Western Front Virtual Tour — Stop 23: Devonshire Cemetery

Near the entrance of this small cemetery stands this marker:

THE DEVONSHIRES HELD THIS TRENCH

THE DEVONSHIRES HOLD IT STILL

1st July 1916

The 8th and 9th Devons

Suffered Very Heavy Casualties

As They Left Their Forward 

Trench to Attack

Later That Day

The Survivors Buried Their Fallen

Comrades in That Same Trench

And Erected a Wooden Memorial

With the Words Which Are

Carved in the Cross Above

The best known burial in the  Devonshire Cemetery is that of Lt. William Noel Hodgson. Shortly before the battle he wrote the poem "Before Action".  It is a tradition for visitors to the cemetery to recite the poem over Hodgson's grave.

Before Action

By all the glories of the day

And the cool evening's benison

By that last sunset touch that lay

Upon the hills when day was done,

By beauty lavishly outpoured

And blessings carelessly received,

By all the days that I have lived

Make me a soldier, Lord.

By all of all man's hopes and fears

And all the wonders poets sing,

The laughter of unclouded years,

And every sad and lovely thing;

By the romantic ages stored

With high endeavour that was his,

By all his mad catastrophes

Make me a man, O Lord.

I, that on my familiar hill

Saw with uncomprehending eyes

A hundred of thy sunsets spill

Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,

Ere the sun swings his noonday sword

Must say good-bye to all of this; -

By all delights that I shall miss,

Help me to die, O Lord.

21 June 1919: The Great Scuttling at Scapa Flow

This Saturday is the anniversary of one of the most memorable postscripts of World War I, the scuttling of the German surrendered fleet at Scapa Flow. Of the 77 ships interned, 52 were irretrievably sunk. In their rage, the British summarily executed a number of German sailors who posed no danger to them; nine were shot dead and many more wounded. Only a few cruisers, destroyers, and the 15"-gun battleship Baden were rescued; the remaining German fleet sank to the bottom, where seven of them remain to this day. It was the largest sinking of naval tonnage in a single incident ever — more than 400,000 tons.

German Submarine Sinking

On 21 June 1919, a party of schoolchildren from the town of Stromness was being taken on a trip around Scapa Flow to view the German Fleet. Little did they know when they left home that day what they were to witness.

The following is a piece written by one of the children, James Taylor, one of the pupils who witnessed the scuttling:

On Saturday June 21st 1919, I rose very early, as it would never do to be late for a school treat which was to take the form of a cruise on the Flying Kestrel to visit the surrendered German Fleet. The though of sailing up to them made us boys almost sick with excitement!

At long last we came face to face with the Fleet. Their decks were lined with German sailors who....did not seem too pleased to see us. Suddenly without any warning and almost simultaneously these huge vessels began to list over to port or starboard; some heeled over and plunged headlong, their sterns lifted high out of the water.

Battle Cruiser SMS Seydlitz Rolling Over

Out of the vents rushed steam and oil and air with a dreadful roaring hiss.

And as we watched, awestruck and silent, the sea became littered for miles round with boats and hammocks, lifebelts and chests....and among it all hundreds of men struggling for their lives.

As we drew away from this nightmare scene we watched the last great battleship slide down with keel upturned like some monstrous whale.

Sources:  Scapa Flow and City of Art Websites, U.S. Navy Archives

A Great Centennial Resource: The Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress

Visit the Site at:
http://www.loc.gov/vets/stories/ex-war-wwi.html

If you want to hear the story of the war in the words of the American soldiers, sailors, and Marines, this is the place for you. The Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress has been serving as a depository for the personal accounts of American veterans for over a decade. On this website they have assembled some of the most authentic, eloquent, and moving memories from diaries, letters, and unpublished manuscripts of the nation's Great War veterans.

Here are few quotes I enjoyed. However, these one-liners are just samples. These and many more full manuscripts are available for you to read online.

“If I ever wanted to be about the size of an ant, it was when I crawled through that hell of shellfire and slid over onto that sunken road.” 

James Nelson Platt, 4th Division AEF

"Boy, these cooties are great; I don't think that they ever sleep, or if they do, they sure do leave a large detail awake to keep us busy."
John Joseph Brennan, 27th Division, AEF

"I had been scared several times in my life before, but now that I could hear these shells coming over I really began to know what fear was..."

Quiren M. Groessl, 1st Division, AEF

"Tonight a regiment marched by, each battalion playing its band and the men singing as they went up to the trenches. It was a most impressive thing to hear & filled one's mind with the wonders of war." (Last diary entry, April 10, 1918)

Gustav Hermann Kissel, Assigned to 43 Squadron RAF, KIA

"An infantryman cannot combat shells. All he can do is get away or be dug in so deeply that none will injure him."

