Madison Square Park’s Victory Arch

Victory Parade for the 27th Division, AEF

New York City, 25 March 1919

Keith Muchowski

Washington Square Arch in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and The Soldiers' and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza are two of the most iconic structures in all of New York City.  Long gone today, however, are several archways in New York City that, while no longer extant, were meaningful to the people who built and experienced them in their time. And then, almost as quickly as these arches were built, they were gone.

Leading this list of fleeting corporeality is an edifice constructed in New York City just after the Great War—the Victory Arch that stood at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway between 24th and 25th Streets from 1919–1920. Other examples of these transient edifices include the original plaster and wooden Washington Square arch hastily constructed in 1889 for the centenary of President Washington’s first inaugural. This is not to be confused with two additional albeit more modest arches built at the same time a few blocks north in Madison Square for that same centennial. A decade later, again in Madison Square, came the Dewey Arch, built in honor of the admiral who had done so much to win the war in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. Citizens turned out at these sites in the hundreds of thousands to honor the achievements of those for whom they were constructed and witness what they knew was history in the making.

Aerial View of the Completed Arch

Ironically the Victory Arch was not conceived in triumph but can be traced to when the war’s outcome was still very much in doubt; planning for a Great War-related edifice dated as far back as February 1918, when most Doughboys and prospective recruits were still stateside. The project’s major stakeholders included the eminent National Sculpture Society, the Mayor’s Committee on National Defense, and the U.S. military itself, among others. These leaders envisioned a monument that might serve as a recruiting tool in those still-early days of American involvement in the war. That structure never materialized, but on November 12—the day after the Armistice—officials returned to the idea of a memorial and the project was on once again. Because a Mayor’s Committee on National Defense no longer made sense once the Armistice came Mayor John Francis Hylan immediately created two new bodies: a Mayor's Committee of Welcome to Home-Coming Troops and a Mayor’s Committee on Permanent War Memorial. Hylan quickly appointed department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker chairman of both committees. As the committee titles indicate, Wanamaker and his associates had a dual mandate—first would be the homecoming welcomes for various units, followed thereafter by the creation of a permanent Great War memorial.

Time was of the essence. In late 1918 and early 1919 troops were coming home by the thousands crammed aboard transatlantic ocean liners, soon to be discharged and returned to their families. Wanamaker and his associates got down to work immediately, selecting Madison Square just before Thanksgiving and by year’s end hiring Thomas Hastings to design the arch. Paul Wayland Bartlett, head of the National Sculpture Society, was to execute a chariot atop the edifice with symbolic figures representing wisdom, power, justice, and peace alongside it. Eager to take part, dozens of prominent artists and architects, including Daniel Chester French, Cass Gilbert, and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney participated as well, not just in Madison Square, but at sites farther up Fifth Avenue at the 42nd Street New York Library and East 60th Street adjacent to Central Park. Donations poured and volunteers rolled up their sleeves for the task.

The work proceeded over the winter while troops continued their return. On one day alone—6 March 1919—over 13,500 men from the 27th Division arrived in New York Harbor aboard the Leviathan and Mauritania. The 27th—O’Ryan’s Roughnecks—was comprised primarily of men from the Empire State and their return naturally drew great excitement. Men from the 27th continued pouring in over the following days and weeks and the division’s homecoming parade was soon scheduled for 25 March. It would stretch nearly five miles from Washington Square Park up Fifth Avenue to 110th Street. The New York Times described Fifth Avenue on the eve of the event, gleaming as it was in the flood lights of 100,000,000 candle power, as a “canyon of brilliancy.” The 27th Division parade that passed through the Madison Square Park Victory Arch that 25 March was the largest gathering in New York City up to that time. The crowd was so large and proved so unwieldy that two people were killed and over thirty wounded as attendees pushed forward to get a better look. The following day the Roughnecks were back at Camp Upton, soon to be discharged in early April and returned home. In early May the men of the 77th Division had their parade. City and military officials maintained a stronger presence for the march through the Arch of the Doughboys from the 77th “Liberty” Division.

