The AEF's II Corps' Remarkable 14-Mile Advance to the River Selle

 

Prisoners Captured by the 30th Division, 8 October 1918

Mitchell Yockelson

Introduction: A number of American divisions trained under the British in 1918 and became involved in the stopgap efforts during midyear to halt the German onslaught. Pershing later pulled back most combat elements, but General Haig convinced him of the necessity of leaving some U.S. units with the British. Two National Guard Divisions, the 27th (New York) and 30th (Tennessee and the Carolinas) without their artillery brigades, the 301st tank battalion (American-operated Mark V British Tanks), and a number of support units would constitute II Corps. These were combined into the U.S. II Corps on the table of organization. Initially deployed to strengthen defenses in Flanders, it was sent to the British Fourth Army in the Somme sector in September to support offensive operations there. At the end of the month the Corps assisted in the spectacular capture of the St. Quentin Canal that allowed the breaching of the formidable Hindenburg Line. That operation seems to garner much attention in histories of the AEF. The subsequent actions of II Corps, however, are just as impressive but seem to be neglected in many histories. For this issue of the Trip-Wire, AEF historian Mitchell Yockelson describes the early stages and central role of the U.S. II Corps of the British Fourth Army's 14-mile advance during two weeks of October 1918. (See map below.) The selection is from his 2008 work Borrowed Soldiers: Americans Under British Command, 1918.

After breaching the Hindenburg Line on 29 September, the Fourth Army continued to push forward. The Beaurevoir Line had not been taken, and Rawlinson was adamant that his army must complete the destruction of the final prepared German defenses just to his east. Once this was accomplished, he would push the Germans back across open country. {After Australian units captured most of the fortified village of Monbrehain] Rawlinson ordered Monash's troops withdrawn from the line, and half of the American II Corps undertook relief of the Australian Corps during the night of 5-6 October. Only the 30th Division was ordered to the front initially, while both brigades of the 27th Division were in corps reserve.

Sector Map (Note Scale & Dates of Advance)

With the German Army now forced into open country, the Fourth Army continued the pursuit, and the Americans would spearhead most of the attacks. Because the 117th occupied a sector too far behind the 118th, it had to straighten its line before the next attack. A minor action was planned for 7 October to make this correction. At 5:15 a.m. a rolling barrage commenced the attack, but the artillery covered only a portion of the front. As a result, the British 25th and 50th Divisions, protecting the American flanks, could not advance. Four hours after the jump-off, 30th Division Commander Major General Lewis halted the attack when the center companies of the 3rd Battalion established liaison with the 118th and stopped near Mannions. Although the battalion had advanced only 500 yards and took heavy casualties, it captured 150 prisoners of the 20th German Division. Lewis blamed the losses on failure of the barrage and a lack of preparation time. His division had been in line less than a day, and it appeared that not all officers knew the battle plan.

On the afternoon of 7 October, the Fourth Army issued an order for the 30th Division to attack again the next day. The 118th would lead the assault, with one battalion of the 117th in support. It first required an advance of 3000 yards on a line running northwest from Brancoucourt. After securing this line, the barrage would halt for 30 minutes, and then the support battalion would pass through and exploit the second objective, requiring a push of 3000 yards to the northeast toward the village of Premont. In the hours preceding the jump-off, the Fourth Army artillery pounded the Germans with 350,000 shells. On 8 October at 5:10 a.m. the infantry moved forward under a barrage, as well as support from a battalion of heavy tanks and two companies of Whippets.

 

Machine-gun fire from the numerous emplacements around the west of Brancourt-le-Grand raked the lead elements, preventing progress. Troops from the 6th Division were held up and could not protect the American flanks. Fortunately, two hours later resistance lightened when the Germans retreated, fighting a rear-guard action. On the right flank, Company C of the 120th Infantry was pulled from reserve and was able to advance enough to fill a gap that developed between the 118th Infantry and the 6th Division. By 7:50 a.m. the 2nd Battalion of the 118th reached its first objective at Brancourt, and by 1:30 p.m. the regiment's 1st Battalion entered the village. There the elements of the 118th mopped up and then consolidated a line and dug in for the night. On this day, the action of three men of the 30th Division earned the Medal of Honor. In one instance, Sgt. Gary Evans Foster accompanied an officer to attack a machine-gun nest in a sunken road near Montbrehain. When the officer was wounded, Foster single-handedly killed several of the Germans with hand grenades and his pistol and then brought 18 back as prisoners.

