The Application of Airpower in the Third Afghan War

 

British Aircraft on Patrol During Afghan War

The Third Anglo-Afghan War also known as the Third Afghan War, the British-Afghan war of 1919, and in Afghanistan as the War of Independence, began on 6 May 1919 when the Emirate of Afghanistan invaded British India and ended with an armistice on 8 August 1919. Airpower played a key role during the 3rd Afghan War (1919) and the revolt in Waziristan (1919-1920). Five Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons of BE2Cs, Bristol F2Bs, De Haviland DH9As, and De Haviland DH-bombers were used in strafing and bombing attacks on the rebellious frontier tribes and on targets in Afghanistan itself, including Kabul and Jalalabad. The attacks on Afghan towns, although small-scale, helped bring King Amanullah to the negotiating table.

Handley Page V/1500 Bomber, "Old Carthusian,"
That Bombed Kabul

In May 1919, during the brief Third Anglo-Afghan War, the Royal Air Force (RAF) employed a lone Handley Page V/1500 to bomb the palace in Kabul. Although little physical damage resulted, the bombing caused great distress among the city’s residents. One author noted that “the women of the royal harem rushed on to the streets in terror.”

The attacks on Kabul and other Afghan towns, although small scale, helped bring King Amanullah to the negotiating table. Within days, Afghanistan’s King Amanullah Khan had called for a truce. Nevertheless, the month-long war gained the Afghans the conduct of their own foreign affairs. A peace treaty recognizing the independence of Afghanistan was signed at Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan) on 8 August 1919.

Sources: Wikipedia, British Army Museum, RAF Archives, Encyclopedia Britannica, Imperial War Museum

Meet Charles Carrington, Author of A Subaltern's War

See Ed Lengel's Terrific Essay on Charles Carrington
HERE

What? Nurses and Soldiers Flirting on the Wards!—A Roads Classic

[This article is dedicated to a certain nurse who was assigned to my ward at Williams Air Force Base Hospital once upon a time.]

VAD Nurses and Soldier-Patients on an Outing

Where there are male soldiers and young female nurses, there’s bound to be trouble. At least, that was the view of many when the First World War began. Red Cross volunteers were under strict instructions not to socialise with soldiers. But what could you do when young men flirted with you?

Helen Beale, a VAD in France, bemoaned the strict rules about socializing with men in her letters home: “The rule is that nobody must go out with a man, even if it’s your own brother and you are with other people, too.”

The rules, she said, simply didn’t make sense: “Although you mayn’t go and have tea at a shop with anyone it’s apparently quite permissible to go with them for a lonely walk on the sandhills and bring them back for tea.

“And though you equally mayn’t go motoring with a friend you may get a lift given you by any casual motorer-by and nobody says nuffink!

Lighting a Cigarette for a Patient

“I believe these questions are settled and rules made by a pack of silly old women in England.”

Male visitors at the field hospital where Helen worked  were not encouraged. Men seemed to quickly realise they were not welcome. When Helen’s family friend popped in unannounced at the camp, she wrote: “I was at lunch so just missed him as he said he really didn’t dare face a sisters’ mess to come and find me.”

Sex and the VAD

Although the rules seemed ridiculous to people like Helen, they were in place to protect VADs. Many of these young women had led very sheltered lives and had never been told about sex. The Red Cross offered self-defence classes to many VADs as part of their training.

In her memoirs, VAD Kathleen Theodora Rhodes recalls how naïve she was. She was “on a troop train in Rouen in the afternoon–the only female on it–and had to travel all night, alone in stygian darkness, with an unknown officer.

“But I was such a sweet innocent in those days that it did not occur to me to be nervous. […] After some hours he said to me, ‘Aren’t you nervous, alone like this in the dark with a strange man?’

‘Not in the least’, I replied and asked innocently: ‘Why should I be?’ He did not explain! But he treated me with the greatest chivalry until we were dumped on the station in Etaples at 4.30am and he said goodbye quite reluctantly.”

Flirting in the Wards

Whilst they couldn’t socialize in private, the injured soldiers and the nurses spent many hours together in the wards. As we’ve seen from Oona Chaplin’s Kitty and Richard Rankin’s Captain Gillan on The Crimson Field, emotions in a hospital could run high.

If a patient wanted to flirt, nurses had little opportunity to escape. Helen Beale wrote to her mother: “We have a very tiresome new patient in the wards…he is by way of being very gentlemanly and swagger but as it takes the form of calling us ‘you girls’ and the like—and worse—I strongly object and shall snub him when opportunity arises!”

Playing Cards with the Patients

Other flirtations were more welcome. “Another such nice boy in the ward comes from Lincolnshire and is the most incorrigibly cheerful thing you can imagine considering that he has lost his leg and part of his left hand has been blown away, too. He nearly made me lose countenance the other day when I was washing him.

“I was diligently rubbing his back etc when the jolly old YMCA man came in to bring the men parcels of fruit that he had brought up for them from the village. What must my boy say than ‘wouldn’t you like to be me, sir, lying here being washed by a nice young lady like this!’”

