The GI Bill: Legacy of the Doughboys—Part II, Hammering Out the Bill

The Legion had some dramatic moments after ignoring advice that it chop up its GI Bill into more manageable chunks, rather than continue to press for a complete benefits package. In March, at the request of five smaller veterans' organizations, several congressmen introduced an adjusted compensation bill in lieu of the GI Bill of Rights. With this division in veterans' ranks threatening to confuse the nation over which path to pursue, the Legion rallied its members to make their wishes known. Behind-the-scenes negotiations brought the VFW into line behind the Legion bill. The Legion worked diligently to organize a grass-roots campaign and prepared promotional materials for its 12,000 posts to use in rallying local support. Posts received suggested radio interviews, press releases, and letters and telegrams for congressmen, as well as short trailer films for legionnaires to take to the local movie theater. The earlier decision of the Hearst newspaper chain to support the bill as a way to highlight the shortcomings of the Roosevelt administration's social welfare programs also helped influence public opinion in favor of the proposal. Inside the Legion command center in Washington, members mounted a huge wall chart to portray the results of their daily canvas of Congress and the work of the 149 House members who belonged to the Legion. On 10 May, in a well-publicized ceremony on the steps of the Capitol, Legion officials delivered petitions bearing a million signatures to the House leadership.

The Final Bill and Signatures

Congressman John Rankin (D-Miss.), a legionnaire, who chaired the House World War Veterans' Legislation Committee, provided the most gripping, nail-biting moments. The Senate passed an omnibus bill on 24 March, but the House version remained mired in Rankin's committee until 3 May. In April, the Mississippi congressman focused his objections on the bill's unemployment provisions. In public hearings, he recalled the "goldbrickers" he had known during World War I who would have relished a chance to loaf at government expense. Privately, Legion officials noted that, in executive sessions, Rankin was "using the line that it will result in too high remuneration without work for Negro veterans in the South." Rankin also wondered aloud whether adjusted compensation better served former farmers from the South and West who had no intention of attending college. Throughout this period, the Legion worked hard writing compromise drafts to appease Rankin. The draft of the bill finally reported out of Rankin's committee on 3 May limited educational and employment benefits and raised the maximum loan amount. The version that passed the House 387-0 on 18 May sharpened these modifications.

In the joint Senate-House Conference Committee created to hammer out differences between the two omnibus bills, compromise came quickly on education and loan benefits. Deadlock soon developed, however, over a relatively minor issue: whether or not the VA should have supervisory or administrative responsibility over the Veterans' Employment Service. With the final conference committee vote set for the morning of 10 June 1944, Rankin refused to cast the proxy vote of an absent member in favor of supervisory responsibility. Legion officials raced to track down Congressman John S. Gibson, a Democrat who had returned to Georgia. Those enlisted in the search included a telephone operator, who rang his house every fifteen minutes, a local radio station, which put out a news alert for Gibson to call home, and the state police, who went on the lookout for his car. Returning home late in the evening after spending the day hunting, Gibson agreed to take an army flight back to Washington from nearby Waycross air base. This plan fell through when the only available plane succumbed to mechanical problems, but the officer in charge provided a car to a commercial air field in Jacksonville, Florida. After boarding a 2:20 A.M. flight to Washington, Gibson arrived in time to cast the key vote. In the final version of the bill, a board chaired by the administrator of Veterans' Affairs was established to monitor veterans' job placement by the U.S. Employment Service.

The housing loan and unemployment compensation provisions of the GI Bill clearly owed a debt to New Deal innovations such as the long-term, low-interest mortgages first offered in 1933 by the Home Owners Loan Corporation, the unemployment compensation provisions of the 1935 Social Security Act, and the creation of the 1933 Veterans' Employment Service within the U.S. Employment Service. The largesse of the New Deal years also made the proposal seem less like special class legislation (the main objection FDR had to paying the bonus early), and more like a subset of the general social welfare assistance now available to Americans classified as deserving poor. The public and government intended simply to enfold veterans in the system of entitlements available to a broad cross-section of Americans. Dixon Wecter, in his path breaking study of veterans in 1944, spoke for the majority of Americans when he refused to see GI Bill-granted access to national health care as special class legislation. Wecter argued that the "broader ideas of social responsibility which have sprung with the New Deal" made national health insurance inevitable, "which means that [soon] the ex-soldier as civilian will share a universal protection." Although influential commentators like Wecter denied veterans the right to special entitlements, the notion of them as a specially disabled group had stuck. "The fact that selective service has become the basis for recruiting our armed forces—that a man's losses in time, opportunity, or health while in the service are no longer voluntary but risks exacted by the State-has fostered a greater sense of Federal responsibility in his retraining and reemployment," Wecter wrote. Foreshadowing the debate that would swirl around affirmative action programs in the late twentieth century, the question centered on whether veterans' benefits restored equality by rectifying past injustices or whether they bestowed advantages and created a specially entitled class. The public had sanctioned adjustment compensation as the former in the 1920s and rejected the bonus as the latter after the Bonus March. Commentators like Wecter soothed Americans with the idea that the majority of the benefits provided by the GI Bill simply leveled the playing field that the selective service system had made uneven, and that the remainder would soon be extended to non-veterans. In reality, the legislation created the most privileged generation in American history.

The President Signs the GI Bill, 22 June 1944,
Two Weeks After D-Day

The GI Bill went further than any previous New Deal program by providing equal benefits without regard to class, race, gender, or (by 1945) age. The access to free medical care and bonus payments that had set World War I veterans apart paled in comparison to the way the GI Bill established the veteran as a unique social class in American society. State laws governing mortgages became irrelevant to 3.7 million working-class veterans, who needed no down payment to acquire a house in the new suburban subdivisions, and to thousands of others seeking a farm or a business. Federal Housing Administration restrictions that only approved loans for homes in areas with electricity and sewers did not apply to veterans. Female veterans had independent access to benefits for themselves and their children, unlike their civilian counterparts, whose social security benefits depended on whether or not their husbands lived at home. The law provided the same unemployment benefits for all veterans, regardless of what line of work they intended to pursue after the war. This provision overrode state and federal laws that denied unemployment compensation to agricultural and domestic workers, rules that effectively excluded many blacks and Hispanics from receiving jobless benefits. The GI Bill also set up a system of federally administered unemployment benefits at a standard rate of twenty dollars a week for veterans, in contrast to state rates for civilians that varied from two to twenty-two dollars weekly. Overall, 9 million veterans received unemployment benefits after the war, although the average of 17 weeks assistance fell far below the fifty-two weeks allowed. Only one exception existed to these efforts to ensure that all veterans had full use of these benefits to recover their financial losses: Congress refused to grant unemployment compensation to veterans who participated in strikes. Veterans did, however, gain the right to turn down a scab job without jeopardizing their unemployment rights. There would be no repeat of state employment bureaus sending ex-servicemen to break strikes as they had in 1919.

