Eleven Interesting Items I Found at the British Library Website

1.  John Bull Goes U-boat Fishing - Cartoon

Optimistic [hopeful?] cartoon from an Unidentified Member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

2.  Denmark's Neutrality

In this picture workers are mounting barbed wire fences along the main road, Strandvejen, on the northern outskirts of Copenhagen. Fences like this were laid out across the northern suburbs to guard against enemy attack on the capital. Denmark managed to remain neutral throughout the war. Despite this, preparations were needed to defend their neutrality, including a major defence force of 50,000 men. Most of this force was deployed in the defence of Copenhagen. Furthermore, and strictly against international law, the strait of Øresund between Denmark and Sweden was mined on German command.

3.  Italian Armoured Cars

These armoured cars are in Gorizia, an unredeemed city for Italy, excluded from its 1861 reunification. Gorizia remained an Austro-Hungarian territory until World War One, after which it became part of Italy. Armoured cars were one of many innovations used during the war.

4. War Poem by a Young George Orwell (Eric Blair)

While George Orwell is better known for his novels, the first work he ever published was a poem. Written when he was only eleven years old, "Awake! Young Men of England" appeared in the local newspaper, Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard, on 2 October 1914. The poem was published under Orwell’s real name, Eric Blair—he adopted the pseudonym George Orwell only in the 1930s. During the years of the First World War, Orwell was a student at St Cyprian’s, a preparatory boarding school outside Eastbourne. Despite his young age, he was already determined to become a well-known writer. Orwell’s poem, written in three quatrains, shows the influence of the patriotic language and glorification of war that characterised the recruitment campaigns aimed at young men during the Great War. "Awake, Young Men of England!" appeared on the back cover of the newspaper, next to a long list of names of local men who had enlisted. 

5. Children Playing Soldiers

This photograph from the Italian Front shows children imitating soldiers, carrying swords and shields and lining up as if for a military drill. The lives of children were greatly influenced by the conflict. Toy bears were replaced by toy guns to imitate the occupation of absent fathers, and playtime was lost to work in factories. Children sometimes encountered their enemies face to face and were themselves victims of violence. They were also victims of the catastrophic changes the war inflicted on their families.

6.  Journey of the Red Cross Yacht Erin

The map shows the route of the steam yacht Erin in January and February 1915. The yacht was used by the Red Cross to transport ambulances, trucks, medical materials, and clothing to typhus-stricken Serbia. In the second image, Erin is shown passing through the Corinth Canal on the voyage.

7. Execution of an Unidentified Spy Near Reims, 1914

This photograph is one of very few showing executions by French troops during the first weeks of the war. After the Battle of the Frontiers (10–28 August 1914), which ended in French defeat, French troops were forced to flee in particularly harsh conditions. In order to maintain the cohesion of the French army, orders were given to execute spies and traitors. Those killed were both civilians and soldiers—soldiers who had become separated from their units or contested orders but also civilians unable to explain what they were doing there. We still know very little about those killed, as historians tend to focus instead on the mutinies of 1917.

8.  Honk!  The Voice of the Benzine Lancers

Honk! was a trench journal published by the Benzine Lancers of Australian, although this first issue was published on board the Lancers’ troopship. As with most trench journals, Honk! printed verse and humorous notes from the trenches and also included news from home. Trench journals were notorious for their wit and black humour, hardly surprising given the circumstances of those providing material for them. They provide an important insight into how people looked at and read about life to keep their spirits up. . . Diggers’ language and slang was different from that of other forces from the British Empire, and journals such as Honk! preserve the language and irreverence of the group. A sentiment summed up by the editor in Issue 1, who, seeking to stem any questions about why the soldiers were abroad and what the meaning of life may be, merely printed, in very large type, DUNNO! 

9.  Photograph of [1/4th] Gurkhas at kit inspection in Le Sart, Flanders

10.  Letter from First Sea Lord Admiral H. B. Jackson to Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet John Rushworth Jellicoe  

The beginning of this letter from First Sea Lord (professional head of the Royal Navy) Admiral H.B. Jackson to Jellicoe gives an insight into how some within the navy felt about their work during the war. Jackson warns Jellicoe, who is in charge of the whole fleet, to watch out for "staleness" among the commanding officers, and he sympathizes with his "monotonous" work. Defensive activities were important, but they could be dull, and many in the navy wished for a proper naval battle, ship against ship, like the Battle of Trafalgar more than a hundred years earlier.