The Soldiers' View As They Marched Through the Arch

The parades and homecomings over, the Madison Square Victory Arch was demolished by summer 1920. Rodman Wanamaker and his colleagues then began their next task—building a permanent memorial. The idea of a Great War memorial for New York City continued for almost a decade and a half. Interest was initially intense but waned as the 1920s progressed and it became apparent that the war to end all wars had led only to revolution, discontent, and instability. Many were also turned off by what they saw as the various proposals’ excessive triumphalism, anti-German nativism, and excessive price tag. United States Congressman Fiorello H. La Guardia, himself a Great War veteran—a major in the U.S. Air Service stationed on the Italian-Austrian front where he ran bombing runs and worked as a translator and liaison—eventually even soured on the project. La Guardia was elected mayor of New York City in November 1933 and in January 1934 appointed Robert Moses commissioner of the New York City Parks Department. Moses believed parks should be more for exercise and recreation than commemoration and quickly set about on his mission of building playgrounds, swimming pools, and ball fields. While there are many fine World War One monuments in New York City, a permanent, large-scale Great War memorial for Gotham was not to be.

Keith Muchowski, a librarian and professor at New York City College of Technology (CUNY) in Brooklyn, writes occasionally for Roads to the Great War. He blogs at thestrawfoot.com.

Remembering a Veteran: Pvt. Ollie O. Olive, 116th Infantry, 29th Division, AEF

By Glenn Hyatt

Ollie Olive, Private, Co. K, was operating a captured machine gun, holding out against one of the counterattacks along the railroad spur. As described by one of his comrades to his family after their return from France: "Ollie climbed into a tree to have a better line of fire on the enemy with the machine gun. His position was located by the enemy and with a withering fire they cut him down. He didn't suffer but was killed outright."

Olive fell at the age of 19, defending his comrades, his body was recovered and returned to his family. Olive is buried at Arlington Cemetery.

Tom Morgan's Hellfire Corner

They Had a Rendezvous with Death

The fall weather finally providing a relief to the summer heat and Armistice/Veterans day just around the corner I took time this weekend to finish up a little business that I seem to have put off again and again. I planned to visit the grave of a fellow Virginian from my home town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, who was lost in the Great War.

My interest began some years ago while visiting our World War I memorial with my fellow VFW members. The name of Ollie O. Olive seemed to leap from the tarnished bronze plaque, and I wondered, who was he, how did he meet his fate?

My fascination continued as I interviewed his surviving sisters and became familiar with the family's story of their lost brother. During trips to France I visited the battlefield and found the location where the men from Fredericksburg fought during World War I. I had even located a picture of Ollie in uniform.

Ollie was a young man whose family worked a small farm just outside of town. He was a frail and sickly boy, nearly crippled at times with what the family described as the rheumatism. In 1916 Frederickburg's National Guard regiment, (The Washington Guard, 2nd Virginia, Company K), mustered into service for the Texas border. Ollie fancied himself as a soldier but was disappointed when he was not accepted. 

In the ensuing months the papers were filled with reports and letters from Company K as they served on the border. They returned in February of 1917 to a parade through town as the community crowded into the streets welcoming the returning heroes. The men of Company K marched through town before being demobilized and returning to civilian life. But as fate would have it, Ollie's chance to join up came again in just a few short months.

With the declaration of war in April of 1917, Company K was once again called up. The paper was full of advertisements calling for the enlistment of able bodied men to fill the ranks for service in Europe. Ollie went to the recruiter and this time convinced them that he would fill the bill. Without even a chance to return and say good-bye to his family, Ollie began the adventure which would culminate in a strip of shell-torn forest on a French farm, north of Verdun.

Company K, became part of the 116th Infantry, 29th Division, and was selected to assault the heights overlooking the sleepy Meuse River which meandered across the blood drenched battlefield of the Western Front. Occupied by the enemy since 1914, these heights provided a commanding position from which German batteries raked the allied troops attacking through the Argonne Forest. On 16 October 1918 Ollie and his fellow Virginians joined an attack across an open field against the German lines. Machine guns played their deadly tattoo, cutting through the Doughboys like a scythe. Ollie and the other survivors of Company K gained the woods sheltering the enemy line. As Ollie's comrades related the story to his family, he mounted a captured machine gun in the shattered stump of a tree and raked the Germans in counter attack after counter attack. Finally the enemy located his position, and as the soldier in Alan Seeger's epic World War I poem, Ollie kept his rendezvous with death.

After the war, as the victory celebrations passed and the horror of war dimmed in the veterans' eyes, Ollie was returned. His family selected Arlington Cemetery as his final resting place and there he was laid to final rest.

As I walked the distance from the reception center to Section 18 in the back corner of the grounds, I recalled my visits to the battlefield and that same strip of woods where Ollie fought and died. I recalled the moss covered trenches and collapsed bunkers that still run through that section of battle line, the rusted equipment poking through the forest floor and the barbed wire which still lay in coils in the tangled underbrush. I also recalled the details of  Ollie's unselfish sacrifice.