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of the GI Bill in 20th-century American history. For the first time, serving in the wartime military became a way to enter the middle class. The economic stability provided by the GI Bill in education, home ownership, and medical care came at the right historical moment in the life of both individuals and the nation. Until amended in 1945, the initial law required veterans who entered the service after age twenty-five to prove that the war had interrupted their education in order to receive more than a year of educational benefits. The original bill's creators correctly concluded that younger veterans had the best chance of using education to repair their civilian lives. Colmery warned that "many of the older group taken under selective service, leaving wife and children and sacrificing position and business[,] may have a more serious problem of readjustment than the younger ones. "The GI Bill's expansion of the VA's hospital system, coupled with easier access to government health care in the next few years, proved to be a more substantial way to help older veterans. Paradoxically, the men who had entered military service later in life had more health problems throughout their lives, even though they were less likely than younger recruits to have experienced combat in World War II.

University education helped younger veterans advance because this opportunity came along at the right personal and historical moment. Giving free college tuition to men who as a group averaged only a sixth grade education would have made little sense after World War I. The discovery of this educational deficit, coupled with stricter child labor laws, had encouraged a new domestic emphasis on education in the interwar years. By World War II, the average serviceman had completed the second year of high school. This veteran could readily see how military service had prevented him from finishing high school or attending a college or technical school. Approximately 80 percent of the 2.2 million veterans who received a GI Bill-sponsored college education were returning students, while 5.4 million took vocational job training courses. An education as an engineer, accountant, or even a plumber meant little, however, without a job after graduation. Defying all predictions forecasting a new Depression, educated World War II veterans benefited from and contributed to a postwar economic boom that kept the unemployment rate below 5 percent. The singularity of this historical moment is underscored by life-course research on the Vietnam War. Military service did not have the same positive effect on the socioeconomic status of Vietnam veterans. Substantial aid to college-bound students in the 1960s and 1970s and scaled-back veterans' benefits meant that military service once again became time lost for veterans rather than the path to increased occupational and educational opportunities.

As expected, the issue of adjusted compensation came up again after World War II, but the bonus concept had been discredited by its ineffectiveness as a relief measure and its earlier role in rallying veterans against the government, and little came of such proposals. The concept of compensating veterans for the hardships of living overseas and for the length of time they spent away from high-paying civilian wartime jobs remained relevant, however. The amount of mustering-out pay, for instance, differed for those serving at home and overseas, while education and unemployment benefits depended upon the length of one's service.

World War II Veterans Lining Up to Register at
the University of Minnesota

The only adjustment to wartime service pay came after returned soldiers learned that the army had paid officers for furlough days not taken when they left the service. Congress retroactively adjusted enlisted men's wartime wages to include unused furlough days by giving them a bond that matured in five years. Recognizing that a bond in lieu of cash left a sour taste in the mouths of those who remembered the Bonus March, Congress agreed in 1947 to let veterans redeem their bonds immediately. As a result of their fathers' hard work planning their homecoming, World War II veterans expressed overwhelming satisfaction with the help given to them by the federal government.

World War I veterans had made a long and difficult journey from 1917 to 1944 to establish the principle that total war gave soldiers and the state a mutual obligation to ensure each other a safe and prosperous future. Starting with adjusted compensation and ending with the GI Bill, World War I veterans forced the government to accept responsibility for redistributing profits and opportunities from advantaged civilians to disadvantaged veterans in the aftermath of total war. The executive branch found itself transformed forever by its experience in conscripting a mass national army to fight the Great War. World War I soldiers shaped critical policies and practices of the army and modern state, and created the piece of social welfare legislation that played a key role in generating the unprecedented prosperity Americans enjoyed in the second half of the twentieth century.

See yesterday's posting for Part I, WWI Lessons

Excerpted from: Doughboys, the Great War and the Remaking of America. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Used with permission.

The GI Bill: Legacy of the Doughboys—Part I, WWI Lessons

By Jennifer D. Keene

Why is World War I important in American history? Quite simply, the Great War generation played a critical role in constructing the modern U.S. Army, turning World War II soldiers into the most privileged veteran generation in American history, and determining what mass military service would mean for millions of American men throughout the 20th century . . .

Doughboys to Be: Reporting for Duty

The Servicemen's Readjustment Act (1944), commonly known as the GI Bill, is rightly celebrated for the renewal that unemployment, education, and housing loan benefits gave millions of World War II veterans. The law marked a poignant ending as well. The signing of the GI Bill two weeks after American troops landed on the Normandy beaches of France did not signal the end of their war. Instead, 1944 marked the symbolic exit of World War I veterans from the national political arena after more than 25 years in the public spotlight. The GI Bill is rarely remembered as the final legacy of World War I to the nation. Yet ignoring Great War veterans' authorship of the GI Bill results in an imperfect understanding of why the law took the form it did when it did. Line by line, the most comprehensive piece of social welfare legislation the United States has ever known, it illustrated in vivid detail the struggles World War I veterans had endured to give meaning to their social contract with the state. For the first and perhaps only time, wartime military service became a steppingstone to a better life. The final legacy of World War I created one of the most prosperous, advantaged generations in American history.