Helen also enjoyed watching the military nurses flirting with the doctors: “I scent a love-affair between the Sister and the house surgeon, who comes in constantly and stays much longer than I feel sure there is any need to and they have long confabulations together! A somewhat exposed way of being great friends though, as all the ward and all the nurses can see and speculate about it!”

Rumors of flirtations and secret liaisons between VADs and “khaki” must have reached Red Cross headquarters. Dame Katherine Furse, the Red Cross commandant-in-chief wrote an open letter reprimanding VADs because “there is too much inclination at present to replace good work with sloppy sentiment.”

“A soldier is very adaptable and will accept what is given him”, she wrote. “If his nurses are familiar, and discipline is replaced by slackness and sentimentality, he will respond accordingly.”

She urged VADs to act professionally and prove themselves “worthy of their responsibilities” so that their patients would respect them.

Love Letters

Many nurses carried autograph books with them as a souvenir for patients and colleagues to sign. Some men took this as an opportunity to write flirtatious notes. An example in our archives has a poem from an injured soldier, who wrote:

“Sister Orrell is her name,
Single is her station;
He’ll be a very lucky chap
Who makes the alteration.”

Others knew that flirting—even in writing—was not worth the risk, as one wry poet explained:

“What? Write in a book
Where young ladies look
And old maids spy?
Not I; not I.”

Source: The British Red Cross blog at:   Blogs.redcross.org.uk/world-war-one/

Map Series #19: Le Hamel 4 July 1918

When I was researching my recent article on General Fuller and tank warfare, I discovered he had included this very helpful map on the battle of Le Hamel, which is considered a tactical masterpiece by General Monash and an example of where the potential of the tank was on full display. This map is exceptional because it shows where the tanks were deployed at the opening of the attack.

I have supplemented the map with three photographs which will help the reader appreciate the terrain, which, to me, looks just perfect for tank warfare. Please note the directions. North is to the left; the attack was mounted from west (bottom) to east (top).  C is the 

A.  Australian Front Line

A-B.  No Man's Land

B.  German Front Line

C.  Final Objective (Looking West from the Site of the present day Australian Memorial.)

Click on Images to Enlarge

To learn more about this interesting battle, read our article here:

https://roadstothegreatwar-ww1.blogspot.com/2020/07/battle-on-4th-of-july-le-hamel-1918.html

Recommended: Lowell Thomas Discovers Lawrence of Arabia

T.E. Lawrence and Lowell Thomas

By Mitchell Stephens

Originally presented in The History Reader, 19 June 2017

During the First World War Lowell Thomas was confirming—as he zipped to Europe, through Europe and then to the Middle East— that being in motion was his preferred state. And the direction he preferred for all this moving about, the direction that might best satisfy his adventure addiction, was also becoming clear: toward the increasingly exotic. From Egypt Lowell had made it to Palestine.

And now he was hearing talk of a significant military campaign under way in Arabia—at the time, for a European or American, among the most exotic locales on Earth. Lowell had even spoken with a colorful Englishman, in the habit of dressing in Arab robes, reputed to be riding at the head of the Arab forces.

Arabs were among the ethnic groups using the First World War as occasion to try to gain independence from the sprawling, heterogeneous and increasingly rickety Ottoman Empire and Turkish rule. Since that empire was allied with Germany in this war, and with an eye toward postwar influence in the region, the British were enthusiastically encouraging this “Arab Revolt”—supporting it, advising it, funding it. They were primarily working with the Hashemites, Sherif Hussein bin Ali and his sons, who had dynastic claims in the western part of the Arabian Peninsula, the Hejaz. Major T. E. Lawrence first tagged along with an emissary to the Hashemites, then became an emissary himself. . . 

That initial mention of Major (he had been promoted) T. E. Lawrence in one of Thomas’ notebooks was an account of the effort a month earlier by Lawrence and some Arab forces to hold on to the town of Tafilah, just south of the Dead Sea, which the Arabs had captured and the “Turks” were trying to retake. Here it is in its entirety:

 At southern end of Dead Sea, he & six Bedouins ran into outposts of a whole Turk Division, only had one machine gun & he was manning that. Held Turks off until he could send for re-enforcements. Said: “I believe I ran, yes, I’m sure I ran. But I kept count of the number of paces I ran so we had the range.”

When his re-enforcements arrived he left part of his men where they were & took most of his force around behind Turk Div. Killed divisional commander, took 500 prisoners & killed all the rest.

In his shows and writings, Lowell Thomas would go on to, as Ben Hecht later put it, “half invent the British hero, Lawrence of Arabia.” And this is Thomas’ initial sketch of that supposedly fearless, shrewd, indomitable leader of Arabs and slaughterer of Turks. It is, therefore, a significant piece of evidence.

Lowell Thomas seems to be either taking notes in these initial paragraphs on “Maj. T. E. Lawrence” or writing from notes, and given the appearance of the first person in them, they appear to be notes from an interview with T. E. Lawrence himself.

In that case the story of T. E. Lawrence’s holding off a whole Turkish division at Tafilah by firing a machine gun came from Lawrence. And that story is almost surely untrue. It does not appear again—even in the most hagiographic biographies of T. E. Lawrence, even in the one Thomas himself would write.

