The Draft Board Wants to See You

From: The Oregon Secretary of State

Poster informing that all males between the ages
of 21 and 30 years must register for the draft

Settling on a Draft

With the declaration of war in April 1917, American leaders had to make decisions about how to mobilize millions of men for military service. Many people, such as former president Theodore Roosevelt, held a romantic attachment to voluntary military service. And, certainly, America's experience with a system of conscription or compulsory military service during the Union draft during the Civil War was seen as an example of how not to raise an army. That draft resulted in gross unfairness through the hiring of substitutes and other dubious actions, spawning protests and riots.

In the end, President Wilson and his advisers settled on the draft as the only efficient and democratic way to raise a large army. In contrast to the Civil War draft, Wilson sought to spread the obligation for duty among all qualified men, regardless of their social or economic standing. The Selective Service Act required all males from 21 to 30 go to their election precinct polling place to register in early June 1917. Men who failed to register for the draft risked spending a year in jail. Nine million American men registered in early June.

No Excuse for Failure to Register

Subsequently, men were expected to appear when they turned 21 years old. In 1918 draft ages were expanded to include those aged 18 to 45. By the end of the war, more than 24 million men registered for the draft with almost three million being inducted into the Army.

The Selective Service Department set up district boards in Portland, Eugene, and La Grande. Each of these had jurisdiction over a number of local draft boards. Because of Portland's size, it included the local board divisions. Marion County had two. Otherwise, the boards were located in each of Oregon's county seats.

Draft Registration Card

Registering for the draft was a long and bureaucratic exercise. Numerous forms and cards waited for completion. A 16-page questionnaire walked through nearly every aspect of a registrant's life. Failure to fill it out within seven days could result in a "fine or imprisonment for one year and may result in the loss of valuable rights and immediate induction into military service."

The first, and probably most important, question confronting the registrant was that of making a claim for exemption or deferred classification from the draft. The law held that "the names of all men liable to selection for military service shall be arranged in five classes in the order in which they can best be spared from the civic, family, industrial, and agricultural institutions of the Nation." In simplified form, the system included:

Class I: Every man in this class was "presently liable for military service." These included most single men, unskilled laborers, and certain married men.

Class II: These men were "temporarily deferred" from service until Class I was exhausted. They generally included certain married men with dependents and "necessary" skilled labor.

Class III: These men were "temporarily deferred" from service until Class II was exhausted. They generally included certain men with dependent infirm or "helpless" relatives as well as certain types of government workers and other "necessary" workers.

Class IV: These men were "temporarily deferred" from service until Class III was exhausted. They generally included men with families that were "mainly dependent on his labor for support" as well as merchant mariners and managers of "necessary enterprises."

Class V: These men were "exempted or discharged" from service. They generally included legislative, executive, or judicial officers of government, ministers, aliens, the "totally and permanently physically or mentally unfit" as well as the "morally unfit."

A separate line allowed for a claim of exemption based on religious convictions against participating in war—the conscientious objector.

The rest of the 16-page questionnaire asked detailed questions, 32 on dependents alone, related to supporting claims made for exemption or deferred classification and required affidavits in support. Legal advisory boards, consisting of "disinterested lawyers and laymen" were available at draft board offices throughout Oregon to advise registrants on the "true meaning and intent" of the law. View the  draft registration questionnaire here: PDF Questionnaire

Your Local Draft Board

Once the forms and questionnaires were completed, the local draft board would begin processing the registration and a folder would fill with the resulting paperwork, noting each step of the process. If the registration progressed to the point at which the registrant were ordered to report for a physical examination, the report of the examining physician would be included, as would the report of the medical advisory board. Twenty-five of these boards scattered throughout Oregon examined records and determined the physical qualifications of the registrants. They had four choices: qualified; qualified but deferred; qualified for limited service; and disqualified. The medical board's decision was forwarded to the local draft board, which ruled on the same criteria. If the individual appealed the action, the district draft board would rule.

Local Board Classification Card

Registrants who passed the physical examination would be ordered to report for service. If they failed to report, they first would be listed as delinquent and later as deserters who were to be "apprehended." Those who reported as ordered eventually would find themselves at mobilization camp where they would be either accepted, rejected, or discharged.

Of course, for those not immediately inducted into the military, there were continuing responsibilities related to the draft. If any change occurred that could affect their deferred or exempt status, they were to report it to the local draft board within five days. They were also required to examine "from time to time" notices posted by the local draft board in case changes to the system affected their status.

Results May Vary

The public voiced little opposition to the draft over the course of the war. Some of this could be attributed to fear of criticizing a government that was beginning to crack down on "disloyal" rhetoric. But most Americans saw the need for the draft and believed that, while not perfect, the classification system generally was fair. Certainly, as with any system of its size and complexity, favoritism, bribery, intimidation, and other forms of corruption occurred at local draft boards. But the system held up even as it lowered the draft age from 21 to 18, thereby edging closer to the sight of "taking boys from their mothers' arms."

