on the sofa was a very mean-looking little woman, covered with pearls and diamonds, who was Madame Bleichroeder and whom he had married very early in life when he was penniless. She was unlike her husband, and by no means equal to her wondrous fortune.”

In comparison to the wealth of the upper-middle classes, the circumstances of the working class were, to be sure, much more modest. Still, in most European countries living standards were also rising among these strata. Many families could not only afford better nutrition and hygiene but were increasingly able to enjoy pleasures of the “little man,” such as tobacco and beer. Wages gradually rose and work hours in industry and commerce were slowly reduced from twelve to eleven or ten. This meant that many men and women, who had escaped the much more restrictive routines of labor in agriculture, gained more leisure time. There was more time to socialize with family and friends that was also reflected in the expansion of associational life. Ultimately, there was hardly a hobby in pre-1914 Europe that people could not pursue within an association or club in conjunction with like-minded people. In this sense, the currently much debated idea of a civil society may be said to have been fully developed well before World War I. . .

The prosperity of the pre-1914 years stimulated other leisure activities: shopping and window shopping. While in the provinces shopping continued to be primarily the purchase of daily provisions and other goods in small specialized corner shops—at the same time an important means of local communication among neighbors—cities also had large department stores. These “palaces of consumption” used attractive displays and invited anonymous buying of often mass-produced clothes off the peg and household goods; or, during sales, they encouraged wandering in the aisles in search of bargain. What was offered here at affordable prices was linked to another phenomenon that spread in the prewar years: rationalized factory production and the increasingly cunning marketing of cheap goods, particularly in the department stores.

Bringing the AEF Home

Naval historians of the First World War tend to gravitate toward great battles such as Jutland and the ferociously frustrating Dardanelles campaign, but these dramatic naval and littoral actions had nothing to do with the U.S. Navy's most decisive contribution to the war—delivering the two-million-man American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to Europe. By this time 100 years ago, what was then known as the Great War had been over for months, but many of the American soldiers and marines who fought its final, bloody campaigns were still coming home.

Although many different kinds of American surface combatants played important roles in containing the German submarine threat and saving Great Britain from potential starvation, the U.S. Atlantic Fleet's Cruiser and Transport Force, consisting of 45,000 U.S. naval personnel manning 24 cruisers and 42 transport vessels (many of which were German passenger liners confiscated after the American entry into the war) put an entire American army across the Atlantic, a feat inconceivable to European leaders on all sides of the conflict before the Navy actually accomplished it.

Troops of the AEF Arriving Home

Even after American troops irrevocably tipped the balance against Germany and the Central Powers and the war was ostensibly over, the Navy had much more to do. Even battleships and cruisers were pressed into the effort to bring home the soldiers and marines as quickly as possible, an effort which stretched into the summer of 1919.

"After the signing of the Armistice," wrote Vice-Admiral Albert Gleaves, Cruiser and Transport Force commander, "the United States Transport Fleet expanded still more, and developed into a fleet of 149 ships manned by 4,238 officers and 59,030 men, with the gratifying result that 86.7 per cent[sic] of our overseas army was brought home under the Stars and Stripes."

From The Hampton Roads Naval Museum article: "One Century Ago: Bringing 'Em Back after the Navy Put 'Em Across"

The Importance of Fictional Works About the War, Part II of III

You can't get at the truth by history; you can only get it through novels.

Gerald Brenan, MC

By Jane Mattison Ekstam

Writers of fiction are not concerned primarily with factual accuracy but with depicting emotional truths. History books often tell the wider, national story, the course and results of major battles, the development of technology, and the state of the nation. Fiction, though, brings the individual to the fore. As Richard Holmes observes, history books "often lose sight of the men who actually fought the war" (Tommy, the British Soldier on the Western Front, pp. xxiii). In the final novel of Anne Perry's popular World War One quintet, for example, her character Schenckendorff observes, "Individuals matter . . . [their] moments of joy, a man's victory over the darkness within himself, a perception of beauty, whether it is of the eye or the mind" (We Shall Not Sleep, p. 236). Schenckendorff's observation suggests the major reasons why novels on World War One should be regarded as invaluable complements to documentary accounts of the war.

As Robert L. O'Connell argues, "The shock induced by the Great War was sufficient to cause a radical disjunction between thought and action, a schism of fundamental significance not just for the future of warfare but also in determining the context for the whole complex of economic, technological and political changes that were transforming human existence" (Ride of the Second Horseman. The Birth and Death of War, p. 236). World War One created a crisis of the spirit and called into question the basic direction of Western civilization (Robert L. O'Connell, Of Arms and Men. A History of War, Weapons and Aggression, p. 242). This crisis begs several questions: What defines a civilized society?