Ollie's Resting Place: Section 18, Arlington National Cemetery,
Argonne Cross in Distance

I reached Section 18 and looked for Ollie's grave, #3240, I also became very aware that all about me were soldiers' graves that had one thing in common. These were the dead of the Great War, the fallen, those who had given their all in the War to End All Wars...Names such as William Penny, 318 Infantry, 80th Division, Leroy Small 115th Infantry 29th Division, 167 Infantry of the (Rainbow) Division, Second Division. Boys from Wyoming, New York, Oregon, and so on and so on..all of which were dated 1917–1919. Then I found plot 3240, Ollie's unassuming white marble stone was inscribed "Ollie O. Olive, 29th Division, Virginia, October 1918."

I looked around me, there in all directions row after row of white marble stones stood as mute testimony to those who slept below. Ollie had kept his rendezvous with death, as all the men who lay in this yard, they had given their lives for their country, for democracy, for mankind.

When November 11th approaches and we commemorate the Armistice of 1918 as well as veterans everywhere, remember Ollie and his comrades. For they have passed to us the torch of freedom.

Sources: The Doughboy Center and Find a Grave

The World War One Origins of the American's Creed

Dunedin, Florida

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

William Tyler Page

While the Great War was still under way, the House of Representatives honored William Tyler Page, a longtime Congressional employee and future Clerk of the House, for his authorship of the “American’s Creed.” In 1916, on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War I, Henry Sterling Chapin, the editor of an educational journal, devised a national writing competition to foster patriotism and civic responsibility among U.S. citizens. 

Of the more than 3,000 submissions for an American Creed, Page’s winning entry was described as “brief and simple but remarkably comprehensive of the best in American ideals, history, and tradition, as expressed by the founders of the Republic and its greatest statesmen and writers.” 

The House ceremony to recognize Page included Speaker of the House James Beauchamp (Champ) Clark of Missouri and former Speaker Joe Cannon of Illinois. Members of Congress paid tribute to the veteran employee—who began his career as a House Page in 1881—for his service to the institution and his country. Page, who received $1,000 for his winning entry, recited the “American’s Creed” on the Capitol steps which ended with the declaration, “I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.” In further recognition of Page’s accomplishment, the House placed a bronze tablet of the “American’s Creed” in the Capitol.

Sources: USHistory.org; U.S. House of  Representatives Website

The Cape Helles Memorial to the Missing

James Patton

Cape Helles

The Helles Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Memorial to the Missing is located on the promontory called Cape Helles by the British, at the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula near the small village of Sedd el Bahr in Turkey. The memorial includes the 30-meter-tall obelisk depicted above, which dominates the skyline, and can be seen from ships passing through the Dardanelles as well as from the city of Çanakkale and the ruins of ancient Troy on the other side of the water. There are inscribed on the panels that surround the base and on the low walls surrounding  the obelisk 20,887 names of personnel with no known grave.

The Memorial

The site was designed by Sir John J. Burnet, a French-trained Scot, who designed many important buildings in Glasgow during its Golden Age, and became known for a style called "Burnet Baroque." He also designed the Edward VII Galleries at the British Museum in London, for which he was knighted in 1914.

For the 25 April 1915 landings at Gallipoli the British command designated six spots on the peninsula and coded these S, V, W, X, Y, and ANZAC beaches. Cape Helles is situated between V and W beaches. These two little coves were vitally important because most of the reinforcement and resupply would have to come through them. No fools, the Turks were aware of this and so, unlike ANZAC, both sites were heavily defended.

In what was later studied as a textbook case in "how not to land an invasion force on a hostile beach," written by Lt. Col. George S. Patton in 1936 for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, the British 29th Division was all but destroyed, but toeholds were gained and held due to extraordinary acts of heroism. Six Victoria Crosses were awarded for actions on V Beach that day and six more for actions on W Beach (also called "Lancashire Landing" to honor the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers).

Names shown are men of the King’s Sandringham Co. ,
the subject of the BBC TV show All the King’s Men

Among CWGC memorials, there are some atypical aspects to the Helles site:

First, there is no cemetery attached to the memorial.

Second, there is no Book of Names.

Third, the lists include British, Indians, Newfoundlanders, Australians, and other Colonials. This is the only CWGC memorial that recognizes both British and Australians, and no other CWGC memorial has so many different  groups represented.