11.  School essay written by a student about a fictitious attack on London

In his story "How I made a nightly attack on London with my Zeppelin,", the schoolboy I. Biberl writes about being in a troop in occupied Antwerp. The captain receives a message that his soldiers should attack London and orders them to prepare for departure. They fly to Dover with three zeppelins and six aircraft. The student describes being violently bombarded. Despite this, the troop manages to drop numerous bombs on London. After a successful attack, the team returns to Antwerp, received by cheering crowds. The essay is accompanied by a drawing of the air attack. In addition to the pupil’s handwritten text are corrections in red from his teacher. This document shows that the pupils were assigned to write patriotic essays on the war. New technologies in the conflict were a favorite topic.

The British Library provides 671 examples of pieces from its collection related to the Great War.  Begin browsing the selections HERE.

The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

By Lindsey Firzharris

Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2022

Timothy Daniel, Reviewer

A Patient Receives a Cosmetic Face Plate

Lindsey Fitzharris’s book The Facemaker is one that all students of the Great War will find both absorbing and beautifully written. The book is rich in exploring a subject long ignored and little understood, the subject of facial injuries suffered by the men who fought in the war.

As the author recounts, facial wounds have always been part of combat as well as the most dreaded type of wound, so much so that soldiers would often do a mercy killing of their comrades, assuming they would not wish to live with such an injury.

When the war began reconstructive surgery was a little understood field of medicine. Doctors had little idea how to rebuild a nose or a jaw that had been shot away in combat.

Before and After
 Sgt Sidney Beldam Was Wounded During
the Battle of Passchendaele

Into this void came a true medical hero, Dr. Harold Gilles, a Cambridge-educated doctor. The Facemaker is able to show what a true medical hero Dr. Gilles was. He saw the horrible irony of a soldier who had lost an arm or leg in battle being considered a hero. However, a facial injury resulted in a soldier being cruelly shunned by even their families. The victims of facial injuries were even assigned blue benches in public parks as a way of warning people to keep their distance from an area the facially injured were seated.

Through trial and error Dr. Gilles developed procedures, richly detailed in layperson’s language, of how he learned to rebuild faces. The author recounts numerous cases of his successes but does not shy away from his failures and mistakes. Chapter Eleven recounts his painful learning process and is rightly entitled “Heroic Failures.” Dr. Gilles may have agonized over those failures, but he also learned from them.

This book is a must read for World War One students. True, some of the book can be heartbreaking to read, as the author, with great sensitivity, recounts numerous case histories of the soldiers that Dr. Gilles cared for. The book is a story of compassionate medical providers who used their dedication, skill, and outright genius to rebuild faces. The narrative is so absorbing that the reader is swept up in the story of Dr. Gilles and the men he literally saved. This intrepid doctor is befittingly remembered as I think he would want to be, The Facemaker.

Timothy Daniel

Recommended: America's Mules Go to War

Prewar: An American Army Pack Mule, 1912

Mention the word “mule” and you will get a response from nearly everyone who hears you! Even if they have never been near a mule, people have beliefs, associations, and definite ideas about this hybrid creature. Prior to World War I, most English citizens [for instance] had never encountered a mule.  It's  very unlikely that read this 19th-century description of the beast by an American humorist.

The mule is haf hoss and haf Jackass, and then kums tu a full stop, natur diskovering her mistake. Tha weigh more, akordin tu their heft, than enny other kreetur, except a crowbar. Tha kant hear enny quicker, nor further than the hoss, yet their ears are big enuff for snow shoes. You kan trust them with enny one whose life aint worth enny more than the mules. . . 

Tha haint got enny friends, and will live on huckle berry brush, with an ockasional chanse at Kanada thistels…. If tha ever die tha must kum rite tu life agin, for i never herd noboddy sa “ded mule.” Tha are like sum men, verry korrupt at harte; ive known them tu be good mules for 6 months, just tu git a good chanse to kick sumbody…. Tha kould kick, and bite, tremenjis. I would not sa what I am forced tu sa again the mule, if his birth want an outrage, and man want tu blame for it. . .

Tha are the strongest creeturs on earth, and heaviest ackording tu their sise; I herd tell ov one who fell oph from the tow path, on the Eri kanawl, and sunk as soon as he touched bottom, but he kept rite on towing the boat tu the nex stashun, breathing thru his ears, which stuck out ov the water about 2 feet 6 inches; i did’nt see this did, but an auctioneer told me ov it, and i never knew an auctioneer tu lie unless it was absolutely convenient.