Once the United States had entered World War II, ensuring that history did not repeat itself became the primary objective both of the U.S. Army and of Great War veterans. To learn from its past experiences with conscripted civilians, the General Staff ordered a series of studies of the army's previous experience with black soldiers, courts-martial, relations between American and Allied soldiers, collecting soldiers' votes, desertions, and demobilization. Hoping to avoid the psychiatric breakdowns observed among shell-shocked soldiers during the Great War, the army at first tried to weed out (through induction center rejections or discharges) those who seemed predisposed to mental breakdowns. Eventually realizing that this practice created a way, so feared at the beginning of World War I, for malingerers to avoid military service, the army then reverted to the battlefield treatments used effectively 25 years earlier. Picking up where the Morale Division had left off in 1919, the soldiers' opinion studies undertaken by Samuel Stouffer and his colleagues in the Research Branch of the Information and Education Division of the War Department provide some clues about how much influence civilian soldiers wielded within the new wartime army. The Stouffer studies were vastly more sophisticated than the rudimentary efforts of previous morale investigators, but their intent was the same. Hoping to perfect the collaboration between citizen-soldiers and the army, the Stouffer group provided commanders with detailed reports of soldiers' predilections, including discussions of how some army policies had inadvertently hurt morale. The Research Branch, for example, compiled an impressive amount of evidence that infantrymen felt their branch, which bore the brunt of actual fighting, had the lowest status of any combatant service branch. As a result, the chief of staff initiated a systematic campaign to improve the prestige of the infantry by raising their pay, awarding them distinctive medals, and publicizing the feats of infantrymen throughout the service. . .

Once again, the army hoped to secure veterans' postwar support for expanded defense funding, and this time, it used troop surveys to devise demobilization policies avoid to the mistakes made during World War I. The Research Branch surveyed 20,000 soldiers on the most equitable way to discharge wartime troops and discovered that they wanted the army to award points to each soldier that reflected his days in combat, time overseas, number of children, and length of service. This wartime research made it possible for President Roosevelt to claim that the point system was "based on the wishes of the soldiers themselves." The end of the Pacific war came sooner than expected, however, disrupting these carefully laid plans. The army was in the midst of preparing for a massive invasion of the Japanese islands when the dropping of two atomic bombs caused Japan to surrender. Scrambling to demobilize its wartime force quickly, the army soon abandoned the point system and instead released men when it no longer needed them. As in 1919, overseas soldiers were furious when their return home was delayed, and widespread protests broke out in the Pacific and Europe in 1946.

The smoldering resentment of officers' privileges and court-martial practices presented one final similarity between the two world wars. In 1946, the army and public conceded that the time for permanent reform had arrived. Many of the reforms instituted by the 1946 Doolittle Board echoed proposals made after World War I by Raymond Fosdick, chairman of the Commission on Training Camp Activities.

Combat Veterans Heading Home

In these ways, the lessons and precedents of World War I remained relevant in the military establishment. World War I veterans, however, had little interest in monitoring the influence conscripted soldiers had within the army, even though they had set the precedents that gave these soldiers their institutional power during World War II. Instead, World War I veterans focused on ensuring that the nation learned the appropriate lessons from the adjusted compensation debacle.

Public attention turned to the problem of welcoming veterans home as early as 1943, when Roosevelt used the end of a July fireside chat on the progress of the war to warn the country against "waiting to do a hasty, insufficient and ill-considered job at the last moment." Mail to the White House suggested a warm response to Roosevelt's general proposals for mustering-out pay, unemployment insurance, educational benefits, and adequate medical care. Seventy percent of those responding to a 1944 Gallup Poll even offered to pay extra taxes for these veterans' benefits. However, the head of the VA, General Frank Hines, warned the president against expecting the country to let him solve the problem alone. "We again hear the same talk of high wages at home while the men are fighting abroad," Hines cautioned. These statements raised Hines's suspicions that another bonus crusade was in the making. The president still opposed adjustment compensation, but he had not helped his case by acknowledging in his fireside chat that servicemen "have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice. . . than the rest of us."

The president, it turned out, had little to fear in choosing to remain neutral during the subsequent legislative debates over the GI Bill. Rather than seizing on his words to legitimate the principles they had long espoused, American Legion officials intended to repackage these concepts to make them politically viable. This wartime generation, Harry Colmery, the original author of the GI bill and a former Legion commander, stated, "should be aided in reaching that place, position, or status which they had normally expected to achieve, and probably would have achieved, had their war service not interrupted their careers." But a new vocabulary emerged to explain the GI Bill. "How well we all know that the words adjusted compensation and pension are dynamite to many people," noted one Legion official.

The American Legion's omnibus bill competed with 640 bills introduced in Congress to provide a solution to the veterans' problem. The freshness of the scars inflicted over the previous twenty years surfaced when veterans came to testify before congressional subcommittees. "You can remember that you and I came back as returning heroes. Nothing was too good for us. The streets were draped with flags and the people were cheering," Congressman Errett Scrivner (R-Kans.) recalled to Omar Ketchum, commander of the VFW. "That was the first day," Ketchum interjected. "Well, within the first month," Scrivner replied. "But it was not long after that that we were called every name under the sun." On the Senate side, American Legion Commander Warren Atherton spoke with confidence to the committee chair. "You, Senator [Bennett] Clark [D-Miss.]," he said, "having been the first national commander of the American Legion and knowing the conditions which prevailed for returning World War I veterans in 1917-18, realize the value of making this preparation."

Bonus Marchers Heading to Washington

No one present at these hearings disputed the need to plan properly this time around for the ex-servicemen's return to society. What they were guarding against, however, depended on how one interpreted the preceding2 4 years. For some advocates, the revolutionary potential evident in the soldiers' demonstrations of 1919 and the Bonus March necessitated keeping as many veterans as possible off the streets. The type of law Congress passed, Colmery told the Senate subcommittee holding hearings, would determine if this veteran generation would be a "force for good or evil in the years to come." Others, however, worried about a backlash if the benefits were too generous. The Disabled American Veterans (DAV) preferred to call the Legion's omnibus bill "the ominous bill." Chairman Millard Rice warned that "if the wrong approach is made toward the solution of the economic needs of millions of able-bodied veterans . . . then I fear that the ultimate result, some years from now, would be another Economy Act." "Ominous" also summed up the feelings of those who feared the return of the Depression's dark days. Educational benefits, they argued, might slow the reentry of veterans into the job market.

Tomorrow:   Part II, Hammering Out the Bill

Excerpted from: Doughboys, the Great War and the Remaking of America. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Used with permission.

The Hoover Institution: The Great War's Greatest Depository

 (Note:  This is where your editor learned an awful lot of stuff about World War I.)