Opinions differed on the quality of the soldier produced by the draft. Overall, consensus holds the drafted soldiers fought just as heroically as the two million men who enlisted in the various armed services. But at least one Oregon man, Martin Luther Kimmel, who had enlisted in the Army held a different attitude:

"These conscripts are generally of an inferior class, largely Greeks, Italians & men of low mentality and little schooling. I should judge from the 60 or more who have been assigned to Bat [Battery] A that the selective Draft had been carried out so as to take the poorest stuff they could find. I would very much like to know the truth about the draft. I know that some good men were selected under it but I am afraid that it was not carried out impartially & uniformly in a truly fair manner. The selection of men & the exemptions gave a large field for preferment & partiality on the part of the Boards and all the evidence I have seen points to the fact that they exercised both."

How the News Came

The President of the United States, 

To: Joseph W. Doakes,

Greetings: Having submitted yourself to a local board composed of your neighbors for the purpose of determining the place and time in which you can best serve the United States in the present emergency, you are hereby notified that you have now been selected for immediate military service.

You will, therefore, report to the local board named below at: 48 South Grand Avenue at 4pm, February 16, 1918 for military duty.

From and after the day and hour just named you will be a soldier in the military service of the United States.

Back Over There: One American Time-Traveler Reviewed by Clark Shilling

Back Over There: One American Time-Traveler, 100 Years Since the Great War, 500 Miles of Battle-Scarred French Countryside, and Too Many Trenches, Shells, Legends and Ghosts to Count

by Richard Rubin

St Martin's Press, 2017

American Soldiers "Just Off the Boat" Break from Their Marching, 1917

If you are a student of America's part in World War I, you may already have heard of Richard Rubin. In the early part of this century, he interviewed the last few surviving American veterans of World War I, compiling these interviews into a book published in 2013 entitled The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War. (This book was reviewed on this website in 2013. If you would like to read that review, type Rubin in the search box, and it will be displayed.)

Rubin had insisted that all of his interviews for The Last of the Doughboys be on a face-to-face basis with his subjects. He felt a phone interview would not enable him to get all the nuances of the stories that these elderly veterans had to tell about their war. After writing The Last of the Doughboys, Rubin still felt a sense of incompleteness. He had listened to these stories, but to completely understand them he decided that he needed to see where they took place. He would go to France and explore the Western Front to see the areas where his Doughboys fought; this became the basis for his latest book, Back Over There.

Doughboy Raiders in No-Man's-Land Carrying Sacks of Grenades

In the first quarter of his book Rubin visits the major battle sites that were fought before the U.S. entered the war—Verdun, the Somme and Ypres—and he includes his impressions of each. He was moved by the ossuary at Verdun and the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres, but for the most part, these battlefields left him cold. Except for Verdun, they had been changed too much. He viewed Flanders as a "posh suburb" and the Somme as a "pastoral countryside." He writes that these places were no longer battle sites but rather "sites where battles once took place."

The balance of this book is then spent with the author looking for the "trail of the A.E.F." Rubin calls his method of exploration "bushwhacking"—traveling down tractor roads, logging roads and cow paths, and when necessary, hiking through trees and undergrowth to discover the remains of the Western Front and the places where the A.E.F. fought. He was able to do this by networking with a number of locals who were experts on various sections of the Western Front. With names like Giles, Jean-Paul, Denis, and Christophe, these hobbyists, enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs guided Rubin to some amazing places. Rubin stood on the hill where Americans fired their first shot at a German position. He then provides the trivia that the French 75 cannon that fired that shot is now located at West Point. He visited the site where the first three Doughboys were killed in action. Bookmarking the American experience in the war, he found the monument marking the site where the last American Doughboy, Private Henry Gunther, was killed in the war a minute before the Armistice took effect at 11 a.m. As American troops began to train in the trenches,some were quartered in chalk mines that lay under the famous Chemin des Dames. While there, they covered the walls with graffiti, leaving behind their names and units. Rubin went into the mine and recorded many of these names and then researched their fate, telling us whether they were later killed in battle or whether they survived and were able to return home to live out their lives.

The French province of Lorraine is home to the site of the two largest battles fought by the AEF: St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Rubin describes Lorraine as a backwater, largely agricultural, undeveloped and as a result relatively unchanged since the end of the war. The Germans held this area from 1914 to 1918, and German engineers, the masters of reinforced concrete, built many structures that have survived the forces of time and the efforts of the French to remove them. With the help of his network of locals, Rubin explored many of the numerous German block houses and trenches that remain there. His conclusion was that the Germans thought of everything. Not only that, they also were smart enough to occupy the best positions.

Some of the most interesting parts of the book are his explorations of several German rest areas called Lagers, camps where thousands of German soldiers were allowed to rest and relax after serving in the front lines. These facilities included swimming pools, bakeries, bath houses, libraries, theaters, hospitals, brothels, and more, everything to help a German soldier unwind after combat. Rubin was able to tour the once sumptuous bunkers built for Crown Prince Wilhelm, as well as for the Crown Prince of Bavaria, structures that still stand in the undergrowth in Lorraine.

There are many more adventures in the book. The author visited virtually every major battle site that involved the A.E.F. I often find myself reading very long books. Usually by the time I get close to the end, I have had more than enough and look forward to completion and moving on to another. That is not the case with this all too brief book. When I got to the end, I wanted more. Rubin writes about his adventures with ironic humor and self-deprecation. His writing often reminds me of Bill Bryson in his books such as The Mother Tongue and Letters from a Small Island. He has a great eye for details and shows a reverential respect for the soldiers of the Great War. I found his research and conclusions to be spot on and could find no fault with his knowledge on any aspect of the war.

