Besides France, Did Other Nations Use African Troops on the Western Front?

European Colonies in Africa, c.1914

By Christian Koller in the 1914-1918 Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War

France was the country that most extensively made use of African soldiers in European theatres of war. North African soldiers had already served in the Crimean War (1854–1856), in the 1859 Italian War and in the Franco-German War of 1870/71. Several campaigns in the immediate prewar period had raised African colonial troops’ profile. After the first Morocco crisis in 1905/06, army general and radical politician Adolphe Messimy (1869–1935) petitioned for the extension of compulsory military service to Muslim Algerians and a 1912 decree eventually allowed for their forced recruitment if numbers of volunteers fell short of requirements. From 1909 on, colonial officer Charles Mangin (1866–1925) campaigned for a large armée noire (black army) to be recruited in West Africa and trained for deployment in European wars. . .

Senegalese Troops on a Wintertime March

Between 1914 and 1918, the French deployed approximately 450,000 indigenous troops from Africa, including West Africans (so-called Tirailleurs Sénégalais), Algerians (so-called Turcos and Spahis), Tunisians, Moroccans, Malagasies, and Somalis, most of whom saw deployment in Europe. Settlers of European origin provided another 110,000 soldiers from North Africa (Chasseurs d’Afrique and Zouaves) and some of the 5,700 men in “créole” units from the old Senegalese cities and ports were also of European extraction. . . Casualty figures of French African troops deployed in Europe to be found in official reports, unofficial accounts and in the historiography are rather unclear, ranging for West Africans from 25,000 to 65,000 soldiers killed, for Algerians from 12,000 to 100,000, for Moroccans from 2,500 to 9,000, and for Malagasies from 2,400 to 4,000. . .

Algerian Zouaves Parading in Paris

Unlike the French, the British were reluctant to deploy African troops in Europe. It is true that the British forces in the African and Middle Eastern campaigns included large numbers of African soldiers, and parts of the Indian Colonial Army were used in Europe from as early as autumn 1914 on. From 1916 on a campaign for a “million black army” following the French example was backed by several officers and politicians with colonial backgrounds, including Winston Churchill (1874–1965). But logistical issues, coupled with racist prejudices and opposition from colonial authorities in Africa, resulted in a renunciation of using such troops on European battlefields.  However, a number of blacks resident in the United Kingdom managed to enlist in metropolitan British forces and some of them were even promoted to officer ranks. [Also, an estimated 15,000  black soldiers from the West Indies and Bermuda notably served in France and Palestine.] ARTICLE

Non-white men were also banned from the “South African Overseas Expeditionary Force” that sent about 30,000 soldiers to France. Black and “colored” men from the Union of South Africa served in Europe in the “South African Native Labor Contingent” (21,000 men), the “Cape Auxiliary Horse Transport” (2,800 men) and the “Cape Colored Labor Corps” (1,200 men), all of them in unarmed ancillary roles. Part of this force experienced a great tragedy en route to France, when more than 600 African volunteers, sent to dig trenches in France, were drowned after the SS Mendi was accidentally rammed off the Isle of Wight in February 1917. 

South African Laborers in France

Italy, on the other hand, tried to deploy African colonial troops in Europe which resulted in disaster. In August 1915, some 2,700 soldiers from Libya were shipped to Sicily. However, they did not enter the front line because many soldiers died from pneumonia immediately after their arrival, and so, the Libyans, who were designated for Alpine warfare, were shipped home again after a short while. 

The Belgian government repeatedly discussed shipping in several thousand soldiers from the Congo, yet these plans would never materialize. Nevertheless, a small number of Congolese soldiers served on the Western front in metropolitan Belgian troops. 

The Portuguese didn’t deploy any colonial units in Europe either, and the number of soldiers of African descent in the metropolitan Corpo Expedicionário Português that served on the Western front from 1916 on is unknown. The Germans, as the only colonial power among the Central Powers, used plenty of African soldiers of their Schutztruppen in the African theatres of war, but they had never planned to deploy these troops in Europe and would not have been able to do so during World War I for logistical reasons anyway.

Source: Excerpted from "Colonial Military Participation in Europe (Africa)" by Christian Koller

"Bless 'em All" Was Already Around for World War I

One of the most famous and evocative songs of the Second World War, "Bless 'em All" — was around for the Great War. I first heard it as part of the background music for Twelve O'Clock High. It likely originated, however, in barracks of British soldiers in the 19th century, albeit with much bawdier lyrics. There were occasional attempts to popularize soldiers’ songs with civilian audiences, with “Bless ‘Em All” being the most successful; this song became a hit during the London Blitz. Songwriter Fred Godfrey claimed to have written it in 1916 while serving in the Royal Navy, but it is likely he merely transcribed an existing song. The opening lyrics describe returning to England after garrison duties in India, very similar to Kipling’s “Troopin’.”