That evening, II Corps Commander Read again notified the 30th Division there was no time to rest, but to resume attacking at 5:20 a.m. the next morning in the direction of St. Souplet. The eventual object was to secure the Selle River and the high ground from St. Benin to Molain. Such an attack, the American officers were told, would not be easy as it necessitated advancing a great distance through several villages, farms, and woods that probably contained enemy units. Yet, day to day, the Doughboys would continue their advance averaging a mile per day for the next eleven days. The 30th division would be joined by the 27th division for a period and then sent to rest while the New Yorkers carried on beyond the River Selle until it too was exhausted. By the time orders for their relief had come the two divisions had lost 6,100 men, killed and wounded.

27th Division Reinforcements Crossing the Selle,
19 October 1918

The 1st British Division took over the 30th Division sector and the 6th British Division relieved the 27th by 20 October. Although it was not known at the time, the war was over for II Corps. Its 27th Division moved to Corbie, and the 30th went to Querrieu for training. . . considering how the two divisions of the corps were essentially new to combat, compared with their British and Australian counterparts, they had done extraordinarily well. The American infantry and machine-gun units had received good instruction from the British and Dominion forces and were able to apply what they had learned in this final operation. This was done against a German opponent that was far from collapsing. A historian of the operation writes, the Germans “fought hard and skillfully used defense-in-depth doctrine. Their position and intervention units were well organized, and the position divisions were relatively strong in manpower.”

Mitchell Yockelson's Borrowed Soldiers can be ordered HERE.

Our Desperate Hour – A Novel of the Great War

By John F. Andrews

46 North Publications, LLC, 2024

David F. Beer, Reviewer

First Aid Station by George Harding

The army lied to me. And I think it’s about to get worse.

Although Our Desperate Hour is premised on the search of a father for his estranged son in the madness of World War I, it is also a detailed look at varied military personalities and the brutal human cost of the battle for Belleau Wood. Failed communication—and outright deception—are additionally revealed as piercing flaws that beset military endeavors and cause numerous deaths.

You’ll meet an assortment of characters in this book, from Major Ab Johnson to Medical Corpsman Lyle McCormack, and most are either Marines or Naval medical personnel. Each chapter is related in the present tense by different voices, although Major Johnson dominates the narration. Many of these figures are based on real men who in one way or another took part in the actual combat, although here their words are fictionalized. You will also meet some of the same people who appear in the two other novels by this author.

In some ways this is a shocking novel. Most of us have read various accounts of the events at Belleau Wood and perhaps have some idea of the military incompetence that resulted in carnage that to some extent should have been avoided. The author skillfully includes within the novel’s plot the great difficulty of dealing not only with the French military but also with our own. As Major Johnson observes:

I manage to get a shower, then talk with several neatly attired staff officers over breakfast. They’re out of touch with the battlefield. Their bravado is typical of those in the rear echelons. One thing I noticed in my first tour of army service is that bravado is proportional to the distance between the man and the battlefield. The longer the distance, the more bravado. Those in the shit rarely brag—most don’t say anything (p. 270).

A short description by a Marine runner, Private Carl Larsen, sums up what portions of Belleau Wood have now turned into: “Human decomposition, dysentery, and the sulfurous smell of gunpowder meld with the musty odor of the residual mustard and phosgene…” (p. 261). That the body parts are primarily those of young Americans who had signed up for the Marine Corps (despite the army’s prejudice against the Corps) effectively enhances our involvement in the novel.

Considerable sections of Our Desperate Hour are devoted to the work of the medical personnel involved in the fighting, from stretcher bearers to surgeons and some Naval ranks. The description of their actions is at times riveting, and all the more realistic due to author John F. Andrews being not only a retired critical care physician but also a down-to-earth and evocative writer. We may have read accounts of the fighting for Belleau Wood in histories, but this work presents not only rare background facts but also feelings, thoughts, fears and raw heroism that perhaps can only be shared through the novelist’s hand.

Order HERE

Our Desperate Hour certainly keeps one’s attention. It is also well worth reading the Afterward the author provides, which in some ways is an effective explanatory abstract of the key points of the book. You will enjoy this fine historical novel. 

David F. Beer

Eyewitness: Soissons–18 July 1918

Leathernecks at Soissons
John W. Thomason, USMC

Corporal Thomas Boyd, 6th Marines, 2nd Division, AEF

When the sun rose they were still working their way through the trees. Unexpectedly the guns in the rear of the moving lines stopped. The battle of Soissons had begun.