German Prisoners Carrying a Wounded American Soldier

Next year will be the last year of the Centennial and will mark the 100th anniversary of the key American battles in World War I. If you plan to focus your reading on the A.E.F. in 2018 as I plan to, I recommend you add this book to your reading list. In addition, I would point out that the author made an hour-and-a-half presentation about this book at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in May of this year, where he expands some on the book. The book contains numerous black-and-white photos, but in his presentation at the National World War I Museum, you can see the pictures in color. It can be found on Youtube.com.

Clark Shilling

100 Years Ago Today: President Wilson Enunciates the Fourteen Points

8 January 1918

President Wilson

The Fourteen Points was a major policy position taken by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and announced in a speech to Congress on 8 January 1918. The speech defined Wilsonian idealism in foreign policy, in a doctrine that came to be known as "Wilsonianism." The goal was to identify the main underlying causes of war in the entire world and to eliminate or minimize them. The first five points were broad in scope: open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, the beating down of economic barriers, the reduction of armament, and the adjustment of colonial claims on a fair basis. These followed Wilson's formulas for applying justice to specific countries or areas. The 14th point was a declaration in favor of an Association of Nations (or League of Nations) to resolve unexpected conflicts and thus guarantee world peace. In three follow-up addresses, Wilson set forth elaborations, clarifications and new points, bringing the total number of proposals to 23. 

Wilson sought a just and lasting peace—no bartering of ethnic groups; the satisfaction of legitimate national aspirations; honorable international dealing; the destruction of arbitrary militarism; and territorial adjustments in the interests of the peoples concerned, or "self determination." He was vague on the rights of minority groups in areas where self determination would be controlled by ethnic majorities. 

Wilson was most of all committed to a League of Nations, a peace agency that would be able to use force to preserve territorial integrity and political independence among large and small nations alike. The speech was highly idealistic, translating Wilson's progressive ideals of democracy, self-determination, open agreements, and free trade into the international realm. Much of the speech was drafted by aide Walter Lippmann. It made several suggestions for specific disputes in Europe on the recommendation of Wilson's foreign policy advisor, Colonel House, and his team of 150 advisors known as “The Inquiry.” Politically, he made a serious blunder by not seeking advice from Republican leaders in his policy formulation; some of them, such as William Howard Taft, had very similar goals in mind and could have forestalled the partisanship that caused Wilson trouble in 1919. Senate Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge wanted a reservation that only Congress could take the U.S. into war. Wilson refused to compromise on this issue and the required 2/3 majority for ratifying the treaty was not achieved. As a result the United States never joined the League of Nations. 

Wilson did not invent new terms; he pulled together the best of existing war aims, including many that had been expressed by the British and a few that originated with the Germans and the Bolsheviks, and then added a few of his own. His timing was brilliant; it was the combination that was so powerful—here was an authoritative voice, unburdened by any treaty, who proclaimed what many saw as the best possible outcome of the war, and one that would justify the horrible events by cleansing the earth and opening up a peaceful utopia. Europe went wild when he arrived in Paris, for Wilson had made himself the most trusted man in the world. 

The promise of national self-determination aroused audiences in Ireland, Eastern and Central Europe, Asia, and the Middle East and remains a powerful idea in the 21st century. 

The Fourteen Points: 

I. Abolition of secret treaties 

II. Freedom of the seas

III. Free trade

IV. Disarmament

V. Adjustment of colonial claims (decolonization and national self-determination)

VI. Russia to be assured independent development and international withdrawal from occupied Russian territory

VII. Restoration of Belgium to antebellum national status

VIII. Alsace-Lorraine returned to France from Germany

IX. Italian borders redrawn on lines of nationality

X. Autonomous development of Austria-Hungary as a nation, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved

XI. Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and other Balkan states to be granted integrity, have their territories de-occupied, and Serbia to be given access to the Adriatic Sea

XII. Sovereignty for the Turkish people of the Ottoman Empire as the empire dissolved, autonomous development for other nationalities within the former Empire

XIII. Establishment of an independent Poland with access to the sea

XIV. General association of the nations–a multilateral international association of nations to enforce the peace (League of Nations)

Accommodating Competing Interests in Light of the Fourteen Points Would Prove Challenging for Wilson

The speech was widely hailed by public opinion in the U.S. and Europe, and drove a wedge between the German leaders and the German people, who welcomed Wilson's formula. The French government, however, wanted high reparations from Germany to pay for its past and future war costs. Britain, as the great naval power, did not want freedom of the seas. Wilson compromised with Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and many other European leaders during the Paris peace talks to ensure that most of the points, and especially the fourteenth point, the League of Nations, would be established.

Source: The Citizen's Compendium, (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Fourteen_Points)

Reflections on All Quiet on the Western Front

by Bryan Alexander

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.” (263)

“My subject is War, and the pity of War.” - Wilfred Owen

All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues,1928) is probably the best known work of prose fiction written in any language to emerge from the First World War. From its first appearance, the novel kicked off Remarque’s lifelong literary career. It was influential enough in its antiwar message to earn special and deadly ire from the Nazis, who took care to lethally prosecute the author’s sister, Elfriede Scholz.It has been filmed (1932,1979) and referenced repeatedly by war writers ever since. It serves for many as the 20th-century great war novel. I believe the novel has remained in print since 1928.

What does the novel tell us now, in 2018, during this centenary of World War I?

