Remembering a Veteran: Sgt. Sepp Innerkofler, Tyrolean Standschützen

 

Sepp Innerkofler

By Richard Galli

The people of the valley heard the shooting and prayed for the soldiers fighting up there, without making any distinction between Italian and Austrian.

The History of Val Vanoi

On the 4th of July 1915, an Austrian soldier died on a remote mountaintop in the Dolomites. In the history of the Alpine front, where Italy and Austria battled for three terrible years, two men stand as symbols of each nation's passion and pathos: Caesare Battisti, patriot of Italy and the Trentino who was executed by the Austrians, and Sepp Innerkofler, the Tyrolean mountaineer who died defending his homeland on that July Day. Innerkofler, father and noted mountain guide, had taken up arms to fight what he perceived as interlopers and enemies, his Italian neighbors who had once waved at him from nearby peaks or shared a smoke in the climbing hutte on summer evenings.

Monte Paterno [Left], Drei Zinnen [Right]—Note Destroyed Dreizinnenhutte (Mountain Hut) on Far Right

Sepp's world centered on the Drei Zinnen [or Tre Cime di Lavaredo] peaks of the eastern or Sextener Dolomites. The three summits are amongst the most recognizable and spectacular sights and climbs to be found in the Alps. The Innerkofler family had farmed the area for generations before Sepp was born there on the 28 October 1865, the fourth son of Christian Innerkofler, a yeoman farmer and stonecutter.

Innerkofler's two life pursuits would result from his uncles' influence. Hans, nicknamed Der Gamsmannchen or the Chamois Man, introduced Sepp to hunting. As a lad, Sepp learned to supplement the family table with small game such as mountain grouse; under Hans's tutelage his quarry eventually became the ibex and chamois, the ultimate game on mountain and cliff. Several of his family had also been mountaineering guides, including his other uncle Michel. Known as the Dolomitenkonig [King of the Dolomites], Michel's exploits were legendary. Tragically, he was killed climbing Monte Cristallo in 1888, when a glacier's snow bridge collapsed. Innerkofler would gain renown by expanding on Michel's early instructions, putting up over 50 first ascents in many of the area's classic climbing areas, as well as climbing in the Dachstein Range to the north and on the mighty Matterhorn/Cervino in Zermatt, Switzerland. Sepp's prowess in the combined skills soon became second to none.

By the end of the 19th century, as the European middle class grew in size and adventurous spirit, mountaineering was becoming a popular summer pastime and athletic pursuit. Guides were needed for bourgeoisie climbers, to give advanced lessons and for path finding up the soaring cliffs. Sepp Innerkofler found his calling in this trade and excelled at it. In 1890 Sepp was certified as a mountain guide, no small event in Sexten. He earned 200 florins his first summer guiding; the following seasons brought double that amount.. Most climbing in the Alps, or any peaks a century ago, was on glaciers, with the occasional rock obstacle. A guide cut steps into the ice and kept a course for the summit. There is less ice in the Eastern Alps, but an abundance of vertical rock. New techniques and equipment had to be developed for the extended rock crack, chimney, overhang and knife-edge ridge. Sepp himself was a pioneer of vertical rock climbing for which the Dolomites are now renowned.

1890—Sepp [Center, Standing] Is Certified with
Four Others as Professional Mountain Guides
 by the Austrian Government

After five years of guiding, Sepp married the love of his life, Maria Stadler, in the off season, 8 January 1895. Their marriage was blessed with five children—Gottfried [b.1896], Josef [b.1898], Franz [b.1900], Maria [b.1902], and Adelheid [b.1904]. Sepp ensured security and comfort for his wife and children by working at the local saw mill in the winter and by investing. Sepp and Maria managed the climbers' refuge at Monte Elmo for several seasons. In 1898, they opened their own Dreizinnenhutte, a stone chalet comfortable enough for middle-class tourists from Vienna or Venice and rugged enough to withstand mountain wind, snow, and cold. Clients could relax at dinner, basking in Tyrolian hospitality and the glorious sight of peaks that only hours earlier they had stood atop. In 1903 the Innerkoflers' income increased when they opened the Hotel Dolomiten in Val Fiscalina. For love of family and mountains, the poor son of a peasant stonecutter and farmer had become one of Europe's eminent climbing guides and a man of property.

