8 December 1914: The Battlecruisers Have Their Finest Hour at the Falklands

A naval historian once said to me that as soon as the first battlecruiser, HMS Invincible, was launched it was destined to be put to purposes unsuitable to its design. Admiral Jackie Fisher's concept was for an improved form of the armored cruiser class, but even speedier and with larger guns, to perform missions like scouting, patrolling sea-lanes, and raiding. The trade-off that made this possible was sacrificing the amount of armor aboard. My friend pointed out that they were never intended to serve in the line of battle, or to take on a fully armored battleship as the Hood did with the Bismarck in the Second World War. He argued further that the battlecruiser disaster of the Royal Navy at Jutland showed that battlecruisers should never have taken on another battlecruiser — one lucky shot in, and you are sunk.

HMS Inflexible Picking Up German Survivors of the Battle

Today is the 99th anniversary of an action that helped admirals and naval planners get pointed in this wrong direction. At the 8 December 1914 Battle of the Falklands, two British battlecruisers, HMS Invincible (the first-ever battlecruiser) and HMS Inflexible devastated the squadron of German admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee, previously victorious against a less formidable Royal Navy flotilla at the Battle of Coronel.

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Von Spee brought his ships across the Pacific and after his victory off the Chilean coast was preparing for his dash home to Germany across the Atlantic. However, he tarried excessively and the Royal Navy had sent the two battlecruisers to the South Pacific. Most unfortunately for von Spee, those ships were re-fueling at his next destination. The German ships almost trapped the British ships in harbor. But recognizing the danger, von Spee ordered his ships to run. Only one of his ships escaped that day, however. It was the British battlecruiser's finest hour, but it contributed to their over-valuation in fleet actions. Post-action reports emphasized how many hits the two battlecruisers had absorbed during the battle without any effect. But these were from the smaller guns of smaller ships.

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Invincible was later blown in half and sunk immediately in the action at Jutland by fire from two German battlecruisers. Inflexible, was luckier; it was disabled by land fire and a mine at Gallipoli in 1915 but survived to fight at Jutland the next year, avoiding major damage. After surviving the war, it was sold for scrap – to a German firm.

Armistice Glade at Compiègne

The Compiègne Armistice Glade A must stop for visitors to the Western Front is the Armistice Glade at Compiègne north of Paris where both the Armistice of 11 November 1918 and the French surrender of 1940 were signed. There are several notable monuments on the site and the museum is quite good, with an outstanding collection of stereoscopic viewers for three-dimensional war images. The site for the November 1918 Armistice negotiations in the forest of Rethondes on the outskirts of Compiègne was an artillery railway emplacement. It was hidden and out of the way but accessible for both delegations. Marshal Foch's train is shown on the left, the German delegation's to the right. The central area today from approximately the same perspective (slightly shifted right). The enclosure holding a replica of Foch's car and the museum is in the distance. The large block in the left foreground bears the inscription (in French): "Here on 11 November 1918 the criminal pride of the German Empire was brought low, vanquished by the free peoples whom it had sought to enslave." Entrance to the rail car and museum Foch's Carriage. The original at the orders of Hitler was moved back to the 11 November  1918 location and used as the venue for executing the French surrender. The car was then moved back to Germany and destroyed at the end of World War II. The present car is considered a very accurate replica of the original. Two of the notable statues at the Glade: the Foch statue was unveiled in 1937 with the good Marshal in attendance; the slain German eagle is the principal feature to the monument commemorating the return of Alsace and Lorraine that was built by public subscription after the war.

World War I Treasure Trove at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force Website

The recent announcement that the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force was proceeding with a $35 million expansion reminded me that in addition to their incredible collection of aircraft, inclusive of the Great War period, they have an equally impressive collection of articles on aviation history, flyers, operations, and aircraft. Their "Early Years" section contains over 100 articles on every aspect of military aviation and can be found here:

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/exhibits/earlyyears/index.asp

The site is organized topically using a fact sheet format.  The web pages allow downloading of high- resolution images of the subject matter and offer a printer-friendly version if you want hard copies of the pages.  Here are two examples:

A Christmas Gift Suggestion: A Bear Named Winnie

A Christmas Gift Suggestion A Bear Named Winnie Reviewed and Recommended by Andrew Melomet  Directed by John Kent Harrison and originally produced for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, A Bear Named Winnie tells the story of the World War I Canadian regimental mascot (2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade) that inspired the A.A. Milne character Winnie the Pooh. The story begins in 1914 with a young veterinarian, Lt. Harry Colebourn (Michael Fassbender) of the Fort Garry Horse leaving Winnipeg en route to the army camp in Quebec. At a rest stop in White River, Ontario, he buys an orphaned bear cub for $20 (the equivalent of about $350.00 in today's Canadian currency) and names her Winnie after his home base of Winnipeg. After training in Valcartier, Quebec, the Canadian Expeditionary Force sails for England. Unwilling to part with Winnie, Harry smuggles her aboard ship and into the camp at Salisbury Plain. When the regiment is ordered to France, Harry realizes he must part with Winnie and arranges for her to be temporarily housed in the London Zoo. He plans to take Winnie back to Canada after the war. But, while she's been at the zoo she's become a star attraction due to her gentle friendliness. When Harry returns, he's faced with either bringing Winnie back to Canada or letting her stay at the zoo. Once he realizes what a hit she is with the children he donates her to the London Zoo permanently. Harry Colebourn would return to Winnipeg alone. (Yes, this is the wrong kind of bear, but please don't judge this DVD by its cover.) Winnie was extremely tame. Parents could even place their children on her back for rides. A favorite activity was to give Winnie a drink of condensed milk mixed with corn syrup. Winnie lived at the zoo until 1934. In the last two years of her life she had cataracts and arthritis and suffered a stroke that partly paralyzed her. She was euthanized on 12 May 1934. A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin were frequent visitors to the London Zoo. Christopher Robin loved Winnie and renamed Edward Bear, his stuffed teddy bear, Winnie the Pooh. (Pooh also happened to be the name for the family swan.) The first story with Winnie appeared in the London Evening News in December 1925, and over the years, A.A. Milne wrote a series of stories based on the adventures of his son's stuffed animals. In 1966 Walt Disney released the first animated short starring Winnie, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. Early Photo of the Friends This is a delightful family film with only a brief battlefield sequence. It's well acted, both by the humans and the bears. You feel there's a true warmth and friendship between Winnie (played by two cubs and a full-grown bear) and Harry. Gil Bellows plays Col. John Barret, the stern Chief Veterinary Officer who is won over by Winnie's warmth. David Suchet is General Hallholland, the often drunk commanding officer of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Stephen Fry plays Mr. Protheroe, the cranky keeper at the London Zoo who likes animals more than children and reluctantly accepts the young Winnie as a temporary guest. Currently, in Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park there are two tributes to Winnie: a bronze statue of Captain Colebourn and Winnie, and an original oil portrait of Winnie the Pooh by the illustrator Ernest H. Shepard.    Friendship Remembered: Captain Colebourn and Winnie – Statue at Assiniboine Park and 1996 Canadian Stamp A Bear Named Winnie makes a perfect heartwarming Great War-themed gift for the holiday season.