The platoon was first apprised of the nearness of the enemy when King Cole raised his rifle and fired quickly. He had seen a soiled gray uniform skirting among the trees a few yards ahead. A quick electric shock ran from shoulder to shoulder along the advancing line. The platoon stopped for a moment as if stunned. Then they advanced without increasing their pace. In their faces a machine-gun spat angrily, the bullets flying past like peevish wasps. Automatic rifles were manipulated in the middles of the automatic rifle squad, and the loaders took their places at the sides of the men who were firing, jamming in one clip of cartridges after another. Rifle bullets fled past the advancing men with an infuriating zing. The Maxim machine-guns kept up a rolling rat-t-t-tat, coldly objective.

The platoon had reached the first machine-gun nest, almost without knowing it. There were three Germans, their heavy helmets sunk over their heads, each performing a definite part in the firing. They, too, were surprised. Pugh, a little in the lead, drew a hand-grenade from his pocket, pulled out the pin, and threw it in their faces. It burst loudly and distinctly. One German fell flat, another grasped at his arm, his face taking on a blank expression as he did so, while the last man threw his hands above his head. Inattentive to his gesture of surrender, the line pushed on.

Location of the Fighting

 

The fighting grew more furious. Germans, surprised, were hiding behind trees and firing their slow-working rifles. When the advancing line would reach them they would receive a charge of shot in their bodies, sometimes before they had fired at the swiftly moving line. Some member of the platoon offered his version of an Indian war-whoop. It was successful in hastening the attack. Exhilarated, but sheerly impotent, one man ran forward blubbering, “You God-damn Germans,” and pointing an empty rifle at the trees. Other men calmly and methodically worked the bolts of their rifles back and forth, refilling the chambers as they were emptied of each clip of five shots. From time to time a man dropped, thinning the ranks and spreading them out to such an extent that contact on the right side of the moving line was lost.

Farther on in the woods a small trench had been dug, but through the fierceness and unexpectedness of the attack most of the enemy had been driven from it. The platoon, moving on feet that felt like wings, dashed toward the trench, some of the men sprawling into it. Before them, a few yards distant, a machine-gun poked its nose from between the crevice of two large rocks. The sight of it infuriated Lieutenant Bedford, who was leading the platoon by a few paces. Then, yards away, he began throwing bombs at it. His last bomb exhausted, he aimed his pistol and chucked the remaining shots at it. Now, almost able to look over the top of the rock and see the gunner, he threw the useless pistol at the heavy steel helmet. The gunner dropped his head, covering it with his hands. When he looked up, the platoon had passed. Farther, the resistance grew less. The bombardment of the night before had taken its toll of Germans. Bodies lay gawkily about on the grass. One body, headless, clutched a clay pipe between its fingers. Another lay flat on its back, a hole in its stomach as big as a hat. A heavy leather pack, which a shell had struck, was the centre of a ring of packages of Piedmont cigarettes which its owner had salvaged from some dead American.

The trees became sparse. Ahead, over an interminably long wheat-field, the platoon could see the horizon. There were no Germans in sight. The platoon, ordered to do so, faced in the direction from which they had come and combed the woods for machine-gun nests which they might have passed unnoticed during the attack.

Hot and tired, knowing nearly every need of the body, the platoon was formed near the place where they had entered the woods late the night before, as the sun was sinking out of sight.

They arrived at a crossroads and turned to the right. Thick woods, green at the fringe and black within, walled the smooth white ribbon of road on either side. Through soft, fluffy clouds that floated over an inanely blue sky the sun volleyed rays of brilliant light. Small, shiny pebbles, reflecting the glint, were transformed into pretty baubles of crystal and amber.

 

Thomas Boyd after the War

 

On the right of the road, moving forward in an unbroken stream, plodded a single file of drab-colored men. From a distance the line looked like a swaying, muddy snake. In the middle of the road, also moving forward, black, roan, and sorrel horses pulled caissons, field kitchens, and supply wagons. Men, returning from the direction in which the main traffic was moving, were on the left. They passed by, dejected, vapid-minded, a look of dull pain in the eyes of each. They were the wounded from the attack. Most spectacular among them were the French Colonials, with their red kepis, their broad chests showing strength and endurance beneath their blue or tan tunics. Occasionally a mass of white, blood-stained gauze would be wrapped around a black, shiny head, and strong white teeth would be doggedly bared with pain. The small carbines and long knives that they carried set them off as a special sort of troops. And then the French, with their horizon-blue uniforms and drooping, inevitable mustaches. Shoulders sagging, they slouched along with bandaged heads and bandaged arms. And the gray of the German uniform and the thump, thump of the leather boots that they wore. Small, hideous caps, round and gray, with a thin red piping circling the top, set awkwardly on their heads, which rose from thick fat necks. Behind them walked surly, wary Frenchmen. A number of English troops were scattered through the unending line. Beside the Americans whom they passed their khaki uniforms looked smart and tailored. In this multicolored canyon no words were exchanged. The Colonials looked sullen, the French beaten and spiritless, the Americans dogged and conscientious, the English expressionless; the Germans seemed the most human of them all. For them the fighting was finished.