How could the qualities of civilization be maintained in time of war? Does war necessarily give rise to a new set of values? What happens to the individual in a crisis of the spirit? War is "the other side" of existence, where there is neither time nor place for all. The first few weeks of World War One saw the death of prewar innocence. Dreams of bravery, patriotism, or pure adventure were replaced by the harsh reality of the battlefield and the casualty station. Few if any were prepared for what they were to see and experience. The narrator of David Malouf's novel Fly Away Peter (1999) describes the situation as follows: "Jim saw that he had been living, till he came here, in a state of dangerous innocence. The world when you looked from both sides was quite other than a placid, slow moving dream, without change of climate or color and with time and place for all. He had been blind" (p. 107). Innocence is dangerous because it leads to false expectations. 

What determines survival is a mixture of luck, skill, strong and reliable comrades, and a trust in something that transcends the present situation; the latter may take the form of a code of values, a philosophy or religious belief. While most veterans in their firsthand accounts of battle have difficulty articulating such systems, the conventions of the novel allow a deeper exploration into essential human matters. The majority of the actors in World War One were pawns in a game whose rules were set and interpreted by others. Apart from a few commanding officers and officials, there were few who had any insight into the causes and course of the war or any influence over their own destiny. The chances of being killed or wounded were extremely high at all levels and in all positions. Survival depended on a degree of luck and on finding a means by which to cope with the chaos, destruction, and futility of the battlefield.

World War One novelists share a fundamental assumption that "art is capable of reproducing a more complex and more deeply felt reality than is possible through a documentary insistence on factuality" (Evelyn Cobley, Representing War. Form and Ideology in First World War Narratives, p. 12). Novelists make no pretence at providing objective, detailed, or coherent descriptions of a particular battle or period of the war; neither do they argue for a specific view or interpretation of the war, as do many of the accounts of survivors. Instead, they provide flashes of reality, intense in their detail and subjective in their insights. They reproduce something of the immediacy of the photograph, where the lens is trained on one or just a few individuals at a specific point in time and in a restricted context.

No representation of the war experience is able to reproduce reality as such. However documentary or autobiographical an account may be, it will only ever be one war story among other war stories, since reality can be inaccessible and even un-nameable. There is often no vocabulary for some of the horrors that took place; these remained locked in the memories of those taking part, and have died with them. Not even the memoirs or autobiographies of participants in World War One can make the complex, multilayered experience of war accessible.

Novels do not offer analyses or explanations, but they do engage the attentive reader in a process of negotiation between reader and text which provides important insights into methods of survival in the face of profound destruction. It is for this reason that Gerald Brenan, MC, author of The Spanish Labyrinth, could tell the historian Sir Raymond Carr: "You can't get at the truth by history; you can only get it through novels" (Facing Armageddon, p. 805).

End of Part II.  Part III will be presented on Roads to the Great War on Tuesday 9 June 2020. Part I was our entry on 2 June 2020.

Source: Originally presented in the Winter 2010 issue of Relevance: Quarterly Journal of the Great War Society

MacArthur and Patton Meet on the St. Mihiel Battlefield

From our friends at the MacArthur Memorial, Norfolk, VA

When Canada's Unknown Soldier Returned Home

Detail: Canadian War Memorial, Ottawa

On 28 May 2000, a  long-lost son of Canada returned home for a national wake and a military funeral. An Unknown Soldier, buried in France for more than 80 years, was interred at the foot of the nation's war memorial.

Entrance to Caberet Rouge Cemetery

"Dear God, we receive the remains of Canada's Unknown Soldier as a holy trust," Brig. Gen. Murray Farwell, the chaplain general, said in a prayer when the remains were placed in Canadian care. The soldier had been buried under a gravestone bearing a maple leaf and the inscription "Known Unto God" at the Cabaret Rouge Commonwealth Cemetery at Souchez, France, located midway between Vimy Ridge and the massive French cemetery at Notre Dame de Lorette.

Replacement Marker at the Original Grave Site

On Sunday 28 May, he was borne through the streets of Ottawa on a century-old gun carriage drawn by four black RCMP horses. Honor guards with rifles reversed in mourning marched in front to the slow beat of drums muffled by black cloth. Minute guns boomed 21 times as the procession moved between lines of silent onlookers.

Hundreds of veterans stood by the monument as the pallbearers—army, navy, air force, and Mounties—positioned the silver maple coffin over the hand-hewn Caledonian granite sarcophagus. It was draped in the maple leaf flag that this soldier never knew, a flag which, without him and his comrades, might never have been.