A few pages later in this notebook, Thomas returns to the subject of “Maj. T. E. Lawrence.” Here Thomas records a full seven pages of notes. He jots down his first description of Lawrence: “5 feet 2 inches tall. Blonde, blue sparkling eyes, fair skin—too fair even to bronze after 7 years in the Arabian desert. Barefooted, costume of Meccan Sherif.” We know that at this time T. E. Lawrence, in full Arab dress, posed for photographs by Harry Chase. And these extended notes by Thomas include discussions of T. E. Lawrence’s adventures that must have been based on interviews in Jerusalem with Lawrence.

The dozens of biographers of T. E. Lawrence disagree on the extent of Lawrence’s own responsibility for inflating his accomplishments and thereby helping create the legend of “Lawrence of Arabia.” But it is apparent even from Thomas’ initial efforts to record T. E. Lawrence’s story—which would also have been Lawrence’s initial brush with attention outside the military—that T. E. Lawrence inflated some of his accomplishments and therefore contributed quite a bit to that legend. There is other such evidence. If “Lawrence of Arabia” was half invented, Lowell Thomas must share credit for the invention with T. E. Lawrence himself along with some of his votaries in the British military.

Read the full article here:

https://www.thehistoryreader.com/military-history/t-e-lawrence/

Don't Miss Your April 2021 St. Mihiel Trip-Wire

 

In this issue, we focus on the Great War in the Lorraine in 1914, where much important things were happening while the world's attention was focused on the Race to the Sea in Western France.

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

Main Focus: The Lorraine Gap of 1914

• From Your Editor: Post-Marne Movements
• The Lorraine Gap Evolves
• Germany Files the Gap
• Minding the (Former) Gap, 1914-1918

Éparges Spur on the Meuse Heights Would Be an 

Epic Battleground for the Entire War

• What the Gap Led to in 1918
• 100 Years Ago: The Second Battle of Inonu Marks a Turning Point in the Greco-Turkish War
• The Spanish Flu vs. COVID-19: the Numbers
• Documentary: HMS Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy Sunk on 22 September 1914

Greek Troops Advancing During the First Battle of Inonu, January 1921

Other Topics:

• Different Perspectives on the 1914 Campaign
• Germany's Vulnerable Point Was Lorraine
• The Zabern Affair
• Barbara Tuchman on the Decisive Moment in Lorraine
• Plus all our regular updates and features

Next Month:  Flanders 1914: Locking in the Western Front

American Industrialist & Philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., Visits France in 1916

By Kimball Worcester

The American Industrial Commission to France (1916) was organized and dispatched on its mission by the American Manufacturers’ Export Association in response to a suggestion made November 21, 1915, by President E. M. Herr of the Association at a reception-luncheon given to the French Trade Commission, headed by M. Maurice Damour, deputy of The Landes… Official assurances, conveyed subsequently through Ambassador Jusserand, established French acquiescence beyond doubt, and indicated the unusual character of the opportunity offered an American organization to study French industrial conditions. 
(Chapter I, “The Inception of the Commission,” Report to the American Manufacturers Export Association by the American Industrial Commission to France, September–October 1916)

Thus begins the dense and informative report of the 13-member mission on which the Ohio industrialist Joseph G. Butler, Jr. (1840-1927), traveled to France in autumn 1916 as “the representative of the steel and iron industry.” Butler pioneered steel making in Youngstown, Ohio, in the late 19th century. His companies included the Ohio Steel Company, subsequently the Ohio Works of Carnegie Steel, later U. S. Steel, in addition to Youngstown Sheet and Tube and the Youngstown and Suburban Railway Company. 

The summary of the commission’s report opens with “America must become an important factor in European reconstruction after the war, and whatever tends to throw light on the specific needs of one nation cannot fail to call attention to the similar needs of all.” The report is, predictably, businesslike and solid, while Butler’s reminiscence is personal and chatty as well as astute and heartfelt. This is a chapter of reminiscence from 1925, published two years before his death in Recollections of Men and Events, and he also wrote a more extensive account of his 1916 journey in  A Journey Through France in War Time  (Cleveland: The Penton Press, 1917).

The commission set sail on 3 August 1916 on the French ship Lafayette, an appropriate vessel indeed. Butler comments on the ship: "We found a gun mounted on the prow of our vessel, the Lafayette, and were assured that it was meant for business if the occasion arose, the Captain explaining that his instructions were to fire on the German submarine, if any such vessel threatened his ship." They docked in Bordeaux on 3 September, with Butler observing: 

The first thing that struck me when we landed at Bordeaux was the large number of able-bodied men employed about the docks. It seemed strange when man-power was at such a premium. We were told that these were Spaniards. At this port I saw also a great deal of steel that had been made in Youngstown [namely, his companies’ steel]. Butler recounts as well of Bordeaux: I had secured a small French flag at Bordeaux and carried it with me constantly on the journey through France, waving it whenever the opportunity occurred, in spite of the warning given us by our chairman that we were to observe strict neutrality. This flag was received with great enthusiasm. 

Butler accurately comments on the commission’s official neutrality: "Our chairman was thoroughly convinced that we should observe the strictest neutrality, although we were to be the guests of the French Government and to visit a stricken country with which most of us felt the greatest sympathy." Good points, there. Butler’s Francophilia shows throughout the memoir without degrading into the “filthy Hun” Germanophobia. 