Josh Billings

Of course, most of the British mules were in fact American mules. The British army had no mules at the outbreak of the war, though they had been used a decade before in the Boer War. The 1922 British War Office report on statistics of the Great War states that 275,097 mules were purchased from North America.

By the end of the war, a prominent British general had this to say:

Great as has been the success of the American gun horse, still greater, though perhaps less appreciated, have been the war qualities of the American mule. . . probably the most serviceable and satisfactory animal used in the war.

Brigadier-General T.R.F. Bate, British Remount Commission

Mule-Pulled Army Wagon

Since nearly all of the British Remount purchase centers were in the United States, it is safe to assume that the vast majority of these were from the U.S. Mules were purchased via dealers in Missouri and Kansas, and later in the south in Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, and Georgia.

But the south had its own demand for mules, in that most cotton fields were worked by mule power. The price of mules fluctuated greatly during the war, mainly following the price of cotton. Early in the war, British agents paid $175 per animal, and this rose as high as $230 by 1917.

In Nashville, Tennessee, the agent for the British set up an inspection for prospective purchases in September 1915. The Tennessean reported with enthusiasm that this was a great opportunity for everyone in the surrounding area to sell mules, noting that the timing was perfect for farmers to “dispose of them for a good price and not have to feed and winter them in idleness.”

Pack mules were to “have short backs, stand well, and be good boned” with weight proportional to height and conformation, weighing between 800 and 900 pounds and standing 14 to 14.3 hands barefooted.  Draft mules were to be taller, 15.1 in their bare feet, and should weigh 1000 pounds. It was specifically noted that light gray or white mules were the only ones that would not be considered for purchase. Capt. Sidney Galtrey provided an illustration of what was wanted: 

The prejudice against light colored animals had to do with visibility to the enemy. Later, in World War II in Burma, the U.S. Army was reduced to buying any animals that were available, though sending light colored animals to within a few hundred yards of the front was regarded as suicidal for both men and animals. Yankee ingenuity was brought into play and a mixture of water and the common disinfectant potassium permanganate was developed that, when sprayed on a light gray mule, produced a brownish tint that would last for a month or two.  In WWI, the purchasers simply avoided buying the gray or white animals, though later some were reluctantly accepted from the French.

After the U.S. entered the war it had specific standards of height and weight for its mules, and those were different from the British requirements. Wheel mules, that is, those that were harnessed closest to the equipment they were pulling, were the largest. In all animal harnessing arrangements, wheelers pull the most weight; animals harnessed in front pull progressively less. Thus, lead mules were a bit smaller. Pack mules were smaller still, and this was favored because it was easier to lift and lash the heavy loads onto their backs if the animals were not too tall.

Part of a 49-Mule Train, Preparing for Deployment

There were 52,137 draft mules and 9,240 pack mules used by the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe, but not all of them came from the U.S. Nine thousand were from France, 16,600 came from Spain, and 6,800 came from England.  The latter, however, might well have come originally from the U.S.!

This peculiar state of affairs came about because, after the U.S. entered the war and with limited space available aboard ships sailing from the U.S. to Europe, there was tremendous pressure on American military leaders to get soldiers to the front—with the result that transport of much-needed draft animals was deferred for months. Since the U.S. nominally entered the war in April 1917, but did not actually have many trained troops to send for months thereafter, it was well into 1918 before significant numbers of American troops were present in Europe.

Continue reading the full article HERE.

Sylvanus Morley: Archeologist & World War I Espionage Agent 53

Sylvanus Morley on the Yucatán Peninsula

Sylvanus Morley (1883–1948) may best be known for his excavations at Chichén Itzá, the discovery of the Temple of the Warriors and his study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. He also is known as Agent No. 53 for his work as a spy for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) during World War I.

Colonel Benjamin F. Morley, was a professor of chemistry, mathematics and tactics at the now-defunct Pennsylvania Military College,  located at Chester, PA. Although the family had moved to Colorado, the colonel encouraged his son to study engineering. Morley enrolled at PMC and graduated at the top of his class, receiving a degree in civil engineering. He then promptly enrolled at Harvard and began his study of archaeology, his lifelong passion.