Weapons of War: A Variety of Tanks

Here is a little photographic feature that shows the variety of tanks that were appearing on the battlefields after the Fall of 1916. This is not a comprehensive summary, but several of the most important types are shown and it also shows German efforts in design and in the use of captured tanks.

Source: Mike Iavarone's Trenches on the Web

Alfred & Emily Reviewed by David F. Beer

Alfred & Emily

By Doris Lessing Published by Harper Collins, 2008

That war, the Great War, the war that would end all war, squatted over my childhood. The trenches were as present to me as anything I actually saw around me. And here I still am, trying to get out from that monstrous legacy, trying to get free. [Alfred & Emily, viii]

Doris Lessing died this year on 16 November, the same day I finished reading her curious part-novel, part-memoir Alfred & Emily. She was 94 and died at her home in London. During her long life she wrote a score of novels (including science fiction), half a dozen volumes of short stories, two operas, several poems, nine works of non-fiction, and two autobiographies. Some of her work was considered a handbook for her times, openly dealing as it did with such subjects as emotional breakdown, sex, marriage, race, politics, psychoanalysis, mysticism, and the child-parent relationship.

Much of her younger life was spent growing up on a farm in the old British colony of Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. She wrote her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, which focused on settlers in Rhodesia, in 1950 just after moving to England. During her career she won several literary honors culminating in the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. One of her best-known novels, The Golden Notebook (1962), has been described as "one of the most important works of fiction in modern literature." [Paul Schlueter, Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, 1983]

Alfred & Emily is overshadowed by the First World War, although it was written long after the catastrophe. It's in two parts, the first being fiction and the second autobiographical. If Lessing's parents were haunted by the war, she herself struggled mightily with both of them as she grew up in Africa, especially her highly talented mother. Part Two of the book details much of this psychological conflict with her mother, who, like Lessing's father, might have been and done so much more if there had been no war. It is this loss that Lessing attempts to atone for in the first part of the book, where she imagines the kind of idyllic life both parents might have had in a peaceful world.

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The difference between the ideal and reality is tragic, of course. In the fictional first part, both Alfred and Emily grow up in bucolic conditions and have pleasant enough lives. Significantly, they do not marry each other, and both have successful careers. Of these fictional lives Lessing writes in her introduction: If I could meet Alfred Tayler and Emily McVeagh now, as I have written them, as they might have been had the Great War not happened, I hope they would approve the lives I have given them. [p. viii]

But neither was happy in the lives reality gave them. As Lessing observes, The First World War did them both in. Shrapnel shattered my father's leg, and thereafter he had to wear a wooden one. He never recovered from the trenches. He died at sixty-two, an old man. On the death certificate should have been written, as cause of death, the Great War. [p. vii]

The life of a soldier who lost a leg in WWI was usually one of ongoing pain and discomfort, the false leg — far from the advanced prosthetics we now have — actually being made of wood with a bucket-like receptacle into which the stump was strapped, with knitted stump socks only partially cushioning the friction and getting uncomfortably itchy in warm weather. For Albert the result was both diabetes and depression, the latter being seen much later in the century by the author as untreated post-traumatic stress disorder.

Just as Albert could not escape his wooden leg, he was also captive to his memories of the war, and the whole family, especially his wife, suffered with him. She moreover had her own experiences as a nurse in a hospital for the badly wounded to weigh on her:

. . . there was this load of suffering deep inside my mother, as there was inside my father, and please don't tell me that this kind of pain, borne for years, doesn't take its dreadful toll. It took me years – and years – and years to see it: my mother had no visible scars, no wounds, but she was as much a victim of the war as my poor father. [p. 172]

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Mutilated British Soldiers Playing Croquet

At the end of his life Lessing's father returned more and more to the causes of his lifelong anguish, and although by then the Second World War was in full furor with constant bulletins coming over the family radio, his thoughts could not escape his own war:

'If you had only known them,' he said, holding my hand hard. 'Such good men. I keep thinking of them.' And my father, crying an old man's tears, his eyes wide and childlike-an old man's eyes (but he not yet sixty)-and he was murmuring the names of those fine chaps, his men, who died in the mud at Passchendaele. . . [ p. 258]

Near the end of the book, which contains some touching family photographs, Doris Lessing states what could well be the theme of her work and which succinctly reveals her reasons for having written Alfred & Emily, making it the fascinating historical and psychologically insightful book that it is:

I think my father's rage at the Trenches took me over, when I was very young, and has never left me. Do children feel their parents' emotions? Yes, we do, and it is a legacy I could have done without. What is the use of it? It is as if that old war is in my own memory, my own consciousness. [pp. 257-258]

This book stands as a testament to the aftermath of the Great War and more widely to the suffering, both seen and unseen, that inevitably results from any war. Lessing treats her topic without subtlety and leaves us with no doubt about her message. She also embellishes her central theme with insights about colonial Africa, the life of expatriate farmers, and war in general. One comment she makes is most telling, pointing out as it does a sad fact that the history of war does not let us deny:

When pacifists, or people trying to limit war, decide to forget that some men thoroughly enjoy war, they are making a bad mistake. p. 252]

David F. Beer

Theodore Roosevelt's Family at War

The photo we ran on 22 November of Kaiser Wilhelm marching with his sons, reminded me that during the war the martial contributions of his family were contrasted in the American press with those of former President Theodore Roosevelt's.  As you can see in the table below, four of T.R.'s sons saw frontline action, including his youngest, Quentin, who may have been the most famous U.S. soldier to die in action. Furthermore, his daughter Ethel served as a nurse in France alongside her husband Dick Derby, and T.R.'s daughter-in-law served as a YMCA volunteer.  The only Roosevelt offspring who did not make it to the war zone was TR's oldest daughter, the fabled Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who was the wife of Congressman and future Speaker Nicholas Longworth by the time the war came along.