Sepp Innerkofler was also a member of the Third Company of the Austrian Standschützen, the alpine militia based in Sexten. With their symbolic edelweiss badge and spielhahnstoss [black mountain grouse feather] in their caps, the Standschützen were government subsidized rifle clubs made up of those too young [14 to 20 years old] or too old [40 to 70] for active duty. Defense of their alpine province was the sole mission of these reservists. A similar group, the Landesschützen, were reservists of military age [21 to 41] but liable to service outside the region. Both groups, at least in the Tyrol, were expert riflemen, considering the necessity of hunting combined with a regional pride in shooting. [Imagine men from Siberia, Afghanistan, or Montana.] Indeed, out of necessity, mountain people across Europe have been allowed a much greater liberty with firearms due to their remoteness and fierceness. Rather than costly police actions, most rulers found it easier to allow shooting clubs and patriotic militias to pacify their own mountain areas.

The Standschutzen, were made up of men who had spent their lives in the mountains: climbing guides and porters, herders and foresters, some even possessing the unique skills of poachers and smugglers. Sepp Innerkofler, with his obvious talents and strong personality, was elected Zugsfuhrer [section or platoon sergeant] of a "flying patrol" of 12 of the best on high rock. His region was also manned by the elite Kaiserjager alpine troops, the "Imperials" of the regular Austro-Hungarian Army, as well as a regiment of the German Army Alpenkorps. When the war began in 1914, Austria's military situation on the Eastern Front soon became critical. All regular army and most Landesschutzen units were sent to face the Russians. The Tyrolean Dolomites were left in the hands of the teenagers and old men of the Standschützen.

Spring 1915 saw the Italian Army invading the Tyrol, which they claimed as theirs. Alpini units, mountain troops par excellence, professional and elite, recruited from their alpine peoples and climbers, raced Standschützen patrols to occupy the highest points along the front after the opening shots of 24/25 May. Italy hoped to catch Austria, with most of their forces in Russia, off guard.

A week later Sepp Innerkofler would see his first action, occupying the summit of the icy Cima Undici/Elferkofel [3092 m.] and repelling an observation party of Italian climbers only moments behind them. He would participate in 17 patrols and firefights between the end of May and the 4 July in 1915 and was awarded the Silver Medal of Valor [second class] for his leadership and bravery. The Standschützen had two advantages, despite being outgunned and outnumbered. For the most part, they controlled the high ground and were often fighting around the same valley where they lived. The front line went directly through Sepp's beloved Drei Zinnen refuge, which was totally destroyed by Italian artillery fire the first days of the war. No doubt Sepp had carefully observed Italian positions from the ruined shell of the house that Maria and he had built. What thoughts went through his head? Even in battle Innerkofler was known for being calm, not vindictive or hateful. Nor was his patriotism rabid. But these were his people's mountains. By the end of May, Monte Paterno/Paternkofel [2746 m.] and nearby Tre Cime de Laveredo/Drei Zinnen [2999m.] had become Italian strongholds, with their cannon and machine guns creating a deadly crossfire.

Sepp Innerkofler [Center] and His Flying Patrol

On the 18 June 1915 Innerkofler earned a second Silver Medal [1st class] for retaining his lofty observation post on Cima Uno/Einserkofel [2699 m.] after "a violent duel with the Alpini." His son Gottfried fought by his side on the summit from which they could observe Sexten and the family home. The following morning Sepp reported an estimated 450 Alpini and their artillery reoccupying the strategic summit of Cima Undici that overlooked Passo Monte Croce Comelico [1636 m.] and the road to Sexten, Brunico, and the Brenner Pass.