The Schneider Works at Le Creusot

The commission visits textile factories, munitions manufacturing, shelled cathedrals and towns, and Le Creusot, where “the greatest of all French steel and munitions plants is located.” They were kept away from the area where the high-explosive shells were loaded, as “it was thought the danger was too great.” He notes, interestingly, that this plant is “the oldest business concern in France, having been chartered as a coal mining proposition in 1253.” They traveled largely by automobile, near the First Marne battle lines, to Rheims, Baccarat, Limoges, Belfort, and Besançon (the “gateway to the Front”), among other locales. They are feted by the French and speeches are made on both sides, although Butler himself does not speak French (one wonders how many on this American commission actually did). Butler can’t help name dropping a bit. He meets Lloyd George at the Hotel Crillon in Paris and “greeted the English Premier in Welsh, his native tongue, which secured for me a few minutes conversation with him…[he said that] ‘the world is big enough for us all’ [and that] the British were ‘fighting the battle of civilization.’”

Further adventures bring Butler and the commission ultimately to Le Havre on 18 October, whence they cross the Channel and make their way to Liverpool, embarking on the Philadelphia for the journey back across the Atlantic, arriving “without incident.” Later, Butler philosophizes toward the end of his 1925 essay: 

What does civilization mean if it fails to include justice and consideration for others What do knowledge and skill and industry profit, if they are to be used to destroy what they have already created? And what do the long ages of man’s struggle upward to the light avail if they lead to scenes such as have been described [above]? Since that time the German dream of dominance has been shattered and the human race seems safe from another such catastrophe as the World War, but there does not appear to be much evidence that Europe has learned from this experience the lesson it should teach which is that if human progress is to be real, both the head and the heart must have a share in solving the problems of mankind.

Winslow Homer's Crack the Whip at the
Butler Institute of American Art

Joseph G. Butler, Jr., made good on this belief in human progress in 1919, when he donated his entire personal art collection to the museum he founded in Youngstown, Ohio, the Butler Institute of American Art, the first museum in the country dedicated exclusively to American art. From its inception, the Butler collected and celebrated works by American women and Black Americans. It is there today, a noted museum, free admission to all (www.butlerart.com). Butler was my great-great grandfather, the grandfather of my grandmother, whose husband (Capt. Benj. L. Agler) served on the Western Front in the 4th Division and in occupied Germany with the 26th Division. Butler volunteered, as did Agler, to further the combined causes of the U.S. and France during and after the Great War. 

Sources: 
https://bobonbooks.com/2017/07/29/growing-up-in-working-class-youngstown-joseph-g-butler-jr/; Recollections of Men and Events; Report to the American Manufacturers Export Association by the American Industrial Commission to France, September–October 1916.

In 1920 J.F..C. Fuller Asked: "What had the influence of the tank really been?"

Here's his answer.

The effect of the tank’s mobility on grand tactics was stupendous. Between the winter of 1914 and the summer of 1918, to all intents and purposes, the Allies waged a static war on the Western Front. During these three and a half years various attempts were made to wear down the enemy’s fighting strength as a prelude to a decisive exploitation or pursuit, but these battles of attrition were mutually destructive and the Allies undoubtedly lost more casualties than they inflicted. Attrition without the possibility of surprise  or mobility is a mere “push of pikes,” it is a muscular but brainless operation. At the Third Battle of Ypres it cost us a quarter of a million men. 

Then came the tank, and true attrition was rendered possible; in other words, in tank battles the enemy lost more in human points than we did: it is doubtful whether in killed and wounded we lost, between August 8 and November 11, 1918, as many men as the prisoners we captured. This was only possible by our possessing the means of putting the grand tactical act of penetration into operation, by breaking down the “inviolability” of the German front, and by so doing rendering envelopment a reality.

Tanks Arriving at the Front

In minor tactics it was possible, by means of the tank, to economize life by harmonizing fire and movement and movement and security; the tank soldier could use the whole of his energy in the manipulation of his weapons and none in the effort of moving himself forward; further than this, sufficiently thick armor could be carried to protect him against bullets, shrapnel, and shell splinters. Human legs no longer controlled marches, and human skin no longer was the sole protection to the flesh beneath it. A new direction was obtained, that of the moving firing line; the knight in armor was once again reinstated, his horse now a petrol engine and his lance a machine gun.

Strategy, or the science of making the most of time for warlike ends, had practically ceased since November 1914. Even the great advances of the Germans in 1918 came to an abrupt stop through failure of road capacity, and roads and rails form the network upon which all former strategy was woven. The cross-country tractor, or tank, widened the size of roads to an almost unlimited degree. The earth became a universal vehicle of motion, like the sea, and to those sides which relied on tanks, naval tactics could be superimposed on those of land warfare.

German Prisoners, Canadian Tank, Amiens, August 1918

With the introduction of mechanical movement every principle of war became easy of application and, to-day, to pit an overland mechanical army against one relying on roads, rails, and muscular energy, is to pit a fleet of modern  battleships against one of wind-driven three-deckers. The result of such an action is not even within the possibility of doubt: the latter will for a certainty be destroyed, for the highest form of machinery must win, because it saves time, and time is the controlling factor on the battlefield as in the workshop.