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The Roosevelt Family, 1903

Quentin, T.R., Theodore Jr., Archibald, Alice, Kermit, Mrs. Roosevelt, Ethel

Theodore Roosevelt's children grew up in the glow of Roosevelt's crowded hour.  All of the boys in their time tromped the grounds of Sagamore Hill and the White House, re-enacting the battle at San Juan Ridge.  They all either absorbed or inherited his reckless, all-or-nothing approach to hazards and most certainly caught both their father's attraction to warfare and his egalitarian ethic. Here is a summary of the service of the family members in the Great War. Their father, of course, had wanted to command a division in the Expeditionary Force, but was been turned down by President Wilson.

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The death of his youngest son, Quentin, affected Theodore Roosevelt powerfully.  The day after being notified of his son's passing, he spoke to a Republican group in Saratoga, NY. Without revealing the death of his boy, he told the crowd:

"The finest, the bravest, the best of our young men have sprung eagerly forward to face death for the sake of a high ideal. . ." he said. "When these gallant boys, on the golden crest of life, gladly face death. . . shall we who stay behind, who have not been found worthy of the great adventure. . . try to shape our lives so as to make this country a better place to live in. . . for the women who sent these men to battle and for the children who are to come after them?" 

In the succeeding weeks, Roosevelt started to vaguely resemble himself again, even though he would never again be as he had been before the loss of Quentin. Despite his affable good humor and energetic need to continue to contribute to public life, his old exuberance had left him, never to return. No one was more attuned to this fact than Edith. "Quentin's death shook him greatly," she wrote Kermit. "I can see how constantly he thinks of him and not the merry happy silly recollections which I have but sad thoughts of what Quentin would have counted for in the future." 

After his son's death, Theodore Roosevelt's health declined rapidly. He died within six months on 6 January 1919. 

Source: Theodore Roosevelt's Family in the Great War by Edward J. Renehan, Jr. 

The Hospital Tent: A Forgotten War Painting of John S. Sargent

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The Hospital Tent

Late in September 1918, while gathering material for his iconic World War I painting "Gassed" near Peronne, American war artist John S. Sargent was struck down with influenza and taken to a field hospital near Roisel. Here he spent a week in a hospital bed next to the war-wounded, which inspired this work, now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. It shows the interior of a hospital tent with campbeds lining the side. Many of the beds are occupied and covered with brown or red blankets. One soldier lies propped up on pillows reading, another sleeps turned on his side, the light from the open tent flap falling on his bed.

The Ghosts of the Great War 2014 Calendar

Phil Makanna is one of the world's greatest aviation photographers. He has been photographing historic aircraft since 1974. His work has been featured in numerous magazines such as Air and Space, Warbirds, Air Classics, and many others. He has also authored five GHOSTS books on historic military aircraft. Phil received the International Society of Aviation Photographers Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. Each year Phil publishes calendars featuring his best work. Below is the cover of the 2014 GHOSTS calendar featuring classic World War I aircraft, followed by ordering information, and thumbnail images of each month's featured “GHOST." By the way, on many of the daily entries, Phil includes notable anniversaries, birthdays, and details about the air war of 1914–1918.

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Ghosts
2014
The Great War
$14.99 + s/h

For Ordering Online Go To:

http://www.ghosts.com/calendar14i.html

For Full Information on Phil's books, museum-grade prints, and many other products,
go to his HOME PAGE at:

http://www.ghosts.com

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Secret Overture to Lenin The Bullitt Mission to Soviet Russia, 1919

Tula, Russia, May Day 1919

In March of 1919, William Christian Bullitt, an attaché to the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, visited Soviet Russia on a clandestine mission. Although Secretary of State Robert Lansing authorized him to report only on political and economic conditions, Bullitt’s actual objective was far more ambitious — to broker an agreement between the Allies and Russia’s Bolshevik government that would end the Russian Civil War, lift the Allied blockade of that country, and allow the Allies to withdraw the troops they had dispatched to Russia in 1918. Bullitt eventually received a proposal from the Bolshevik government that would have realized these goals, but the Allied leaders at the Paris Peace Conference were unwilling to accept the offer.

Following the withdrawal of Allied diplomats from Petrograd and Moscow in 1918, the Allied leaders — U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emmanuele Orlando — grappled with the question of how to address the Russian Civil War that had broken out between the Bolsheviks and White Russian forces following the Russian Revolution. After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March of 1918, Allied, Japanese, and U.S. troops had occupied parts of Northern Russia, the Ukraine, and Siberia to protect vital areas from falling into the hands of the Germans, and to provide assistance to the White Russians. When the First World War ended, however, Allied leaders found it difficult to justify leaving tens of thousands of war-weary troops in Russia.

In early 1919, both Lloyd George and President Wilson suggested that the leaders of the warring Russian factions should meet in order to hammer out a peace accord. In spite of fierce French opposition, President Wilson succeeded in proposing that the Russians would meet on Prinkipo Island off the coast of Turkey. While the Bolsheviks accepted Wilson’s proposal, the conference failed to materialize due to French resistance and the unwillingness of Russian anti-Bolsheviks to attend negotiations that would include the Bolshevik government.

Mission Members William Bullitt and Lincoln Steffens

(The third member was Capt. W.W. Pettit, U.S. Army, Intelligence)

Nevertheless, Lloyd George and Wilson remained interested in working toward resolving the Russian situation. Because Bullitt had urged that a mission be dispatched to Russia, Wilson’s chief adviser, Colonel Edward M. House, asked Bullitt if he would be willing to lead such an endeavor. Bullitt then drew up a list of peace proposals to present to the Bolshevik government that proposed an armistice, the re-establishment of economic relations, and the withdrawal of Allied troops. Additionally, House encouraged Bullitt to secure a promise from the Bolsheviks that they would honor Tsarist Russia’s debts to the Allied powers. However, while Bullitt secured House’s assent to his proposals, neither Wilson nor Lloyd George knew of them.