For those who haven’t read it, All Quiet on the Western Front follows our narrator, Paul Baumer, and his group of fellow soldiers (Kat, Tjaden, Muller, and more) as they fight, survive, suffer, and (most of them) die in the trenches against British and French enemies.  The text’s focus is very small, zeroing in on this handful of people. We see little of campaigns and strategies. There isn’t much contextual detail. Instead, Remarque gives us a microcosm of the war through an account of daily life within it. 

There isn’t much of an overarching plot as such, although there are many small stories, and Paul’s experience offers something of a frame. The novel doesn’t offer much of a sense of forward motion or progress but instead consists mostly of a series of episodes or short-short stories that might remind us of subsequent works like Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam book The Things They Carried. Baumer endures a bombardment, is sequestered in a hospital, hunts rats, travels home on leave, falls in love with a French woman, complains about food, enjoys free time on latrines, and so on. The most famous episodes, like the confrontation with a French soldier in a shell hole, can stand on their own.

Remarque’s style is clear and simple, accessible to any reader, at times lyrical and passionate. He can offer elegant, heartbreaking passages like this:

One morning two butterflies play in front of our trench.  They are brimstone-butterflies, with red spots on their yellow wings.  What can they be looking for here?  There is not a plant nor a flower for miles.  They settle on the teeth of a skull. (126)

Or this:

How long has it been?  Weeks - months - years?  Only days.  We see time pass in the colorless faces of the dying, we cram food into us, we run, we throw, we shout, we kill, we lie about, we are feeble and spent, and nothing supports us but the knowledge that there are still feebler, still more spent, still more helpless [new recruits] who, with staring eyes, look upon us as gods that escape death many times.(133)

Remarque After He Was Drafted

Readers interested in World War One can extract a good amount of historical detail from the novel.  Trench life appears throughout in good detail. Artillery bombardment episodes are terrifying. Other historical characteristics appear, as when the novel touches on Germans’ starvation thanks to the Entente’s blockade, as, for example, we learn of new recruits who previously lived mostly on turnips (36), or we follow the narrator and his sister in a long line “to get a pound or two of bones.  That is a great favor” (179).  Baumer’s unit spends time near a Russian prison camp, giving us a hint of the terrible Eastern Front and of defeated Russians (189ff).  Later there is a glimpse of the shock of first encountering tanks:

From a mockery the tanks have become a terrible weapon.  Armored they come rolling on in long lines, more than anything else embody for us the horror of war… these tanks are machines, their caterpillars run on as endless as the war, they are annihilation, they roll without feeling into the craters, and climb up again without stopping, a fleet of roaring, smoke-belching armor-clads, invulnerable steel beasts squashing the dead and the wounded - we shrivel up in our thin skin before them, against their colossal weight our arms are sticks of straw, and our hand-grenades matches. (262)

In the final chapters we see 1918 and the beginning of German defeat:

Out lines are falling back.  There are too many fresh English and American regiments over there.  There’s too much corned beef and white wheaten bread.  Too many new guns.  Too many aeroplanes. (290)

One theme familiar to readers of WWI poetry and fiction is the gap between soldier and civilian, between those who experience war and those who promote it. Remarque doesn’t neglect this, as one can see in an early passage: “We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than [their elders’]… While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying.  While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already know that death throes are stronger.  But for all that we were no mutineers…” (12–13; yet see below). Spending time in a field hospital and overwhelmed by horror at woundings and deaths, Paul muses:

How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible.  It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. (263).

Here we also get a sense of the civilizational shock of the Great War, how radically it ruptured Europe’s sense of itself as the acme of progress. 

All Quiet on the Western Front offers a powerful and clear picture of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, but which the Allies then referred to as “shell shock”. Remarque emphasizes the psychological transformation Baumer and his peers experienced, which would shatter the rest of their lives. Paul describes the break between his civilian and postwar lives in terms of different wants: "…memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow - a vast, in apprehensible melancholy.  Once we had such desires - but they return not.  They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us…" (121)

The novel’s treatment of PTSD as not just a psychological symptom but as human destruction might be its strongest theme. It’s announced right from the start with an opening note: “This book…will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.” Toward the novel’s end Baumer reflects on himself: “I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.” (263). On the penultimate page: “if we go back [home] we will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope.  We will not be able to find our way anymore.  And men will not understand us…” (294)

All Quiet on the Western Front is famous for not only depicting one war but also encouraging the reader to oppose war in general. Time and again passages argue for war’s futility and uselessness. In a famous scene the soldiers around Paul dissect the reasons for war and show them to be groundless, even surreal or silly:

‘A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France.  Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat.’

‘Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?’ growls Kropp.  ‘I don’t mean that at all.  One people offends the other -‘

‘Then I haven’t any business here at all,’ replies Tjaden.  ‘I don’t feel myself offended…’” (204)

Elsewhere the Russians in detention aren’t terrible foes but desperate, kind, and nearly holy fellow people.’

‘A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.  At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that every crime on which formerly the world’s condemnation and severs penalty fall, becomes our highest aim.  But who can draw such a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their childlike faces and apostles’ beards.’ 