Morley in His Cadet Days

After several years at the museum-affiliated School of American Archaeology in Santa Fe, NM, Morley was appointed research associate for the Carnegie Institute. This permitted him to lead a series of expeditions to Central America.

In March 1917, Morley approached ONI and suggested that specialists, including himself, in Mexico and Central America were willing to become intelligence agents using their professional activities as cover. In April, with only basic instructions from ONI and no training, he was sent to Guatemala City. His mission for ONI was to search for secret German submarine bases and build an intelligence network in Central America while conducting an “archeological reconnaissance” for the Carnegie Institute. For the next two years, he traveled more than 2,000 miles along the coastline of Latin America. As he traveled through Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, he recruited an extensive network of agents who kept watch on the activities of German nationals.

Shortly after the war several of Morley's contemporaries voiced their misgivings over the duplicitous nature of the espionage work that Morley and several of his colleagues had been suspected of. One notable critic, the famous anthropologist Franz Boas, published a letter of protest in the 20 December 1919 edition of The Nation. Without naming the suspected archaeologists, Boas's letter denounced these Central American operatives who had "prostituted science by using it as a cover for their activities as spies." Ten days after the letter was published, the American Anthropological Association censured Boas for this action in a 21-to-10 formal vote on a resolution distancing the AAA from Boas's views.

Sylvanus Morley at Chichén Itzá, Mexico

Morley’s career as a spy ended in 1919. During that time he proved to be a remarkable gatherer of intelligence providing over 10,000 pages of  reports to ONI. Once it became clear that there were no German submarine bases, he provided useful economic and political intelligence.

Sources:  Pennsylvania Military College Website; Wikipedia

Meet Three Soldiers of the Great War

 

Interviews from the BBC Archives

Australian Soldier Frank Brent: 

Landing at Anzac Gallipoli

German Soldier Stefan Westmann: 

Killing a Man

British Soldier Horace Leslie Birks: 

 Commanding a Tank in Battle

The Most Important Battle of the War: The Marne 1914 — A Roads Collection

French Infantry, 1914

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

Articles

Quotes from September 1914

25 August 1914 – The Origin of the Miracle of the Marne

5 September 1914 — The Battle of the Marne Begins a Day Early at Villeroy

Let's Not Forget: General Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre (1852-1931)

Barbara Tuchman on the August 1914 Crisis in Lorraine

The French-Kitchener Meeting of 1 September 1914

Why Is France's Battle of the Marne Monument at Mondemont?

Air Reconnaissance Proves Its Value at the Marne

Gallieni and the Taxicabs of the Marne

The Critical Period in Pétain's Ascendancy

Commemorating the Battle of the Marne

Franchet d'Espèrey: Hero of the Marne and Victor of the Balkans

Battle of the Marne Reenactment

A Paris Taxicab of the Marne

Reviews

The Campaign of the Marne by Sewell Tyng

From Marne to Verdun: The War Diary of Captain Charles Delvert

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

Eyewitness to War & Revolution, Part 3 of 4

Editor's comment: This is the third of four excerpts from the recently published book Four Thirds of Our Life, the autobiography of Nina Alekseevna Krivosheina. Krivosheina lived through revolution and the two world wars that enflamed Russia and Europe in the 20th century. The volume was translated and annotated [with notes in brackets] by our Assistant Editor Kimball Worcester. The series will be presented each Thursday in November 2022. MH

3.  The Night of the October Revolution

Translator's comment: By October 1917, the Petrograd populace had grown somewhat used to the turmoil that appeared to be the logical spawn of the revolution that toppled the tsarist regime in February. The war was still on. There were aspects of regular life that struggled to persist, such as concerts and operas. KW

The Women's Battalion of Death Was Guarding the
Winter Palace the Night of the October Revolution

On the evening of 25 October 1917, I was in Petrograd and went with my relative Natalya Sergeevna Polevaya to hear Feodor Chaliapin, who was performing at the People’s House. . .  Verdi’s opera Don Carlos was on the program, and although I had heard Chaliapin concerts before, I’d never heard him in the role of the gouty old King Philip. I have heard this opera only once in my life —on that significant evening. . .

I went by the tram on Liteinyi Prospekt. The route went along Liteinyi, then wrapped around to Gagarinskaya Street and onward, over the Palace Bridge to Kamennyi Island. I don’t really remember the trip there. It was really nothing special. The passengers behaved as usual, no disruption apparent anywhere, not in the tram or near the theater. At the House there were no particular discussions about an expected event with the Bolsheviks; we had talked about that a few times before, but nothing had happened. In the evenings there was some shooting, and sometimes people were stripped naked in the street— this now seemed mundane (what’s more, street thefts had just started).