On 6 March 1917 the Bullitt Mission (which comprised Bullitt, journalist Lincoln Steffens, and a U.S. Army intelligence officer) crossed the Russian border. Following a meeting with Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov in Petrograd, Bullitt and Steffens left for Moscow, where they met with Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin and his foreign minister, Georgi Chicherin. Although there was opposition to negotiations with the Americans within the Bolshevik leadership, on 14 March Bullitt received a Russian proposal that demanded the Allies call for a ceasefire within the former Russian Empire and agree to a peace conference in a neutral nation. The proposed terms for discussion at the conference included allowing all de facto governments within the borders of Russia to retain the territory they held prior to the armistice, the lifting of the Allied blockade, the withdrawal of Allied troops from Russia, disarmament of the warring Russian factions, and a commitment by the Bolshevik government to honor Russia’s financial obligations to the Allies.

Trotsky, Lenin, and Kamenev, 1919

During his week in Russia, Bullitt also compiled an extensive report on conditions there. While acknowledging the economic hardships facing the Russian people, Bullitt asserted that the violent phase of the Bolshevik Revolution had ended and that the Bolsheviks enjoyed popular support. Furthermore, he reported that Lenin and a large segment of the Bolshevik Party were willing to compromise with the United States. In fact, Bullitt believed that the greatest danger confronting the United States was the possibility that continued Allied interventions and support of the White Russians would lead to the rise of more radical political factions. Consequently, Bullitt concluded that “[no] Government save a Socialist Government can be set up in Russia today except by bayonets,” and that Lenin’s faction of the Bolsheviks was “as moderate as any Socialist Government which can control Russia.”

Bullitt returned to Paris on 25 March and there faced Allied resistance to the proposal he received from Lenin. Although Lloyd George privately assured Bullitt that he was sympathetic to the Bolsheviks’ offer, he repudiated it once news of Bullitt’s mission had been leaked to the British press. Clemenceau had opposed any overtures to Lenin from the start. Wilson was in poor health and was focused on achieving a breakthrough in negotiations with the French concerning the peace treaty with Germany. Furthermore, the President’s relations with House, Bullitt’s original patron, had soured greatly. Finally, news from Russia indicated that anti-Bolshevik forces would soon capture Moscow, thus obviating negotiations with Lenin. Consequently, the 10 April deadline for the Allies to respond to Lenin’s offer passed without any word from the Allied side, and Bullitt angrily resigned from the U.S. delegation on May 17. The failure of the Allies to agree to the proposal secured by the Bullitt mission delayed official U.S. recognition of Soviet Russia for many years.

Source: Office of the Historian, United States Department of State

Thanksgiving Day 1918

Happy Thanksgiving from the Roads Editorial Team

Much of the American Expeditionary Force found itself stuck in France after the Armistice. Every unit and base pulled out the stops that Thanksgiving to give the troops a wonderful meal. Here is the menu from the Second Aviation Instruction Center at Tours. It includes a lot of special recipes for Château-Thierry Sauce, Dressing of the Argonne, and some delightful-sounding delicacies like "Submarine Fruits [of the Sea]" and "Dardanelles Turkey." Thanks to contributor Terry Finnegan, who found this in the Gorrell Reports.

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Now sit down ye warriors bold, eat, drink and sing as in days of old. Tis said that man and beast and bird some day has its inning. The turn comes now for men who fight; give thanks above "La Guerre est Finie."

No Wonder the Balkans Were Unstable

The Prewar Overlapping Nationalist Aspirations in the Balkans

I discovered this map in  a booklet titled The Balkan Wars, produced by the Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe. Besides clearly showing the conflicting Serbian–Austro-Hungarian interests circa 1912, it gives a number of indications of competing nationalist ambitions among the Balkan countries that allied in the First Balkan War of 1912 and broke apart for the Second Balkan War the next year. Also, it shows that the states that aligned with the winning Allies during the World War made surprising headway in achieving their prewar expansionist dreams.

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World War I and the Origins of U.S. Military Intelligence Reviewed by Terrence J. Finnegan

World War I and the Origins of U.S. Military Intelligence

By James L. Gilbert Published by Scarecrow Press, 2012

James Gilbert's new book is a welcome addition to the material that has been published in recent years on the evolution of U.S. intelligence processes and organizations during the twentieth century.[1] World War I and the Origins of U.S. Military Intelligence contains much that is new and intriguing, especially about the ways information was collected and then used to make a difference on the battlefield during the period of American involvement in the final year of WWI. A good example is Gilbert's revelation of how the downing of a zeppelin carrying incredibly lucrative material helped put at risk one of the greatest German threats — the U-boat. That story alone is worth the price of the text, though I would have suggested opening the book with it as a way of capturing the reader's interest and thus effectively showing how intelligence can be acquired through the most unlikely sources.

Although the title suggests the book will address U.S. military intelligence broadly, Gilbert really only focuses on the evolution of intelligence in the Army and on the domestic and military applications of that intelligence. By making no mention of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the oldest member of the U.S. intelligence community, Gilbert fails to live up to the promise of the title. Insights into ONI's diverse efforts throughout the war, e.g. the novel use of archaeologist Sylvanus G. Morley to spy in Central America, would have rectified that shortcoming and complemented the work.

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Full appreciation of the material in Gilbert's book requires an understanding of the realities of America's entry into the conflict, a topic on which he might have offered more. As a relative amateur in the business of military intelligence on the scale the war required, the United States had to depend on the experience of its allies, Great Britain and France. The influence of both brought U.S. forces up to par in acquiring and disseminating intelligence to leaders and combatants alike. My research shows that the French did the most to influence American understanding of military intelligence at this early stage of development. Service des renseignements de l'observation du terrain (SROT), service des renseignements de l'artillerie (SRA), and section photo-aerienne (SPAe) were French operations that collected military intelligence to support American infantry and artillery in all the battles in which they engaged. As for aerial reconnaissance, the majority of US Air Service intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination was accomplished according to French standards.