Immediately after those sentences Remarque shifts register to sound a strongly anti-authoritarian note: “Any noncommissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us.” (194–5). Here we see how far Europe has come from the regimented social order of 1914, and gives us a hint of postwar unrest to come. Here is a true “lost generation”. This theme of near-rebellion builds through the novel.  Toward the end, Baumer rails:

I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.  I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it more refined and enduring.  And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world are experiencing these things with me. (263)

Recall his earlier pledge to not be a mutineer when he continues:

What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account?  What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over?  Through the years our business has been killing… Our knowledge of life is limited to death.  What will happen afterwards?  And what shall come out of us? (263-4)

More openly, later: “If there is not peace, then there will be revolution.” (293). That extreme claim, is defused in the next chapter, but its inclusion among an account of the discipline-intensive German army is as astonishing glimpse of how far things had fallen by 1918. 

All these themes are heightened by the novel’s famous conclusion, its last four sentences, where the title appears for the first time, and which I won’t spoil here.

Seen among its contemporaries, All Quiet on the Western Front has much in common with British antiwar writing. The tonal and thematic connections are clear. Episodes echo in verse, like Baumer’s shell crater encounter with a Poilu and Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting”. There are connections as well to the great British memoirs, Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933) and Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That (1929). Like Brittain, Remarque concludes with a pacifist message.  

American readers would find a similar theme and intensity of expression in Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun (1939). The German novel has a great deal in common with Gabriel Chevallier’s Fear (1930), which presents a similar approach: a narrator and a small group of fellow soldiers, brutal and intense frontline fighting. More precisely, Fear may owe a great deal to All Quiet.

It differs greatly from more adventure-themed contemporary novels. Remarque and Ernst Jünger both served on the Western Front, and Storm of Steel (1920) is a very different novel, often emphasizing the heroism of overcoming challenges and a sense of personal satisfaction. John Buchan’s Greenmantle (1916) is almost diametrically opposed to All Quiet, as it features an exciting espionage plot conducted from the highest reaches of the British command. There is suffering, but clearly in a good cause.

Considering literature and the past generation of historiography, we can see All Quiet as a fine novel that passionately takes one side in the great arguments over the first World War.  There is no ultimate good to be achieved by the horrors Paul Baumer and his fellows endure. They don’t experience a learning curve of adapting to modern war. Instead, they represent the breakdown of Europe’s prewar order and the insurrectionist spirit it released. Remarque throws down a gauntlet to war and its leaders. Many subsequent creators and analysts have picked it up, but not all. It remains World War One’s great novel.

Tips on Trench Fighting

by André LaFargue, Captain, 153d Regiment of Infantry, 
French Army Trench Fighting

The foot soldier in the trenches is not over-fond of work; he often prefers to curl up in the mud under indifferent shelter to taking a little trouble. So, when he is subjected to bombardment, he has no cover to get under.

Furthermore, the foot soldier considers that he is in the trench merely to keep the enemy from getting through if he attacks. Since the enemy does not attack every day, the fighting habit is lost, and the enemy is left to plant entanglements and dig his shelters without molestation, so that, when the time comes to attack him, you will have to go up against thoroughly prepared defenses, which must be taken by main force.

The enemy that you do not kill beforehand will perhaps kill you on the day of the assault.

What the Foot Soldier Should Do in the Trenches

1. Be careful of himself.

2. Train himself and get seasoned to war.

3. Destroy Germans.

How to Take Care of Yourself

To get yourself killed or wounded in the trenches through carelessness or negligence is sheer stupidity because you have not been of any use. A soldier can never be replaced. Therefore build yourself a good shelter so that you can laugh at bombardments and sleep in peace. Do not do the imprudent things with which everybody is so familiar. Watch over your comrades who are careless, and especially over newcomers and young soldiers who want to see everything and are ignorant of trench customs. 

How to Get Seasoned to War

In the trenches, people fall into ways that are bad in battle. They stay continually in the shelters; when they move about, it is nearly always in the zigzags, so that they find it very disagreeable to have to pass through open spaces where the bullets are whistling. You must fortify yourself so as not to let any bullet bother you on the day of attack. To this end, go on patrol at night, and plant entanglements in front of the first line.

You should profit by your stay in the trench to learn skill [that] is your surest protection in battle. Every day fire a carefully aimed string at the enemy’s trench; study the point of aim of your rifle for different ranges; practice quick aiming to prepare yourself for firing at close range. Every soldier familiarizes himself with the throwing of the different types of grenades; he should interest himself in everything charged with explosives, the methods of priming bombs, trench weapons, etc.

The Attack on the Trench

In case of an attack, everybody goes promptly to his battle station. Sometimes, when the attack is preceded by a violent bombardment, the station is wiped out; the trench is nothing but a mass of holes and hillocks. You must then take such shelter as you can find; a solid trench is not necessary in order to fight.

Sometimes, it also happens that the enemy succeeds in getting into your trench and pushing by before the defenders can get out of their shelters. You must not think that all is lost; make a space around the shelters with grenades and shoot the enemy in the back. By working in this way, intrepid garrisons have annihilated whole German companies, which had already pushed beyond the first trench.

From: United States Marine Corps in the First World War
Downloadable at:

https://www.usmcu.edu/historydivision/frequently-requested/publications

Rapid Fire World War–Five Incredible Days in April 1915

French Colonials Killed by Gas at Ypres

• The first  gas attack of the Western Front launched on 22 April 1915 at Ypres 1915 was just the first of a rapid series of fateful, tragic, and memorable events that unfolded in less than a week.