During an interlude, men from both sides silently observed Innerkofler stalking a solitary chamois buck. The foreboding and emotions felt by the both the Alpini and Austrians watching can only be imagined as Sepp's rifle brought the animal down in a dramatic scene of death in the high mountains. It was, however, to be his final hunt.

In the Tre Cime area, any successful Austrian defense or attack would require the Alpini outpost atop Monte Paterno to be eliminated. Only one man in the Emperor's army was capable of such an undertaking, in regards to climbing skill and knowledge of the spire itself. Sepp Innerkofler was assigned to lead the best five men of his flying patrol against the lofty stronghold. An entire platoon of Austrians followed prepared to hold the vital observation post once it was secured. Nearby mountain howitzer batteries were prepared to give suppressive fire, as was every Austrian machinegun position in the saddle between summits. As with Innerkofler's chamois hunt, the battle would be witnessed by thousands.

Alpini Squad That Occupied Monte Paterno in 1915

The following are eyewitness accounts of what must be one of the most dramatic duels of the Great War. The first is by Antonio Berti, an Alpini medical officer from the Pieve di Cadore battalion from his book Guerra in Ampezzo e Cadore, written in 1967.

There are six, all volunteers, of which three are over fifty years of age, renowned guides in the Val di Sesto- Sepp Innerkofler, Hans Forcher, Andreas Piller. [With them as well are the other younger men in their famous squad- von Rapp, Taibon and Rogger]. They have received the order to climb the Paterno and occupy its top. Armed with carbines and hand grenades, they leave barracks near the Drezinnenhutte, devastated by fire. With them is a platoon consisting of thirty Landesschutzen and a few military engineers commanded by Christl, Sepp's brother. They set out on a gravel path descending from the Sella del Camoscio, and proceed slowly and stealthily, being careful not to displace any stone that might arouse the enemy's suspicion. Christl and his platoon stop at the top of the path, waiting for events to start happening. The six put on their climbing shoes and start up the wall of the Paterno.

With complete assurance they climb under cover of darkness; the way is known as the NNW passage, the same one Sepp was the first man to ascend in 1896, and has climbed countless times since. One hour later the six reach the top [crest] in the dim light of dawn. From Monte Rudo the Austrians start to shoot at once. Then twice again the roar and hiss of the cannons are heard from a lower altitude; a fourth roar brings down a hail of shattered rocks- then a silence. The six men keep on climbing in single file along the edge of the peak. From Forcella di Pian di Cengia, the Alpini can clearly see them silhouetted against the red sky. That is the awaited signal, and while the six climb toward the west [with the sun to their backs], the Italians open fire from [Tre Cime di] Lavaredo. Immediately the Austrians respond, bringing their own machineguns into action. Over the roar one can hear the Austrian cannons on Monte Rudo and a mortar from Sasso di Sesto. A 105 howitzer shoots without letup, toward the Forcella di Pian di Cenega, from the [Austrian] Torre dei Scarperi. The six continue climbing, cautiously, in short sprints, hiding in every hollow. An artillery fragment hits Sepp in the forehead. Blood streaks down his face and covers his eyes; yet he continues to climb. A rock splinter hits Forcher is also on the forehead; he bleeds, but continues to climb. They have almost reached the top. Suddenly, as if by a pre-arranged signal, an eerie quiet succeeds the thunder. A silence of death spreads through the valley, over the mountaintops, on all sides of the trenches. At this precise moment, slowly and clearly visible, one man alone begins to ascend. Ten steps below the top Innerkofler crosses himself and with a wide arc hurls a grenade over the wall of the summit outpost. He then throws a second and a third. Suddenly, an Alpini soldier appears, his face bleeding from the effects of the first grenade. Shouting "So! You won't go away?" [meaning, "I am going to get you."] Standing above the wall, he holds a rock high over his head. He throws it, and Sepp is fatally hit. Raising his arms toward the sky, he falls backward and plummets [50 meters] into a narrow mountain chimney, dead. The Alpini who hurled the rock is Pietro de Luca, an engineer of the Pieve di Cadore Battalion.