An updated arrangement was published by Jimmy Hughes and Frank Lake in 1940, which became popular with civilians during the Blitz; it was recorded by both George Formby and Billy Cotton. These published versions were sanitized from the original soldiers’ song, which was typically sung as “Sod ‘em All” or "Buck 'em All," although an even stronger term was sometimes used. Here is the best-known version of the song, sung by the great Vera Lynn.

Source: The Colour Sergeant Tombstone's History Pages

Lonesome Memorials: #12 The Great Frieze at the National World War One Museum and Memorial, Kansas City, MO.

These Have Dared Bear the Torches of Sacrifice and Service: Their Bodies Return to Dust But Their Work Liveth for Evermore * Let Us Strive on To Do All Which May Achieve and Cherish a Just and Lasting Peace Among Ourselves and With All Nations

Click on These Images to Enlarge Them

This is the first of our Lonesome Memorials series that is located here in the States.  Despite the fact that I have visited the National WWI Museum five times, it is also one of the few in the series I have not personally viewed. It's a poor excuse, but the memorial is on the functional backside of the large complex, away from normal pedestrian traffic. Anyway, in this article I'll try to make amends for my omission.  MH

Located on the North Wall of the National WWI Museum and Memorial, the Great Frieze measures 148 feet by 18 feet and represents the progression of mankind and the nation from war to peace. Sculpted in 1935 by Great War veteran Edmond Amateis, each collected figure or grouping of figures is rich in symbolism.

At each end of the frieze is a sword with the Stars and Stripes representing the defense of our country. The story of the frieze depicts the end of the war and the creation of an era of greater peace and amity.

Similar to the new National World War One Memorial in Washington, DC, the frieze tells a story moving left to right with  five groupings of sculpted figures.

 

American Soldiers of the War—
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Wounded and Maimed—The Family of the Fallen

Armistice

Welcoming the Returning Warriors

Home: Protected by Justice—Prospects for a Peaceful Future

The Great Frieze has a number of inscriptions carved into it. The quote at the top of this page serves as a heading for the unified piece. Here are a few samples used in other positions.

• Behold a Pale Horse and His Name That Sat on Him Was Death and Hell Followed with Him.

• Violence Shall No More Be Heard in they Land Wasting Nor Destruction Within Thy Borders.

• What Doth the Lord Require of Thee But To Do Justly and To Love Mercy and To Walk Humbly with Thy God.

• Then Shall the Earth Yield Her Increase ; and God, even our own God, shall bless us.

Directions to the National World War One Museum and Memorial can be found HERE.

Four Shadows Over the Russian Army of 1914

At the Winter Palace, 29 July 1914

By  Stephen Walsh, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

Excerpted from "The Russian Army and the Conduct of Operations in 1914",  British Journal for Military History, February 2016.

 

The Russian Army of 1914–18 seems indelibly associated with the image of an ill-equipped mass of brave, but limited, soldiers, led by an inept officer corps, the representatives of a discredited tsarist political system that went to war, ironically, amongst other things, to uphold Russia’s status as a great power. The Russian Army of 1914 was a flawed instrument, the unwieldy tool of a tsarist state incapable of harnessing Russia’s military potential. However, it is a fact that while the Russian Army was regularly defeated by the Germans in 1914, it also inflicted a significant defeat on the Austro-Hungarian Army, one of the few decisive strategic events of the 1914 campaign.  

Three factors (shadows) hanging over the Tsar and Stavka–the Russian high command—at the opening of the war influenced the strategic and operational choices that brought a combination of success and disaster in 1914.

Russian Soldiers Facing a Banzai Attack
in the Russo-Japanese War

1. The Legacy of the Russo-Japanese War 

In August 1914, the Russians wanted to restore a military reputation trashed by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The Treaty of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, signed in September 1905, publicly acknowledged Japan’s victory and Russia’s humiliation. The army was defeated and the navy thrashed, with their performance depicted as symptomatic of a medieval tsarist autocracy, ill-equipped for the modern world. 

Defeat in war provoked domestic unrest and, in October 1905, the tsarist regime barely staved off revolution by granting a political constitution and an elected assembly, the Duma. The Russo-Japanese War revealed that "we did not know modern war," and initially the army was eager to discern and absorb its lessons. 

However, by 1908, unity of purpose had degenerated into bickering, cabalistic antics that undermined reform and disrupted Russian strategic planning despite the fact it was "fuelled by the certainty of a general European War." The Russian Army had five Chiefs of the General Staff in the period 1908–13: each was either a product of, embroiled in or consumed by, endemic factionalism.

2.  The Bosnian Crisis of 1908–09 

[This diplomatic defeat] revealed, in the face of Austria’s determination to annex Bosnia, that the Russian Army could not seriously contemplate war and was in fact incapable of going to war, even against the wheezing conglomerate of Austria-Hungary.  Russia capitulated and was exposed as a great power unable to use war as an instrument of state policy. The Russian press described the Bosnian humiliation as a "diplomatic Tsushima." It cast a long shadow. During the successive Balkan crises of 1912–13, Count Thurn, the Austrian ambassador to Russia repeated on numerous occasions: 

. . . that although the Russian leadership sought and badly needed peace, it would accept even a nearly hopeless  war rather than face further humiliation.