 

Thomas Boyd, Through the Wheat, 1923

Lifeboats in the Great War—The HMHS Rohilla Disaster

James Patton 

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is the principal lifeboat service operating in Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man. Its volunteers fulfill a 24-hour coastal search and rescue mission.

Founded in 1824, it gained royal patronage under George IV that continues to the present day, and the current name was adopted in1854. Since inception, the RNLI  lifeboats and lifeguards have been credited with saving over 146,000 lives.

SS Rohilla at Port Said, 1914

The 460-ft long S.S. Rohilla was built in Belfast by Harland & Wolff for the British India Steam Navigation Co., completed in 1906 for the line’s London-Calcutta service. Since Calcutta is a river port, it must be accessed by shallow draught vessels, which tend to roll a lot in heavy seas, and Rohilla was no exception.  

She was often chartered by the Admiralty for use as a troopship in the Calcutta service from 1908 to 1910. In 1911 she took part in George V’s Coronation Fleet Review at Spithead, carrying members of the House of Commons. At the onset of war in 1914, she was requisitioned by the Admiralty, converted into a hospital ship,  and re-commissioned as HMHS Rohilla. 

A Section of the Wrecked Rohilla

On 30 October 1914, she embarked on her first voyage, from South Queensferry bound for Dunkirk to evacuate wounded soldiers. In the evening of that day, during a full-blown North Sea gale,  HMHS Rohilla ran aground on Saltwick Nab, a reef about a mile SSE of  Whitby harbor. The Nab is more or less perpendicular to the shore, lying about 400 yards offshore and, due to Admiralty orders, the warning buoy had been removed.  

Around Hartlepool, in Yorkshire, the coast line starts to move steadily eastward. With the lighthouses also ordered unlit, the Rohilla’s captain (who was unfamiliar with the North Sea) lost his bearing and was more than a mile west of his plotted course. This was seen from the shore, but attempts to warn the badly rolling Rohilla by signal lights went unnoticed, possibly because there was nobody aboard who was well enough to be a lookout.

After striking the Nab, the ship broke into three pieces, with the stern piece quickly slipping into deeper water. Although the ship had been close to shore, the high seas and strong winds made rescue attempts challenging, but six RNLI lifeboats answered the call. Of the oared craft, two were from Whitby Harbor, one was from Upgang (now part of Whitby) and one from Scarborough (which was towed to Whitby by a steam tug). 

A Line Thrower Rocket Fired to Rohilla

There were also two motorized  lifeboats, one from Teesmouth and a large, powerful one that came  all the way from Tynemouth (44 miles away). The steam trawler Mayfly out of Hartlepool also responded but was too big to be useful. After repeated attempts, the Scarborough boat crew was unable to launch in the surf and the Teesmouth boat was side-lined with a leak, so it was down to the Whitby-area boats until the Tynemouth boat arrived and, with skillful manuevering, was able to rescue the last 50 persons from the wreck.

Over the three days, some persons who attempted to swim to shore in the pounding waves made it, but many who tried were lost. The lifeboat crews and volunteers from Whitby worked over 50 hours straight, including carrying the Whitby No. 2 boat overland in order to successfully launch it, transporting overland and lowering the Upgang boat from the cliffs above Saltwick Bay to launch it, and even trying to form human chains from the shore to the wreck. Due to all of these heroic efforts, 144 persons were saved, including all of the nurses, one of whom was an RMS Titanic survivor,  Mary Kezia Roberts. Sadly, 83 lives were lost. 

On 16 December, raiding German battlecruisers shelled Whitby, causing damage to its famous abbey, already a ruin.

During the First World War, RNLI lifeboats were launched 1,808 times, rescuing 5,332 people. With most of the younger men on active service, the average age of a lifeboat crewman was over 50. 