Sepp's Original Grave

A second, lesser known memoir of the battle gives an account quite different from Berti's. Speaking is Pietro de Luca himself to a Captain Neri in the book Inediti di Guerra Alpina, 1915-1918 [Edited by Marino and Francesca Michieli in 1996]. De Luca was part of a group of six alpini of the Val Piave Battalion led by Corporal Da Rin posted the Monte Paterno. This is his reconstruction of what happened:

Once in a while I had to look up from below, as I was ordered to do. [De Luca was on sentry duty below the summit ridge.] There was not a living soul! But it was hard to say as it was dark as hell. I had just looked around and then headed behind the cover of a rock, as ordered by Da Rin, since dawn was approaching. It was then that I saw a shadow. Could it be the devil? I said to myself, "Devil my eye!" There was a man all right! The shadow had its back to me and moved as if it was pulling a bucket from a well. I understood afterwards that it was trying to help others climb.

Blessed Virgin Mary! That can only be the enemy, I said to myself and I jumped him. Hell, he was strong like a demon, so much so I was not sure that I could take him! I managed to throw him off and as he came at me again I picked up a rock and crushed his face, sending him straight over the cliff faster than I could say amen. [This entire struggle took place on a ledge or 'shelf' twenty feet long and one or two feet wide, with sheer cliffs above and below.] I forced myself to look down, so I could check where he fell and…damn, what did I see! Just below me there were about thirty of those "mamaluchi" [Mamelukes- an Italian pejorative] climbing like ants. "Da Rin! Da Rin"! I started to yell out. But I could not waste time waiting for Da Rin; so I started to push rock after rock down. It was a pleasure to see them roll down and hear them curse words I could not understand one damn bit…

The Italian squad atop Paterno was quick to respond with a shower of grenades and rifle fire. A call for artillery and mortar fire soon arrived. The Austrians fled. Later that day, under continued rifle and machinegun fire, Innerkofler's body would be found and examined by an Alpini medic, Angelo Loschi. The men atop Monte Paterno reverently buried Sepp on a wide part of the summit ridge on his beloved Paternkofel, beneath a simple cross inscribed "Sepp Innerkofler, guida." When news of this battle reached the Austrian high command Innerkofler was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal for bravery. Of the eight million subjects who served, only 3,700 were awarded this highest of honors.

Sepp Innerkofler Memorial at Monte Paterno

Battles continued to rage on summit and plateau each short summer, yet their intensity diminished as units from both sides were siphoned off to Russia or the Isonzo River Front. On the morning of November 1st 1917, the Austrian forces realized the Italians had abandoned their positions in a front wide retreat after the Battle of Caporetto. The Italians had lost a quarter of a million men there, and were now incapable of holding a vast high altitude front. The area around Monte Paterno and the Tre Cime returned to nature's silence.

In August of 1918 a small expedition was sent to exhume Sepp Innerkofler's remains. This climb in itself was no minor feat. He was returned to his family in Sexten, and buried in the community cemetery along side parents, uncles and eventually 54 other men from Sexten who died in the war. One million Austrian and Italian men would die on the alpine front in avalanche, lightning strike or blizzard or from poison gas, artillery and machinegun. Sepp's sons Gottfried and Josef had enlisted, fought, and survived this enormous war. Josef would live until 1993, and the great age of 97 years. Sepp's memory lives on in his many grandchildren and their thriving families, the rebuilt Drei Zinnen Hutte and the eternal Dolomites. Mutual understanding increases in this bicultural area with each generation—a type of tolerance quite different from events only 100 miles to the east in the former Yugoslavia, where mountain warfare has not ceased. The memory of Sepp Innerkofler is now honored all its citizens.