The performance went as usual: the orchestra, the chorus, and the other performers were the essential background for the aged king with greying red hair who leaned on a crutch, favoring his afflicted leg. The crowd, as always when Chaliapin appeared on stage, applauded madly and shouted, the hysterical young ladies in the gallery squealing...

The first entre’act was over, and the curtain should just have been rising again. The only thing audible was the quiet murmur of the audience dying down. Suddenly, the theater lights went out, and we were in complete darkness, then total silence. There followed a light outbreak of talk, then all fell silent again. Some time passed in absolute darkness. Neither from the lobby nor from behind the curtain was there a glimmer of light. It was frightening. I whispered to Natalya Sergeevna: “It’s been a long time. Maybe there’s a fire somewhere?” Backstage some muted  bangs were occasionally audible. A wave of whispering spread through the crowd and then fell silent. Again, it was completely quiet, no one stirring. For some reason, none of the spectators (and there were no fewer than one-and-a-half to two thousand) were saying anything, and no one made the first move to get up from their seat. There was no panic, although little by little it was becoming intolerable.

Within five minutes (I later figured out the time almost exactly, so everything here is narrated just as it was), there was a slight movement in the curtain, and a voice spoke from the front of the stage, saying calmly as if it was some usual announcement from the management, “Citizens, don’t be alarmed. We’ve had a small malfunction in the electrical system. It’s nothing serious, and our technicians have immediately started the repair. We hope that the lights will soon be restored. There is some talk of a fire backstage, but there’s nothing of the sort, absolutely nothing is burning. The management assures you of that. I respectfully ask you to remain calmly in your seats.” A kind of sigh passed through the hall, and the quiet continued unbroken. All this went on for fifteen to twenty minutes. Why did no one leave? Why did a spontaneous panic not suddenly erupt? After another ten minutes I started imploring Natalya Sergeevna in a hysterical whisper, “Let’s go. We’ll escape sooner. For God’s sake, let’s leave. Je n’en peux plus!” [I can’t take it anymore!] Nat. Serg. seized me tightly by the arm and angrily whispered, “Sit down. Don’t you dare move even a little, or we’ll perish.” “What is that banging backstage?” I whispered. “Of course, it’s a fire, and they’re chopping away at something.” Natalya Sergeevna clenched my arm with all her might.

“Be silent. I’m not letting you go anywhere. Listen to me. Understood?” What helped me here was being with an experienced teacher. I succumbed and fell silent. I was afraid of very little then, but I had been terribly afraid of the dark since childhood. Entering a dark room in our huge apartment was real torture for me, so in these circumstances the experience of the absolute dark was almost more than I had strength for. Somehow, I screwed up my eyes, curled up in the seat, and just waited. When, when will the light finally come on? It seemed that all this would never end, and it was unbelievable that no one was disrupting this tenacious quiet.  

Then suddenly the light came on for a second and just as suddenly went out. The orchestra began to key up their instruments, the conductor walked out, sat at a music stand, and the curtain rose. Everything came back to life; the unexplained fire was out. At the end of the performance, we retrieved our coats and went out to the street, where suddenly there was the chattering of machine guns, quite unexpected, close, steady. They were shooting in various places, but it was mostly coming from the Neva side, and I thought that something was being chopped down from a wall, maybe some ornamentation!  

Armed Revolutionary Sailors and Soldiers

Natalya Sergeevna said, “Let’s stay the night at my place. It makes no sense for you to go home now.” I really didn’t want to and said, “No, no. I’ve got to get home right away. Things could get worse.” A tram suddenly appeared to our left. I had thought that any kind of street activity had stopped. I just shouted, “I’m off home!” and ran off to the stop and jumped full tilt onto the tram. There were lots of people in it, all the seats taken (benches along the windows), so I stood at the entrance but still inside the tram. Absolute silence reigned here as well, not even any little conversations. In a minute or two, a sailor from the Baltic Fleet hopped on the tram and stepped on my foot in doing so. It was terribly painful, and I cried out loud involuntarily. He politely stepped back and, excusing himself, he uttered clearly and discreetly, “Pardons, madmazelle.” I babbled, “Well, you...it’s okay. It wasn’t on purpose.” A short pause, and suddenly a middle-aged heavy man seated in the far corner at the exit said emphatically and distinctly, “Ha, you were forgiven! Just wait, something’ll still go wrong for you."