From: TANKS IN THE GREAT WAR, 1914–1918 by Brevet-Colonel J. F. C. FULLER, D.S.O. (Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry)

International Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology of Lost Voices

 Edited by Constance Ruzich 

Reviewed by Bryan Alexander

Bloomsbury Academic, 2020

While Serving in These Trenches on Mte San Michele, Giuseppe Ungaretti Was Inspired to Write Some of the Greatest Poetry of World War I

World War I gave rise to an extraordinary wave of creative expression. Novels, memoirs, plays, manifestos, paintings, and more appeared from 1914 on, each grappling with the war’s disruptions, brutality, and transformation.  The war’s poetry is perhaps the most famous, with British war poets being widely taught and read.

With this volume Constance Ruzich gives us a new collection of WWI poetry, one which goes beyond familiar verse. [Connie runs the excellent blog Behind Their Lines , which looks at lesser-known poetry of the Great War.] To begin with, this new anthology includes works from a wide range of nations, from Russia and Germany to France, (including both French and Breton languages), Italy, India, New Zealand, and the United States (with white and Black writers). Connie also takes care to represent many women’s voices, which can be a surprise to readers accustomed to a primarily male field. She selects poems which offer varied views of the war: yes, the familiar sorrow and pity, as well as fervent calls for more fighting, criticisms of war profiteering, and thoughtful lines about battlefields long after the last shot has been fired.  

This panoramic view of First World War poetry is divided into the kinds of human experience each poem addresses.  "Soldier’s Lives" leads the volume and presents the kinds of poetry most readers would expect, such as “The Night Patrol France, March 1916.”  Rupert Brooke is represented by a fragment. There is quite a tonal range, touching horror (“Song of Mud,” “Little Song of the Maimed" ("Petite Chanson des Mutilés"), momentary peace in war (“The Bathe”) and surreal comedy, (“In No Man’s Land”). One is a very musical piece, which was actually turned into a song (“On Patrol in No Man’s Land”). “The Hill” shows us the shocking first appearance of the tank.  Some of these poems describe the experience of war as one of extraordinary intensity, like Giuseppe Ungaretti’s “Vigil" ("Veglia"):

 

 

The "Minds at War" section takes us deeper into psychology, giving us views of characters’ thoughts during and close to the war.  For example, Albert-Paul Granier’s “Fever (La Fièvre") shows us a mind racing in terror and exhilaration. “Bivouacs” traces a soldier’s imagination from recalling the details of camp to flights of escapist fantasy. Amy Lowell’s “September, 1918” imagines a peace that was actually soon to arrive. Some of the “Minds” are lighthearted, like William Oliphant Down's “Picardy Parodies No. 2 (W.B. Y--ts"), which satirizes the famous Yeats by placing his mythical visions in the west front. 

The "Noncombatants" section gives us the views of civilians, from mothers sending sons to war to priests dealing with military occupation. Some are elegiac, while others wish destruction and heightened war on the enemy, like Émile Cammaerts’ brutal “New Year’s Wishes to the German Army" ("Voeux de Nouvel An à l’Armée Allemande").  Dorothy Parker’s cutting “Penelope” focuses on the contrast between soldiers and civilians.  May Sinclair’s “After the Retreat” ponders ruined cities from an ambulance volunteer’s viewpoint. C.H.B. Kitchin describes civilians experiencing the new art film of cinema, as it depicts the Battle of the Somme. “A Memory” (Margaret Sackville) ponders a savaged village but, again, not from a military standpoint:

"Making Sense of War" offers reflective or analytical poems, sometimes focused on social problems like venereal disease (“The Camp Follower”) or on calls for national renewal (“A Litany in the Desert”).  Classic references (“A Meditation upon the Return of the Greeks,” “I Saw a Man This Morning”) and Biblical language (“O Little David, Play on Your Harp,” “Solomon in All His Glory”) appear alongside the mundane details of daily life (“A Letter from the Front”). At least one is more abstract and also apocalyptic, Georg Trakl’s “Eastern Front" ("Im Osten):

While many accounts of the war’s cultural impact emphasize religious disillusionment, this section shows religion serving a serious and central purpose for a good number of poets.

"Remembering the Dead" and "Aftermath" take the postwar period as their subjects: disability, the gap between veterans and inexperienced civilians, unbearable loss, the desire for peace. What we now refer to as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) appears.

With each poem the editor adds biographical background, as well as particular historical context. In addition, a solid introduction does a fine job of explaining the volume’s plan, along with some of the history of WWI poetry. Readers familiar with the First World War may recognize some themes and topics, from Gallipoli and futility to new technology and comradeship. Yet International Poetry of the First World War lets us see that history from new perspectives. This is indeed a rich, valuable, and rare collection of poetry from the Great War. 

Bryan Alexander

 

President Wilson's Stroke: Governing the Nation

Edith Wilson and the Ill President's Daughter,
Margaret, Accompany Him on an Outing

In recent years, the discovery of the presidential physicians’ clinical notes at the time of the illness confirm that the president’s stroke left him severely paralyzed on his left side and partially blind in his right eye, along with the emotional maelstroms that accompany any serious, life-threatening illness but especially one that attacks the brain. Only a few weeks after his stroke, Wilson suffered a urinary tract infection that threatened to kill him. Fortunately, the president’s body was strong enough to fight that infection off, but he also experienced another attack of influenza in January of 1920, which further damaged his health.