Mark Lewis McCave, 89th Divison, AEF

"War is mostly work, partly like a 4th of July celebration; partly like a circus, and to anyone with ambition and life in him, extremely fascinating.... I would very much like to get into the artillery...as an observer, or a range finder, and hope to see real action before the fighting is over."

Albert Lester Kleinecke, 29th Engineers, AEF

"Most of the men were drinking water out of shell holes, taking a chance, as most of the holes were full of gas."

Harry Frieman, 79th Division, AEF

"Those boys up there were still in that Hell, and the end wasn't in sight yet. Closing my eyes I could still see those mangled and bloody bodies of my buddies, and I began to wonder what it was all about." 

Morris Albert Martin, 91st Division, AEF

The School of Hard Knocks: Combat Leadership in the American Expeditionary Forces — reviewed by Peter L. Belmonte

The School of Hard Knocks: Combat Leadership in the American Expeditionary Forces

by Richard S. Faulkner

Texas A&M University Press, 2012

When the United States Army expanded at the start of the Great War there was a desperate need for officers to fill the leadership positions at all levels, but especially in lower levels of command. How well the Army trained and developed officers would, in a large part, determine how well the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) would perform in combat. Richard S. Faulkner, in his book The School of Hard Knocks: Combat Leadership in the American Expeditionary Forces, claims that the AEF failed to develop into a highly effective fighting force largely because of a failure in leadership among its junior officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs).

Faulkner suggests three main reasons for this failure: a poor officer training system in the United States and later in the AEF, misguided personnel policies that resulted in large numbers of men moved from unit to unit or dispatched to schools, and an incorrect view of the tactics necessary for victory on the battlefield.

After reviewing the immediate prewar state of officer and NCO training and the sudden need for a greatly expanded cadre of junior leaders, Faulkner begins a discussion of the various methods of wartime officer training. Faulkner contends that the training of officer candidates in schools in the United States was, overall, unsatisfactory. According to Faulkner, the officers schools devoted too much time to such subjects as bayonet training and flag signaling to the detriment of such topics as the proper use of auxiliary weapons.

Order Now

Personnel policies both stateside and overseas tended to hamper officer development. While in training stateside, men were shunted from unit to unit in order to fill manpower deficiencies. These transfers, designed "to enhance the overall institutional efficiency" of the Army, had the effect of hindering training, hurting unit morale, and dampening the efforts of officers and NCOs to create unit cohesion. (p. 134) Often NCOs were tapped for officer training against their will; thus many men who were not mentally or emotionally qualified to be officers languished in training schools. Overseas, AEF policy resulted in officers and NCOs yanked from their men and sent to various schools in what seemed to be a random manner. This had the effect of disrupting unit cohesion and training.

Faulkner believes that the relentless push for success, driven from the highest levels of the AEF, fostered a climate of fear that crippled overall officer performance. An officer who failed would very likely be relieved and sent to Blois, the AEF reclassification center in France. This climate, argues Faulkner, had at least one desired effect — it "pushed commanders to accomplish their missions and demand results from their subordinates." But, he continues, "it also encouraged them to micromanage their units, reduce the initiative of their subordinates, stifle the development of their junior leaders, and heedlessly push attacks after it was clear that such efforts were not worth the cost of the gain." (p. 194)

Officers in the AEF were bound to rifleman-based tactics that harmed their performance in combat. Faulkner contends that the official Army reliance on infantrymen with rifles and bayonets making frontal assaults against fortified positions was a cause of high casualties and low success rates. Although many junior leaders, such as platoon and company commanders, eventually overcame this and adapted their tactics to the actual situation on the battlefield, they did so, claims Faulkner, without AEF headquarters encouragement or guidance.

American Trench Raiders in No-Man's-Land

Faulkner recounts numerous examples of the failure of AEF officers and NCOs, each of which, of course, could have been matched with many counterexamples of competence and bravery. The reader should understand that Faulkner's emphasis is on examples of AEF failure. Although Faulkner is unstinting in his criticism of AEF performance regarding junior leaders, he comes very near to the crux of the issue when he writes: "Some of these problems were the result of the inherent realities of the Great War's battlefields that all the major combatants had to contend with during the conflict." (p. 319) Faulkner concedes: "For all of its problems, in the end the AEF accomplished its strategic goal. … [T]he doughboys' rather unskillful and costly attacks still wore down the strength and willpower of their Teutonic foes." (p. 327)

The book is thoroughly researched and very well written; this brief review cannot possibly touch on all aspects of the subject covered in the book. Faulkner's chapter on combat physics is outstanding, and his notion of attritional warfare will resonate with students of the Great War. Although readers may disagree with some of the author's emphases, the book deserves to be on the shelf of anyone who wants to learn more about the AEF and how it fought.