The National War Memorial

Brig. Gen. Murray Farwell, the Roman Catholic chaplain general, conducted the non-denominational service. He read from the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want" and recited the words of Ecclesiastes, "To every thing, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven." 

Buglers from the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry sounded the "Last Post," the silver notes echoing and re-echoing over the square. After two minutes of silence, a lone piper skirled "Lament for the Unknown Soldier" and four CF-18 fighter-bombers screamed overhead, one pulling up and away to leave a gap in the "missing man formation."

Internment, 28 May 2000

Paul Metivier, a 100-year-old First World War vet and Ernest "Smoky" Smith, a Victoria Cross recipient of the Second World War, read the simple words of Laurence Binyon's "Act of Remembrance"—

They shall not grow old, as we who are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning. We will remember them.

Final Resting Place of Canada's Unknown

Legion members filed past the tomb with bags, boxes, and urns to pour in a bit of soil from each province and territory, as well as soil from Vimy in France. The Unknown will lie in the soil of his homeland and that of the land where he died. Grand Chief Howard Anderson of the Gordon's Reserve north of Regina, poured in a mix of tobacco and sweet grass and added a ceremonial eagle feather. The traditional three volleys were fired by a lining party as the coffin was lowered. The grave was left with a temporary cover. It will be sealed with a granite lid, decorated with bronzes by sculptor Mary Ann Liu. The tomb is marked simply "The Unknown Soldier, Le Soldat Inconnu."

Sources: "The Legends and Traditions of the Great War" by Joyce M. Kennedy; Photos and additional commentary by Steve Miller.

Sabotage at Charleston, SC

German freighter, SS Liebenfels, in dry dock at Charleston Navy Yard
on 1 May 1917

"Federal officers had been unable tonight to ascertain the cause of the sinking of the 2,830-ton German freighter Liebenfels, of the Hansa line, which settled to the bottom in the harbor here today under circumstances that led marine men to believe she had been scuttled," reported by the New York Times.

Before the United States of America entered the Great War on the side of the Allies, a forgotten incident of German sabotage occurred in the Cooper River near Charleston, SC. The Liebenfels was sunk on 31 January 1917, coinciding with the break in diplomatic relations between the USA and Germany. The following day, Germany announced a return to its practice of unrestricted submarine warfare. Neutral nations like the United States feared the effects of this policy on their shipping and ability to stay out of the conflict. The story of the Liebenfels would not end there; the vessel would be raised and outfitted for service as an American naval vessel, the Houston, in the Charleston Navy Yard.

Eight of the ship’s officers were convicted for their role in the conspiracy and sentenced to a year in an Atlanta penitentiary. In another trial on 12 October 1917, Johann R. Klattenhof, the ship’s captain, and Paul Wierse, a Charleston American editorial writer, were convicted in federal court of conspiracy to sink the ship in Charleston Harbor and sentenced to two years. They acted upon orders from the German government, likely the German consul in Atlanta, William Muller. Muller fled to Ecuador and could only be sentenced in absentia.

Conversion of the SS Liebenfels to the USS Houston, finished,
2 July 1917 at the Charleston Navy Yard

The Liebenfels was raised by army engineers and moved to the Navy Yard for repairs. After the American declaration of war in April, five German vessels interned in Charleston Harbor were similarly overhauled and refitted at the Yard. These six vessels, given new American names, would be welcome additions to an expanding U.S. Navy. The Liebenfels was commissioned as the Houston on 3 July 1917 and saw service in convoys to France, transporting vital wartime goods like coal, oil, trucks, and airplanes. Writing in 1919, the commandant of the Sixth Naval District, headquartered in Charleston, stated that conversion of enemy vessels was probably the most important work done by Navy Yard workmen during the war.

Sources:  National Park Service (Article), Naval History and Heritage Command (Photos)

Yeah! The National World War I Museum Reopens with Two New Exhibitions

A pair of special exhibitions opening on Monday 1 June for members and on Tuesday 2 June when the National WWI Museum and Memorial reopens to the public shed light on how the organization came to possess the most comprehensive World War I collection in the world. 100 Years of Collecting and 100 Years of Collecting – Art provide a window to examine incredibly diverse objects and documents, the vast majority of which have never been on exhibit before.

Both exhibitions are open from 2 June 2020 to 7 March 2021. Entry to both exhibitions is included with general admission to the Museum and Memorial.  Here are some examples of the exhibits.