By February of 1920, news of the president’s stroke began to be reported in the press. Nevertheless, the full details of Woodrow Wilson’s disability and his wife’s management of his affairs were not entirely understood by the American public at the time. What remained problematic was that in 1919 there did not yet exist clear constitutional guidelines of what to do, in terms of the transfer of presidential power, when severe illness struck the chief executive. What the U.S. Constitution’s Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 on presidential succession does state is as follows:

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

20 June 1920: the President and First Lady

But Wilson, of course, was not dead and not willing to resign because of inability. As a result, Vice President Thomas Marshall refused to assume the presidency unless the Congress passed a resolution that the office was, in fact, vacant, and only after Mrs. Wilson and Dr. Grayson certified in writing, using the language spelled out by the Constitution, of the president’s “inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office.” Such resolutions never came.

For the remainder of her life, Edith Wilson steadfastly insisted that her husband performed all of his presidential duties after his stroke. As she later declared in her 1938 autobiography, My Memoir:

So began my stewardship, I studied every paper, sent from the different Secretaries or Senators, and tried to digest and present in tabloid form the things that, despite my vigilance, had to go to the President. I, myself, never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public affairs. The only decision that was mine was what was important and what was not, and the very important decision of when to present matters to my husband.

Over the last century, historians have continued to dig into the proceedings of the Wilson administration and it has become clear that Edith Wilson acted as much more than a mere “steward.” She was, essentially, the nation’s chief executive until her husband’s second term concluded in March of 1921. Nearly three years later, Woodrow Wilson died in his Washington, DC, home at 2340 S Street, NW, at 11:15 a.m. on Sunday, 3 February 1924.

Source: PBS News Hour, 2 October 2015, Dr. Howard Markel, Correspondent

President Woodrow Wilson's Stroke: Illness Strikes

Returning Home from the Peace Conference, July 1919
President and Mrs. Wilson with Wounded Soldiers
Aboard SS George Washington

Woodrow Wilson may have been one of our hardest-working chief executives and by the fall of 1919, he looked it. For most of the six months between late December 1918 and June 1919, our 28th president was in Europe negotiating the Treaty of Versailles and planning for the nascent League of Nations, efforts for which he was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize (an award he did not officially receive until 1920). Back home, however, the ratification of the treaty met with mixed public support and strong opposition from Republican senators, led by Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Mass.), as well as Irish Catholic Democrats. As the summer progressed, President Wilson worried that defeat was in the air.

Bone-tired but determined to wage peace, on 3 September 1919, Woodrow Wilson embarked on a national speaking tour across the United States so that he could make his case directly to the American people. For the next three and a half weeks, the president, his wife Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, assorted aides, servants, cooks, Secret Service men, and members of the press rode the rails. The presidential train car, quaintly named Mayflower, served as a rolling White House. Also joining the party was the president’s personal physician, Cary T. Grayson, who had grave concerns over his patient’s health.

All during September of 1919, as the presidential train traveled across the Midwest, into the Great Plains states, over the Rockies into the Pacific Northwest and then down the West Coast before turning back east, the president became thinner, paler, and ever more frail. He lost his appetite, his asthma grew worse, and he complained of unrelenting headaches. Unfortunately, Woodrow Wilson refused to listen to his body.

Late on the evening of 25 September 1919, after speaking in Pueblo, Colorado, Edith discovered Woodrow in a profound state of illness; his facial muscles were twitching uncontrollably and he was experiencing severe nausea. Earlier in the day, he complained of a splitting headache. Six weeks after the event, Dr. Grayson told a journalist that he had noted a “curious drag or looseness at the left side of [Wilson’s] mouth—a sign of danger that could no longer be obscured.” In retrospect, this event may have been a transient ischemic attack (TIA), the medical term for a brief loss of blood flow to the brain, or “mini-stroke,” which can be a harbinger for a much worse cerebrovascular event to follow—in other words, a full-fledged stroke.

President Wilson Meeting with a Women's Group in San Francisco About Ten Days Before the 25 September Episode

On 26 September, the president’s private secretary, Joseph Tumulty, announced that the rest of the speaking tour had been canceled because the president was suffering from “a nervous reaction in his digestive organs.” The Mayflower sped directly back to Washington’s Union Station. Upon arrival, on 28 September, the president appeared ill but was able to walk on his own accord through the station. He tipped his hat to awaiting crowd, shook the hands of a few of the people along the track’s platform, and was whisked away to the White House for an enforced period of rest and examination by a battery of doctors.

Everything changed on the morning of 2 October 1919. According to some accounts, the president awoke to find his left hand numb to sensation before falling into unconsciousness. In other versions, Wilson had his stroke on the way to the bathroom and fell to the floor with Edith dragging him back into bed. However those events transpired, immediately after the president’s collapse, Mrs. Wilson discretely phoned down to the White House chief usher, Ike Hoover, and told him to “please get Dr. Grayson, the president is very sick.”