Peter L. Belmonte

Photos: U.S. Army Military History Institute

Question: Why Is the Symbol of the Salonika Campaign Society a Mosquito?

Visit the Society's Website at:
http://www.salonikacampaignsociety.org.uk/

Answer:  In general, the front was a medical hellhole, especially with regard to malaria.

Serbian forces were hit with a lice-borne typhus epidemic originating in the unsanitary camps of their Austrian prisoners of war in the fall of 1914. Eventually 135,000 soldiers and civilians would die from infection. The Serbs passed on the disease to the invading Bulgarian army in similar fashion during the next year. One silver lining in the 1915 defeat of the Serbian army for the Allies was, however, that during its evacuation to Corfu, the Serbs underwent a thorough delousing regime.  Consequently, their forces that later arrived on the Salonika Front were essentially typhus-free.

The valleys of the Vardar and Struma, however, especially the latter, which was garrisoned by British forces for the entire period, were breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Men here had to be detailed for "mosquito strafing": clearing grassy mosquito-friendly fields, pouring creosote in ponds, and carrying stretchers on patrols for soldiers suddenly debilitated by a new bout of the illness. The troops received a regular quinine dose and wore muslin veils under their tin hats on night duty. 

British Troops Issued Quinine

Over 34,000 British officers and men were evacuated home for malaria. This is why the postwar association of British veterans, the Salonika Campaign Society (still existing), selected the mosquito as its emblem.

To the last, disease ravaged the Salonika armies. In September 1918 — just as the decisive battle was to be fought — the worldwide Spanish influenza pandemic arrived in the Balkans. An entire British brigade was withdrawn from the final offensive because of its impact. 

The Short, But Dramatic, War Service of SMS Emden

Emden Re-provisioning in Colombo

The German ship SMS Emden was a light cruiser that, at the start of the First World War, formed part of the German East Asiatic Squadron. She was detached to stalk the shipping routes across the Indian Ocean and quickly became the scourge of the Allied navies.

Between August and October 1914, the Emden captured or sank 21 vessels. In November 1914, nine Allied vessels were involved in the hunt for the Emden, and the threat she posed led to a particularly heavy escort of four warships being allocated to the first Australian and New Zealand troop convoy. Surprised by one of these escorts, HMAS Sydney, while in the process of destroying the British radio station on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, the Emden was destroyed on 9 November 1914.

Emden Under Attack by HMAS Sydney

Remembering a Veteran: John Giles Farquhar, 25 Squadron, RAF

Dad in His Trench Coat with His DH-9A Aircraft and Air and/or Ground Crew

Contributed by His Son:  John W. (Jack) Farquhar, MD

My father, John Giles Farquhar, was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on 13 July 1897. He joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916 and was assigned  the 196th Infantry. By 1918 he had earned a lieutenant's commission and his pilot's wings with the RAF. He was assigned to 25 Squadron, flying a DH-9A on bombing and reconnaissance missions. He was shot down several times and survived, but on one mission his observer was killed.

After the war, he returned home, renewed his athletic career, and earned recognition as one of the finest hockey goalies of his era. His subsequent career also involved sports, both coaching and operating sporting businesses. His interests brought the family to the U.S., first at the University of Wisconsin, then Pasadena, California.

2nd Lt. Farquhar

He passed away in 1974.

My uncle Charles also served in the Canadian Army. He was four years older than my father and chose to stay in England after the war, where he became an exporter of Scotch whiskey.


Dr. Jack Farquhar is Professor Emeritus at the Stanford School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California.

Western Front Virtual Tour — Stop 22: Lochnagar Mine Crater

The largest mine crater on the Western Front, this was one of several mines exploded under the German frontline positions on the Somme on 1 July 1916. A charge of 60,000 lbs (26.8 tons) of ammonal explosive was blown at 7:28 a.m., resulting in a crater 90 feet deep and 300 feet across. Englishman Richard Dunning now owns Lochnagar Crater, named after the trench from where the main tunnel was started. He saved it from being filled in 1978, and now each year on the 1st of July a ceremony is held here to remember men of all sides who fell on the Somme in 1916. Nearby is the site of the Glory Hole, which we will also visit. Units of the 34th Division attacked this area and the nearby village of La Boisselle on 1 July. This formation contained two whole brigades of "pals" battalions — the Tyneside Irish and the Tyneside Scottish. They suffered many casualties that day — five battalions losing over 500 men each. Indeed, the whole division lost 6,380 that day.