The Dreizinnehutte Today, Part of Sepp Innerkofler's Heritage

Sources and Thanks: I would like to send my deepest appreciation and thanks to the Innerkofler family of Sexten for all the information and depth regarding their ancestors and area. I would also like to thank my friend Salvatore Vasta, editor of Coorte military history magazine, for his assistance in translating the Fruilian dialect. Postcards and photos are from the authors personal collections and the outstanding three volume history by Hans Von Leichem, Gebirgskrieg 1915–1918. (This article was originally presented on La Grande Guerra: The Italian Front, 1915–1918.)

Before Bond, Daniel Craig Played a Great Sergeant

 

Not to be confused with the silly reality TV production with the same title, The Trench, with a just-on-the-verge-of-stardom Daniel Craig in the lead, captures the claustrophobic feeling, tediousness, and random danger of trench warfare better than any film I've seen. The 1999 movie, set in the days just preceding the Battle of the Somme, was written and directed by WWI author William Boyd operating on a low budget. Maybe because of this, except for the concluding and somewhat predictable over the top sequence, the entire story is set in the frontline trenches and dugouts. Yet the dramatic result is most effective. 

By the end of the 98-minute production, the viewer is left with a sense of having spent a long stretch in a linear, open-air prison. The personalities of the soldiers are well explored, but at the center of everything is Sgt. Telford Winter (Craig). One of the things I especially liked about The Trench is the depiction of how it's the sergeants who actually run things at the cutting edge of any combat operation. Winter, burdened with a weak and erratic lieutenant (nicely portrayed by Julian Rhind-Tutt), carries a bigger load than most NCOs. The film is available on Netflix and for purchase on Amazon.

Nice Little Village Ya Got There, Passchendaele

Click on Images to Expand  

It Would Be Too Bad If a War Came Your Way Someday.

Passchendaele Rebuilt—Similar to Prewar

1916 RFC Aerial Photo – Village Undamaged
(Red Dot Shows Same Location)

November 1917 RFC Aerial Photo—Utter Obliteration

2021 Google Maps Photo

The RFC's First Aerial Reconnaissance Mission: 19 August 1914

Before the First World War the potential of aircraft for military purposes was not appreciated by the majority, but a few borrowed aeroplanes were used in the Army manoeuvres of 1910. These manoeuvres saw what is widely accepted as the first British military aeroplane reconnaissance flight. Despite criticism, the aeroplane was used for reconnaissance in the Army manoeuvres of 1912 and during the First World War, where it was to have every opportunity of proving its worth.

The first wartime aerial reconnaissance mission occurred shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, when two pilots of the Royal Flying Corps, Gilbert William Mapplebeck of 4 Squadron and Phillipe Joubert de la Ferte of 3 Squadron set out for a region of Belgium just south of Brussels on the 19th August. Both pilots made a record of this historic event in their diaries. Mapplebeck is clearly very enthusiastic about his task and records it in detail.

Mapplebeck – The night before last after dinner the Major told me I was to make a reconnaissance the next morning at about 9 o’clock. He told me that I was to reconnoitre Gembloux and to look out for large bodies of cavalry. Another machine was also going out probably a Bleriot of Number 3 Squadron to reconnoitre Braine l’Alleud and look out for the signs of the Belgian cavalry. I was tremendously pleased at this as it meant that I was making the first reconnaissance of the war, and am most grateful to the Major for selecting me. At 8 o’clock on the morning of the 19th August, I and my machine were both ready. At 8.15 Joubert (who was going in the Bleriot) and I were sent for by General Henderson, who told us each our particular jobs. Joubert was to go straight to Braine l’Alleud via Nivelles; I was to go to Gembloux near Namur. He was to be over friendly territory and look out for Belgians and I was to look out for advanced German cavalry. My special orders were to keep up with the Bleriot as far as Nivelles then both were to go off to our own districts.