Grayson quickly arrived. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the president's bedroom, and the doctor’s diagnosis was terrible: “My God, the president is paralyzed,” Grayson declared. What would surprise most Americans today is how the entire affair, including Wilson’s extended illness and long-term disability, was shrouded in secrecy.

Part II, Tomorrow: Governing the Nation

Source: PBS News Hour, 2 October 2015, Dr. Howard Markel, Correspondent

Restoring the Cloth Hall

Cloth Hall, 1872

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The greatest cultural destruction from the war in Flanders was in the leveling of Ypres. And the most visible treasure of the town was its immense medieval Cloth Hall, built in the 13th and 14th centuries. During the days when Ypres was a world leader in the textile industry it served as the marketplace, warehousing, and offices for what was then the cutting-edge new technology and source of wealth.

The southern wing of the hall had a magnificent facade, surmounted by a tall belfry in the center, its oldest element. The foundation stone for the belfry (and watchtower) was laid by Baudouin IX, Count of Flanders. Over the centuries the Hall was frequently restored and embellished and in 1914 held many irreplaceable artistic masterpieces, frescoes, murals, tapestries, and painting. Many of these would be lost forever during the Great War.

Reduced to Rubble and the Stub of the Belfry

In early November, German artillery units drew close enough to begin shelling Ypres and a few random hits were made on the Cloth Hall itself. The southeastern section of the Hall, a less strongly built addition known as the Nieuwerk, constructed in the 17th century, was the first feature to fall. Struck by German artillery on 21 November 1914, its south gable was destroyed. The following day the Cloth Hall burst into flames, destroying its upper floors, and a few weeks later the Nieuwerk was completely destroyed. Over the next four years, shells relentlessly reduced the structure, although—oddly—just enough of the belfry survived so that the Tommies marching through the town always recognized the ruins.

With the necessity to focus on rebuilding the necessary infrastructure of Ypres, it took a full decade after the Armistice to initiate restoration of the Cloth Hall. Funding, local redevelopment priorities, architectural purity–would the design match the original or would contemporary styles be incorporated in the design–were all areas of great contention. The strategy to try to match the look and quality of the pre-1914 structure mostly prevailed and construction finally began in 1933 on the belfry. Eventually, despite the slow precise craftsmanship involved and the coming of another war that saw the town occupied by the enemy for five years, the project carried forward. The rebuilt Cloth Hall was dedicated in 1967, by my one-time acquaintance King Baudouin, grandson of Albert I, Belgium's greatest hero of the war.

The Cloth Hall Gloriously Restored

Today, the Cloth Hall is once again one of the world's cultural treasures and a premier tourist destination. It holds the town council and tourism offices but most notably, the In Flanders Fields Museum, which our readers surely know, is one of the finest military museums anywhere and an unforgettable experience for visitors.

Sources: Michelin Ypres & the Battles of Ypres; Major and Mrs. Holt Ypres Salient Guides

Looking Back at the Halifax Explosion (Video)

Master of Musketry: Brigadier Norman Reginald McMahon (1866–1914)

 

 Norman Reginald McMahon

Remember the accounts you've read of the Battle of Mons that stated the British rifle fire that day was so rapid the German soldiers thought they were facing machine guns?  Well, here's the man behind that legend. Norman McMahon was born in London on 24 Jan 1866, the son of Sir Thomas Westropp McMahon and Sir Thomas's second wife, Frances. Known as the Musketry Maniac, Norman McMahon, commanded the 4th Battalion Royal Fusiliers at Nimy, where his men put down a rapid rate of fire that decimated the German 84th Infantry Regiment. Soon after Mons he was promoted to brigadier-general and was to be put in command of the 10th Infantry Brigade. But he was killed in action on 11 Nov 1914 during the first battle of Ypres.

The standard of 15 aimed shots per minute is credited to Major Norman Reginald McMahon, Chief Instructor of the British Small Arms School at Hythe from 1905 to 1914. Some attribute the creation of this standard to McMahon's Boer War experience, while others point to McMahon's early advocacy of machine gun usage. In either case, the standard was formalized in the Musketry Regulations of 1909 and earned McMahon the nickname "Musketry Maniac." To support the standard, 15-shot exercises were conducted. These eventually became known as the "Mad Minute." By 1912, failure in the exercise could be sufficient for a discharge due to "inefficiency." By 1914, it was reportedly not uncommon for many troopers to exceed 20 hits per minute.

British Riflemen at the Mons-Conde Canal, 23 August 1914

With the British entry in the First World War, McMahon, now a lieutenant-colonel, took command of 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers. His unit took part in the Battle of Mons on 23 August 1914, attempting to hold a pair of bridges at Nimy. During the battle, German forces first mistook the accurate, rapid fire of British troops as the work of machine guns. (The first two Victoria Crosses of the war were awarded as result of the Nimy bridge action but, ironically, to a pair of machine gunners. The 4th Battalion's defense of the bridges didn't fail until after the unit's machine guns were permanently knocked out of action.)