Rupert Brooke, Royal Naval Division

• The following day, one of the first of the notable "war poets" to emerge, Lt. Rupert Brooke of the Royal Naval Division, would die on the island of Skyros. 

Armenian Family on a Deportation March

• On 24 April the Ottoman Empire would begin its systematic massacres and deportations of its Armenian subjects.

Gully Ravine, Gallipoli Peninsula

• Sunday the 25th will forever be remembered as the landing day at Gallipoli, the start of the memorable and ill-fated land campaign. 

Italian Ambassador to Great Britain, Marquis Guglielmo Imperiali

• In London 24 hours later, Italian and Allied diplomats executed the treaty bringing Italy into the war. Anticipating an Allied victory to come soon, Italy's representatives never realized they were signing a death warrant for 600,000 of their citizens. 

• Meanwhile in New York on 24 April the RMS Lusitania completed its 201st transatlantic voyage and began loading cargo for its next trip, which would be its last.

Recommended: The Exciting Life of Georgetown University Alum—Laurence Stallings

From: SFS: Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service


December 8, 2017
by Matt Ellison and Charlotte Kelly

Capt. Laurence Stallings, 1918

Laurence Stallings, who graduated with a master’s degree from the School of Foreign Service in 1922, turned his experience as a wounded veteran in the First World War into inspiration for a career as a journalist, author, and playwright.

Laurence Tucker Stallings was born on 25 November 1894 in Macon, GA, to Larkin Tucker Stallings and Aurora Brooks Stallings. In 1912 he matriculated to Wake Forest University, where he became the editor of the literary magazine on campus, Old Gold and Black. It was there where he met his first wife, Helen Poteat, the daughter of the university's president.

In 1916, Stallings graduated from Wake Forest and got a job writing advertising copy for a local military recruiting office. Then, in 1917, he joined the United States Marine Reserve. On 24 April 1918 he left Philadelphia aboard the USS Henderson for overseas duty in France. Stallings served in France as a platoon commander with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, during the fighting at Chateau-Thierry. At the Battle of Belleau Wood, Stallings was shot in the right leg leading a successful assault on an enemy machine gun installation. He was promoted to captain, awarded the Silver Star, and given the Croix de Guerre by the French government. Although he begged not to have the leg amputated, a wish respected at the time, he would have to have it amputated in 1922 after a bad fall on ice. He began work on his novel Plumes while recovering at Walter Reed Hospital.

Stallings was no longer able to serve due to his injury and returned home to the United States. Stallings married Helen Poteat on 8 March 1919 and had two daughters, Sylvia, born in 1926, and Diana, born in 1931. Stallings then attended the School of Foreign Service, where he received his master’s degree in foreign service in 1922. After graduation he began working as a reporter, critic, and entertainment editor at the New York World. 

Perhaps Stallings’s greatest work was his pseudo-autobiographical novel Plumes, which told the story of Richard Plume, a U.S. Marine whose combat injuries cost him a leg and much of his faith in government and society. The novel was published in 1924 and became a huge success, with nine printings in that year alone. The novel was so popular, in fact, that it was adapted into King Vidor’s 1925 film The Big Parade, which was MGM’s largest-grossing film until Gone with the Wind in 1939.

Stallings’s career in the arts and entertainment blossomed when he began to collaborate with playwright Maxwell Anderson. The two co-wrote several plays together, their first and most successful being What Price Glory, a comedy-drama which depicted the rivalry between two U.S. Marine Corps officers fighting in France during WWI. What Price Glory opened at the Plymouth Theatre in New York City in 1924, ran for 435 performances, and was adapted twice for film.

Stallings and Anderson went on to co-write two more plays—The First Flight and The Buccaneer, both of which premiered in 1925—before going their separate ways. Stallings continued to work in theater. He wrote the book and lyrics for the musical Deep River, which ran briefly in October of 1926. He co-wrote the book for the 1928 musical Rainbow with Oscar Hammerstein, adapted Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms for the stage in 1930, co-wrote the book for the 1937 musical Virginia, and he wrote the play The Streets Are Guarded, which premiered in 1944.

After this big success, Stallings served as a key influence for several of John Ford’s greatest films, having wrote or co-wrote 3 Godfathers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Sun Shines Bright. He is also credited for contributing to the screenwriting of Vidor’s Northwest Passage, as well as Leslie Fenton’s The Man from Dakota and On Our Merry Way.

According the Los Angeles Times, Stallings “lived adventurously despite the loss of his right leg.” In the interwar years between screen-writing assignments, Stallings traveled the world as an editor and writer for the newsreel service, Fox Movietone News. This work brought him to cover Europe and wars in Spain and Ethiopia in the 1930s. In Hollywood, the LA Times wrote, Stallings “gained a reputation as a ‘two-fisted’ writer, specializing in tales of war and adventure.”

Continue reading the article at:

https://sfs.georgetown.edu/alumnus-laurence-stallings-used-wwi-experience-inspire-books-plays-films/

The Development of Aeromedical Evacuation in the First World War

Col. David M. Lam, U.S. Army,  M.D., M.P.H

A Curtis "Jenny" Converted to an Air Ambulance, Scott Field, IL

Between 1892 and 1910, the innovative Surgeon General of the Dutch Army, General De Mooy, developed an entire concept for medical evacuation, including ground vehicles, aircraft, dirigibles, and captive balloons pulled by horses. Unfortunately, this forward-looking concept, which earned him the sobriquet of "the Jules Verne of aviation medicine", was never tested or implemented.