Highland Drummer by Daniel MacMorris

U.S.-Issued Hardtack

French Poilus by Edmond Lesellier

Uncle Sam (after Lusitania) by Unknown Artist

Messenger Pigeon Kit

American Red Cross Foreign Service Volunteer Ann Bailey’s Tunic

Exit Joffre, Enter Nivelle, Part II

Why Nivelle?

Nivelle

By Elizabeth Greenhalgh 

[Part I of this two-part article appeared in yesterday's Roads to the Great War]

The general chosen to replace Joffre is the only man with a Western Front battle named after him. Joffre had preferred Robert Nivelle to the cautious and demanding Pétain of May 1916 at Verdun, and he recommended Nivelle to Briand at year's end. Since Briand, at that moment, was expecting Joffre still to play a role as the government's “technical advisor,” it seemed prudent that Joffre and the new c-in-c should be able to work together. Furthermore, Poincaré much preferred the Joffre-Nivelle strategy of seeking the decisive battle in 1917, with the aim of capturing strategic German territory, over anything the other candidate, Pétain, might propose.

Briand knew that Pétain would not work willingly with Joffre; moreover, Pétain favored small, local actions with limited aims. Briand wanted a “new spirit” in his rejigged cabinet and favored Nivelle as being more likely to infuse the high command in similar manner. Besides, Pétain was not acceptable politically. He had insulted Poincaré by saying “we are neither commanded nor governed,” and suggested that the head of state should act as a dictator to get things moving. When Poincaré exclaimed, “But what about the Constitution?” Pétain replied, “Bugger the Constitution.” 

Yet his dislike of Pétain's politics was probably a less important factor in Poincaré's eyes than his wish for Nivelle's more aggressive attitude. Some saw the choice of Nivelle as a risk. Influential Nivelle staff officer Maurice Pellé, who was sacked from GQG at the same time as Joffre, thought that Foch would have been a safer bet. One could put up with Foch's speechifying because of his energy, but with Nivelle it was impossible to know whether he would be as successful as c-in-c as he had been in his earlier command positions. Nivelle's ascent had certainly been a rapid rise from colonel of artillery at the beginning of the war. Thus, he had no experience of dealing either with politicians, or with Haig and the British, or with the staff at GQG, although he was breveté; that is, he had passed staff college (in 1889).

Moreover, Joffre had clearly hoped to retain some influence behind the scenes by pushing someone whose rise had been so rapid that he had not had time to create his own political following. Joffre was overheard at GQG saying that Nivelle would be a “devoted and obedient lieutenant,” and, although Nivelle lacked the “authority to give orders to those who yesterday were his chiefs,” he (Joffre) would “cover” him with his own authority. Joffre's hopes were soon dashed. Indeed, he was sent off to the U.S. when the Americans declared a state of war with Germany on 6 April 1917 and was thus well out of the way when Nivelle's offensive began on 16 April. 

Nivelle had to deal with more than his political masters in Paris, because he was immediately thrown into dealings with France's allies, in particular with Britain's new prime minister, David Lloyd George, who was sure that he did not want the 1917 campaign to become another Somme. Armies other than those of Britain were to do the fighting! Hence the Rome conference in January 1917, during which Lloyd George tried unsuccessfully to get the Italians to undertake a major campaign. Lloyd George thought that French generals were, on the whole, better than the British, and if Nivelle and the French insisted on carrying out their plan for the 1917 campaign, then there was little reason to oppose it since it gave the main role to the French Army. Nivelle asked to speak with Lloyd George as he was returning through Paris to London, but the prime minister refused to discuss strategy with him unless Haig and Robertson were also present. 

All in all, Nivelle took command at a time of great change, which made his task much more difficult. The move of GQG from Chantilly to Compiégne and the personnel changes (a new chief of staff, General Pont, and some new heads of section) added to the difficulties of commanding men who had been his superiors in 1914 and 1915. Yet, despite his inexperience, Nivelle made a good impression at the start of his command. After Joffre, who had seemed increasingly tired and weighted down by responsibility, Nivelle was a breath of fresh air, younger and more energetic, self-confident but kindly. Liaison officer Edward Louis Spears thought he gave “an impression of vigor, strength and energy.” 