The ultimate product missing in James Gilbert's book is that important deliverable — the Plan Directeur map. Almost all intelligence targeting in sectors occupied by the Americans aimed at getting the latest information applied to the Plan Directeur. The positional warfare of the period depended on the map, and intelligence provided the information that made plans for artillery targeting and infantry assaults credible.

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Typical Plan Directeur

French 6th Army Plan Directeur Covering an Area Midway Between St. Quentin and Reims.

Indeed, given the importance of such maps, their absence from this book is a most glaring oversight. Thus the book fails to help readers follow the "where" and "when" of the events it describes. Maps might have helped convey how the order of battle facing American forces was portrayed to commanders. Maps would have been invaluable in helping readers visualize the locations of countless places and to know their names, not to mention their pronunciations. Maps go with the subject.

One final observation —the book suffers from an insufficiency of source notes, which intelligence specialists immediately gravitate toward for deeper understanding. Numerous paragraphs contained quotations and specific details that were not attributed. Such details allow readers to dive beyond the published work. I, for one, would revel in carrying on such a search.

World War I is full of opportunities to expand knowledge of the intelligence business. As much as Gilbert has added to our knowledge of the subject, he really has just scratched the surface. There is still much to learn and reveal.

________________________________________

Notes [1] By way of full disclosure, I must note that my work is cited and complimented in Gilbert's book, and I am grateful for his praise. TF

[2] This review first appeared in "Studies in Intelligence" of the Central Intelligence Agency

Terrence J. Finnegan

Remembering a Veteran: Major James Van Fleet, 6th Division, AEF

With a little better luck on the dispersal of fragments from his bomb load, an unknown German aviator might have killed a second American officer instead of merely wounding him. It will never be known what the first man might have achieved, but the survivor, who was only lightly wounded, was destined to become one of America's greatest generals of the twentieth century. That future general was Major James Van Fleet, then commander of the 17^th Machine Gun Battalion of the 6th Division.

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Van Fleet Shortly After Each of the World Wars

A graduate of West Point's famous class of 1915, Van Fleet had already earned attention for his accomplishments with General Pershing on the Mexican Expedition and his earlier service with the AEF. The air attack that wounded him occurred on 4 November 1918 in the Argonne sector, just north of Grande Pre. The major was quickly back with his troops, but then the Armistice ended things. After occupation duty, he returned to life back in the States with the peacetime army.

He did not advance as quickly during peacetime as some his classmates, but his moment arrived on 6 June 1944 when he led his regiment ashore at Utah Beach, Normandy. In less than a year he advanced to divisional and corps command during the advance across Europe. After the war he was the adviser to the Greek Army in successfully defeating a Communist take-over attempt and later was called on to command Eighth Army in Korea. None of this, of course, would have taken place had the spread of fragments from that German bomb of 1918 been wider.

The Magazine of the World War I Centennial: Coming in January 2014

Starting with our January issue we are recasting our subscription magazine Over the Top as THE magazine of the World War I centennial. With the first issue of our Volume 8, we will parallel month by month the Great War,  initially covering the run up to the war and, then, with our June issue on the Black Hand and the Assassination of the Archduke, presenting cutting-edge articles on the critical earthshaking events of that same month 100 years ago. Our 2014 centennial editorial program is presented below with the link to download our flyer for ordering information. If you mention that you are subscribing through Roads, you will also receive our Decmeber 2013 issue for free upon subscription or purchase of any of our past annual CD compilations.

Click to Download PDF Flyer

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Our December 2013 Issue and Our First As the Magazine of the World War I Centennial

1914 January 2014 The 99-Year Countdown	1914 July 2014 The July Crisis Leads to War
1914 February 2014 Arrival of Wilhelm II & the Departure of Bismarck; and Whither Russia,  Whence France	1914 August 2014 Three Early Actions: the Ardennes, Mons, Tannenberg
1914 March 2014 The Prewar Game of Thrones: The European Alliance System	1914 September 2014 The Battle of the Marne: the War's Most Fateful Clash
1914 April 2014 America's Improbable Route to  the Battlefields of Europe	1914 October 2014 Turkey Enters the War; and the Western Front in Full
1914 May 2014 Revolutionaries, Anarchists, and Assassins	1914 November 2014 Austria-Hungary Fails in Serbia;  and the Naval Blockade Begins
1914 June 2014 The Black Hand and Sarajevo	1914 December 2014 Battle of the Falklands; and the Christmas Truce

Talbot House: The Sanctuary from War That Lives On

Talbot House or Toc H is in the Belgian town of Poperinghe, west of Ypres. It was the idea of Philip "Tubby" Clayton who wanted to create a place where soldiers on the Western Front could find some peace and quiet when they were away from the trenches. The house was named after Lieutenant Gilbert Talbot, who was killed at Ypres in July 1915. His brother, Neville, was a senior Church of England chaplain who had been tasked with finding chaplains to join battalions at the front line. It was while carrying out this task that he came across "Tubby" Clayton, who was attached to the East Kent and Bedfordshire regiments. Clayton arrived in Poperinghe in late 1915.

It was Clayton’s idea to find a house where soldiers could relax as much as was possible given their circumstances — a place “where friendships could be consecrated, and sad hearts renewed and cheered, a place of light and joy and brotherhood and peace.” Clayton managed to rent out a townhouse in Poperinghe from a wealthy local brewer for 150 francs a month. The house had been damaged by shell fire — the loft in particular needed repairs. The Royal Engineers did this work, and by December 1915 the sanctuary was ready to be opened. 

The house was named Talbot House in memory of Lieutenant Gilbert W. L. Talbot, age 23, who was the brother of Reverend Talbot. Gilbert was serving with 7th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, when he was killed at Hooge Chateau in the Ypres Salient on 30 July 1915. It soon became known by its intials with the "T" pronounced as "Toc," the British Army signalers' code for "T." Rank counted for nothing in Toc H and the house was open to those who were about to go up to the front line as well as to those who had a break from the frontline trenches.  A notice was hung by the front door bearing the message "All rank abandon, ye who enter here.”