Prudential, Veteran of the Dunkirk Evacuation

During the Second World War, between 27 May and 4 June 1940, 19 motorized RNLI lifeboats assisted in the the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. Between them, two large diesel lifeboats, Ramsgate’s Prudential (ON 697), and Margate’s Lord Southborough (ON 688), collected over 2,800 troops from the beach. Not counting Dunkirk, during the war the RNLI saved 6,376 lives, including downed air crew. 

A royally chartered charity since 1860, the RNLI is principally funded by legacies (65 percent) and donations (30 percent). Most of its lifeboat crews are unpaid volunteers, who operate over 400 lifeboats from 238 stations. The RNLI receives no direct government funding. 

____________________________

[Asst. Editor's note: for you tea drinkers, try Lifeboat Tea.  

It's quite good, and your purchase supports RNLI's wonderful work.]

_____________________________

Today, the stern section of the Rohilla is a popular scuba diving site. Most of the remainder of the wreckage was salvaged for scrap after the war, but bits still remain on the reef and can sometimes be seen at low tide. 

Sources include: The Western Front Association, the BBC and the RNLI’s  Lifeboat Magazine archive. 

Lonesome Memorials #18: The Mournful and Grieving Treviso, Italy, Memorial to the Fallen

 (Click on Images in This Article to Enlarge)

The Monument at Piazza della Vittoria, Treviso

Treviso and its province were central to the Italian Front of World War I, especially after the Caporetto disaster of 1917, when the Piave River, just to the north, became the last defensive line for Italy. Part of the province was held for most of the remaining war. Many towns in the surrounding area would suffer additional heavy damage, especially during Austria-Hungary's last offensive of the war in June 1918. Refugees fleeing from enemy-occupied territory had to be housed and fed. The city of Treviso would play a major support role in Italy's Vittorio Veneto victory campaign. The city also lost 630 of its sons in combat during the hostilites.

Detail 1

A major commemorative memorial was announced in 1926, with 38 design proposals submitted.  A fusion bronze/marble sculpture set within broken columns by Arturo Stagliano was selected.  The monument was inaugurated on 4 November 1931, in the presence of King Vittorio Emanuele III. The memorial suffered bombing damage in World War II, which was later repaired. Another restoration effort was made in 2016.

Detail 2

What Was Russia Trying to Accomplish with Its 1914 Campaign?

Russian Infantry, 1914

Stephen Walsh, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

The scale of the fighting on the Eastern Front in 1914 is reasonably familiar, but the Russian campaign of 1914, apart from Tannenberg, is poorly understood. The Russian Army’s military strategy, the choices it made, what it was trying to achieve, why and how, are not well known. This article will analyse Russian strategy and operations in a thematic rather than narrative manner, placing the Russian conduct of operations in the context of Russian military thinking at the time. It will argue that the relative importance of the East Prussian and Galician Operations has been misunderstood, especially the Russian operations in northern Galicia. In late August 1914, the Russian Army faced strategic catastrophe on the entire Eastern Front,  because of events in not East Prussia but in northern Galicia, where the chronic lack of correlation between ends and means in Russian military strategy became acute. 

Russian Cavalry

The main strategic objectives of the Russian Army in August 1914 were to divert German forces from the west and defeat the Austrians in Galicia. Stavka and the French Army believed an invasion of eastern Germany would draw substantial German forces on to the Russians, thereby relieving the French and increasing the Triple Entente’s chances of defeating the Schlieffen Plan. In order to achieve this, Stavka tried to manufacture a third operation in August 1914, even though the Russian Army was already committed to the East Prussian and Galician Operations. The East Prussian Operation was an operational means to a strategic end dominated by the compass needle of the French alliance. The Day 15 deadline committed the Russian "steamroller" to a sprint but robbed it of the means to create the strategic and operational momentum that was its greatest asset. It was this chronic failure of strategic and operational thinking that lay at the heart of the failure of the East Prussia Operation in August 1914.

Junior Officers in the Trenches

In Galicia, the Russians teetered on the edge of strategic and operational disaster before securing a decisive victory over the Austrians. The northern sector of the Galician Operation, not East Prussia, was the Russian centre of gravity, the essential point, around which the Russian strategic plan revolved. It was the brush with catastrophe in northern Galicia, not 2nd Army’s defeat in East Prussia, that rescued Russian strategy from its more fanciful aspirations and resolved, albeit temporarily, the dilemmas that plagued Russian strategy. In November 1914, the invasion of eastern Germany, the operation that distorted, influenced and undermined Russian strategy, flattered to deceive but fizzled out against fierce German resistance. It was a strategic gamble to capitalise on an opportunity that never presented itself again, and in December 1914, the Russians conceded western Poland.