Hoover Tower, Stanford University

The First World War demonstrated the horrors of humanity and technology on a never before seen scale. In the midst of the atrocities, Herbert Hoover, a Stanford alumnus and successful mining engineer, oversaw food relief efforts in Belgium. It was in this capacity that he was inspired to document the history of war and political change. He later reflected on this inspiration, writing "The position I held [as a relief administrator] required regular visits to several belligerent countries. It seemed to me to offer a unique opportunity to collect and preserve such records. I therefore established centers for such collections in each country and enlisted the aid of others who believed in the importance of the work."

Hoover first met President Wilson in May 1915.  The meeting was prompted by allegations that Hoover’s work with the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) placed him in violation of the Logan Act. This act made it a crime for American citizens to negotiate with foreign governments. Technically, Hoover had transgressed, but Wilson immediately saw the big-picture benefits afforded by Hoover feeding Belgians. Wilson issued a statement [written by Hoover] publicly supporting the work of the CRB.

Hoover (Upper Left) Became an Insider
of the Wilson Administration*

The Hoover War Collection was established as a library and archives, cementing the Institution's roots in history and scholarship.

Herbert Hoover conceived the idea for gathering materials on World War I while he was organizing humanitarian relief for Belgium. He began the collection in June 1919, when he was at the Paris Peace Conference advising President Wilson. The founding document of the Hoover Institution is a telegram from Herbert Hoover to Stanford president Ray Lyman Wilbur offering $50,000 for the collecting effort and instructing Wilbur to send Professor Ephraim D. Adams to Paris to begin work.

The Telegrams That Started It All

In addition to Hoover's collecting documents while in Europe, Stanford professor and war scholar Ephraim Adams, Stanford history graduate Ralph Lutz and historian Frank Golder traveled across Europe to collect pamphlets, newspapers, posters, and government documents for the archives. The founding collections include the extensive files of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, the U.S. Food Administration, and the American Relief Administration in Europe and Russia.

In 1922 the Hoover War Collection was renamed the Hoover War Library on the basis of the collection of primary materials related to World War I. During the course of that year, the library collected 40,000 documents that were housed in the Stanford Library. In 1938 the name was again changed to the Hoover Library on War, Revolution and Peace.

The First Delivery of Documents to Palo Alto

Since the mid-1920s, Hoover and Stanford had been planning to move the library into its own building. The Great Depression, however, made fundraising nearly impossible; it was not until 1938 that Stanford decided $600,000 was sufficient for the building. The design, as seen here, was contracted to Arthur Brown Jr., who also designed Stanford's University Library, San Francisco City Hall, and San Francisco's Coit Tower. Construction broke ground in 1939.

Herbert Hoover defined the institution's mission: "The overall mission of this Institution is, from its records, to recall the voice of experience against the making of war, and by the study of these records and their publication, to recall man's endeavors to make and preserve peace, and to sustain for America the safeguards of the American way of life. This Institution is not, and must not be, a mere library. But with these purposes as its goal, the Institution itself must constantly and dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system."

(Sources: Various Hoover Institution sources; Freedom Betrayed introduction, by George Nash)

________________

*ca. 1918 President Woodrow Wilson and his war council. Back row (from left to right): Herbert Hoover, Edward M. Hurley, Vance McCormick, James Garfield. Front row (left to right): Benedict Crowell, William G. McAdoo, Woodrow Wilson, Josephus Daniels, Bernard Baruch.

"French Nocturne (Monchy-Le-Preux)" by C. S. Lewis

A Young C.S. Lewis

By David F. Beer

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the most noted and influential authors of the 20th century. His books on literary history, religion, and fiction—such as The Chronicles of Narnia—are well known and have been translated into over 30 languages. His conversion to Christianity in 1931 is described in his autobiographical Surprised by Joy. 

Less known is that in his younger days Lewis rejected Christianity and wrote poetry. His first collection of war poems, Spirits in Bondage, resulted from spending several months in the trenches with the Somerset Light Infantry. On 15 April 1918, he was badly wounded by an explosion which pulverized a soldier next to him. He was taken to a hospital near Étaples and was discharged from the army in December 1918.

Ruins of Monchy at War's End

.

His war poetry rails against the idea of a loving or caring God. He had earlier expressed this atheism in a longer poem, De Profundis: “Come let us curse our Master ere we die/For all our hopes in endless ruin lie/The good is dead. Let us curse God most High.” Here’s one of his war poems, inspired by his trench life near Monchy Le Preux:

      French Nocturne (Monchy-Le-Preux)

Long leagues on either hand the trenches spread

And all is still; now even this gross line

Drinks in the frosty silences divine

The pale, green moon is riding overhead.

The jaws of a sacked village, stark and grim;

Out on the ridge have swallowed up the sun,

And in one angry streak his blood has run

To left and right along the horizon dim.

There comes a buzzing plane: and now, it seems

Flies straight into the moon. Lo! where he steers

Across the pallid globe and surely nears

In that white land some harbour of dear dreams!

False mocking fancy! Once I too could dream,

Who now can only see with vulgar eye

That he's no nearer to the moon than I

And she's a stone that catches the sun's beam.

What call have I to dream of anything?

I am a wolf. Back to the world again,

And speech of fellow-brutes that once were men

Our throats can bark for slaughter: cannot sing.

By 1918 the small town of Monchy-Le-Preux was an utter ruin, having seen heavy fighting and huge loss of life during the Battle of Arras from 9 April to 16 May 1917. Trenches were still occupied in the area, and from one of these Lewis records his feelings as he looks over the parapet of “this gross line” in the evening, seeing “The jaws of a sacked village, stark and grim.”   

37th Division Memorial Near Monchy

Just a glimpse of twilight remains, and the poet sees this as no more than an angry streak of blood.  An aircraft seemingly climbing towards the moon offers no hope: the romantic moon of traditional poetry that might have conjured up “dear dreams” is remote to the battle-hardened Lewis, just a “False mocking fancy.”

The final quatrain (four lines) of the poem confirms that Lewis has given up all humanity. He has become a beast, brutalized, just like his fellow fighting men. No music, no dreams, no hope, no divinity exists—just slaughter. No hint of the loving deity he would come to know later in life.