In the period 1909–14, Russian foreign policy was dominated by an enduring desire to  maintain its status as a great power, if necessary by force. It was driven by the need to cultivate allies, to avoid further humiliations, to advance Russian interests in the Black Sea and to restore Russian military power as a credible factor in international relations In August 1914, the Russian government chose to fight because in many ways it did indeed fear peace and humiliation more than war. 

Russian Infantry

3.  Myth of the Steamroller 

In the wake of the Bosnian humiliation, the army benefited from enormous investment in road and rail infrastructure as well as manpower and equipment. The Great Programme envisaged an army of 1.7 million men by 1917: a bigger, better army, capable of rapid mobilisation and sustained operations, with more firepower,  greater reserves, and increased flexibility. The vision impressed France and haunted Germany, which feared a reformed Russian Army would become an unbeatable strategic colossus. In February 1914, Moltke explicitly stated that "Russia’s preparedness for war has made gigantic strides since the Russo-Japanese War and is now much greater than ever in the past."

Yet, "for all these improvements, the army still lagged dangerously behind its probable enemies." One of the enduring myths of the 20th century, then as now, was  the perception, if not reality, of Russia’s unlimited manpower. True, in August 1914,  the Russian Army was the largest in the world, but it was a superficial superiority. Russia mobilised a smaller percentage of her manpower than France or Germany while the notorious exemption system ensured many who could serve, did not, while those who did were of inferior quality. Quantity did not offset poor quality, and the exemption regime also robbed the officer corps of capable individuals who were not, like the aristocracy, socially conditioned to serve in the army. Yet, Russia’s allies and rivals, especially Germany, persistently overestimated the Russian Army, convinced it was shifting the balance of power toward the Triple Entente. The  Dual Alliance evolved from a nervous strategic insurance policy, driven by fear of Germany, to a more confrontational military alliance. French and Russian joint military planning was more urgent and meaningful in the period 1911–14. Russia’s perceived military recovery influenced French strategic planning while Russia’s  alliance with France dominated Russian strategy in August 1914. It was a strategy defined by an enduring struggle to reconcile ends and means. 

Commemorative Flag of the Franco-Russian Alliance

4. Strategic Dilemmas

In the period 1909–14, Russian strategic planning was dominated by the struggle to establish a war plan capable of reconciling the need to fight a two-front war against Germany and Austria, support the French, defend Poland, invade Germany, and protect Serbia. These strategic dilemmas remained unresolved in August 1914; indeed, they haunted the [1914] campaign. The dilemmas revolved around a series of key strategic questions that were distinct and problematic in their own right but also interacted with each other in a complex, elusive manner. These were not esoteric puzzles but urgent questions of military strategy, in a world where:  

First, should Russian strategy be offensive or defensive? 

Second, how could Russia simultaneously support the French, fight the Germans, challenge the Austrians, and defend the Serbs? 

Third, if Russia attacked, should its priority be East Prussia, an invasion of eastern Germany on the Berlin axis, or the Austrians in Galicia? 

Fourth, was the Polish salient a key strategic asset, one that presented offensive and defensive options against Austria and Germany or an indefensible strategic liability, full of bitter Poles?  

Fifth, should Russia seek a decisive victory over Austria but adopt a more defensive strategy against Germany or, vice versa, attack Germany and conduct defensive operations against the Austrians? 

Sixth, was a rapid Russian victory over the Germans a realistic possibility, and if not, why waste forces on bloody, indecisive or unsuccessful operations against Germany at the expense of a strategic offensive against Austria? 

Seven, was a defensive strategy against the Germans actually possible when France required a Russian offensive to divert German troops from the west? 

Eight, could Russian strategy focus on Austria based on the widely held assumption the main German forces would strike west? If Russia prioritised Austria, but the Germans drove east, a strategic catastrophe loomed. It was unlikely but had to be considered.

Nine, the Russo-Japanese War and the Bosnian humiliation seriously questioned the idea that Russia’s ability to defeat the Austrians, never mind the Germans. 

Tenth, how, if at all, could Russia actually protect the Serbs and Russia’s interests in the Balkans? 

Initial Deployments on Eastern Front, August 1914

Going to War

. . .In the final analysis Russian strategy in August 1914 was driven by the French alliance.  If Russia had to fight, it could not fight alone. Success in the east required French survival in the west, while survival in the west required Russian offensives in the east.  This is not to suggest that Russia selflessly sacrificed itself for the French.  Russia did not go to war for France, but Russia’s strategic options were dependent on her alliance with France. The French and the Russians were partners in the Dual Alliance, but each manipulated the other while officially acknowledging the  interests of their ally. The French wanted a Russian invasion of eastern Germany as well as East Prussia because for France, the alliance was about Germany, not Austria.  The Russians’ "natural" foe was the Austrians, not the Germans, but Russia feared the Germans and could not contemplate war with Austria without France.