Anywhere on the Eastern Front

In August 1914, the Russian Army, whatever Russia’s political aims, confronted strategic objectives that were too ambitious, with insufficient forces to achieve them but too many troops to supply. The story of the Russian campaign in 1914 is one of a strategic failure to correlate ends and means: rapid victories were necessary to gain strategic and operational success, but the Russian Army did not have the means to sustain such operations. The vast bloody campaigns of 1914 took a terrible toll on Russia, inflicting 1.2 million casualties. [The war was entered to maintain tsarist Russia’s status as a great power, but it eventually destroyed the empire.]

Source: British Journal for Military History, February 2016

1920: Whose Olympiad?

 

Gold Medal for Antwerp Champions

By Bert Govaerts

The first Olympic Games after the tragedy of the Great War might have been a fine stage for global reconciliation, but the war was won by some and lost by others. These were to be the Games of the winners (and the neutrals). Just as Antwerp had been selected because it had suffered on the winning side during the war, a number of nations were excluded because they had fought on the wrong side. The Olympic ideal was supposed to be "above" all politics and the International Olympic Committee had purposely settled down in neutral Lausanne during the hostilities, but its president, Baron de Coubertin (who, as a Frenchman, had luckily enough found himself on the correct side), had enough common sense to understand that less than two years after the end of the war, German or Austrian athletes would not be welcomed with open arms in a country that they had helped ruin. The former Central Powers (or what was left of them) were not really excluded. They were simply not invited to participate in 1920. It would not be until the 1928 Olympics that Germany once again sent athletes to the Games.

Neither was Bolshevik Russia invited; not only was it considered a subversive state advocating the spread of world revolution, it had also left the Allies in the lurch in 1918 by signing a separate peace treaty with Germany and Austria. Moreover, Bolshevik Russia was engaged in warfare with the newly independent Polish state, a state that was receiving military aid and assistance from France. Coubertin found an administrative trick that allowed this one-time "exclusion" of Bolshevik Russia and of the former Central Powers without mortgaging the future of his Games.

Of course, on the "winning" side there would be many absentees. Many sportsmen, including a number of Olympic champions, had died or been crippled at the front. After years of continued slaughter of Europe's youth, the competition between nations could hardly be fair. This had already been demonstrated during the so-called "Inter-Allied Games" of 1919, during which the United States, latecomers in the Great War, showed their athletic superiority. The neutral countries as well were in a favorable position.

Antwerp Olympic Stadium Entrance
Note the Soldier Is Throwing a Grenade Rather Than a Discus

Anyway, the Games had to be taken up again. Twenty-nine nations accepted the invitation to participate. Among them were the newly independent states of Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Finland, created in the aftermath of the Great War. Belgium, Canada, France, Great Britain, Greece, India, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, and the USA had all been combatants during the war. Yugoslavia, Brazil, and Monaco participated for the first time, though at the time Yugoslavia was still known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. New Zealand participated independent of the Australians for the first time.

It had been a top-level decision to go ahead with the Games in Belgium. The "generals" had spoken, now the sportive "soldiers" had to march once again. The practical problems were forbidding. There was simply nothing available, except the will (of some) to push forward. Of course, money was the first major problem. It was not just that the organizing committee lacked funding. Belgium was then going through a period of galloping inflation, which made it very hard to calculate realistic budgets. And so much remained to be done. There was no Olympic Stadium, to mention just one obvious point. Some of Belgium's sportive infrastructure survived the war years, but the swimming pool, the tennis lawns, the boxing and fencing arenas, etc. would all have to be renovated and refurbished. Finding accommodations for the athletes was another tricky task in an impoverished country that was experiencing a post-hostilities housing crisis. All this was solved in one way or another, partly on borrowed money and with a lot of improvisation "à la Belge."

The stadium was finished in time, if only two months before the opening of the Summer Games. The most striking feature of the Olympic Stadium was the "imperial," neo-classical entrance gate (a temporary construction, made of cheap materials, but few people knew that at the time). In front, a statue by Albéric Collin was placed. Not of a classic discus thrower, but of a Belgian soldier throwing a hand grenade. The accommodation problem proved harder to solve. Some of the athletes would have to sleep in city schools, others in military barracks. The poor Dutch had to stay onboard a small vessel, the Hollandia, which was moored at an Antwerp dock. The 1920 Games were not exactly the most luxurious or comfortable in history.