1915: The Mortar Emerges As a Major Weapon

Stokes Mortar by John Nash

Tactically, by the end of 1914 it was clear that the magazine rifle, the machine gun, and quick firing (QF) artillery had made the battlefield lethal to an unprecedented degree. The only way to survive the storm of lead was to dig in, and as the advantage shifted from attack to defense, the opposing armies were soon mired in stalemate. The balance of importance shifted from the élan of the infantry to the skills of the military engineer, who was responsible for building and defeating fortifications and fieldworks and ensuring communications.

When defending or attacking fortifications, it was often difficult to use direct-fire weapons like rifles; instead it was useful to have short-range area weapons such as explosive grenades. Hand grenades, and short-range bomb-throwers such as the German Minenwerfer, formed part of the equipment of the engineers and pioneers, but at first they were available only in the relatively small quantities that had been anticipated as being sufficient for the occasional set-piece siege.

Hand grenades were useful in the assault and defense, and rifle-grenades could sometimes be projected as far as from one trench line to the other, but there was  a need for a more powerful weapon capable of indirect fire and light enough to be manhandled forward to give intimate support to an assaulting force. 

German Minenwerfer

The German Army had come into the war with the Minenwerfer but:

. . .These were only held in small quantities, and at first they remained the responsibility of the Pioniere. The Minnenwerfer batteries were distinct both from the infantry they were supporting, and the artillery, of whose fire-planning they should have been a part.  U.S. Army Document

The British, though, needed to improvise. In siegecraft the historic solution had been the 17th-century Coehorn mortar, a stubby barrel fixed at an angle to a substantial wooden base and firing a spherical iron shell with a gunpowder  filling. Its descendants had finally fallen out of use after the American Civil War, but in 1915 the French Army found some in the dusty recesses of its stores and was able to supply these antiques to the BEF (who called them "Toby mortars").

During the siege of Port Arthur (Aug 1904–Jan 1905), British observers had taken note of improvised Japanese "trench mortars." In 1915, when the need for "trench howitzers" became urgent, the Royal Engineers set about designing and manufacturing light mortars that could be rapidly supplied to the infantry. During that year, eight patterns of trench mortar would enter British service on the Western Front, in addition to cruder bomb-throwers powered by springs or rubber bands. 

French Mortar of the Early War

Unlike the sophisticated Minenwerfer in German service, the "Indian Pattern Trench Howitzer" designed by the 3rd (Bombay) Sappers & Miners consisted simply of a 24-inch-long, 3.5-inch-caliber seamless tube plugged at the lower end and fitted to a base plate or spade. A bipod fitted with a simple elevating screw mechanism was clamped to the barrel. Improvised "jam-tin" bombs were loaded from the muzzle, and a propellant charge was ignited by way of a touch hole near the base. 

The later excellent weapon designed by Wilfred Stokes that was first used at Loos in 1915 and went into general service in 1916 was quite similar to the Indian Pattern, but the propellant charge was contained in the tail of the bomb and ignited by a firing pin in the base of the barrel. It fired a 10 lb-11oz bomb out to 800 yards and could be carried by advancing infantry. 

The Indian Pattern and Stokes mortars gave the British infantry its own indirect-fire support weapons. During 1915 each BEF division gained three batteries of four trench mortars, which were subsequently reorganized as two batteries of six each. 

Meanwhile, the same challenges and problems that were leading all the combatants to develop something like the "trench howitzer" were causing all the staffs to expand and improve their field and heavy artillery. More on that in future postings on Roads to the Great War.

Source: Over the Top, August 2015

Four Outstanding AEF Regimental Histories

Author Stephen L. Harris, is not only an award-winning historian of the Summer Olympics but is also one of the finest and most prolific chroniclers of the American Expeditionary Forces in the Great War. He specializes in studies of highly active regiments, which allows him to focus on the soldiers and their experience in combat. Harris also has an outstanding, easy-to-read style.  Anyone with a deep interest in the American effort in World War One should consider adding each of these volumes to their library.

• Duty, Honor, Privilege is the story of the 107th "Silk Stocking" Regiment of the 27th New York Division that helped capture the Hindenburg Line.

• Harlem's Hell Fighters tells of the service of the 365th segregated regiment that served with distinction under French command.

• Duffy's War is an account of the actions of the 165th Regiment ("Fighting 69th") of the 42nd Rainbow Division, sometimes told through the eyes of the division's famous chaplain, Father Francis Duffy.

• Rock of the Marne give the history of the 38th Regiment of the 3rd Regular Division that played a key role in halting the last German offensive of the War.

You can order these below through Amazon:   

The Delayed Action Rifles of Gallipoli

As winter approached, the Allied forces prospects for success at Gallipoli were effectively gone.  The deteriorating conditions, and the Ottomans’ growing strength, finally convinced the British to order the evacuation of Suvla and Anzac on 22 November. It would be a very risky venture, security of the highest level a necessity. British generals estimated that half the force would be lost in any attempt to withdraw because the Turks could not fail to notice as the trenches were so close.

In order to give the impression that trenches were still manned, the Australians invented a delayed-action rifle. Mounted on the trench parapet, the rifle was fired by water dripping into a container on a long string attached to the trigger mechanism. The Diggers called these weapons "drip" or "pop offs." By rigging up dozens of these devices and varying the rate at which water dripped into the can, the Australians were able to simulate sniper fire over a period of several hours. 

Capt. W.C. Scurry, 1919

In the event, the Turks were so deceived that 80,000 men were evacuated with only about half a dozen casualties. The inventor of the rifles was Lance Corporal W.C. Scurry, who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal and promoted to sergeant for his ingenuity and later commissioned. 

Sources:  Over the Top, January 2016; AWM

Suppression: The Real Role of Small Arms in Combat

American Infantryman with His Rifle

By Dr. Jim Storr

Jim Storr is a retired army officer who now teaches at the UK’s Joint Services Command and Staff College and the Defence College of Management and Technology. In this article presented here in part  he considers the importance of suppression in the infantry battle, and the weapon effects, training and tactics that increase its effectiveness. His article does not mention the Great War specifically, but many of the lessons he discusses were certainly learned (or relearned) back then. 