Fourth, the lists include naval personnel lost at sea in the Gallipoli campaign, especially on the battleships destroyed on 18 March 1915.

Fifth, the lists also include personnel known to be dead but buried at sea.

John Hambidge, MBE

One of this latter group is 240 Sergeant William John Piggott, Royal Engineers (Territorial Force), 1/2nd  London Field Company, attached to the 29th Division for the Gallipoli Campaign, who was from Eastleigh, Hampshire, and was a railwayman in civilian life on the London and Southwestern Railroad. Sjt. Piggott died on 1 September 1915 while on a hospital ship en route to the U.K. He was the maternal grandfather of my good friend John Hambidge, MBE, of Macclesfield, Cheshire. In the photograph John has his right hand by his grandfather’s inscription. We are left to speculate as to why a railway engineering unit was sent to Gallipoli.

James Patton

Railway Guns of World War I

By Marc Romanych and Greg Heuer
Illustrated by Steve Noon

Osprey Publishing, 2017
Peter L. Belmonte, Reviewer

French Railroad Piece Deployed at Verdun

In World War I artillery was truly the king of battle. It inflicted more casualties than any other weapon, and railway guns, although not predominant, were a part of this bloody work. It is fitting, then, that authors Marc Romanych and Greg Heuer have teamed with artist Steve Noon to produce this short but informative book on these interesting rail-borne weapons. The authors are well qualified to produce this book. Romanych, a retired U.S. Army officer, has previously written on fortifications and artillery for Osprey Publishing, and Heuer is a student of the history of technology, to include heavy artillery. Noon has produced artwork for over 30 books for Osprey Publishing.

After a brief introduction and overview of the history of railway guns and an outline of the nomenclature used by each nation, the authors proceed to review the development and fielding of these guns on a year-by-year basis. For each country the authors provide a narrative of the numbers and types of guns produced and general accounts of their manufacture. They also include a table for each year showing, by country, a list of each of the railway guns fielded, giving their designation, range, and number fielded.

There is something here for everyone. Technical enthusiasts will enjoy the descriptions of the development and characteristics of the guns, including recoil and traverse systems, while others will appreciate the accounts of the use of the guns in combat. And everyone can learn about the operations and tactics involved with these guns. Consider the authors' description of the work necessary for computing firing data for the guns. After initial computation taking into account range, azimuth, type of ammunition and charge, other factors had to be taken into account:

At long distance, a minor error could result in a wide dispersion of rounds, so once basic firing data was determined, firing corrections were calculated for the difference in elevation between the gun and its target (determined by map), direction (lateral wind, rotation of the earth), and range (wind, air density, weight of projectile, muzzle velocity, barrel wear, and perhaps even curvature of the earth and displacement of the firing track during multiple firings) (p. 39).

There are many photographs of the guns of each nation, and Noon's excellent artwork helps us visualize these guns in color. This book is highly recommended as a useful introduction to this topic.

Peter L. Belmonte

The Rubaiyat of William Hohenzollern

Awake, old Tirpz I Bid Hindenburg arise,

"Der Tag" has come, I long to hear the cries

Of Europe ! Well proceed to raise all Hell,

Let's use our day from dawn. Time flies! Time flies!

-o-o-o-

Dreaming, it seemed to me the World was mine,

Waking, I think that the idea is fine;

We'll wade right in to see what we can grab,

And glut ourselves with murder, rape and wine.

-o-o-o-

Come,  fill the cup, and don a mask of pain

That we should have to cleanse the World again 

Consider we our cause both pure and strong,

So first we'll try our hand in old Louvain.

-o-o-o-

Should any doubt my will, or us dispute,

Man, woman, child, don't hesitate to shoot;

We'll play the policeman,, and for Kultur's sake

My son, young Bill, will pick up all the loot.

-o-o-o-

How sweet is mortal sov'reignty—you see

How sov'rcignty has made a God of me,

As I a God of it—play we the role

Thus, each one part, and that alternately. 

-o-o-o-

I sometimes think that never lived so great

A monarch as Myself—in fact of late

My greatness has appalled 'me and I bow,

I bow my humbled head upon the gate

-o-o-o-

There is no door, but that we have the key,

There is no depth debarred from you and me,

Success alone will justify our game,

So kill the land and terrorize the sea.

-o-o-o-

And if the man you burn, the child you kill,

Should even for one moment keep you still,

Think well 'tis for our sacred Kultur's sake,

And by a million murders steel your will.