Inside Belleau Wood Today

How the Wood Looked After the Battle

In June 1918 the Marine Brigade of the 2nd AEF Division was given the mission of seizing Belleau Wood, just northwest of Chateau-Thierry. It took 20 days to do the job and is today one of the legendary battlefields of the Corps. The nearby cemetery is a sacred place for Americans, but the wood on the plateau above is a moving and haunting place to visit. Here are some images from the heart of Belleau Wood.

The Marine Monument, Created by Sculptor Felix de Weldon, Stands in the Woods' 
Central Glade

Every Memorial Day the Marine Commandant or His Designee Lays a Wreath
at the Monument with a Senior French Officer

Here an Active-Duty Marine Raises a Flag Over the Wood

A German Machine Gun Post Protecting the Wood's East Flank

The Hunting Lodge — Captured Near the End of the Fighting

Australians on the Western Front

2nd Australian Division "Digger" Monument, Mont St. Quentin

Historian Trevor Wilson has pointed this out, but some statistics back up his case. The Australian contribution on the Western Front was significantly greater in size and importance than it was in the Gallipoli Campaign. Here is a document I found in my old files. Compare the Western Front numbers vs. Gallipoli —

Europe's Last Summer — Reviewed By Ron Drees

Europe's Last Summer

by David Fromkin

Reprint of Knopf 2004 Editon

Fromkin is one in a long series of authors who attempts to explain the origins of the Great War, but he actually succeeds, mainly by benefitting from recent document discoveries, the work of other authors, and by discarding conventional thinking in providing a credible thesis. He begins in his prologue by listing 12 conflicts — ethnic, religious, military, political — that could have contributed to the beginning of the war.  These include 1) the 7th-century occupation of the Balkans by Slavs, 2) the Kaiser's firing of Bismarck, which changed alliances between Germany, Austria, and Russia 3) Serbia's murder of their pro-Austrian king and queen leading Austria to plan Serbia's punishment, and 4) German aggressiveness pushing Britain and France closer together.

Order Now

Historical background, its impact upon the rulers of nations in 1914, how those nations operated, and how our current thinking clouds our understanding are among the strengths of this book. The reader learns how Germany viewed Russia as a threat, felt surrounded and friendless, and thus considered that since war was inevitable, the sooner the better rather than later when their adversaries would be stronger.

After the Archduke's assassination, many nations were slow to realize where events were leading. Austria and Germany hid their intentions, not only in 1914, until the fighting began, but also later as part of the numerous countries that destroyed records to hide the truth forever.

Diplomacy did not fail because it never had a chance as the antagonists wanted to go to war and moved directly toward that objective. Yet, when Austria finally began their war of punishment, they were the ones taken to the woodshed: by 1915 Austria had suffered 1,268,000 casualties out of 3,350,000 mobilized — 38 percent with almost four years of war left. Oh, the ancient curse, beware of what you wish for. . .

Happy Austrian Troops Departing for the Front with Defeat Awaiting Them

Fromkin has provided a coherent, readable text that pulls no punches as he explicitly, painstakingly, identifies the guilty and the ramifications. He breaks down events on a day-by-day and nation-by-nation basis, enabling easy tracking by the reader. One of his more eye-opening thoughts is how this was two wars, where Austria's war with Serbia got switched out for the war Germany wanted to fight with Russia. Another striking point is that the conflict that Germany began on 1 August 1914 did not end until "…the last Russian soldier left German soil on 31 August 1994." Considering recent events in the Crimea, the Ukraine, and the behavior of the governments of China and North Korea, the guns of August 1914 still haunt us.

Read Fromkin's book for a credible understanding of "who did it" and then read McMeekin's July, 1914, reviewed earlier, for an update on relevant historical research and the counter-argument that Austria dragged Germany into war. This conflict between historians continues also.

Ron Drees

War Artist Fernand Léger

Léger in His Studio, Probably After the Great War

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) was an established French artist at the time war broke out. He had seen earlier national service and was recalled to the army in 1914 and was assigned to the Engineer Corps. He saw extensive service in the Argonne sector near Verdun for two years when he became a victim of mustard gas. His most famous war work, known as the "The Card Players" was created while he was recuperating. His style is described as a  naive, energetic modified form of cubism, with machine-like figures using flat tones of pure primary colors, black, white, and gray.

July 14, 1914
Last Work Before the Declaration of War

The Proof That the Man Descended from the Monkey, 1915

But how much of an effect did the war have on Léger? Any feelings of despair or cynicism provoked by first-hand contact with its carnage are markedly absent from the work. Léger was, in fact, invigorated by the contact with his “new companions” in the Engineer Corps—“the whole of the French people”. Then there was the “dazzling” sight of “the breech of a 75-millimetre gun which was standing uncovered in the sunlight: the magic of light on white metal.” World War One didn’t alter Léger’s take on the machine. If anything, it emboldened a sensibility already entranced by the machine’s regularity, precision, and power. Admittedly, a revived humanism did enter the work, if not always in imagery—Léger’s figures are always robots or symbols, never flesh-and-blood entities—then in spirit and reach. Compare Leger’s art with that of post-war contemporaries like Otto Dix, Max Ernst, or Max Beckmann, and Léger comes off as positively sunny. Not every artist who has experienced suffering has to suffer in the studio. Léger remained something of a utopian until the end of his days. You can’t help but think: More power to him.