Download Stephen Walsh's full 30-page article about Russia's 1914 campaign HERE

"The Lusitania Anniversary" — The First Pulitzer Prize for Editorials

The Lusitania Anniversary

Pulitzer Prize Award for Editorial Writing

by Frank H. Simonds

Published  in the New York Tribune 7 May 1916

On the anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania it is natural and fitting that Americans should review all that has happened since a wanton murder first brought to this side of the Atlantic a nascent realization of the issue that was being decided on a world battlefield.

There will be no anger and no passion in American minds. We have never asked, never desired, that the slaughter should be avenged. No portion of the American people or of the American press has clamored for vengeance, no man or political party has demanded that there should be German lives taken because American lives had been ended.

It is not too difficult to reconstitute our own minds as we stood in the presence of that supreme atrocity. The horror that seized a whole nation in that moment has no counterpart in our history. We have known war, we have fought Great Britain twice, we have fought Spain and Mexico; within our boundaries we have conducted the most desperate civil war in human history.

But it was not the emotion provoked by war or the acts of war which moved Americans. It was not even the emotion stirred by the sinking of the Maine nearly two decades ago. It was certainly something utterly remote from the feelings our fathers and grandfathers on the morrow of the firing on Fort Sumter.

The Lusitania Massacre was not an act of war. The victims were not soldiers, only a portion of them were men. Essentially the thing was a new phenomenon to the American people. It was at first incomprehensible, unbelievable. Despite the solid and inescapable evidences of death, men's intelligence doubted what their senses told them.

So for days and weeks the American people stood doubtful and puzzled. They waited for that evidence they expected, they believed would come; that there had been an accident, a mistake, the blunder of a subordinate which would be repudiated by a government, the crime of a navy that would be disavowed by a people. But instead far borne across the seas they heard the songs of triumph of thousands of German men and women, who hailed the crime as a victory, the eternal disgrace as an everlasting honor.

Day by day, week by week, we Americans have since then been learning that we are not in the presence of a war between nations, a conflict between rival powers; that we are not the agonized witnesses of one more conflagaration provoked by conflicting ambitions of hereditary enemies. We have been learning that hwat is going forward remorselessly, steadily, is a war between civilization and barbarism, between humanity and savagery; between the light of modern times and the darkness of the years that followed the collapse of Rome.

Time and again Americans have been murdered, time and again our government, our people, have had recourse to the ordinary machinery and the ordinary conceptions of civilized life. But each time we have beheld the utter collapse of every appeal based upon reason, justice, common humanity. The Germans who slew our women and our children flung us back the challenge that they and not we possessed the true civilization, and that their civilization, their Kultur, was expressed in their works, which were altogether good and right.

Slowly, steadily, we have been learning. We still have much to learn, but the primary truth is coming home to many day by day. This German phenomenon which fills the world is a new thing and an old thing; it is new in our generation, it is new in recent centuries; but it is as old as that other barbarism which, descending upton the Roman civilization, beat upon it and spread destruction until it was conquered and tamed amidst the ruins and desert it had created.

The French, who see things as they are, have beheld and appraised the German phenomenon justly. The British, like ourselves, have partially and temporarily failed to understand the nature of the German assault. We have insisted upon applying to the German mind our own standards and upon believing that the Germans thought as we thought, believed as we believed, but were temporarily and terribly betrayed by a military spirit and by dynastic madness.

Nothing is less true, nothing more fatal to a just appreciation of the essential fact in the world in which we live. These things which we name crimes are neither accidents nor excesses; they are not regretted or condemned by a majority or even a minority of the German people. They are accepted by Kaiser and peasant; they are practiced by Crown Prince and private soldier; they are a a portion of what Germany holds to be her right and her mission.

The Lusitania Massacre should have been a final illumination for us. Blazing up as it did, it should have revealed to us the ashes of Belgium and the ruins of Northern France. We should have seen in our slain women and children the sisters and fellows in misfortune of those who died more shamefully in Louvain and a score more of Belgian cities. We should have seen the German idea working here and revealing in each incident the same handiwork, the same detail. All these things were similar as the different impressions left by a single stamp.

We did not see. We have not yet as a nation, or as a people, perceived that the German phenomenon is an attack upon civilization by barbarism, a barbarism which combines the science of the laboratory with the savagery of the jungle, but a barbarism because it denies all those doctrines and principles which have been accepted after long years as the proof of human progress and the glory of mankind's advance.

In France the people will show you the atrocities of Germany commited not upon human beings, but upon the inanimate things, the destruction of the village church and the Rheims Cathedral, of the little thing of beauty quite as well as the larger and more famous thing, with far more emphasis than they will recount the horrors suffered by women and children. In the assault upon things beautiful because they are beautiful, an assault provoked neither by lust nor by passion, they recovnise the revelation of that which is essential barbarism.

For us the Lusitania Massacre was a beginning. It was only a beginning, but it was not possible then, it is hardly possible now, for men and women, living in peace under the protection of laws framed to protect human liberty and human rights, living in the full sunlight of this Twentieth Century, to believe that suddenly there has broken out from the depths the frightful and the all-destroying spirit of eras long forgotten.