Local publicity for the Games suffered immensely from a shortage of paper. A great poster campaign was planned, but it was never realized. The official poster for the summer games (one version shown above) was designed by local artist Martha Van Kuyck. It showed a classical discus thrower, more or less wrapped in national banners and posing in front of the Antwerp skyline, featuring the city's great pride, the gothic spire of Our Lady's Cathedral. The poster was not precisely a "state of the art" design. In fact, it was very old fashioned, still breathing the atmosphere of the Belle Époque, the period during which the leading sportsmen of Antwerp had started thinking of "their" Games. If anything, the occupation had not really revolutionized their taste. Anyway, local propaganda for the Games was so lacking that when several prelude athletic events were held, a Belgian newspaper wrote: "Friday evening (April 23rd), at nine o'clock, the Olympic games are supposed to begin. How many Antwerp citizens are aware of this?"

Opening Ceremony, 14 August 1920

The opening ceremony of the VII Olympiad took place on 14 August 1920. It began with a religious service in Antwerp's impressive gothic cathedral. The entire Olympic family gathered in a Catholic prayer house to listen to the admonishing words of a cardinal of the Church. Many military delegates from the Allied and neutral countries were present as well, and the memory of the Great War was omnipresent. The speaker, Cardinal Désiré Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, belonged in part to the national Belgian history of the war. During the occupation he had taken an attitude of staunch resistance toward the Germans, at times even embarrassing the "neutral" Pope himself. Yet, Mercier was not a universally popular hero in his own country. The French-speaking Mercier considered the Dutch language, spoken by the Flemish, Belgium's majority community, as an inferior tongue, fit only for everyday life but not for use in science, politics, or diplomacy. His "Olympic" speech (delivered after he had sung a de Profundis in memory of the athletes who died during the war) was entirely in French. That did not go unnoticed outside the cathedral. It rankled the atmosphere even before the Games began.

The speech itself clearly, be it obliquely, referred to the Great War once again and not simply in pacifying terms. Before 1914, the Games, the Cardinal told the athletes, had been a preparation for war. History proved the correctness of the provisions of their founder. Today the Games were preparation for peace but also...."against the terrible risks that have not entirely disappeared from our horizon." Mercier urged the athletes to be moderate, disciplined, and prepared to accept authority. All this in order to prevent sports becoming the "brutal, haughty translation of the Nietzschean conception of life." Germany wasn't mentioned by name, but everyone understood the message.

After the religious ceremony, the Olympic family moved to the stadium on the outskirts of the city. After gun salutes were fired, King Albert, wearing his military uniform, solemnly opened the 1920 Games. Just as nowadays, the delegations marched in and paraded in front of the grandstand. When everyone was in, the new five-ringed Olympic banner was raised for the first time in history. Belgian soldiers released white doves to celebrate the return of peace. Another novelty followed: a Belgian athlete, decorated wartime veteran, and prewar Olympic medalist Victor Boin stepped forward, carrying a Belgian flag and flanked by two Belgian officers. He was the first athlete ever to take the Olympic oath. He did it, of course, in French.

And that was it. The Games could finally begin. The press praised the quality of the ceremony but could not fail to notice that the stadium was hardly filled to capacity. In any case, the Antwerp Games had begun.

Eyewitness: Amiens, August 1918

Canadian Troops on the Attack

It is a great victory. The 2nd German Army has suffered a humiliating reverse, the extent of which, even yet, cannot be fully estimated, and much of its organization which covered the open country before Amiens has been, for the moment at least, practically destroyed.

I do not think that war has ever yielded such extraordinary stories of rout and the confusion of trained soldiers. General von der Marwitz no longer has Amiens by the throat. It is doubtful whether he has any kind of grip on his own bewildered men.

To-day we have advanced further. There must not be undue impatience at home if the progress does not meet with the hopes of the map-followers. This has been a “clean-out” enterprise, executed on very definite lines, and the men who directed it know what they are about. Do not look expectantly at Péronne and St. Quentin and demand a daily sensation. Without attempting to look into the future, there is plenty to occupy people at home in the story of what has happened. Thus far it is a most incomplete story—necessarily so. The outstanding feature, however, has been the complete success of the tanks, cavalry, and armored cars, in delivering the first shock to the enemy, and the superb following stroke of the infantry of the British Isles, Canada, and Australia. Never have the Germans been more completely dazed.