-o-o-o-

Yet . should success to dust and ashes fade,

And Justice. rise from out the Hell we made,

We'll say that others lit the fire, and we

But fanned the flames, to mark the price they paid.

-o-o-o-

So Tirpz I with Hindenburg and me conspire,

With murder, rapine, frightfulness and fire,

Let's raise all Hell and, even should we fail,

At least we'll have " Der Tag" of our desire. 

Source: The Wipers Times

Our Monthly Newsletter: The St. Mihiel Trip-Wire

The March 2019 issue of the St. Mihiel Trip-Wire, sister publication to Roads to the Great War,  is now available:

http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/smtw.htm

This month's issue contains articles on such topics as:

• Austria-Hungary in the First World War


• Mary Borden's Song of the Mud.


• America Demobilizes Her Wartime Forces


• Portent of Another World War


• Looking Back: Our Retrospective of the War, Part III


• A German Admiral Evaluates the Prospect of America Joining the War


• Harry Moseley: Greatest Scientific Loss of the First World War


• Hell's Angels: A World War One Film Classic


• All Our Regular Features

To subscribe yourself, just click the blue tab for Free Publications.

Remembering Joyce Kilmer: A Roads Classic

A Forgotten War Poet: Sgt. Joyce Kilmer, 

165th Infantry, 42nd "Rainbow Division," AEF

By David Beer

Kilmer Before the War

Few people remember Joyce Kilmer. In a very random survey I asked some friends, all reasonably well educated and “of a certain age,” if they had heard of him and none had. One was sure I must be referring to a woman. All however were familiar with the lines “I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree.” This memory seems to be all that remains of an American journalist, editor, and poet who, born in 1886, enlisted in 1917 and as a sergeant in the 42nd Rainbow Division met sudden death at the Second Battle of the Marne from a sniper’s bullet through his forehead on 30 July 1918. He died by the Ourcq River, a stream in Picardy, and left behind him a wife and three children His comrades of the 42nd buried him by the side of the stream.

When Kilmer met his death at the age of 32 he was already an established writer and poet, with some 42 poems to his credit. Perhaps “Trees” was his best-known work, and it was certainly popular among ladies who liked to sing it at gatherings in their parlors, but to judge Kilmer by this rather lightweight and sentimental lyric of six couplets is to underrate a poet who also composed longer works such as “The White Ships and the Red” and “Rouge Bouquet.” The former is a long, haunting reflection on what just a week earlier had shocked the nation and helped point us toward war with Germany: the sinking of the Lusitania. For Kilmer, as for much of the nation at the time, this was an act of shocking barbarity, so shocking that the countless ships that over the centuries have sunk to the bottom—Spanish galleons, Roman triremes, and even “the grim Titanic”—look up from their resting places startled:

The ghostly vessels trembled
From ruined stern to prow;
What was this thing of terror
That broke their vigil now?
Down through the startled ocean
A mighty vessel came,
Not white, as all dead ships must be,
But red, like living flame!

Sgt. Joyce Kilmer, KIA

Soon the Lusitania gives her lengthy answer, reinforcing the color imagery of the white ships that met their ends in expected ways and the red ship now joining them, stained by a bloody and shameful act:

"But never crashing iceberg
Nor honest shot of foe,
Nor hidden reef has sent me
The way that I must go.
My wound that stains the waters,
My blood that is like flame,
Bear witness to a loathly deed,
A deed without a name.

"I went not forth to battle,
I carried friendly men,
The children played about my decks,
The women sang – and then –
And then – the sun blushed scarlet
And Heaven hid its face,
The world that God created
Became a shameful place!

We now know that the Lusitania also carried less innocent cargo besides “friendly men” and playing children serenaded by their mothers. This was not known in May of 1915, however, and the poem effectively conveys the sense of shock and injustice the sinking caused the American people, all intensified by the aura of grief and tragedy that emanates from the ghost ships.

The Need for Flight Surgeons in World War I

By Lewis Barger, Office of Medical History, U.S. Army

Equilibrium testing for an aviation candidate,
19 March 1918. Early tests tried to replicate
aerobatic stresses. Courtesy National Archives

The Army’s association with heavier-than-air flight began on 10 February, 1908, when the Army signed a contract with the Wright brothers for an airplane. It was four years before the War Department published instructions, drafted by Surgeon General George H. Torney, directing the medical examination of pilot candidates attending the Signal Corps Aviation School. By April 1914, the particular physical demands of aviation were becoming better known, and two future Brigadier Generals, ophthalmologists Theodore C. Lyster and W.H. Wilmer, outlined new specifications for aviators: “Vision, ocular muscle balance, and the effect of refractive errors, were particularly considered.”