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A chapel was made in the loft. A carpenter’s bench was used as a makeshift altar and it remains in the loft to this day. Whereas the rooms downstairs were full of song and laughter, the chapel was different. Clayton was very aware that many of the men who arrived for a service would be killed in battle. He was also aware that many of the men who arrived for one of his services also knew that their chance of survival on the front line was very small. Clayton described these services as “difficult."

As much as was possible given the proximity to the front lines, Clayton tried to produce a "home-from-home" effect. Harry Patch, "the Last Fighting Tommy," described it as “ ‘the haven’ because that’s exactly what this place was to the men – a place of peace where you could relax, and that’s the only time you could forget the strains of war for a couple of hours.”

When the Great War was over, Monsieur Camerlynck, the hop merchant, returned. However, he was overwhelmed by the number of ex-soldiers who came knocking at the door to see the old house again and put it up for sale. In 1929 Lord Wakefield of Hythe bought the house for £9,200 and donated it to the Talbot House Association, a British-Belgian association that still keeps the site open. There is also an international charitable association know as Toc H inspired by the work of Tubby Clayton.

Sources:  Talbot House, GreatWar.co.uk, HistoryLearningSite websites

Kaiser Bill: Before and After

Here are some interesting images of Kaiser Wilhelm that we presented in our magazine Over the Top a few years ago. Nothing new here, but I think as a set they slightly broaden the stereotype portrayal of him.

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Wilhelm with his father on a visit to Balmoral Castle; As a Student at Bonn University, the New Kaiser Exchanging Salutes with His Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck

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A Happy Kaiser and Proud Father on Parade with His Sons; with Winston Churchill at Prewar Military Maneuvers; near the End, the Forlorn Kaiser in Exile 

21 November 1916: RMHS Britannic, Sister Ship of Titanic, Lost at Sea

RMHS Britannica

The White Star Line didn't have much luck with giant ocean liners, much as they tried to build them for safety as well as opulence. The Titanic went down in spite of engineers' efforts to build a shipwreck-proof vessel. And in the wake of that disaster, the shipbuilders retrofitted Titanic's sister ship, the Britannic, with special design features — including a double hull — to ensure that it would not suffer the same fate. But, ironically, on 21 November 1916 it sank three times FASTER than the Titanic. It disappeared under the water off the Greek island of Kea, at 9:07 a.m., roughly and hour after an explosion damaged her.

Four years after the Titanic sank, the HMHS Britannic, then serving as a hospital ship,  suffered a mysterious explosion off the coast of the island of Kea in the Aegean Sea. It was during the First World War, and she had been converted to a hospital ship. Off of Kea, experts are pretty certain, the Britannic struck a submerged mine about ten feet below the waterline. (The possibility that a torpedo, rather than a mine, felled the ship has not been disproved, but most experts believe it was a mine.) The ship took on water quickly, developing a list to starboard. In only 55 minutes, she lay beneath 400 feet of seawater, fortunately having lost only 30 of the 1,125 crew and medical personnel aboard.

The Society of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering think they know why. The society's Marine Forensics Panel has examined the factors that helped to bring the Britannic to such a swift, plunging end. Surprisingly, one of the most deadly may have been the decision to open the ship's portholes in order to air out the inside. Unfortunately, they did so in waters where the Kaiser's submarines had laid mines the previous month.

Source:  PBS Website

WWI Collectibles—A Case Study: The Photographs of Dr. Giulio Andreini, Italian Army

The Photographic Archive of Dr. Giulio Andreini

and How I Came to Own It

By Doug Frank

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Dr. Andreini, Left, and a Recovering Patient

[Editor's note:   Collectors are a big part of the World War I community. They help keep interest in the war alive and preserve its heritage.  On 26 July we presented some of the photos of the Italian Front from Dr. Andreini's collection. The response from our readers was very positive and I thought some more photos from the collection, and Doug Frank's story of how he came into possession of it would make a fine article. So here it is.  MH]

Photographic negatives made on glass plates always have been a fascination of mine. The often uneven edges of a glass plate seem to give me the sense that the image actually is emerging from the blackness of time past — a true artifact. I began collecting a varied group of such plates many years ago. eBay has been my primary source, although wherever I come across one of these I look at it very carefully. The majority of my glass plate collection was made by anonymous photographers. The human subjects, too, are mostly anonymous and long dead.

I am a career photographer and am quite familiar with the use of high-end scanners as well as various types of image editing software. Film has always been my number one medium, although digital cameras have become a necessity to me in recent years. In 2004, I came upon an auction on eBay for several vintage glass negatives of a medical nature. There were two that caught my eye. One was a 9cm x 12cm portrait of a nurse, and the other was a 13cm x 18cm negative of a medical procedure involving a woman and four doctors. I came to own both of these photographs after winning the two auctions.

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Classic World War I Pose

A few weeks after this sale, I received an e-mail from the dealer who had sold me these plates. He was located in Los Angeles. He explained that he had come upon the archive of an Italian physician named Giulio Andreini, who lived his adult life during the first third of the twentieth century. The dealer had found this archive in Lucca, Italy, and purchased the entire collection from an antiquarian there. However, he went on to say that he had only been interested in negatives of a medical nature, although he was obliged by the antiquarian to purchase the entire archive in order to obtain the images that he wanted. In fact, he still owned about 1,400 glass plates made by this physician but had sold the ones he wanted to sell and had no further interest in the remaining archive, so he asked me if I would like to purchase all 1,400 for $500.

From his description, there were about 250 small glass plates of WWI. The rest appeared to be family photographs, portraits, and others made in hospitals. I went ahead with the purchase. The sizes of the plates range from 4.5cm x 6cm to 18cm x 24cm. The majority measured 4.5cm x 6cm, and virtually all of the war photographs were made in this format. There is one interesting aspect about the WWI plates. Many have very jagged edges. My guess is that 9cm x 12cm plates were the most readily available, but Dr. Andreini’s camera used 4.5cm x 6cm plates, so he probably broke the 9 x 12 plates into quarters somehow, thus giving him the ability to use them in his small camera. This camera was a Contessa Nettel Duchessa, produced in Germany from 1913 to 1925. It was about the size of a modern 35mm camera and could be used either handheld or on a stand.