The first great step forward in the concept of aeromedical evacuation occurred in 1909, when Captain George Gossman, a U.S. Army medical officer, joined with Lieutenant Albert Rhodes of the Coast Artillery Corps in designing and building an aircraft specifically for the transport of patients. The aircraft, though crude and requiring the patient to lie unprotected on the wing alongside the pilot, was successfully flown (once!), and Gossmann and Rhodes attempted to convince the War Department to develop the concept further. Since this proposal was made only a year after the Army purchased its first motor-driven ground ambulance, and in the same year in which the Army purchased its first aircraft (it was not to purchase another for two years), it may be imagined with what degree of success they met. In the face of War Department obstinance, numerous medical officers took up the battle for air evacuation.  The response of the War Department echoed that of the newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, which proclaimed that "the hazard of being severely wounded was sufficient without the additional hazard of transportation by airplane."

In France, too, military medical professionals faced opposition from the Ministry of War in attempting to develop an air evacuation capability, but the opposition of the conservatives was to be overridden by the force of circumstances. In November of 1915, during the retreat of the Serbian Army from Albania, it became impossible to evacuate all the sick and wounded of the French Expeditionary Force by ground, and it was unthinkable to abandon the wounded to capture. Therefore, although the only available aircraft were fighter aircraft in poor condition, the decision was made to attempt evacuation by air. The first heavier-than-air evacuation in history took place on 15 November 1915, and over the succeeding month, 13 wounded were evacuated from frontline, poorly prepared airstrips, often within rifle shot of the enemy. Based on this dramatic evidence of the usefulness of air evacuation, as well as on the results of exercise trials, the French government authorized the development of the first air ambulances, which were first used in combat on the Aisne front in 1917. However, the risk of aircraft losses derailed this experiment, with one member of the Chamber of Deputies crying "Are there not enough dead in France today without killing our wounded in airplanes?"

The French Air Service Converted the Breuget-14 Bomber
to Air Ambulances

A fixed-wing aircraft was first officially used as an air ambulance in 1917 in Turkey, when an injured British soldier was transported from the battlefield to the nearest medical facility. The hospital was located three days away by road, but the patient arrived in 45 minutes by air, reportedly saving his life. French records at the time indicated that, if casualties could be evacuated by air within six hours of injury, the mortality rate among the wounded would fall from 60 percent to less than ten percent.

The United States, in gearing up for entry into WWI, developed numerous new flying fields. These fields were established in areas of the country with poor roads, and it was often a matter of several hours before a student pilot injured in a crash could be brought to a hospital. Flight Surgeons rapidly began to develop air ambulance conversions of the JN-4 "Jenny" training aircraft, and by 1919 such ambulances were a fixture on all training fields.

Aftermath

By the end of WWI, air ambulances were in common use in the United States and had seen limited combat use in France. No other nation actually used air evacuation, though the United Kingdom had experimented with it before the war. However, neither medical systems nor the airframes themselves were able to allow in-flight medical care. Though built in numerous versions, each of these early air ambulances had one common feature—the patient was enclosed in the fuselage, without an attendant, and with no possibility for care in flight. In this regard, they were the model for most air ambulances during this period. Even though the air ambulance was a reality, it was seen only as a means of transport, rather than as an integrated part of the medical care system.

British  DH.9A Air Ambulance in Somaliland, 1920

Although air ambulances were certainly in increasing use following WWI, there did not appear to be any great need for systematic air evacuation on a large scale during peacetime. Most nations paid little attention to the issue, though military air evacuation systems were developed by France and Britain for use in their colonial wars and successfully evacuated thousands of casualties. For the first time, there was an effort to provide some limited in-flight care, and one Breguet XIV-b Limousine was described as having "electric boilers, coverlets, tank of oxygen, surgical instruments, and dressings." For the first time, aircraft were integrated into the military medical system, even though still under command of non-medical officers. The benefits were clearly recognized, but unfortunately the systemic changes needed in military medical establishments to make optimum use of this new modality were not adopted by most nations.

Beginning in 1920, the U.S. Army developed an ambulance modification of the De Havilland DH-4, which was produced in significant numbers, and several of which were used extensively on the Mexican border. Just as had been the case with earlier air ambulances, these planes carried their patients isolated in coffin-like enclosures built into the fuselage. 

From: "Medical Evacuation, History and Development—The Future in the Multinational Environment"  by Col. David M. Lam, U.S. Army,  M.D., M.P.H

The Defeat of Imperial Germany: 1917–1918 Reviewed by James M. Gallen

The Defeat of Imperial Germany: 1917–1918

by Rod Paschall

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1989

For many, their image of the Great War is one of water and rat filled trenches, denuded no-man's-land, futile over the top charges into machine gun fire in which nothing moves but the death toll. However, we know that something changed because the war did end. That is the story of The Defeat Of Imperial Germany: 1917–1918.