Sources: Britishempire.com; IWM

This Friday—The WWI Memorial First Colors Ceremony Live Broadcast

 

https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/commemorate/first-colors/first-colors-registration.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Great Personalities of the Air War: A Reading List

Pilots Victor Chapman, Kiffin Rockwell, Norman Prince, and James McConnell  of the Lafayette Escadrille

Contributed by Aviation Historian Steve Suddaby

These 11 biographical works are not necessarily a list of the “The Best” works about the war's aviation personalities—I'm not confident I could compile such a list. Each of these is interesting in its own way, and I hope to pleasantly surprise the reader with my unusual, even quirky, choices. Regrettably, I've found no bios of French or Italians that could elbow their way onto this short list.

1. Maurice Baring, Flying Corps Headquarters 1914–1918, 1920. The multilingual Maurice Baring  was Gen Hugh “Boom” Trenchard's right-hand man through most of the war. He translated the inarticulate RFC commander's mutterings into English or French and later wrote this entertaining and literate story of life at RFC HQ.

2. Freiherr Treusch von Buttlar Brandenfels, Zeppelins Over England, 1931. A rare first-person account by a zeppelin commander.

3. K.N. Finne, Igor Sikorsky: The Russian Years, 1987. Excellent story of the visionary designer and his airplanes.

4. Peter Kilduff, Richthofen: Beyond the Legend of the Red Baron, 1993. Simply the best biography of Manfred von Richthofen, the most important personality of WWI aviation.

5. Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising, 1936. This is justifiably the most well known pilot autobiography in English. If it's not in your library, you're missing out.

6. Frederick Libby, Horses Don't Fly, 2000. Amazing and humorous  autobiography of a Colorado cowpuncher who joined the RFC via Canada.

7. Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall, Falcons of France, 1929. A slightly fictionalized account using a composite character to describe their experiences in the Lafayette Flying Corps. These famous authors tell a more interesting story than most regular autobiographies without compromising historical accuracy.

8. Blaine Pardoe, Lost Eagles: One Man's Mission to Find Missing Airmen in Two World Wars, 2010. Biography of Frederick Zinn (Lafayette Flying Corps, USAS, OSS), a genuine American hero who devoted his life to bringing closure to the families of missing U.S. fliers.

9. Alexander Riaboff, Gatchina Days: Reminiscences of a Russian Pilot, 1986. Riaboff flew for the Imperial Russian Air Service and later for the Red Air Fleet before escaping the Soviet Union.

10. Gavin Roynon, ed., Home Fires Burning: The Great War Diaries of Georgina Lee, 2006. Georgina Lee was a very literate and politically well connected Londoner. She kept a diary throughout the war years for her infant son. The impact of the zeppelin and Gotha air raids on England, often viewed as merely a nuisance, is astounding when seen from her perspective.

11. Rudolf Stark, Wings of War, 1933. Stark was a German fighter pilot in 1918; his own paintings illustrate the book.

Originally presented in the Winter 2013 issue of The Journal of the World War One Historical Society

A German Admiral Evaluates the Prospect of America Joining the War

Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff

The Memorandum of  Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff

Announcing unlimited submarine warfare will once again force the government of the United States to answer the question of whether or not it wants to experience the consequences of the position it has taken on submarine warfare up until now. I am very much of the opinion that war with America is such a serious matter that everything must be done to avoid it. In my opinion, however, the aversion to this break must not lead us to shrink from using, in the decisive moment, the weapon that promises us victory.

In any case, one should plan for the worst and make clear to ourselves what influence America joining our enemies would have on the course of the war. In regard to shipping capacity, this influence can only be very small. It is not to be expected that more than a small percentage of the tonnage of Germany and its allies in American or other neutral harbors could be quickly put into service for the trip to England. By far the largest part could be damaged in such a way that it would not be able to travel in the first months. The preparations for this have been taken. There would also be no crews for these ships at first. Just as little decisive impact can be attached to American troops–who, on account of limited freight capacity, cannot be brought over in considerable numbers–and American money, which cannot make up for insufficient technical supplies and tonnage.

The only remaining question is how America would respond to a peace such as England would be required to make. It is unlikely that America will then decide to continue to fight us alone, as America will have no means with which to harm us significantly, whereas its ocean traffic will be damaged by our submarines. On the contrary, it is to be expected that America will become a member of a peace treaty with England, in order to arrive at a healthy economic situation once again.

German U-boat Resupply at Sea

I, therefore, conclude that an unrestricted submarine warfare initiated soon enough to bring about peace before the world harvest in summer 1917–that is, before August 1–must hazard the consequences of a break with America, for no other choice remains to us. Despite the danger of a break with America, unlimited submarine warfare, begun soon, is the right means for ending the war successfully. It is also the only means to reach this goal.

Since the fall of 1916, when I declared that the moment had arrived to strike against England, our situation has fundamentally improved. The shortage in the world’s harvest, combined with the effect of the war on England, has once again given us the opportunity to bring about a decision in our favor before the next harvest. If we do not use this opportunity, which according to my calculations will be our last, then I do not see any possibility other than that of mutual exhaustion.

In order to achieve the necessary effect in time, it is necessary for unlimited submarine warfare to begin on February 1st at the latest. From Your Excellency I request a statement explaining whether the military situation on the continent, especially vis-à-vis those nations which are still neutral, will allow this. I need three weeks for the necessary preparations.

Source: Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff to Field Marshal von Hindenburg (22 December 1916)