Source: Over the Top, December 2016

Exit Joffre, Enter Nivelle, Part I

Time for a Fresh Approach

Joffre

By Elizabeth Greenhalgh 

As the battle of the Somme ended and the Battle of Verdun was in its last stages, it was clear to France's leadership that  civic-military relations were deteriorating as well as army morale. The army commission of both houses had been worried by the state of defenses at Verdun, and the first secret session of parliament held during the war took place in June 1916, when much criticism of the high command had been aired. The vote of confidence that the government won afterwards contained a clause about “effective supervision over the prosecution of the war.” The deputies had won the right to parliamentary inspection for which they had been pressing. André Tardieu proposed a 30-member commission, which was discussed during July as the Somme offensive failed to achieve a quick success. On 1 August, deputies were elected to carry out the supervision. Joffre was furious that there should be any so-called interference with military matters.

Another secret session of the deputies was held on 21 November over the question of calling up the 1918 class, and this was followed a week later by another, during which it became clear to Prime Minister Aristide Briand that he would have to change the high command if he was to save his ministry. Over ten sittings complaints were aired. Although Briand obtained a (reduced) vote of confidence at the end of the sessions, he moved to ease Joffre out of command. Joffre had already cast off Foch, as responsible for the failure on the Somme, on the (false) excuse that he, Foch, was ill. This was not enough to save his own job, and when Joffre realized that Briand's offer of a role as the government's "technical advisor” was an empty one, he resigned. The pill was sweetened by the grant of a marshal's baton, making Joffre the Third Republic's first Marshal of France. The honor had been tarnished by the performance of Louis Napoleon's marshals during the Franco-Prussian War, and so had been in abeyance ever since. Briand also got rid of his war minister, General Roques, widely seen as Joffre's creature.

On 15 November the Allied military leaders gathered in Chantilly, just as they had done at the end of 1915, to plan the 1917 campaign. Joffre proposed a program that differed little from the previous year's, except for its being on a larger scale. He argued for an early start to coordinated operations to prevent any repetition of the Verdun offensive that had forestalled 1916's offensives. In France he proposed separate British and French attacks on both sides of the German salient—a repetition of 1915's strategy. Before any detailed planning could take place, he was removed from command on 13 December. Joffre's replacement as c-in-c of the French Army was Robert Nivelle, the general who had won the final success in the battle for Verdun. 

Read Part II, Why Nivelle? in Tomorrow's Roads to the Great War

Source: Over the Top, December 2016

The Importance of Fictional Works About the War, Part I of III

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Emerson

By Jane Mattison Ekstam

Why is war such an important feature of modern novels in English? How do such novels contribute to our understanding of war, and what does it mean to be a human being in time of war? I believe that by understanding the nature of representation of war in fiction we can better appreciate the consequences of war for human beings and understand the special contribution that novels can make in reaching such an appreciation. Most important, novels have a special ability to portray the moral concerns of individuals and how these affect the chances of

survival.

It is not my purpose here to argue for the historical accuracy, or otherwise, of war novels. Rather, I wish to show that works of art, which treat a limited aspect of the war, and where the writer enjoys the benefits of distance—physical and emotional—from the events which form the inspiration and context of the story told, can add to our understanding of human beings who serve in wars. 

Documentary accounts alone cannot accomplish this. Whether a story is "true" or not, it is difficult for the reporter to separate what is verifiable from what seemed to take place. Tim O'Brien, American novelist and veteran of the Vietnam War, expresses this as follows:

In any story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. When a guy dies . . . you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed. 

("How to Tell a True War Story", in Paula Geyh, et. al, eds. Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology, pp. 175-6). 

World War One has given rise to a particularly large number of novels in English, especially from the British and Commonwealth countries, e.g. Canada, Australia, India, and South Africa. These have been the focus of my ongoing research into the popularity of modern English war literature, a study which covers over 80 novels published in English over the past 40 years. 

The renowned World War One scholar Paul Fussell wrote: "Life feeds materials to literature while literature returns the favour by conferring forms upon life" (The Great War and Modern Memory, p. ix). World War One novels are important sources of knowledge not only about the past; they also indicate values and concerns that are important today. It is thus no surprise that a number of World War One novels have appeared on bestseller lists throughout the world—and their popularity continues to grow. In accounting for the British fascination with World War One, Richard Holmes points out that this war saw more men serving than any other conflict in British history.

The Great War contained all the extremes of the human condition. Sebastian Faulks, author of the best-selling World War One novel Birdsong (1994), reflected that the war has become an important setting for serious contemporary fiction. The "hideous collisions of metal and flesh" give rise to repercussions and "social eddies" of special interest to modern writers intent on exploring human nature and its strengths and limitations (The Vintage Book of War Stories, pp. ix-x). 

End of Part I.  Part II will be presented on Roads to the Great War next, Tuesday, 9 June 2020.

Source: Originally presented in the Winter 2010 issue of Relevance: Quarterly Journal of the Great War Society