We rode along swiftly, the sailor standing alongside me, rifle slung, and a machine gun bandolier under his coat across his shoulder. I remember him perfectly: a young, decent, even pretty face. Also, the middle-aged fellow who appeared to stick up for me. The tram was en route to the ascent up to Palace Bridge, and here I suddenly caught sight of the Winter Palace: lots of people, Junkers [officer cadets graduated from military college] standing in groups and lines, a few bonfires burning, everything surprisingly clear against the background of the palace wall. It seemed to me that I could even make out some of the Junkers’ faces; I clearly saw that they weren’t simply soldiers but specifically Junkers. The tram took off onto the bridge and suddenly stalled, and we all lurched in place from the sudden braking; apparently frightened, the driver decided to go back. A moment later, however, the tram suddenly went forward and boldly left the bridge onto the embankment. On the descent, those young faces again appeared close and distinct in the bright bonfire light; one Junker was slapping himself with his hands in a purely Russian way. However,  the whole group of them stood immobile, as if a magic lantern had...

Now we were rolling along full speed, rattling around the turn onto Gagarinskaya Street, and suddenly it became almost dark. I remember how we stopped on Liteinyi, the driver opened the door and shouted, “Get out. The tram is going to the shed.” Unbroken quiet in the tram had reigned for the whole journey.

I crossed to the other sidewalk, toward the corner of Kirochnaya, the tram passengers quickly disappearing, and I saw that I was completely alone. Not far off there was some serious gunfire. I had to pass about twelve houses, two of them with gardens; I went quickly. There was no one on the street, and I was scarily alone at night on an empty street. I had never had cause to be out at night by myself on the street, even on my own Kirochnaya Street. I walked still faster. Suddenly six shots whistled loudly down the street. Are they shooting at me? But there was no one around.

I couldn’t bear it and ran with as much strength as I could muster, even though at first I had decided that I wouldn’t run for anything, that I didn’t have to show how terrified I was (to whom, exactly?). Finally, I made it home; fortunately, the entry to the courtyard was open, and I flew in under the house’s arches. The black staircase was dimly lit, and I ran up the eight or ten stairs to our apartment, where the door opened right away. “Why are you out so late?” said my mother with displeasure. “They’re shooting again out there. It’s better not to go out in the evenings, as I’ve said. Did you hear a cannon go off not long ago?” “Not at all, we didn’t hear any cannon. You imagined that!

I calmed down a little and then slept well. In the morning there were rumors, of course: what and how, no one knew exactly. Toward evening, however, we found out that Kerenskii and the Provisional Government had fallen and there was a new regime. Well, said our friends, it won’t be for long, and just who are they?

No one then knew, no one understood that this would in reality be for a long time and that a spider had begun to weave its initially imperceptible web. Who in our house or among our friends and acquaintances then knew what sort of man Lenin was, who these Bolsheviks were, what their agenda was? I think almost no one did. After all, the most frightening of them all then seemed to be the SRs [Socialist Revolutionary Party; agrarian socialists]—they were cursed and criticized. In our house, where politics were really of very little interest to anyone, even the Kadet Party [Constitutional Democrats] were beyond the pale. . .

Now I am simply astonished, remembering that easy, senseless carelessness with which Russian society accepted both the revolution in February and the Bolshevist coup d’etat in October. Did anyone know at the time what had happened?

The series will be concluded next Thursday, 24 November 2022, with Nina Alekseevna's account of her escape from the Soviet Union.

Source:

The four articles in this series are excerpts from the recently published volume Four Thirds of Our Life, the autobiography of Nina Alekseevna Krivosheina.

Four Thirds of Our Life is available now in hardcover at Blurb.com  and is coming soon in paperback at Amazon.

Churchill and the Tank

Mark IV Female (Armed with Machine Guns) Tank in a British Museum

By David Fletcher of the Churchill Society

In the first place the Commission desire to record their view that it was primarily due to the receptivity, courage and driving force of the Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill that the general idea of the use of such an instrument of warfare as the ‘Tank’ was converted into a practical shape. Mr. Winston Churchill has very properly taken the view that all his thought and time belonged to the State and that he was not entitled to make any claim for an award, even had he wished to do so. But it seems proper that the above view should be recorded by way of tribute to Mr. Winston Churchill.

—Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, 

in summing up claims in respect of “Invention of Tanks”

The Inspiration/Perspiration Ratio is well known where inventions are concerned, and it should be recognized that Churchill’s contribution falls directly into the former category—but even then it did not spring from nowhere. His duties to the Fleet and the Royal Naval Air Service notwithstanding, the First Lord of the Admiralty was always looking for an opportunity to gain a toehold in a war zone.

It came sooner than he thought when that piratical RNAS officer, Charles Rumney Samson (who in earlier times was one of those who taught Churchill to fly), took his squadron to Dunkirk in 1914. Within weeks, whenever the weather prevented flying, these men were tearing around Flanders in homemade armored cars, shooting up the German cavalry, and having the time of their lives. Grasping the opportunity, Churchill encouraged expansion of this armored car force with newly made vehicles from Britain, and before long anyone with a sense of adventure was anxious to join in, among them the legendary Bendor, the Duke of Westminster.

First Prototype, "Little Willie"

But it didn’t last and couldn’t last. Trenches appeared, often dug across the roads; barbed wire likewise. Shell fire began to turn the ground into a quagmire and the movement of armored cars was restricted. After all, even the best of them were no more than conventional cars with about four tons of armor bolted on, even if many were Rolls-Royces. Most were handed over to the Army while the men dispersed, some back to sea. The Duke took his armored cars to Egypt, but others, fired up with the potential of armored warfare on land, returned to London and thought up new ideas.

Among them was a chap named Tom Hetherington, who somehow managed to retain commissions in the Army and the Navy at the same time. He dreamed up the idea of a huge machine, something one might associate with H. G. Wells, which would roll into Germany on 40-foot-diameter wheels, wade across the Rhine, and bring the war to an end in weeks.

Hetherington and Churchill came together at a dinner, hosted by Westminster, and there is little doubt that the young officer’s impossible design reignited the First Lord’s interest. Churchill himself was, above all, a realist, who dealt best with what he could see and understand. Commodore Murray Sueter, Director of the Air Department at the Admiralty, remembers Churchill storming around his office saying, “We must crush the trenches, D.A.D. It is the only way; it must be done.”

Churchill’s first effort along these lines was abortive. Two municipal steam rollers were acquired, linked up side by side and then driven like mad at a trench parapet, only to get stuck in the soft mud and sit there, belching smoke, rollers spinning, going nowhere.

News Coverage from 1918

On a more practical level the First Lord ordained an Admiralty Landships Committee, which met (for the first time in the First Lord’s rooms at the Admiralty since he had the flu) under the chairmanship of Eustace Tennyson D’Eyncourt, Director of Naval Construction, in February 1915. This committee, and the driving force behind it, was Churchill’s greatest contribution to the evolution of the tank.

The Landships Committee’s first problem was to decide upon the respective merits of wheels or caterpillar tracks. Hetherington’s huge wheeled design was simply too big, and even a half-scale version, designed by William Foster and Company in Lincoln, was rejected at an early stage. That left tracks, but tracks, as a means of crossing rough ground, were hardly known in Britain and early prototypes mostly had to be imported from the USA [from the Holt Tractor Company of Stockton, CA]. Murray Sueter educated Churchill on the properties of tracks by inviting him down to Horse Guards to push a small tracked truck around. Soon the Landships Committee had experiments going on everywhere and Churchill attended one with Lloyd George, as the following article notes, at a testing ground near Wormwood Scrubs.

I Could Not Find a Photo of WSC with a WWI Tank, This Is from the Next War

Even so, Churchill was better with men than machines. and his last great contribution to this saga was to appoint a pushy young merchant banker, one Albert Stern, as secretary to D’Eyncourt’s Committee. Commissioned a lieutenant in the RNAS, Stern went at it like mad, with no respect for rank or station. Stern didn’t tread on toes—he lept on them and managed to make himself very unpopular, but he got things done. A prototype machine, first known as “Little Willie,” was running by the summer of 1915. Its successor—“Big Willie” or “Mother”—the true prototype of all British World War I tanks—was completed the following December and a matter of months later, production began. As Marcus Frost relates next, tanks went into action for the first time on 15 September 1916. In the circumstances, it was an amazing feat to imagine, invent, design, and produce a brand new weapons system in so short a time.