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The Contessa Nettel Duchessa Camera

After receiving Dr. Andreini’s archive from Los Angeles, I did a quick survey of it, looking at every negative. My first conclusion was that this man was a superb amateur photographer. My second conclusion was that his WWI plates deserved to be seen by people other than just me.

I then attempted to find information on Dr. Andreini and if he had any relatives living. So I Googled “Giulio Andreini.” The first hit was the website of a “Giulio Andreini, Photojournalist, Siena, Italy.” When I opened the site there appeared a photograph of this Giulio, aged 44. I knew that I was on the right track. Dr. Andreini had made many self-portraits, and this man looked just like him! So I e-mailed the young Giulio and asked if he had a relative who had been a physician in Florence, Italy, in the early twentieth century as well as an amateur photographer. The e-mail I received back confirmed my suspicions.

Yes, he said, his grandfather was named Giulio Andreini, and, yes, he had been a physician as well as a photographer, but all of his work had been lost in 1937. This was the family lore as he knew it. In fact, the Andreini family possessed just a single photograph of the doctor! The young Giulio wondered, however, as to how in the world I could possibly be in the possession of any his grandfather’s photographic material. After all, I lived in Oregon, half a world away from where the photographs had last been seen, in Florence, in the doctor’s medical office there sixty years before. So I suggested to Giulio that I send him one of the self-portraits from the archive, and he then could confirm or not whether the man was, indeed, his grandfather. I sent the photograph and he responded with a resounding “YES!”

Please refer now to Roads to the Great War and a post from Friday, 26 July 2013.

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It contains a biography written about Dr. Andreini by his son, Giorgio. The last sentence of the biography refers to an episode described in my next paragraph. Giorgio has since passed away. Dr. Giulio Andreini passed away in 1937 from acute leukemia rather suddenly at the age of 49 years. After his death, his widow, Georgette, went to the hospital where he had worked, taking her thirteen-year-old son, Giorgio, along with her. She asked the nuns who ran the hospital if she could please collect all of her husband’s personal items, such as his photographic material as well as several books of poetry that he had written.

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Helping a Dog Cross a Trench on the Asiago Plateau

One of the nuns informed Georgette that the hospital had destroyed everything of a personal nature that had belonged to him, presumably, and in her words “for the good of the family.” The ensuing conversation became quite intense according to Giorgio, but the nuns held firm. The photographs were gone. “For the good of the family” could have had any number of meanings, but I like to think that the nuns were trying to protect the Andreini family from possible repercussions from the dictatorial government in Italy during that time. This was, after all, 1937, and the fascists under Mussolini were running Italy. It is known that many of Dr. Andreini’s poems were satirical and critical of the government as well as the Catholic Church. This material, if seen by government officials, possibly could have presented the family with big problems.

I culled about 350 glass plates from the archive, mainly family pictures, and sent these as scans to the young Giulio. He went on to make prints of these images for all of his relatives and was able, with the help of his father, to reconstruct the history of the Andreini family. He has since even found a previously unknown branch of relatives in the Milan area and has made contact with them.

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Two Towns:  Unidentified Town on Italian Front, Left; Château-Thierry, Western Front

So the archive of Dr. Giulio Andreini had never been destroyed after all. It probably was sold or given away by the nuns to someone who kept it in a safe place, where it remained undisturbed for the next sixty years. It then resurfaced intact and fell into the hands of the antiquarian from Lucca, who sold it to a dealer in Los Angeles. Then I purchased it and still am holding all 1,400 of the glass plates. Although I own the publishing rights to this work, I am in the process of finding a permanent home for the archive. If possible, I would like this home to be in Italy. His poetry, however, remains lost. As a final note, the young Giulio and I have become good friends over the years. My wife and I visited him in Siena in 2006 and reconnected with him again this past June while we both were traveling in France.

Presented here  is a second group of images for the readers of Roads to the Great War  from his series on WWI, which he photographed while working at a field hospital on the Italian Front between 1915 and 1917. He had been transferred to the French Front when the war ended.

Doug Frank
Portland, Oregon
August 2013

The Great War and Modernism Series The Great War and the Language of Modernism Reviewed by Jane Mattisson Ekstam

The Great War and the Language of Modernism

By Vincent Sherry Published by Oxford and New York,
Oxford University Press, 2003
War and language belong together. When the language of the prevailing ideology cannot express major changes in society and culture, a new language must be invented. By reading modernist literature in the context of its historical period, Vincent Sherry demonstrates that the liberalism of prewar Britain was in the process of disintegration. Modernists such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Virginia Woolf imitated, exaggerated, and parodied this disintegration by pushing language to its limits as they experimented with new turns in syntax, grammar, and diction. Imaginative language is the hallmark of the great modernist writers, whose primary purpose was to give expression to the apprehension of the exceptional times before, during, and after the war. The impact of modernism on writing during and after the war, claims Sherry, has been ignored by two of the most important writers of our time — Paul Fussell (The Great War and Modern Memory, 1975) and Jay Winter (Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History, 1995).

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The shaping occasion of modernist literature was wartime London. Eliot, Pound, and Woolf took it upon themselves to, as Sherry claims, "develop a register to echo and inflect the prodigal logic of Liberal war policy." Modernism was the first massive reversal that history inflicted on liberal rationalism. Its language can only be understood by relating it to the historical moment in which it was born.

The modernists needed to maintain a special critical edge to the forces of liberalism prevailing before and during the war. The Americans Pound and Eliot, with their alien status, enjoyed a privileged position in this regard. British Woolf, like other feminist writers, managed to exercise a well-practiced skepticism on the language of nationalist politics — politics from which women were still disenfranchised in early 1918.

As Sherry so eloquently demonstrates, liberalism was discredited by World War One. Its decline and death were as inevitable as they were agonizing. The agony propelled a revolution against liberal rationalism, thereby creating a space and a reason for experimentation in language. The literature which came out of this space was imaginative, daring, and highly experimental. Among its chief creators were T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Virginia Woolf. Sherry's analysis of Woolf's contributions to the modernism movement is particularly persuasive. In his discussion of To the Lighthouse (1927), for example, he argues that there is a calculated mismatch of language and reality, which reiterates and amplifies "the subtle but truest motif in the ordeal that recent history has featured." Sherry concludes that Woolf both recognizes and represents "the failing grasp of an older rational language," demonstrating that history cannot be reduced to the order and schemes of reasoned speech, i.e. language. The foundation for this realization was the upheaval of World War One. Woolf's imaginative awareness is not unique, it is shared by the other modernists, but is, argues Sherry, particularly powerful.