Since the Boer War, if not before, infantrymen have been unable to advance in the open against tolerably well-organised defences equipped with rifles. The attackers’ casualties are simply too great. The minimum requirement for a successful defence is quite modest: high-velocity, conoidal bullets fired from half-decent breech-loading rifles. Anything more, such as automatic weapons, simply makes the attackers’ job even harder. In the early part of the 20th Century different armies came up with different ways of overcoming that problem. Many involved artillery or tanks. Some involved infantry heavy weapons, such as mortars. Most included a form of organisation and tactics by which the attacker used small arms fire to suppress the enemy. That enabled the attackers to move forward to the point where they could use bayonets, grenades and very-short-range small arms fire (at ranges of perhaps a few feet) to incapacitate any defenders who continued to resist. Critically, however, there was never much rational, explicit analysis as to how that took place.

German Anti-Tank Rifle Team

A few studies are quite insightful. It appears that a soldier’s ability to hit a given target is typically reduced by a factor of ten or so when he is moved from a static rifle range to a field firing area where he has to select cover, move, shoot and so on. It is reduced by a further factor of ten or so if there is an enemy firing back at him. It is reduced by another factor of ten if the enemy has machine guns, or if he has tanks; and by a hundred if he has both. We begin to see why many thousands of rounds can be fired, but very few actually hit.

Another study reveals entirely different phenomena. It highlights that achieving surprise, or inflicting shock on the enemy are hugely effective. These are more effective than any likely force ratio, or the use of other weapon systems, and so on. Put very simply, if the attacker can find the enemy’s flanks and rear and attack him from there, or apply sudden concentrated violence to him and then exploit it, the enemy will typically give up quite quickly. He will then either withdraw, if he can, or surrender. A number of issues interact here. One is that using covert routes to find the enemy’s flanks and rear is clearly a good thing. Another is that the use of tanks or indirect fire to stun the enemy is very helpful. But within all of those tactics there is another critical factor: the attacking infantry’s ability to suppress the defender. That enables the attacker to move forward: either to close quarters to use bayonets and grenades, or around and past the defender’s positions to attack him from unexpected directions.  

Although relatively few of the enemy are typically incapacitated by small arms fire, their location and identity is often critical. For example, the clearance of one trench may allow the attacker to get behind several more, and start to roll up the position.

U.S. Hotchkiss Machine Gunners

Suppression is the effect of small arms and other weapons systems which temporarily prevent the enemy firing its weapons or moving in the open. In simple terms, it makes them keep their heads down. It is critically important. In the offence it allows the attacker to move forward, to find gaps and weak points, and exploit them. In the defence it prevents the enemy moving forward and firing, and thereby sets him up for counterattacks. In both cases it pins the enemy down for incapacitation (or destruction) by other weapons.

For the last century or so most rifles have been more accurate than their riflemen. A typical rifle — be it bolt-action or semi-automatic — will form a group of perhaps 40mm or better at 100m, if fired from a vice or clamp. A reasonably well-trained soldier firing the same weapon on a range can group at perhaps 100mm at the same distance. Very few armies train their soldiers to consistently beat that sort of accuracy. This has a huge consequence, which very few armies acknowledge: the weapon is in many ways irrelevant. As most modern small arms are more accurate than their firer, it makes very little difference which weapon is selected. There are many other parameters. Reliability, weight and ergonomics are all important. But accuracy is almost irrelevant, because many weapons are ‘good enough’ in that regard.

What is far more important is to train the soldier to get the required effect from his small arms. In most armies he is trained to hit targets out to 300m or perhaps 600m. Yet in battle he rarely does that. He is rarely, if ever, trained to do what he really needs to do: suppress the enemy. Field research carried out in the Second World War provided a useful metric for small arms suppression, as did some more recent analysis. We can consider three cases: the need to suppress an enemy; the need to keep him suppressed; and the need to re-establish suppression once lost. In general, small arms fire has to pass within roughly a metre from the outline of the target to be effective. A small number of rounds passing through that area in a few seconds (perhaps 3 to 5 rounds in as many seconds) will suppress the target, or re-suppress him if required; whilst just one round every three seconds will keep him suppressed. That seems quite achievable.

Source: June 2009 Rusi Defence Systems

India Gate First World War Memorial

By James Patton 

Depicted above is the second tallest Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) memorial to the missing. The CWGC calls this the "Delhi Memorial," as it’s located in the Indian capital city of Delhi (the name New Delhi has gone out of favor). This monument is 42 meters tall, while the Thiepval Memorial in France is 54 meters. 

This colossal structure was another work of Sir Edwin Lutyens, the foremost British architect of his time, who also designed Thiepval  and the Whitehall Cenotaph in London, amongst many monuments and memorials. His design is deliberately evocative of the slightly taller (50 meters) Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which he called a "universal architectural style free of religious ornamentation." The cornerstone was laid in 1921 by Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, third son of Queen Victoria and an uncle to King George V. The Duke had significant ties to the Lutyens-designed city of New Delhi—the principal business center is named Connaught Place. The construction took ten years to complete.

Names of Indian Army Missing in the War

The monument recognizes all of the fallen of the Indian Army in the period 1914 to 1921—some 82,000 in total—74,187 military and about 8,000 followers. Inscribed on the walls are the names of 13,216 missing men and women of the Indian Army who aren’t commemorated elsewhere. Some of these are British. 

In 1971 the government of India decided to make the site the primary memorial to all of its fallen military personnel. It was renamed the "India Gate," not to be confused with the "Gateway to India," another relic of the British Raj, which is on the Mumbai  (Bombay) waterfront and isn’t a war monument. The CWGC no longer has responsibility for the upkeep, although there is still a Book of Names on the site. When I visited the gate in 1994 it was a quiet, deserted place that time had forgot, but after the Kargil War (1999) there was built under the arch the Amar Jawan Jyoti (the flame of the immortal soldier), a memorial conceptually similar to the French WWI Unknown Soldier resting beneath the Arc de Triomphe. There are actually four perpetual flames under the arch, guarded 24/7 by members of the Indian military, and there is also a flame on the top of the gate, but this is very rarely lit. The gate is floodlit for two and a half hours every night, and on special occasions the lights used are in the national colors of orange, white, and green. Now no traffic can ever pass under the gate, not even military parades.

World War I Centenary Commemoration

The government intends to further develop the site with a National War Memorial for the dead of the wars since WWI and a National War Museum nearby. Both of these facilities will be mostly below ground level so as to not detract from the visual impact of the Gate. 

Sources:  Originally presented at Kansas WW1, February 2017. Some photographs from Creative Commons.