Joubert’s diary entry is shorter and notes one of the major problems with aerial reconnaissance at the beginning of the First World War.

Joubert – First reconnaissance, with Mapplebeck. Lost myself most thoroughly. Landed at Tournai, where I had lunch with the governor and again at Courtrai, where I was taken for a German, until rescued by the Irish inhabitants. Finally achieved my task and returned after six and a quarter hours flying.

A BE-2 of the Type Flown by Mapplebeck

Mapplebeck also records his report of this reconnaissance in his diary.

Mapplebeck – Left Maubeuge 9.30am. Using large scale map, followed Bleriot. I did not pick up my position on the map, so depended on Bleriot’s pilot for correct route, intending to branch off on arriving at Nivelles. Missed Nivelles, arrived at a large town (I was at 3000 feet and in clouds) but could not place it on map. (On my return I discovered this to have been Brussels.) I flew to the other side of the town, turned round and steered South-South-East. I then took out the small scale map and picked up my position at Ottignies and soon found Gembloux after being in cloud. I made a wide circle round it, being in cloud part of the time, but only saw a small body of cavalry about a mile in length, moving faster than a walk in a

south easterly direction. At this time I was at 3400 feet and was just turning a little further south when I was enveloped in clouds. I flew on for about 300 feet out of the clouds and saw Namur. I then turned west and passed Charleroi and altered my course a little south. I missed Maubeuge, flew on for about 15 miles after realizing that I had missed it and landed at Wassigny at 11.30 am, and flew back, landing at Maubeuge at 12.00

This report of the first reconnaissance mission demonstrates that pilots had difficulty with navigation and only looked for specific pieces of information. The mission lacked something which would enable aircrew to record everything visible below them. There was no camera. The aircrew made sketches and annotated maps of the area with what they saw on the ground below. A difficult feat when flying at approximately seventy miles per hour in an open cockpit. 

Mapplebeck (Left); Joubert de la Ferté in WWII

Captain Mapplebeck proceeded to have a very adventurous war. He was wounded during an aerial encounter, but after nine surgeries, returned to action three months later. He was later shot down behind enemy lines near Lille, escaped capture, and made it home to England through the Netherlands.  Then, his luck ran out when he crashed and died on a training flight in August 1915. On the other hand, Philip Bennet Joubert de la Ferté, KCB, CMG, DSO (21 May 1887–21 January 1965) was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force during the 1930s and the Second World War.

Source: Royal Air Force Museum

A Baker's Dozen from the Musée de l'Armée Invalides Archives

Click on Images to Enlarge

Wine Ration

Penguin Mascot of Aviator Adolphe Pégoud

Passage of Prisoners in the Main Street of Suippes

Trench Art Necklace

Illustration Project for Les Croix de bois by Roland Dorgelès

Model of U.S. Liberty B Truck

Biaches, Somme Battlefield, March 1917

Under Very Lights

Alpini Post in the Dolomites, Italy

Kepi of Lt. Col. of the 311th Infantry Regiment

First Attack Wearing Gas Masks

Portrait of a German Infantryman

Camoufleurs (detail)

 

Map Series #21 — Eastern Front 1914: Six Major Battles and Campaigns

 

Austrian Troops Advancing Over a Vast Plain on
the Eastern Front

Click on Map to  Enlarge

Prisoners Taken at Tannenberg

Cossacks and Russian Cavalry

Source:  Over the Top, December 2014

Dere Mable—Love Letters of a Rookie

By Edward Streeter
Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1918
Reviewed by James Patton

Dere Mable Can Be Downloaded from Project Gutenberg
HERE

Edward Streeter (1891–1976) was a native of Buffalo, NY, and a graduate of Harvard, where he served as an editor of the satirical magazine the Harvard Lampoon. Throughout his writing career satire was to be his principal genre. After college he became a reporter for the Buffalo Express.  In 1917 he joined the 74th Regiment, N.Y. National Guard, which became part of the 108th Infantry Regiment, 27th Division. 