We have been learning - we must continue to learn. The road of suffering and humiliation is still long. But the Lusitania was a landmark and it will endure in American history. Our children and our children's children recalling this anniversary will think of it as did the Romans over long generations, after the first inroads of the barbarians had reached their walls.

Today is not a day for anger or passion. It is not in panger or in passion that civilized men go forth to deal with wild animals, to abolish the peril which comes from the jungle or out of the darkness. We do not hate Germans and we shall not hate Germans because on this day a year ago American men, women and children were slain willfully, wantonly, to serve a German end, slain without regard to sex or condition, slain in the broad daylight by German naval officers and men whose countrymen hailed the killing as the supreme evidence of German courage, manhood and Kultur.

But as we view the thing without passion we must see it without illusion. If the German idea prevails, all that we believe in government, in humanity, in the thing we call civilization, is doomed. If Germany succeeds in this war then it is not again time, as Pitt said after Austerlitz, "To roll up the map of Europe," but it is time to burn our ancient parchments and dismiss our hard won faith. All that there is in the German idea was expressed in the Lusitania Massacre, it was expressed in the killing of women and children, innocent of all offense, entitled to all protection as helpless, unoffending, as the children of a race not at war, at least entitled to immunity which hitherto was reckoned the right of women and children, neutral or belligerent.

The war that is being fought in Europe is a war for civilization. The battle of Great Britain, of France, of Russia, is our battle. If it is lost, we shall return to the standards and the faiths of other centuries. The truth of this is written in the wreck of the Lusitania, it is written in the wreck of Belgium and the desert of Northern France for those who may see. Where the German has gone he has carried physical death, but he has done more, he has carried spiritual death to all that is essential in our own democratic faith, which derives from that of Britain and France.

This war in Europe is going on until the German idea is crushed or conquers. The world cannot now exist half civilized and half German. Only one of two conceptions of life, of humanity, can subsist. One of the conceptions was written in the Lusitania Massacre, written clear beyond all mistaking. It is this writing that we should study on this anniversary; it is this fact that we should grap today, not in anger, not in any spirit that clamors for vengeance, but as the citizens of a nation which has inherited noble ideals and gallant traditions, which has inherited liberty and light from those who died to serve them, and now stands face to face with that which seeks to extinguish both throughout the world.

Frank Simonds

Steele's Battalion: The Great War Diaries

Doughboy Machine Gunners in Training

By John D. Beatty

JDB Communications, LLC. 2025

Reviewed by David F. Beer

Although Steele's Battalion is a work of fiction—as the author points out right away—it would be easy to take it as based on the actual diaries of its main character, Edmund Archer "Ned" Steele, born in Michigan in 1896. Found, we are told, in an old steamer trunk in 1996, these documents plus some other memoirs supposedly enhanced by the research of an endowed professor of American ishtory, provide the fictional genesis for the novel.

Steele is mechanically talented, and we begin his story in January 1917, when he is in Mexico with the Machine-Gun Section of the U.S. Army’s Provisional Division. He distinguishes himself by coming up with a new kind of pedestal for the current machine gun, a gun that is still causing various problems for its users. Steele’s abilities soon find him in WWI and promoted from corporal to lieutenant, after enduring Officer’s Candidate School where they are told

…you are the most contemptible creatures on God’s Earth: third Lieutenants. For the next ninety-one days you will remain the most contemptible creatures unless you fail, are ejected or quit, at which point you will revert to whatever enlisted slime you once were where you will remain until you die or muster out (p. 29).

For almost 400 pages, we follow the life of Ned Steele as he leads his men through the last year of the war. He distinguishes himself more than once and advances from lieutenant to brigadier general (although this rank is rescinded after the war). The author spares no detail in making Steele’s war career come alive to us, whether in his relationships with women, his men and his superiors, or in his grueling experiences which never even allow him a badly needed break without a heightened reality crashing in upon him:

But rest would not come; only fitful sleep, with artillery and machine guns and explosions and rivers of blood invading his mind. The wounded he knew rose and fought again, only to be hurt again; the dead fell and died again…and again. A ghastly tableau of horrible wounds and the stench of blood, gas, guts, and smoke…(p.311).

We learn much in Steele's Battalion about the overall American experience in France during the final year of the war. We meet notable figures such as George Marshall and General Pershing, and we encounter some interesting British and American Army characters. Inevitably, since Steele always serves in machine gun units and by the end of the war is commanding a machine gun battalion, we get in-depth descriptions of the workings of these weapons and their use.  

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The horrors of war do not end for Steele with the cease-fire. For him, the flu epidemic among the soldiers is as dreadful as actual combat:

We have become an isolation camp since more than half of our men are sick. Murph says it is worse than he could have imagined in his worst nightmares. I know now what Milton meant by the inner circles of Hell…all the blood…death stalks the halls of our once-safe camp… (p. 345).

There is much to recommend this historical novel. Despite some unfortunate over-italicizing in the text, I found Steele’s odyssey from the Mexican border to the end of the Great War a captivating and informative read full of fascinating characters and insights into the workings of a wartime American army machine gun company.