It's 1920 and H.G. Wells Looks Back at the "War to End All War"

In 1920 H.G. Wells published his monumental and best-selling Outline of History.  C.P. Snow wrote of Wells that he could "throw out a phrase that crystallized a whole argument," and that he "never heard anyone remotely in the same class." Among these phrases were "the War that will end War," coined when he worked with the Ministry of Propaganda under Northcliffe during the First World War.  In his Outline, Wells spends many pages reflecting on the recent war.  Here are some striking quotes I found in rereading his section on the Great War.

Once Given Free for Joining the Book-of-the-Month Club

1.  The Great War of 1914-18 was the culmination of the military energy of the western populations, and they fought and fought well because they believed they were fighting “the war to end war.” 

2.  These tremendous experiences of the war constitute a crowning epoch. In the past six years there must have been a destruction of fixed ideas, prejudices, and mental limitations unparalleled in all history. Never before can there have been so great and so universal an awakening from assumed and accepted things. Never before have men stood so barely face to face with the community of their interests and their common destiny. 

3.  War is a horrible thing, and constantly more horrible and dreadful, so that unless it is ended it will certainly end human society. . . War is war; its only law is the law that the maximum destruction of the forces of the enemy is necessary. To that law in warfare all considerations of humanity and justice are subordinate.

4.  The professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling.“ 

5.  More lives were wasted by the British generals alone on the opening day of what is known as the Somme offensive of July, 1916 than in the whole French Revolution from start to finish.“

6.  Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. Against the unifying effort of Christendom and against the unifying influence of the mechanical revolution, catastrophe won — at least to the extent of achieving the Great War. 

7.  The terrible experiences of the Great War have made very many men who once took political things lightly take them now very gravely. To a certain small number of men and women the attainment of a world peace has become the supreme work in life, has become a religious self-devotion. To a much greater number it has become at least a ruling motive.

8.  Just as the history of Europe in the nineteenth century was largely the undoing of the Treaty of Vienna, and as the Great War was the necessary outcome of the Treaty of Frankfort and the Treaty of Berlin, so the general history of the twentieth century henceforth will be largely the amendment or reversal of the more ungenerous and unscientific arrangements of the Treaty of 1919, and a struggle to establish those necessary impartial world controls of which the League of Nations is the first insufficient and unsatisfactory sketch.

9.  The close of 1919 and the opening months of 1920 saw a very curious change come over American feeling after the pro-French and pro-British enthusiasms of the war period. The peace negotiations reminded the Americans, in a confused and very irritating way, of their profound differences in international outlook from any European power that the war had for a time helped them to forget. They felt they had been “rushed” into many things without due consideration. They experienced a violent revulsion towards that policy of isolation that had broken down in 1917. 

10.  We do not begin to realize yet how much of the pre-war world is done with for good and all, and how much that is new is beginning. Few of us have attempted to measure yet the change in our own minds.

Recommended: Wellington Quarry at Arras Multi-Media Presentation

A Short Section of the Troop Tunnel at Wellington Quarry

I usually don't  like fancy online presentations, but the Arras tourism folks have put together a SIMPLY FABULOUS presentation about the remarkable engineering feat of turning an abandoned quarry into an 8-kilometer long launch pad for the April 1917 offensive. Without further ado:

https://www.arraspaysdartois.com/en/remembrance/wellington-quarry-the-end-of-the-tunnel/

War Artist George Mathews Harding

After Harvey Dunn, my favorite American war artist is George Mathews Harding.  According to the Smithsonian, he was born in Philadelphia and followed in his sister's footsteps at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, then studied with the distinguished illustrator-teacher Howard Pyle. In 1903 he began a successful career as an illustrator-author, which included international travel. After becoming a war artist, Harding was particularly intrigued by the new technologies of war. His war pictures are full of guns, airplanes, motorcycles, trucks, and tanks. He returned to American in February 1919 and before the end of the year published a lavish portfolio of his war art, The American Expeditionary Forces in Action. During World War II, at age 60, he was once again commissioned as an army captain and created war art in the South Pacific. He was the only AEF artist to serve in both wars.

Here are three of my favorites followed by an link to his online World War I album.

Click on Images to Enlarge
(Display width=580px, download width=800px)

Tanks Attacking Early 26 September 1918 Between Avocourt and Montfaucon

Rounding up Boche Prisoners

Artillery Firing Near Verdun

See the full album here:

https://www.si.edu/spotlight/official-artwork-wwi/harding

Étaples: Britain’s Notorious Infantry Base Depot, 1914-1919

by Stephen Wynn

Pen & Sword Military, 2020

Peter L. Belmonte, Reviewer

Étaples, a village on the northeastern coast of France, hosted a large British Army complex during the war. The base depot included several military hospitals and a large reception and training center designed for new troops bound for duty in France. Convalescent soldiers also stayed there prior to their reassignment. The camp and its cadre, particularly the military police, were known for brutality and excessively tight discipline. Men also complained of inadequate food and quarters. Many combat veterans resented being treated like new recruits by men (trainers and military police) who had seen no combat themselves. All this served to engender discontent at the base. Author Stephen Wynn, a retired British police officer who has written several works on Great War history, wrote this book to bring to light issues surrounding military indiscipline in the British Army at Étaples.

A Vast Military Encampment

It is difficult to properly characterize this book. It is not, as the title implies, a history of the base depot during the war years. Nor is it an in-depth examination of the September 1917 mutiny there by Australian, New Zealand, and British troops. It is, rather, a brief look at that mutiny and other events and people associated with it. After a review of some other acts of mutiny among Allied troops during the war, the author covers in brief the actual mutiny among British Commonwealth soldiers there in September 1917.

Wynn claims the main cause of the trouble was the common soldiers’ discontent with the war and a growing class-consciousness among the enlisted men. This, coupled with the abuse and mismanagement evident at the base, produced an atmosphere rife with tension that needed only a spark to ignite. Around 300 men were eventually arrested for their part in the mutiny; many of them were officially tried and received a variety of sentences including several days of field punishment, years at hard labor, and reduction in rank. One man was sentenced to death and shot on 4 October 1917.