While in training at Camp Wadsworth, SC, Streeter and others started a newspaper for the division which they called Gas Attack. Streeter wrote a humorous column for the paper that he called “Love Letters of a Rookie,” which were  purported to be letters from a poorly educated trainee named Bill Smith to a girlfriend named Mabel Gimp. These letters featured his wry comments about army life, practices, and procedures. 

Streeter published a short collection of these "letters" which was titled Dere Mable—Love Letters of a Rookie. The text was supplemented with 35  cartoons by fellow Doughboy Bill Breck. It was a runaway best seller with middle-class Americans. I have two copies, one came down through my mother’s family and the other through my mother-in-law’s family; I first read Dere Mable when I was nine years old. Streeter published two more volumes of this material, entitled That’s Me All Over, Mable and Same Old Bill, eh Mable. Each was less popular than its predecessor. There was also a "copycat" book authored by Florence Elizabeth Summers called Dere Bill: Mable’s Love Letters to her Rookie.  

The genre is similar to the "Busher Stories" by Ring Lardner (1885–1933), which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post beginning in 1914. Some of these were collected into a book titled You Know Me Al, published in 1916. [Lardner's Busher also made it "Over There." We reviewed his accounts in Treat 'em Rough: Letters From Jack the Kaiser Killer  HERE. MH]

Army Food Always Runs

 

In the original Dere Mable Streeter sets the tone for his subject in his "Dedication to all of the Trainees," which includes the following descriptions of them: "…Taking things as they find them. Vaguely Understanding. Caring less. Grumbling by custom. Cheerful by nature. Ever anxious to be where they are not. Ever anxious to be somewhere else when they get there". . .  This sounds a lot like my draftee Army of the 1960s. 

Streeter’s satire comes out constantly in Bill’s homespun expressions and witticism. Readers chuckled at his delightful misspellings, his misuse of words, his misunderstandings, his malapropisms, his naïve or backward takes on his circumstances, his awkward attempts at male chauvinism, his insensitivity, and his catty remarks about “Mable’s” friends and family. 

Here are a few typical quotes. All of the misspellings are [sic]:

The only place there flat is on the map. Where our tents is would be a good place for a Rocky Mountain goat… The Captin says “Pitch your tents here”. .. I guess he thought we were Alpine Chasers. Eh, Mable? But you probably don’t know what those are.

You Walk a Post But Their Ain't No Post

 

… I’ve been doin guard duty. Seems like I’ve been doin it every night… Guard duty is something like extemperaneus speaking. You got to know everythin your goin to say before you start. It’s very tecknickle. For instance you walk a post but there aint no post. And you mount guard but you don’t really mount nothin.  And you turn out the guard but you don’t really turn em out.

Well I got to quit now an rite a bunch of other girls. Thanks agin for the box altho it was so busted it wasn’t much good.

Captin and I had different ideas about runnin things. One of us had to leave… Hed been there the longest. I left. Hot headed. Thats me all over.

Chair Mable. Thats French. I didn’t expect you to know what it meant tho.  The YMCA are learnin me French now… The only difference between French and English is that there pretty near alike but the French don’t pronounce there words right... A poilus Mable is a French peasant girl and they say that there very belle.

The other day we was all lined up in the company street and the sargent  says  ”Inspecshun Arms”. I lays down my gun and rolls up my sleves. Just to show how tecknickle the Army is he didn’t want to see my arms at all but my gun.