I have heard from many quarters to-day accounts of the wonderful scene as viewed front the air. When the horsemen and their rivals in armor swept across the Santerre plateau, driving terror-stricken Germans in front of them, they did the most amazing things. The headquarters of the 11th German Corps in huts at Framerville was charged by tanks and the Corps Staff pursued down roads and across fields, one general escaping capture by running like a hare.

Tanks Supporting the Advance, 8 August 1918

Tanks or armored cars—I am not sure which—captured a German ambulance train with its staff of doctors and women nurses. Other trains were attacked and set on fire, and one containing part of a Saxon division was destroyed, 500 men and 30 officers who survived being taken prisoner.

Never have I seen more striking evidence of the dismay and disorganization of a surprised enemy than on the battlefield I visited this morning. The story of headlong flight before the tanks and armored cars and the infantry advancing in their wake with dreadful deliberation is written plain on the plateau of Santerre, beyond our old front line.

From the forward machine-gun nests to the snug headquarters of the 11th German Corps at Framerville the fugitives left a trail of debris and booty dropped pell-mell. Deserted batteries confront you at the edge of ruined villages, and some of the fields are dotted with document strewn haphazard by fleeing staffs.

I passed through eight miles of reclaimed country and four villages which were held by the Germans until yesterday morning, and every yard of this journey revealed fresh proof of the consternation of the enemy and his inability to check the panic of his troops.

Manchester Guardian, 10 August 1918

_____________________

German Prisoners

On the other hand, the failure of August 8th was revealed to all eyes as the consequences of an open weakness. To fail in an attack was a very different matter from being vanquished on the defence. The amount of booty which our enemy could publish to the world spoke a clear language. Both the public at home and our Allies could only listen in great anxiety. All the more urgent was it that we should keep our presence of mind and face the situation without illusions, but also without exaggerated pessimism.

Paul von Hindenburg, German Supreme Commander

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Reflecting on the Great War and the Birth of Airpower

 

First World War Air Action As Popularly Remembered

By Tammi Davis Biddle, U.S. Army War College

For centuries before the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903, humans had tried to imagine all of the future roles that airplanes might play—as both military and non-military instruments. During World War I, aircraft underwent revolutionary, telescoped changes driven by the intensely competitive demands of the war. In 1914, warplanes were primitive machines held together by wire and twine; by 1918, large, sophisticated four-engine bombers had been developed and used. These new instruments had major institutional and organizational ramifications for all modern military services—and the institutional transformation this entailed was far from painless.

Prewar expectations tended to influence the interpretation of wartime experience. Since the interpretation of data and evidence is heavily conditioned by what people expect to see, observations are colored by social, cultural, and political influences. Prior to the outbreak of World War I, civilian writers typically held higher expectations for air warfare than military planners did. The latter were generally conservative, expecting an airplane’s main or sole contribution to be reconnaissance. However, a minority—officers who came to hold formative roles in the development of air power and thus came to hold an institutional stake in the future of air warfare—emerged from the war with strong convictions and bold claims about the revolutionary impact of the airplane in war.

[After the Great War], those making bold claims for airpower, [especially Italy's Giulio Douhet, America's Billy Mitchell, and Great Britain's Hugh Trenchard] gained degrees of legitimacy for a variety of reasons. The war had indicated that technological advancement could take place in a highly telescoped way. Many observers thus concluded that the technological development of air power would be fast and relentless—and offensive capabilities would outstrip defensive ones. Moreover, many assumed that some of the most daunting weapons of the war, including chemicals and gas, would be teamed with airpower.

Air advocates argued that all modern states would have to embrace airplanes as essential tools of war and deterrence, insisting that those who failed to do so would put themselves at an enormous disadvantage in the ongoing competition among nations. Air power—long-range bombing especially—would restore offensive operations to the battlefield, and would offer the prospect of directly undermining the enemy’s all-important “will to fight” by strikes on his homeland. One would be able to leap over the army and navy and go right to both resources and popular will. It is interesting to note here that offensive operations had not in fact disappeared from the battlefield. By 1917, armies had begun to work out the basics of modern combined arms, restoring the offensive on land. This was manifest in the German offensive of March 1918, and in the subsequent ground offensives led by the Americans in 1918. However, many writers, traumatized by the trench stalemate of 1914–1917, assumed that the offensive on land was largely dead. Another common misapprehension of interwar theorists was that the German Army and Navy had not been defeated; instead, its population had lost the war due to war-weariness and defeatism.

Source: Airpower and Warfare: A Century of Theory and History, Tami Davis Biddle, U.S. Army War College Press