David F. Beer

Remembering a Veteran: Lt. Col. Clarence R. Huebner, 28th Infantry, 1st Division, AEF

Lt. Col. Huebner in Washington, DC, 1919

Of all the officers commissioned as 2nd Lieutenants around the time of America's declaration of war, onetime sergeant Clarence Huebner ended the war with the highest ranking. He was promoted from Lieutenant  to  Lt. Colonel in a little over a year's time. Part of this rapid advance is explained by his two Distinguished Service Crosses for valor, Distinguished Service Medal for leadership, and other decorations. In the Second World War he repeated his rapid advance, commanding V Corps of the First Army on VE Day.

Clarence Ralph Huebner was born in Bushton, Kansas, on 24 November 1888. He was the first child of Martha Rischel and Samuel Huebner, a farmer of German descent. Early in Clarence’s educational career he showed an aptitude for math and grammar, participated in many sports, and was a student leader. It appears that early on Huebner knew he wanted to join the army, but before doing so he attended Grand Island Business College in Nebraska. After graduation, in 1908, he was hired by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad as a typist. It is fairly clear that this desk job wasn’t able to keep his attention for long, since in 1910 he enlisted in the army as a private and was sent to Fort McKenzie in Wyoming for training. After completing training, Huebner was assigned to the 18th Infantry Regiment. During this time he worked his way up to the rank of sergeant, with some sources stating his first taste of combat was during the hunt for Mexican outlaw Pancho Villa in 1916. Huebner also received his commission as a 2nd lieutenant during 1916, then being quickly promoted to 1st lieutenant, along with a transfer to the 28th Infantry Regiment.

Major General Huebner at the Siegfried Line, 1944

During World War I Huebner served on the Western Front and was sent to France with his regiment, the 28th Infantry, which later became part of the 1st Infantry Division. The following year he participated with distinction in the first major AEF assault at Cantigny, and again with distinction in the division's operation near Soissons, where he was wounded. He commanded the 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry at Cantigny after his commanding officer was killed, and was promoted to major. He returned to fight at Saint-Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne. He eventually commanded the regiment, one of the youngest regimental commanders in the AEF.

Remaining in the army after the war, Huebner attended the United States Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth in 1924 and served on its faculty from 1929 to 1933. In 1943 at the end of the Sicily campaign, First Army Commander General Omar Bradley gave Clarence Huebner the difficult task of commanding the 1st Infantry Division after General Terry Allen, who was particularly popular with the troops, had been relieved. 

In 1944 Huebner and His Staff Visit the First Division's
WWI Monument Near Soissons

After imposing his stricter regime of discipline on the men, First Division subsequently spearheaded the landing at Omaha Beach on 6 June 1944 and then took part in the Normandy campaign, particularly in the area of ​​the town of Saint-Lô, which it freed after furious and costly fights. In August 1944, Huebner and his men defeated a German counterattack before continuing the offensive toward Germany. They took part in the battles of Aachen and the  Huertgen Forest.

In January 1945, Clarence Huebner took command of the Fifth Corps which he led from the Rhine to the Elbe, where he made the junction with the Soviet troops. He retired from the Army in 1950 and led New York State's Civil Defense Commission, until January 1961. His wife Florence died in 1966, and Huebner married Anna Imelda Mathews two years later.  Clarence Huebner died on 23 September 1972 at the age of 83 and is buried in the Arlington National Cemetery with both his wives.

The Huebner Burial Plot

Clarence Huebner's Major WWI Awards

Distinguished Service Cross, for his efforts at Cantigny:

For three days Lieutenant Colonel Huebner withstood German assaults under intense bombardment, heroically exposing himself to fire constantly in order to command his battalion effectively, and although his command lost half its officers and 30 percent of its men, he held his position and prevented a break in the line at that point.

Distinguished Service Cross, for his efforts at Soissons:

Huebner displayed great gallantry, and, after all the officers of his battalion had become casualties, he reorganized his battalion while advancing, captured his objective and again reorganized his own and another battalion, carrying the line forward. He remained continuously on duty until wounded on the second day of the action.

Distinguished Service Medal, for leadership:

As Captain, Major, and Lieutenant Colonel of the 28th Infantry, 1st Division, throughout its training and active operations in France, Lieutenant Colonel Huebner successfully commanded all echelons of the Regiment, participating with distinction in every engagement from Cantigny to Sedan, reorganizing his Regiment after its heavy losses in the first phase of the Meuse-Argonne offensives, and inspiring it with the will and dash that carried it to the heights of Sedan. By his sound tactical judgment, his unusual leadership, and indefatigable energy he contributed in a marked manner to the American Expeditionary Forces most conspicuous services in a position of great responsibility.