Streeter's Greatest Hit

After the war Streeter went into banking, occasionally contributing short stories and articles to Post and McCall’s magazines. In 1938 he published his first novel, Daily Except Sunday, and over the next 31 years there would follow nine more humorous works. His biggest success was his second, Father of the Bride, which he published in 1949. Made into a movie starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor, it was a box-office hit. There was a sequel made in 1952, a TV series made from the sequel (1961–2), a remake of the original in 1991 starring Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, and a sequel to the remake in 1995. Still another remake is reported to be in the works.

You can read Dere Mable and the two sequels on Project Gutenberg. 

World War One and the Decline of the British Empire

Jonathan V. Last
Originally Presented in the  9 October 2005 Philadelphia Inquirer

Click on Image to Enlarge

. . .At the beginning of the 20th century, the British Empire was an unopposed hyperpower (much as the United States has been since 1989). As historian Colin Cross observes: "In terms of influence it was the only world power." The British people and their leaders accepted this fact. In the early 1930s, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin pronounced that "the British Empire stands firm, as a great force for good." Historian William Manchester argues that "most of the crown's subjects, abroad as well as at home, felt comfortable with imperialism."

But after the conclusion of the first World War, Britain's imperial psyche began to fracture. "After the survivors of the Western front came home," Manchester writes, "Britons wanted nothing more to do with war; most of them hoped never again to lay their eyes on an Englishman in uniform, and they were losing their taste for Empire." Winston Churchill despaired of this change. "The shadow of victory is disillusion," he noted. "The reaction from extreme effort is prostration. The aftermath even of successful war is long and bitter."

A deep desire to avoid conflict, even at the price of letting the Empire dissolve, permeated British society. In 1931, the House of Commons passed the Statute of Westminster, the first step toward independence for Britain's dominions. In 1932, a poll found that 10.4 million Britons supported England's unilateral disarmament, while only 870,000 opposed it. Historian Alistair Horne observes that, after World War I, it took just about 10 years for the "urge for national grandeur" to be replaced by "a deep longing simply to be left in peace."

Officers of the Oxford Union, 1933
The Oxford Oath, or Oxford Pledge, is the name commonly given to a resolution carried by students of the Oxford Union that "this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country." It was passed by 275 votes to 153 at the King and Country debate on 9 February 1933.

Why did it all crumble? Several interrelated reasons—among them the grisly fact that England had lost virtually an entire generation of future leaders in the trenches of Europe. But another important cause was the waning of confidence on the part of liberal British elites, whose pacifism evolved into anti-patriotism.

In 1933, the Oxford Union—a debating society and one of the strongholds of liberal elite opinion—held a debate on the resolution "this House will in no circumstances fight for king and country." The resolution passed. Margot Asquith, one of England's leading liberal lights, wrote that same year, quite sincerely: "There is only one way of preserving peace in the world, and getting rid of your enemy, and that is to come to some sort of agreement with him. . . . The greatest enemy of mankind today is hate."

Churchill disdained the new liberalism, mocking one of his opponents as part of "that band of degenerate international intellectuals who regard the greatness of Britain and the stability and prosperity of the British Empire as a fatal obstacle. . . . " So deep was this liberal loathing of empire that even as the first shots of World War II were being fired, Churchill's private secretary, Jock Colville, witnessed at a theater "a group of bespectacled intellectuals" who, to his shock, "remain[ed] firmly seated while 'God Save the King' was played."

The Cambridge Spy Ring
Kim Philby, Donald MacLean, Guy burgess and Anthony Blunt

These elites could see evil only at home. The French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir did not believe that Germany was a "threat to peace," but instead worried that the "panic that the Right was spreading" would drag France, Britain, and the rest of Europe into war. Stafford Cripps, a liberal Labor member of Parliament, feared not Hitler, but Churchill. Cripps wrote that after Churchill became prime minister he would "then introduce fascist measures and there will be no more general elections."

In an important sense, the British Empire's strength failed because its elite liberal citizens stopped believing in it. . .

Note:  The original title of this piece was "Rule America?" I've deleted sections drawing parallel to America's situation today to concentrate on the British experience. MH

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.