Commentary by Mario Naves in his blog Too Much Art

The Card Party, 1917

The Plane Crash, ?

Léger consistently embraced an industrial style for the rest of his career. He took refuge 1940–45 in the USA, where he started to make compositions of divers, acrobats, and cyclists. Returning in 1945 to France, became a communist, and in his last years was active not only as a painter but as designer for the ballet and of polychrome sculpture in ceramic, mosaics, and stained glass. Léger died at Gif-sur-Yvette in 1955.

Disks, 1918
One of  Postwar "Disk" Series

The First World War, Dr. Dakin, and His Wound Care Solution

BY ALAN COULSON M.D.

About this time a hundred years ago the nations of Europe were on an unsuccessful suicide watch.  

Imperial rivalries, competition for markets and ultra nationalism made International conflict all but inevitable. Thus the subsequent assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in June, 1914, was all it took to trigger one of the deadliest wars in history, an Armageddon with a final tally of 16 million dead.

On the Western Front, German forces were bogged down fighting against those of France and Britain, and so by 1915, trench systems scarred the face of Northern France stretching 400 miles from Switzerland to the English Channel. Much of the fighting took place on agricultural land which had been fertilized with manure, and was thus loaded with gangrene-causing bacteria. Since it rained so much, the ground was usually muddy so a soldier wounded and falling to the ground would inevitably get infected.

The number of casualties was inconceivable. For example, in the first few hours of fighting during the ill-fated Battle of the Somme on July 1st 1916, Britain lost 57 thousand men, including 19 thousand dead, as wave after wave of men were ordered to walk towards the German machine guns.  The front line hospitals were overwhelmed and many soldiers died unnecessarily from infections that spread from their bullet and shrapnel wounds.

Henry Dakin, PhD, and Alexis Carrel, MD

Enter Henry Dakin (1880–1952), a PhD biochemist born in England and working in New York in 1905. Although he was not a physician, he was interested in finding an antiseptic that would kill bacteria in the presence of body fluids but not hurt the white cells trying to defend the patient. It is important to note all his work was done in test tubes, and Dakin never saw a patient or a wound. He observed that chemicals like iodine are so powerful that they kill bacteria and human tissues indiscriminately, and then they bind with human proteins and are rendered ineffective in a short time.

Dakin eventually found that dilute household bleach, sodium hypochlorite, was the best antiseptic chemical, thus confirming the work of the French researchers Labarraque and Berthollet, who first described this phenomenon in the early 1800s. Dakin was shy and retiring and was reluctant to speak in public. As a result, the world would probably never have heard of Dakin or his obscure solution except for two things: the start of World War I and Alexis Carrel.

Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) was in many ways the opposite of Dakin. He was a short Napoleonic figure and in his photographs looks like an arrogant prelate of medical science, and for a good reason; among other things he invented vascular surgery, performed the first heart bypass surgery and the first heart transplant, won a Nobel Prize, and invented tissue culture. But even though he was working in New York at the Rockefeller Institute, and had been there since 1905, as a French citizen he was drafted when the war started and deployed to a hospital just behind the front lines at Compiègne. 

An Underground French Field Hospital During the War

There he did a number of important things, including combining thorough cleansing of wounds with antiseptic irrigation and recruiting his former New York neighbor Dr. Dakin to be his hospital chemist. Intuitively, Carrel also chose Dakin’s solution to be the medicine to use for the irrigation.

This concept was termed the Carrel-Dakin technique, and as far as I can tell, it was the first time Dakin’s solution was actually used on patients and also the first time irrigation had been used. The gamble soon paid off; Dakin’s solution successfully killed the bacteria and, more important, also did not hurt growing skin. Wounded soldiers began to get better. So Carrel then renamed the all-important solution — it was christened the “Carrel-Dakin solution”.

Headlines in the New York Times soon followed: “Drs. Carrel and Dakin find new antiseptic; Remedy said to make infection impossible.” Certainly the technique and the solution were used all over the world and saved thousands of lives, with Carrel largely taking credit for Dakin’s discovery. After the war Carrel came home to a hero’s welcome.

A tube is inserted in the leg of an American soldier wounded in World War I, providing irrigation of the knee with Dakin’s solution.