It wasn’t until April 1917, that the Medical Service for the Aviation Section was created. Newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Lyster was put in charge of aviation issues in the Surgeon General’s Office and was responsible for the physical examinations of all those seeking to serve in the Air Service. In two month's time Lyster organized 67 examining units at sites around the country. He also incorporated the specifications he had worked out with Wilmer into the physical standards for pilot candidates, but he recognized that the standards were based more on common sense than actual analysis.

Aviator's Oxygen Mask in Position,
Ready for Use.  From Wings of War
by T.M. Knappen, 1920

Meanwhile aviation cadets were dying at a horrific rate in training accidents, leading Lyster to call for a research program to determine what type of person would best be suited for aviation duty. In September, Lyster was made Chief Surgeon of the Aviation Section, Signal Corps and promoted to colonel. He immediately set to work organizing an Aviation Medical Research Board, which the War Department gave the authority to:

* Investigate all conditions which affect the efficiency of pilots.
* Institute and carry out experiments and tests to determine the ability of pilots to fly at high altitude.
* Develop and test systems to supply pilots with oxygen at high altitudes.
* Act as a standing medical board for the consideration of all matters relating to the physical fitness of pilots.

One of the board’s first actions was to create the Central Medical Research Laboratory. The laboratory was created with departments of otology, cardiovascular medicine, physiology, psychology and neurology, and ophthalmology, and opened on 19 January 1918 at Hazelhurst Field in Long Island, with Colonel Wilmer as director. By that summer, 20 branch laboratories had been set up at flying fields throughout the United States and Wilmer was on his way to Europe to establish a Medical Research Board for the American Expeditionary Force. All this expansion was driven by the high rate of non-combat deaths, which would continue to drive research after the war ended.

Brigadier General Theodore C. Lyster

In May 1919 the first eight-week course of instruction for flight surgeons was given by the Central Research Laboratory at Hazelhurst Field. By 1922 the laboratory had been renamed the School of Aviation Medicine and in 1926 was moved to Brooks Field in San Antonio. That same year COL Louis H. Bauer published Aviation Medicine, the first textbook on the subject. 

Although Surgeon General Torney recognized the need for standards of fitness for military fliers relatively early, losing 59% of the fliers killed in France to non-combat accidents provided the War Department with the impetus to create research facilities to study the unique environment and demands of flight. Once the Medical Department was adequately resourced, they moved rapidly to the forefront of research and education on the subject and made significant contributions to the field of aviation medicine.

Source:  "The Beginnings of Aviation Medicine," The AMEDD [Army Medical Department] Historian, Summer 2014

Rube Goldberg Explains the War

Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist whose work mocked America's fixation on technology. After receiving a degree from the University of California in 1904 he took a job designing sewer pipes for the San Francisco Sewer Department. A few months later he became a sportswriter and cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Bulletin. He also briefly worked for the New York Evening Mail, creating three long-running comic strips. His most popular drawings depicted complex gadgets that performed even the simplest tasks in convoluted, elaborate ways, known as Rube Goldberg machines. In 1948 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartoon, "Peace Today," which conveyed a warning against atomic weapons. Besides his wacky machine designs, all attributed to Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, Goldberg produced political cartoons and many regularly appearing strips like "Boob McNutt,"  "Sideshow," and "Father Was Right."

Rube was touring Europe when the Great War broke out. He sent a cartoon home from Paris explaining to his countrymen just how the war broke out.

Sources: Biography.com, Screwballcomics.blogspot.com

Prelude to the October Revolution: The Kornilov Affair

Alexander Kerensky and General Lavr Kornilov

With the failure of the 1917 offensive of the Russian post-tsarist Provisional Government, Supreme Commander Alexei Brusilov's stock plummeted and his advocacy of executions to restore discipline in the army made him politically unpalatable to the Provisional Government. He had to go. Alexander Kerensky, now prime minister, selected heavy-handed General Lavr Georgevich Kornilov to replace him. On political matters, this would be roughly analogous to George Patton replacing Dwight Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander in World War II. It was an appointment doomed from the start. 

Kornilov's solution for restoring discipline turned out to be even more threatening to the revolutionary cadres than Brusilov's. Kornilov believed it was imperative to repeal Order No. l, issued by the Petrograd Soviet in March 1917, which made all military orders dependent upon its consent and placed discipline at a regimental level under the discretion of soldiers’ councils rather than in the hands of officers. 