Continue Reading the Full Article at:

The Finest Hour #135, Summer 2007 

Jules Romains on Verdun

Fresh Troops Arriving in Verdun

In the 1930s French author and poet Jules Romains (1885-1972) wrote an epic 7.892 page novel, 27 volumes in the original French, 14 in the English language version.  It's umbrella title is Les Hommes de bonne volonté (Men of Good Will).  It tells the story of France over a quarter century from a day in October 1908 to October 1933  through the eyes and experiences many characters, but most-importantly, those of two friends,  writer Pierre Jallez (loosely based on Romains himself) and the politician and soldier Jean Jerphanion.  The most memorable volume  is titled Verdun  (in the American version), set during the battle where Jerphanion is serving as an officer.

Here as some of my favorite quotes from Verdun, published by Alfred Knopf, 1939

1.  A Letter from Jerphanion to Jallez

What produced the enthusiasm of the first days of the war? What produced it? Ignorance; love of the dramatic; and accumulated spiritual vitality which found no employment in the things of every day and so was ready for anything out of the ordinary; belief, too, that enthusiasm, given its head, would inevitably mould events. [p.143]

 

2.  What Helps Me [Jerphanion] Carry On?

Perhaps the thought I  might be worse off. [Looking after the men] and all that and numerous other details, divides my waking hours into small sections, each one thus easier to swallow and containing only a dose of poison so small that the organism can absorb it. [p.146]

The Height of the Battle

 

3.  The Inner Voice

There is in each of us a voice which whispers, "We are not sent into this world to live peacefully. When there is nothing to worry us, it's not natural, it's a bad sign. [p.150]

4.  How Verdun Managed to Hold Out

The first step is what counted.  Once you've begun a thing it exercises a terrible authority over you. . . [And also,] the pressure of society. Society today has willed that men should suffer and die on the battlefield. [p.446]

 

The Author: Jules Romains

5.  Fear

I've found one of the best cures for fear is to say to oneself it's completely useless. . . it won't make the slightest difference to the trajectory of the next shell or the path of the next bullets. [p.448]

The German Offensives of 1918: The Last Desperate Gamble

By Ian Passingham

Pen & Sword Military, 2008

Peter L. Belmonte, Reviewer

German Troops Assembling for Operation Michael

In The German Offensives of 1918: The Last Desperate Gamble, defense analyst and military historian Ian Passingham provides a concise history of the series of German offensives on the Western Front.

The topic, of course, lends itself to Passingham’s chronological approach. He covers the various attacks as they unfold, giving both high-level and lower-level accounts of the planning and fighting. Given the constraints of a comparatively small volume, Passingham succeeds very well in giving both views of the campaigns. This approach also illustrates how the British and French adapted over time and how the Germans began to tire and become more disheartened. Indeed, Passingham credits the unexpected British staunch defense, even in retreat, with blunting and eventually defeating the offensives. 

Passingham rightfully considers the difficulties of waging coalition warfare in 1918; his conclusions generally support a positive assessment of British commander Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, while still acknowledging British failures. He lays the blame for the German failures squarely on General Erich Ludendorff’s shoulders. Passingham notes Ludendorff’s well-known disdain for strategic goals, and he criticizes Ludendorff for overreach: “[Ludendorff’s plan was] too ambitious, and took too little account of the enemy’s capabilities” (p. 100). While the so-called storm troop tactics the Germans employed were effective and have been highly touted, the author cites some drawbacks, including a depletion of highly trained manpower that had an impact on future operations.

Infiltrating a British Position, Spring 1918

The German offensives played out by the end of July, and Passingham continues his narrative to cover the late July, August, and September offensives by the Allies in order to show how completely the pendulum had swung in their favor. In a concluding section, Passingham blames postwar revisionists and David Lloyd George for the negative views of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and the emergence of the view that the war was a futile bloodbath. The author’s views, in this regard, coincide with recent scholarship.

There are only 21 endnotes in the book, making it difficult to check the author’s information, but he has included a good bibliography for further reading. The three maps in this book are sufficient to understand the scope and geographic location of the German offensives, but the book suffers from the lack of a couple of nice maps detailing each offensive separately and including German and Allied units. Sixteen pages of photographs are included. Several helpful appendices cover German tactics and weapons and orders of battle. The German Offensives of 1918 serves as a fine, concise introduction to the topic, and it is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the Western Front.

Peter L. Belmonte