Once the war was over, Dakin and Carrel drifted apart. The mild-mannered Dr. Dakin essentially retired, whereas Carrel became increasingly famous, or so it seemed until his decision to return to his native France in 1941, during the Second World War, where he became linked to the Vichy government and eugenics research. This move made him very unpopular to say the least, so much so, that after his death in Paris in 1944, Carrel’s name was rarely mentioned in polite society.

With Carrel out of the picture, the lifesaving medication reverted back to its original name, “Dakin’s Solution”, and as such it is used by the gallon in wound care centers worldwide, including the one here at Hamlet, the Sandhills Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine. Remarkably, a hundred years after its rediscovery it remains one of our most valuable treatment modalities.

My later friend Dr. Alan Coulson (1941-2022) was  a panel physician at the Sandhills Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine in Hamlet, NC. He was a certified wound care specialist, and was also board certified in surgery, and in hyperbaric medicine.

World War I Centennial Battlefield Tours – Update

We have recently refined our unfolding Centennial Battlefield Tour Program. Detailed itineraries and prices are now available for our trips through 2015 and the schedules have been set for the future trips. Just click on our Travel Page icon below the flyer to request brochures and reservation information.

For More Information Go To

WORLDWAR1.com/travel.htm

Overlord's Commanders and Their Great War Service

The High Command for Operation Overlord, except for Supreme Commander General Dwight Eisenhower and U.S. First Army Commander Omar Bradley, was predominately made up of veterans of the Great War, who had all seen notable service in that conflict.  In some cases, such as Bernard Montgomery's, they also survived serious wounds.

SHAEF's High Command

Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder 
WWI Service: RFC/RAF
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Deputy Supreme Allied Commander

Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory 
WWI Service: Lancashire Fusiliers and RFC/RAF
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Air Forces Commander

Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay
WWI Service: Commander HMS Broke
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Naval Forces Commander

General Bernard Law Montgomery
WWI Service: 47th Division, among several
D-Day, 6 June 1944: 21st Army Group Commander (Land Forces Commander)

Lt. General Miles Dempsey (Not shown)
WWI Service: Royal Berkshire Regiment
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Second British Army

Lt. General Walter Bedell Smith 
WWI Service: 4th Division
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Chief of Staff SHAEF

Further, a number of the divisional commanders that led their units in airborne drops or onto the beaches were also notable veterans of the First World War. The first two on this list, Clarence Heubner and Charles Gerhardt, were earlier involved in the first "D-Day" in history, the U.S. First Army's St. Mihiel Offensive, 12 September 1918, for which the designations "D-Day" and H-Hour" were coined.

MG Clarence Huebner
WWI Service: 1st Division
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Commander, 1st Division

MG Charles Hunter Gerhardt
WWI Service: 89th Division
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Commander, 29th Division

MG Raymond O. Barton
WWI Service: 8th Division (Occupation Only)
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Commander, 4th Division

MG Richard Nelson Gale
WWI Service: Machine Gun Corps,
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Commander, 6th Airborne Division

MG Douglas Alexander Henry Graham
WWI Service: 1st Cameronians (Scottish Rifles)
D-Day, 6 June 1944: Commander, 50th Division

Our Virtual Tour of the Western Front returns next Friday.

Let's Revisit The Great War and Modern Memory

Recently, when we presented David Beer's excellent review and reevaluation of Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, I had a bit of a brain-lock. I had forgotten that Tony Langley of our editorial team had contributed many of the images used in the 2009 "Illustrated" version of Fussell's classic. As you can see from the sample pages below, Tony's contributions from his enormous collection of period images and publications really enhanced the volume.

Here is a link to Amazon if you would like to order the Sterling Publishing illustrated version of the book and add some of Tony's finest specimens to your library.

Order Now

The Gurkhas at Gallipoli

Contributed by Jim Patton

Gurkha Soldiers in a Trench at Gallipoli (Cap Badge Shown)

When organizing the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton lobbied hard to get a Gurkha Brigade included. Hamilton was an old India hand and appreciated the Gurkha’s ability to fight in hilly terrain. When he offered to leave four cavalry brigades, he was to get an Indian brigade, to be all Gurkhas when available, as there was only one Gurkha battalion in Egypt, the 1/6th. Adding three other Indian battalions on hand (14th Sikhs, 69th and 89th Punjabis), the 29th (Indian) Brigade was formed. Due to delays in formation the new 29th didn’t arrive at the front behind V Beach until 9 May. The ability of the 1/6th was quickly proven by the capture of a highland subsequently known as "Gurkha Bluff". Two previous assaults by British troops had failed, and this secured the left flank of the British line all the way to the sea. 