One of the Most Famous Photos of the 1918 Campaign
Gas Victims of the British 55th Division, April 1918

What I like best about this tome is the way it chronicles the shift from the stalemate that existed on 1 January 1917 to the Armistice of 11 November 1918. The first chapter sets the stage by describing the state of each contending army. British General Haig was commanding the greatly expanded New Army, which replaced the small professional force that had been destroyed in 1915. The French Army had carried the bulk of the fighting in 1916 while the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) rebuilt and was showing wear by 1917. The strength of the German Army was its Army Staff organization and its ability to adapt to changing challenges and opportunities. Ironically it was the autocratic Germany nation that spawned a more merit-based staff system than did the democratic French and British. While the Europeans were stalemated "Over There," the U.S. Army was stalemated in Mexico in its search for Pancho Villa. Despite its small size, the U. S. Army had improved its officer corps since the Spanish-American War and had a tradition of rapid expansion through volunteer units. It also had the advantage of a commander-in-chief, Woodrow Wilson, who knew his limitations and was not inclined to micro-manage.

Three of the key events of 1917 were Germany's implementation of unrestricted submarine warfare, the release of the Zimmerman Telegram, and the American declaration of war that followed. The author brings out the fact that the Zimmerman Telegram not only offered Mexico support in retaking Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, but also suggested an outreach to Japan. Interestingly, California was not mentioned, perhaps with the thought of dangling that before the Japanese.

Although perhaps the most significant events of 1917, the Russian Revolutions in March when the tsar was overthrown and in October when the Communists came to power, are given little ink. In fact this book does not say much about the revolutions. Lenin and Trotsky make the index once each and Nicholas II, Kerensky, and Kornilov not at all. The authors seem to play down the significance of the revolutions as factors in the defeat of Germany.

Nineteen-seventeen was a year of glory and degradation. The British seized the initiative with renewed vigor in their Flanders campaign while French effectiveness was impaired by widespread mutinies that were closely kept secrets. Canada is said to have won its nationhood on Vimy Ridge, where its corps first operated as a unit. The British offensive, while impressive in scope, sunk into a sea of mud and blood that made Passchendaele the name for the worst of the war.

The dawn of 1918 brought both danger and opportunity to both sides. The Russians were withdrawing and the Yanks were coming, but what difference would it make? German troops were moved from the Eastern to Western Fronts, but the instability of the new Soviet Union and breakaway republics required the retention of a substantial guard. When the Yanks got here what help would they be? In European minds, they were untrained, poorly equipped, and weakly led. Then there was the problem of the Italian Front on which both Italy and Austria-Hungary called on their stronger allies for aid.

The British introduced a new style of warfare at Cambrai where trucks, tanks, and airplanes transformed combat forever. The British used their new equipment to break the German defensive system but had not learned to exploit their advantage to rout the foe. In a deviation from Pershing's insistence that Americans fight as units under their own command, two battalions were placed in the French line. Their performance provided support for claims that the Americans were unprepared and poor fighters.

The American Expeditionary Force was expected to be huge, but its impact remained to be proven. The German offensives from 20 March through 4 June 1918, first against the French along the Somme and then against the British in the Lys Offensive, were attempts to win the war before the Americans could make their power felt. The German failure to break the Allied lines set up the American First Infantry's limited, but successful, attack at Cantigny. The Marines' victory at Belleau Wood, to which they were ironically transported by Vietnamese troops, was followed by the reduction of the St. Mihiel Salient.

U.S. 18th Infantry, 1st Division, Advancing
 Second Day of the St. Mihiel Offensive

The final American drive through the Meuse-Argonne region was the largest American military operation to that time and continued up to the Armistice. On these pages I found aspects of the war that I had not picked up in other reading. I have read about the Allies maneuvering for postwar advantage during World War II but do not recall the suggestion that Haig and Foch tried to minimize American success to diminish Wilson's stature at the peace conference. Clemenceau's recommendation that Pershing be removed may have been aimed at Wilson's prestige. The American preference for rifles over machine guns came as a surprise as did the objections to strategic bombing when it was first introduced during this war. The influence of the Spanish Flu on the competing armies is a topic I had not seen raised elsewhere.

Readers will also enjoy the appearance of well-known names such as Eddie Rickenbacker, Alvin York, Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall, and George S. Patton. The genius of The Defeat Of Imperial Germany: 1917–1918 is its ability to organize the bullet points of why the Allies won into a narrative that aids the understanding of the road to victory and the challenges, within and outside the Allied ranks, that were overcome to achieve it.

James M. Gallen

What to Expect from Worldwar1.com in 2018

Happy 2018!

Here's some what you can look for in the coming year from all our publications at Worldwar1.com, including Roads to the Great War, the St. Mihiel Trip-Wire, Over the Top magazine, and our constellation of educational websites.

The Big Stories of 1918

The Yanks to the Front

The Zeebrugge Raid

Which Was the Right General for 1918?

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic

Germany Rolls the Dice

The British Army's Finest Moment

     

Armistice Day: Paris, 11 November 1918

Reviews and Recommendations for Your WWI Bookshelf

Try These On the War in 1918: 

Germany's Last Gamble: The Five Ludendorff Offensives The German Offensives of 1918: The Last Desperate Gamble  by Ian Passingham	American Expeditionary  Force's Battles in WWI American Armies & Battlefields in Europe from the ABMC
Turmoil in Russia:  Revolution, Civil War, Intervention Russia in Flames, War, Revolution: Civil War 1914–1921 by Laura Engelstein	The British Army's Final  100-Day Campaign Hundred Days: The Campaign That Ended World War I by Nick Lloyd