Kerensky simply could never agree to such a fundamental change and an overly candid speech by Kornilov at a conference in Moscow further alarmed him. He began seeing Kornilov as a Napoleon in the making with backing from the right. Whether imagined or real, charges of a coup were levied when Kornilov sent troops to Petrograd to maintain order. Kornilov responded to the charges by calling for the overthrow of the Provisional Government, sealing his fate. He would be dismissed, jailed, and, after escaping, become a White Army commander in the Don Basin where he would be killed in April 1918. 

Red Guards at a Petrograd Factory, 1917

Kornilov's fate, though, is much less interesting than the damage caused by Kerensky's handling of the episode. The Petrograd Soviet was called upon to oppose Kornilov's deployment to the capital. But the only military assets they had were controlled by the Bolsheviks, who gained the authority from the Soviet to form a Red Guard. So Lenin's followers were given an opportunity to reverse their fading fortunes. They helped suppress the "coup," rehabilitating the Bolsheviks' reputation, and gained a permanent presence. Trotsky would later write, "The army that rose against Kornilov was the army-to-be of the October Revolution." 

Pétain: Verdun to Vichy

By Robert B. Bruce

Potomac Books, Inc. 2008
James Thomas, Reviewer

Lt. Pétain

Marshal Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Pétain is the great enigma of French history. The hero and savior of France in the Great War, he was the collaborator and traitor to his nation in the Second World War. Robert Bruce warns the reader in the preface that while Pétain may be most remembered for leading the Vichy government, this biography would focus on his military career. That is quite a difficult task in itself. Something Bruce wrote toward the end of the book might well have been more useful at the beginning, when he said that perhaps Pétain lived too long. He would indeed have remained a great heroic figure had he died prior to 1940, but it is the actions of one's entire life that define a person.

That said, Bruce does an excellent job presenting the life and military career of the hero of Verdun. In many ways, Pétain was the ideal model of the Third Republic's military. He was 14 years old when France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War and Germany was born. That moment in the impressionable teenager's life defined who he would be. Like so many soldiers and civilians in France, vengeance against the Germans was the theme of his life for the next decades. As France the nation prepared itself to get back at Germany for the humiliation of the war that brought the birth of Germany and the creation of the French Third Republic, so too did the young Pétain.

Following all the proper steps to build a military career, the ambitious and driven Pétain studied at Saint-Cyr and the Ecole de Guerre. Service in a variety of infantry units, even teaching infantry tactics and climbing through the officers' ranks, Pétain was made general as the Great War began in that auspicious summer of 1914. Doing well in the early stages of the war, it was at Verdun that he ultimately defined himself, his talents and his love of France. As the hero of the savage slaughter that finally stopped the German onslaught, Pétain symbolized French stubborn resistance and willingness to do whatever necessary to defeat the hated Allemands.

Joffre and Pétain at Souilly Headquarters, March 1916

By the time the war ended in November 1918, Pétain was named Marshal of France and had achieved legendary if not mythical status to the people of France. The ceremony in which Pétain received his marshal's baton took place in Metz, under the statue of another great French marshal, Napoleon's ablest subordinate, Michel Ney. Attaining the honor in Lorraine, finally regained from Germany, made it glorious to the utmost.

In some ways, the last third of Bruce's book then reads almost as if it were an afterthought. A dozen or so pages describing those profoundly significant years between the wars (in the middle of which the book's photographs are placed) and then the last pages are devoted to the fall of France, Vichy, and the final years of Pétain's life. Professor Bruce warned the reader in the preface that this would be the case, and in fact he does a nice job in the pages devoted to this part of the story, but naturally the reader wants more. As the series description on the back of the book notes, part of the purpose of the series is to encourage further study, and that it certainly does.

Still, for a relatively brief examination of a remarkable and controversial figure, Robert Bruce's little biography of Marshal Pétain is quite good, especially for readers with more military than political interest in the man, and most particularly for those more interested in the Great War than the Second. Pétain, like most of the entries in Dennis Showalter's Military Profiles series, is an excellent piece and a very good place to begin learning about Pétain.

James Thomas

Who Was Boris Shaposhnikov?

Boris Mikhailovitch Shaposhnikov  (1882–1945) served with distinction in the tsar's army, the Red Forces in the Russian Civil War, and as Josef Stalin's Army Chief of Staff in the opening days of World War II. Born in Zlatoust, in Central Asia, he joined the Russian Army in 1901 and graduated from the Imperial Nicholas Military Academy in 1910 in St. Petersburg (later Petrograd, Leningrad, and then back to St. Petersburg), Russia. 