Two days later Hamilton decided to remove the Punjabis because of concern about the loyalty of their Muslim companies, even though they had already been engaged and sustained casualties. The brigade was at half strength until 2 June, when the 1/5th and 2/10th Gurkhas arrived from India. Hamilton had his Gurkha brigade at last. 

The 29th fought in the Third Battle of Krithia and specifically the action at Gully Ravine, where the 14th Sikhs were decimated in a brave but futile attack. On 5 July, after heavy casualties (only eight British officers remained in the entire brigade, including the staff) the 29th had to be pulled back to Imbros. 

Gully Ravine Today — A Horrible Place to Fight

It was difficult to replace officers who could not only speak the language of the men but were often deeply respected and implicitly trusted by the ranks. It was thought important that officers set a high standard of élan. One frequently mentioned example was Capt. W.K. Brown of the 1/5th Gurkhas, who drew his sword — he was probably the only officer on the peninsula who wore one –— and led his men in a gallant, though doomed, charge. 

The battalions were brought back up to strength, and the brigade was to be augmented by the 1/4th Gurkhas and detachments from 2/5th and 1/9th Gurkhas sent from France, but they were delayed and didn't arrive until 25 August, so the 6th S Lancs and the 9th Warwicks (which included the young Lt. W.J. Slim, much later Field Marshal and Viscount) were temporarily attached. This reconstituted 29th became part of the new Indian Expeditionary Force “G”, landed on 6 August, and immediately moved to the northern flank of Anzac and joined in what would be last major attempt to break the stalemate.

Part of the left assaulting column, Force “G” were continuously engaged in action, with little rest or sleep, till the 10th. Despite this, they rose magnificently to the occasion and played a vital role in the battle for the Sari Bair Ridge. 

The climax of this action occurred on the morning of the 9th when the ridge was crested at Hill Q by an ad hoc force led by Major C.J.L.Allanson, the CO of 1/6th Gurkhas, which included his 1/6th, elements from the British battalions, and a party from the 1/5th that had been separated from their battalion, charged at dawn, and overcame the enemy defenders.  

Major (Later Lt. Col.) Allanson

Allanson, who was wounded but survived, later wrote:

Then off we dashed, all hand in hand, most perfect and a wonderful sight. At the top we met the Turks; Le Marchant was down, a bayonet through the heart. I got one through the leg, and then for about what appeared to be to be ten minutes we fought hand to hand, we hit and fisted, we used rifles and pistols as clubs and then the Turks turned and fled, and I felt a very proud man: the key of the whole peninsula was ours, and our losses had not been so very great for such a result. Below I saw the strait, motor s and wheeled transport on the road leading to Achi Baba. As I looked around I saw that we were not going to be supported and thought that I could help best by going after those who had retreated in front of us. We dashed down towards Maidos but only about two hundred feet when suddenly our Navy put six twelve inch monitor shells into us and all was terrible confusion. It was a deplorable disaster; we were obviously mistaken for Turks and we had to go back … We all flew back to the summit and took our old positions just below. I remained on the crest with about fifteen men; it was a wonderful sight.

John North added in his book Gallipoli: The Fading Vision —

The lonely advance of these British and Gurkha skirmishers to the crest of the ridge, when the battle was already lost must always remain one of the most gallant episodes in the whole campaign.

  

As the Gurkhas pursued the enemy down the opposite slope, they were hit by a salvo of naval gunfire which, combined with heavy enemy fire from the directions of Abdel Rehman Bair and a subsequent counterattack, drove them back from the summit. They were able to rally on the line held the previous night, but all of the British officers of 1/6th except the medical officer were casualties and in command was a subhadar-major who spoke no English.

The battle for Sari Bair was now lost, and strong enemy counterattacks on the 10th pushed the Allies to a line along the lower slopes of the ridge, which was entrenched and held till the end of the campaign. 

Hill Q in the Middle Distance from Chunuk Bair, Hill 971 Farther Back

The Indian Brigade was actively involved in the assault on Hill 60, the last battle of any magnitude to be undertaken. After the capture of Hill 60 on 28 August, the entire line settled down to the routine of trench war. Force “G” held a front on the extreme left flank of the Anzac defenses, extending northward from Hill 60 and joining up with the right of IX Corps at Suvla, and elements remained in these positions till the final evacuation on 20 December.  

Indian casualties for the campaign were 4,130, with 1,300 dead.

When the historic Indian Army was divided in 1947, four Gurkha regiments went to the British Army. Although not one of the distinguished regiments, one was the 6th Gurkhas. Designated "Queen Elizabeth’s Own" in 1959, in 1994 the 6th was combined with the 2nd to form today’s 1st Bn, Royal Gurkha Rifles.