Sources:  Rock Island Arsenal; Wikimedia; First Division Association; CRH: An American Military Story of Achievement; Military Times Hall of Valor

 

A Dozen Rarely Seen and Striking War Posters

An Irish View of the Easter Rising—Video

 

Source: Irish History Documentaries

The Great War Advanced the Science and Methods of Physical Therapy

Physical Therapy at Bath War Hospital
Elizabeth Horton, c.,1918

The First World War produced a huge number of injured disabled soldiers. During the war, military physicians realized that it was not enough to merely treat the limbs of the wounded soldiers; it was also necessary to train them to use their remaining abilities to their greatest capacity. Rehabilitation of these men was needed both to sustain nations' wartime mobilization efforts and to insure the wartime wounded became productive citizens when peace returned.  

Consequently, the development of rehabilitation medicine accelerated during and immediately after the First World War. The war’s unprecedented scale of casualties, in combination with an increased survival rate of the severely injured due to medical advances, left a high number of soldiers with both mutilated bodies and minds—and posed a major challenge to  medicine at the time. The war created a demand for new techniques and trained professional "physical therapists" to help injured soldiers regain function. Every combatant nation of the war had to deal with this challenge. History is filled with ironic examples of the "benefits of war,"  and physical therapy is one such case. Postwar, civilian doctors hospitals around the world, having observed the benefits to the injured soldiers, began to incorporate the new techniques into patient recovery care and add rehabilitation services and professional units to every hospital's mission statement and organization chart.

Accounts of the explosive growth of this new medical specialty during the Great War are highly fragmented and unsystematic. So, for the remainder of this article, we will focus on one interesting case study I discovered that highlights the British approach at the innovative Bath War Hospital. I think the article by physical therapist Heide Pöstges gives a feel for the challenges the medical staff faced and how they responded creatively and energetically.

The City of Bath had always been famous as a centre of healing, and its medical research and learning was much needed to treat the wounded soldiers who became patients at the War Hospital. Dr. Preston-King, the Mayor of Bath when war was declared and again in 1918, had previously introduced X-rays to the Royal United Hospital with the Bath engineer John Rudge. The Bath War Hospital was able to be similarly equipped, thanks to the generosity of Alderman Cedric Chivers, who paid for the entire cost of a building and equipment that became known as Q Block. He also provided electricity free of charge via a wire connected to his book binding works. X-rays were essential for locating bullets before surgery and in the diagnosis of gas gangrene.

Whirlpool Bath Room, Exterior of Q Block,
and Radiant Heat Room

Elizabeth Horton’s painting at the top of the page is a unique record of one of the best-equipped rehabilitation facilities in a British war hospital during WWI. It depicts the interior of Q Block at Bath War Hospital in Bath, South West England—near Bristol—where injured soldiers received applications of massage, mechanotherapy, electrotherapy, hydrotherapy, and light therapy.  Most of the appliances were manufactured by local engineers in Bath. The Bath Surgical Requisites Association, supported by 290 volunteers and temporarily housed in Chivers's premises near the hospital, made many appliances for injured soldiers, including artificial limbs.

Q Block had more to offer than X-rays. By the end of WWI, nearly 2 million British soldiers had been permanently disabled, over 40,000 of whom had lost limbs. Q Block, under the charge of Dr. King Martyn and his chief nurse, Marjorie Clark, was able to offer a range of therapies, such as whirlpool baths, electrical treatments and massage, to aid the recovery of wasted muscles and tissues, twisted limbs and stiffened joints, and to treat shell shock. Comparatively few military hospitals possessed such a facility, and soldiers were sent from other establishments to benefit from the treatments offered. Shown below are 13 workshop drawings of gymnasium equipment by Elizabeth Horton.   

Ankle rotation; flexion and extension of the ankle; flexion and extension of elbow joint; and pylons

Bath Hospital's staff attempted to apply many of the European innovations growing out of the spa culture—a systematic approach to physical therapies that included a combination of bathing, electrotherapy, exercising, and massage had become part of the treatment provided in hospitals by the end of the 19th century.

Electrotherapy became increasingly popular to treat symptoms attributed to nervous ailments, which were believed to be a side-effect of industrialization and modern life. During the war years, the scope of its application broadened rapidly to include, for instance, testing and stimulating muscles.  

The saddle crutch; slings for
attachment to any form of crutch

Advances in exercise programs and massage therapy were strongly influenced by the “movement cure” developed by the Swedish physical educator Dr. Pehr Henrik Ling, who distinguished between active movements encountering resistance and passive movements performed on the body, such as rubbing—a precursor to massage.

Swedish physician Dr. Jonas Gustaf Wilhelm Zander took Ling’s approach a step further by developing the first mechanical equipment to control the exact weight-resistance needed to optimize development of individual muscles. He created gymnastic appliances for different movements; his equipment collections became internationally known as Zander Institutes. Bath War Hospital was one of the few hospitals in Britain in possession of an almost complete Zander Institute.  Some of these machines are shown here.

Rotation of shoulder joint; attachable belt for stretching contracted hamstrings; flexion and extension of knee; rotation of wrist joint; flexion and extension of fingers; exercise for weak thumb and fingers

During the war, the Q Block and its then state-of-the art equipment, received many visits from respected experts—and royalty, including King George V and Queen Mary, who were impressed with the innovative treatments provided.