In the ensuing chapters, the disjointed nature of the book is evident. Topics include a Communist Member of Parliament and erstwhile soldier, British regiments used or considered for use in putting down the mutiny, a review of Étaples as reported in the press, air raids on Étaples, a brief account of Étaples nurse Vera Brittain, and a discussion of some men who may or may not have been at Étaples. Wynn also includes a chapter covering the British Army’s abuse of civilian workers in both the Chinese and the Egyptian labor corps. While the events Wynn describes are terrible and worthy of more study, neither of these corps was closely connected with Étaples.

For the trouble at Étaples, the author blames the camp cadre and British senior officers. In his chapter entitled “Étaples Enquiry,” Wynn gives full vent to his feelings about Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig:

Personally, I don’t believe Haig was really that concerned about the welfare of his men at Étaples, or anywhere else for that matter, because to him, men were there to be used for his own egotistical ideas. If one man, ten men, or even one hundred men were killed, all he really thought about was where their replacements were coming from and how quickly they could get to where they were needed [p. 56].

Bayonet Training in the Infamous "Bull Ring"

Wynn follows this with a brief critique of Haig’s actions on the first day of the Somme. Such facile criticisms of Haig and his generalship are open to debate, and they detract from Wynn’s argument by couching it in emotional terms. There were real problems at Étaples; Wynn’s approach, however, doesn’t clearly show the reasons for any systemic mismanagement, malfeasance, or abuse there.

The main strength of his book lies in Wynn’s pointing out the general discontent and disgust of some Commonwealth soldiers at this stage of the war. Indeed, trouble between Australians and British soldiers continued well into 1918. It is important to remember that many men were tired of the war; not all men served well and honorably. There were troublemakers and miscreants among the camp cadre as well as among the mutineers.

The book is not a scholarly account of Étaples and what happened there; in places it seems disjointed and reads like a catalog of Wynn’s research. Wynn includes no end notes, and his list of sources runs to 14 Internet sites. Twenty-nine photographs and one period map enhance the text. Although Wynn is to be commended for this brief, accessible account, a more thorough scholarly approach would be helpful in understanding Étaples and how it fit into Britain’s war effort. This book will appeal to those who want only an introduction to the topic.

Peter L. Belmonte

Some Fictional Veterans Return Home

Benedict Cumberbatch as Tietjens

Christopher Tietjens (Discussed by his brother Mark)

He had felt a certain satisfaction in the fact that Christopher was going out, though he was confoundedly sorry too. He really admired Christopher for doing it–and he imagined that it might clear some of the smirchiness that must attach to Christopher’s reputation, in spite of what he now knew to be his brother’s complete guiltlessness of the crimes that had been attributed to him. He had, of course, been wrong—he had reckoned without the determined discredit that, after the war was over, the civilian population would contrive to attach to every man who had been to the front as a fighting soldier. After all, that was natural enough. The majority of the male population was civilian, and, once the war was over and there was no more risk, they would bitterly regret that they had not gone. They would take it out of the ex-soldiers all right!

From: Last Post, Ford Madox Ford

Richard Cromwell as Ludwig at a Veteran's Protest

Surviving Members of Paul Bäumer's Platoon

Because we were duped I tell you, duped as even yet we hardly realize; because we were misused, hideously misused. They told us it was for the Fatherland, and meant the schemes of annexation of a greedy industry. They told us it was for Honor, and meant the quarrels and the will to power of a handful of ambitious diplomats and princes. They told us it was for the Nation, and meant the need for activity on the part of out-of-work generals!. . .Can't you see? They stuffed out the word Patriotism with all the twaddle of their fine phrases, with their desire for glory, their will to power, their false romanticism, their stupidity, their greed of business, and then paraded it before us as a shining ideal! And we thought they were sounding a bugle summoning us to a new, a more strenuous, a larger life. Can't you see, man? But we were making war against ourselves without even knowing it!. . .

From: The Road Back, Erich Marie Remarque

Poland Defeats the Soviets: Stalin Will Never Forget, Part II

By Jaroslaw Centek, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland

Stalin and Tukhachevsky Would Both Be Blamed for the Soviet Defeat

Battle of the Vistula

The Polish situation was critical, given the intensified enemy pressure at the Bug River. Thus, it was necessary to retreat to the last possible line of defense–the Vistula River. The Polish high command decided to regroup and form an assault group on the Wieprz River, on the left flank of the Soviet advance. The Poles were determined to defend the right bank of the Vistula in the vicinity of Warsaw, which resulted in heavy fighting. Apart from concentrating their forces in that area, the Soviets also advanced in the northern direction in order to cross the Vistula north of the Polish capital and capture it from the western side, as happened in 1831.

During those dramatic days in mid-August 1920, the Poles succeeded not only in stopping the advance towards Warsaw but also in regrouping their forces in preparation for a massive counteroffensive. On 15 August 1920, the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Poles attacked on the left flank; a day later they began an attack on the right wing from the Wieprz line. The enemy was completely surprised and failed to put up any significant resistance.

The "Manoeuver from Wieprz" was an operational masterpiece. It is difficult to determine its authorship, but most probably it was either the Polish chief of the general staff, General Tadeusz Rozwadowski (1866-1928), or the head of state and supreme commander, Josef Pilsudski. The contribution of French general Maxime Weygand (1867-1965), who is sometimes credited with the initiative, is somewhat unlikel since French doctrine favored static warfare. In the course of the Vistula battle, the Soviets' northern front was crushed. The remnants withdrew to the east or crossed the German border in East Prussia and applied for internment. However, the Germans sent them back to Russia.

Polish Officers with Captured Soviet Flags

Battle of the Neman

The last main battle of the war took place at the Neman River between 20 and 26 September 1920. This time the Poles attacked from the outset. Despite some Soviet counterattacks, the Polish troops crushed the enemy's resistance. Tukhachevsky had to retreat, and his front found it impossible to restrain the Polish forces in pursuit. However, the Poles were also exhausted, so both sides decided to sign a truce in October 1920.

Peace Treaty in Riga

The peace negotiations were conducted in the Latvian capital of Riga. Since the Poles had been victorious, they would have been entitled to demand a border well to the east of the River Bug. The members of the Polish delegation, however, were unwilling to incorporate too much territory where Poles would be a minority. Therefore, Minsk was left to the Bolsheviks and the new border was drawn well to the west of the ceasefire line. The new frontier closely resembled the old one of the years 1793-1795, of course with some corrections in favor of Poland

Source: International Encyclopedia of the First World War