Sources: United Services Institute (India), Byron Farwell, The Gurkhas, 1984

Alamo Doughboy: Marching into the Heart of Kaiser's Germany During World War I — Reviewed By Michael Kihntopf

Alamo Doughboy: Marching into the Heart of Kaiser's Germany During World War I

by Jennifer Rude Klett

Branden Books, 2013

Judge Knott (Waving Flag) with Fellow Recruits Leaving Willmar, MN, 26 April 1918

A review of almost any publisher's spring catalogue offerings in this centennial year reveals that there will be a flood of Great War books coming to the market. Some of them are new works while a vast majority of the books are re-releases. This veritable deluge will overwhelm many works that are more noteworthy than others. Such is the case of Alamo Doughboy, a truly noteworthy work that should not be missed or wind up overshadowed.

Jennifer Rude Klett is a self-described non-fiction writer living in Wisconsin. She is one of the granddaughters of Pvt. George "Judge" Knott, the primary subject of this book, who was a member of the 90th Infantry Division. Yet the book is more than just one Doughboy's experience. Klett vividly describes the experiences of Knott, his two brothers, and two cousins who were also involved in fighting in the war to end all wars in France. Her sources included letters written home from "somewhere in France," documents kept by Knott's daughter, and interviews that were recorded shortly before Knott died in the 1970s.

Order Now

The author lays out a captivating story starting with life on the farm in Minnesota where the Knott family had its roots. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the family was not of the silk stocking variety as is so often the case in a personal experience in the Great War. The family was large with four brothers and five sisters. The boys shared one sleeping room with two beds while the sisters had a separate room with the same shared sleeping accommodations. Judge, our central figure, was told to quit school after completing the eighth grade and worked on the family farm, sometimes putting in 14-hour days at 25 cents for each of those long days. His two older brothers did not finish high school either.

I was again surprised when I didn't find the usual patriotic flare of voluntarily enlisting as soon as war was declared. Instead, all three brothers duly registered for the draft in June 1917 and waited their turn. They were inducted in quick succession beginning in September 1917 and ending in May of the following year. The first brother and Judge went to the 88th Division, while the third brother went to the 6th Division. But the life of an inductee is never so easy. Both brothers who had gone to the 88th Division became backfills to other divisions that were already supplying drafts to divisions leaving for France. Judge found himself in Camp Travis, TX, with the 90th Division, composed primarily of inductees from Texas and Oklahoma, in which he stayed for the entire war. Having a similar upbringing as the farmers and ranchers he was housed with, Knott fit right in with the ethos of the division.

What unfolds after those initial chapters is a story of life in the trenches for a Doughboy. Judge Knott saw action in St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne offensive with his brothers and cousins assigned in adjacent divisions engaged in the same actions. Judge's letters home are quite revealing regarding the tedium that the common Doughboy experienced, as well as containing brief glimpses into combat situations, and that is what makes this book different from the rest. There are no generalities nor are there aspirations toward a higher goal. Judge and his brothers saw their service as something that they owed their country as citizens and not as an inconvenience. This factor comes through time after time. None of the brothers complains about raw living conditions or the fear of battle or standing guard. There are the scattered notations of being homesick, but not the deep, almost depression-ridden thoughts that other books portray. The narration is like talking to a friend over a steaming cup of coffee on a cold winter night.

Judge Knott (Top Left) and His Mates from Company G, 360th Infantry, 90th Division

Miraculously, all three brothers survive the war, without wounds, and the final chapters are filled with letters from them as part of the occupation forces, which offer another insight into the Great War. Like those brothers, this work needs to survive the flood of centennial releases.

Michael Kihntopf

Shell Shock Then, PTSD Now

In sorting out some of my image files, I came across a group of images of shell shock victims from the war, which I have turned into the collage below. I thought the subject was worth a fresh look so I've added links to some of the better articles I've come across on the subject from the Great War and today's wars. Incidentally, I recall that when I was gathering the images for an article published long ago, I had trouble finding photos of such distressed patients. In the middle on the right side is a figure that readers may recognize as Major William Donovan of the 42nd Rainbow Division. To my knowledge he was not diagnosed with shell shock, but in the photo he is clearly showing the strain of the continual battle his unit engaged in. He was wounded sometime after this photo and received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

Recommended Articles:

The Medical View in 1917

The BBC Looks Back

Reevaluating Society's Perception of Shell Shock

Current Forms of Treatment, Services and Support for PTSD

Weapons of War: The Luger Parabellum P-08 Pistol

The Parabellum Pistol of 1908 (P-08) was the standard German sidearm in both World Wars. In 1908 the German Army adopted the Luger to replace the Reichsrevolver in frontline service. It was a single-action, recoil-operated, semi-automatic pistol with a capacity of eight 7.65mm rounds. The Luger was a prized war souvenir for both Doughboys and GIs.