Bath Hospital Patients and Therapists

The work of the Bath War Hospital did not cease with the signing of the armistice in 1918. When the Ministry of Pensions took over the hospital in November 1919 the total number of cases admitted was 24,333. Of these, 18,710 reached the hospital in 124 convoys from the Midland Road Station, the last of which arrived on 30 June 1919. When the management transferred from the Ministry of War to the Ministry of Pensions, the facility was renamed the Bath Ministry of Pensions Hospital in 1919; it closed in 1930.

Thanks to Nick Verville, PT, at Kaiser Richmond for inspiring this article while he was working me hard.

Sources:  "Physical Therapy at Bath War Hospital: Rehabilitation and Its Links to WW1," European Journal of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, 2015 June; 51(3):331-6; "The rise of physical therapy: A history in footsteps," Archives of Medicine and Health Sciences; Bath War Hospital Website.

Romanian Historian Lucian Boia Reflects on His Nation's World War I Experience

From a  May 2014 interview on History Campus conducted by Historian Vlad Badea

Lucian Boia (born 1944) is professor at the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest. His work consists of titles published in Romanian and French, as well as translations in English, German, and other languages. In 1997, his work, History and Myth in Romanian Conscience, provoked sensation and remained, until today, a landmark in the process of redefining Romanian national history. In 2014 he focused on The Great War in The First World War: Controversies, Paradoxes, Reinterpretations.

VB: What is the relevance of WWI for those living today, for the European and Romanian present?

LB: . . . As far as Romania is concerned, WWI means the making of Romania virtually as it appears today: from the little Romania (the old kingdom that existed until 1918), to what became Greater Romania—sure, amputated partially during WWII; nevertheless, the Romania we live in today is largely the product of WWI. 

Lucian Boia and Vlad Badea

VB: Where does Romania fit in this equation? [Concerning the dynamics of being drawn into the war]. 

LB: First of all, there was the treaty of alliance signed by Romania in 1883 with Austria-Hungary and Germany. As a German prince, Carol I was faithful to this alliance. He was faithful to the alliance not only by virtue of his German origin; he was also convinced it was in the best interest of Romania to ally with Germany.

What happened eventually was more in favour of Romania than anyone could have imagined—although, we should not forget the high costs Romania paid: Romania incurred enormous human losses in relation to the size of its population; significantly higher than France or Germany. Romania entered the war in 1916 with the Entente in order to obtain Transylvania and Bukovina. Bukovina was not that much of a problem since Austria-Hungary suggested that it would give it away in favour of Romania should Romania join the Central Powers in the war effort. Therefore, the main issue was Transylvania . But there was also Bessarabia!

Romanians often tend to forget Bessarabia; our focus is rather on Transylvania. And to be honest, Transylvania means much more to Romania than Bessarabia. Fair or unfair, this is the reality. No Romanian would give Transylvania for Bessarabia, but this does not mean Bessarabia is not important. The Germanophiles said: Fine, you will make Greater Romania, with Transylvania and other pieces, but this Greater Romania will still be very small next to the Russian empire and of what use will it be if Russia will engulf us, small or big. Russia's aim was to expand to Constantinople. The Allies even recognized this right of Russia in spring 1915. The situation was dangerous, indeed, because you could only get to the Balkans through Romania. Therefore, one shouldn't minimize the viewpoints of the so-called Germanophiles. These viewpoints were of course contradicted by history, but the politicians of 1914 or 1916 could not have foreseen all the historical evolutions we now know, so each constructed his personal scenario of the future. In the end, Romania obtained not only Transylvania and Bukovina, but also Bessarabia, which no one could have predicted given that we entered the war in 1916 as allies of Russia. Russia dismantled after the 1917 revolution and the context was thus created for Bessarabia to leave the former empire and join Romania. As Carp said, Romania has so much luck that it doesn't need politicians.

Romanian Army Soldiers

VB: And yet all these political achievements occurred in a military context where Romania lost the war. From a military point of view, do you think it was wise for Romania to participate in the war effort?

LB: I don't know if the idea to participate was good or not; in the end, Romania achieved its goals... What else is there to say? But the idea was at least bold if not risky and—in a certain interpretation—even reckless, because Romania accepted from the very beginning fighting a war on two fronts, which Germany sought to avoid at all costs. In absolute numbers, the Romanian front was the longest: from Northern Moldavia along the Carpathian Mountains to the Iron Gates and then the rest of the Danube to the Black Sea—and immense front that had to be defended by the Romanian Army. Fighting on two fronts against the Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Turks was simply unsustainable. Romania could not have had a different fate. 

VB: How do you see the Versailles negotiations following the war?

LB: . . .  Some states resulting from these negotiations proved to be more viable than others, and a good example in this sense is Romania. Romania was not a true nation-state, as we like to affirm. It was rather a combination of nation-state, in the old kingdom, and different provinces attached to it where the majority was indeed Romanian, albeit with a substantial non-Romanian minority. Yet, Romania proved to be a viable state.