During World War I he served in staff positions, becoming a regiment commander in October 1917; in December of the same year he was elected commander of the Caucasian Grenadier Division, with the rank of colonel. Demobilized from the Russian Army the following March, Shaposhnikov volunteered for the Red Army in May 1918, subsequently holding various staff positions on the Supreme Military Council and in the People’s Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs of the Ukraine. He became the most trusted of the former tsarist officer who served with the Reds and was appointed chief of the Intelligence Section of the Field Staff of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic in August 1919 and chief of the Field Staffs Operations Directorate in October 1919.

Photos from Top: 1917, Tsarist Officer; 1939 with Stalin as Chief of Staff; 1982 Commemorative Stamp for Centenary of His Birth.

Between 1921 and 1925, he served with the Army General Staff. In 1925, he was named the commanding officer of the Leningrad Military District. Between 1928 and 1932, he was the commanding officer of the Moscow Military District and then the Privolzhsk (Volga) Military District. His book, Mozg Armii (The Brain of the Army), was published in 1929; it was a required reading for a generation of Soviet army officers. In 1930, he finally joined the Communist Party. In 1932, he was appointed commandant of the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, Russia. Between 1935 and 1937, he was once again the commander of the Leningrad Military District. 

In 1937, he was named Chief of the General Staff. In 1940, he was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Shaposhnikov first involvement in WWII came in the form of planning the invasion of Finland, the mediocre result of each resulted in his resignation from his position as the Chief of the General Staff in August 1940 with the excuse of poor health. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, he was reappointed as the Chief of the General Staff and held that position until Nov 1942. For several months in 1943 he was the Deputy People's Commissar for Defense, resigning due to declining health. Until his death in 1945, he was the commandant of the Voroshilov Military Academy of the USSR Army General Staff in Moscow. A marshal of the Soviet Union, he was buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow.

Source:  World War II Database

Map Series #3: The 1915 Battles in the Champagne

Click on Image to Enlarge

In English-language sources, the 1915 campaign on the Western Front is vastly under-reported.  For military historians the fighting there apparently seems especially pointless and the interest in and enthusiasm for the ill-fated Gallipoli operation has remained irresistible and unabated for a century. 

The French Army carried the much-bigger load throughout the year because the British New Army was still being recruited and trained. Consequently the French incurred enormous casualties in Artois, north of Paris, and in the Champagne. However, in terms of the learning curve for the French Army, these battles must be studied for a full understanding of why breakthroughs at any location at this time of the war were almost impossible. The Champagne, especially, showed the need for an even greater investment in artillery and the development of a doctrine for advancing against multiple trench lines with elaborate barbed wire barricades.

This map from a French postwar magazine is well detailed, showing well-known sites like Navarin Farm and Main de Massignes, and nicely delineates between the First Champagne, which started in December 1914, and the Second, launched in September 1915. The width of the map covers about 12 miles.  The farthest cumulative advance in the two battles was 3 miles. France paid for the lessons learned in them with nearly a quarter million casualties.

For some additional details on the battles visit our earlier articles:

First Champagne

Second Champagne

A Must-See Video: They Deserve Their Own Memorial

Scenic Battlefield: The Isonzo Sector of the Italian Front—Part 2, the South

Having led battlefield tours to Western Europe, Gallipoli, Italy, and Slovenia, I can say that the most dramatic scenery can be found on the Italian Front.  The Isonzo Sector, on both sides of a 60-mile leg of the Isonzo [today Soca] River involved the bulk of the fighting, featuring 11 Italian offensives and the German-Austrian victory in the Battle of Caporetto. Today we highlight the southern half of the sector, best known for being the locale of the 11 Battles of the Isonzo, intended to push past Gorizia and across the Carso Plateau to Trieste.

Austrian Chapel Near Plava

Cavern Used for Shelter

Sveta Gora (Holy Mountain, Monte Santo) Destroyed During the War

Hungarian Cemetery North of Gorizia

Mte San Michele Monument Overlooking Gorizia

Defensive Trench of Austro-Hungarian Forces

The Carso Plateau

Italian Artillery Galleries

Monument to Field Marshal Svetozar Boroević, Fifth Army Commander

Dolina of the XV Bersaglieri, Italian Support Base

Italian Third Army Memorial, Site of 100,000 Burials