Bruegel's Triumph of Death

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Bruegel's 1562 Premonition of the Western Front or Eliot's Waste Land, or Both?

Scholarly in language and approach, Sherry's examination of modernism is also highly readable and refreshingly daring. Copiously annotated and illustrated, The Great War and the Language of Modernism is essential reading for those who wish to understand not only the thinking prevailing in the second decade of the nineteenth century, and particularly immediately before and during World War One, but also the language which evolved out of this thinking — a language which has produced some of the finest works of literature: Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) and Prufrock and Other Observations (1920), Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925), and Pound's The Cantos (1915–1962) and Homage to Sextus Propertius (1917).

Jane Mattisson

On the Home Front: The Butte Montana Copper Mines

Contributed by Jim Patton

Miners Going Under at Butte

When war came in 1914 one of the most strategic materials was copper. The world was already in a copper boom due to the need for electrical wire. The supply was tight and new production slow to come on line due to the high capital costs of new mines. In 1914 the U.S. mines contributed 77 percent of the world’s copper, and 31percent of U.S. production was from Butte, Montana, which sat atop an ore body that was 50 to 80 percent copper, the richest in the world, and also containing important amounts of zinc, lead, manganese, and molybdenum.

Needless to say, the price of copper skyrocketed, going from 15.22 cents per pound in 1913 to a high of 27.2 cents per pound in 1916. After the U.S. entered the war the price was fixed at 23.5 cents per pound. With production costs under 10 cents per pound the profits could truly be called extraordinary. The Butte mines were already running at capacity, but the operators ramped up output by going deeper and putting on bigger work crews. Some shafts were lowered a thousand feet, about 20 percent more miners were sent down, and of course the shafts ran 24 hours a day. Maintenance and expansion had to be done while running at high output.

This led to accidents. During the war at least 437 miners died underground in Butte. On 8 June 1917 a fire caused by maintenance work in the Speculator Shaft killed at least 164 miners (some records say 169) in that shaft and the adjacent Granite Mountain Shaft, as they were connected at several levels. This accident was the worst ever in a non-coal mine in the U.S. and the fourth-worst in any kind of mine. Although there had been other accidents in Butte (for example, on 9 October 1915 sixteen miners had died in the same Granite Mountain Shaft), the huge death toll stunned the community and even the nation.

Both shafts were badly damaged and several others had to be shut down due to carbon monoxide build-up. The mine owners encouraged speculation that the fire was sabotage to limit production. The person suspected of starting the fire was a German immigrant named Ernst Sullau, but no evidence of a German plot was ever found. Organized labor never bought into this theory at all, feeling that the cause was disregard for safety and a strike was called that further crippled production until the end of the year.

The Speculator Shaft After the Disaster

Due to minor disturbances, including anti-war protests by Irish and Hungarian miners, the state militia had already been called out in April to guard property and maintain order. Among them was my great-great uncle, Sgt. T. J. Coberly, a 45-year-old who had served in the Philippines during 1898–99.

But it was decided that spies and strikes were way beyond the capabilities of men like Tom Coberly and regular soldiers were needed. Units of the 14^th Infantry Regiment, fresh from service on the Mexican border, were rushed to Montana. In addition to responsibility for guarding mine properties, the regular army units were tasked with "enforcing patriotism."

As the strike continued, a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World named Frank Little came to town.  After a bombastic speech Little was murdered by persons unknown. Soldiers were among the suspects, but no one was ever charged with the crime.

The federal occupation of Butte lasted until 1921. A Justice Department report later stated that "troops in Butte changed from a fair, restrained body of men to an unrestrained, vicious and violent body of men carrying on a veritable reign of terror."  Other consequences of these events were also far-reaching. Sedition Acts were passed to prevent speeches like those delivered by Little and many labor leaders and socialists were arrested, including Eugene V. Debs. 

Production of copper in Butte never again reached the 1916 levels. A serious national shortage was averted by the rapid expansion of the Bingham Canyon pit in Utah, the beginning of the large-scale strip mining that many consider to be the greatest environmental disaster of the twentieth century.

Did I mention that from January until September 1918 the troops in Butte were commanded by Capt. Omar N. Bradley?

Omar Bradley During the War

99 Years Ago: Quotes from November 1914

In the distance the battle thunders grimly on,

Day and night, groaning and grumbling non-stop,

And to the dying men patiently waiting for their graves.  

It sounds for all the world like the words of God.

Wilhelm Klem, November 1914

Should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in twenty or thirty years a million Jews out there, perhaps more, they would develop the country, bring back civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal.

Chaim Weizmann letter to the Manchester Guardian, November 1914

At the start of August, I was flayed by the apparition of War, of the War God. . .now the war has become invisible to me.  A visiting spectre. . . all that is left now is for the soul to endure it, agony and catastrophe are perhaps no more common than before, only more real, more active, more visible.

Rainer Maria Rilke, letter, November 1914

I have no complaints whatever to make about the response to my appeals for men.  But I shall want more men and still more, until the enemy is crushed.

Lord Kitchener, 9 November 1914

To the German soldiers:

It is not true that we French are shooting or mishandling German prisoners.  On the contrary, our prisoners are treated well and have enough t eat and drink.  Those of you who are weary of your wretched existence can safely report yourselves unarmed to French advance posts.  You will be well received.  After the war every one will be allowed to return home.

French pamphlet, dropped by aircraft, November 1914

The trenches my regiment was holding were rushed by the Cossacks on the night of 6 September.  It was about 11:30 when they attacked us.  I can remember being hit by one horse and knocked down.  While I lay I saw a second Cossack reach down to finish me.  He got me in the hip, but as he struck me I fired my revolver. I remember  seeing him fall and the riderless horse gallop on. Then I became unconscious.

Fritz Kreisler, 29 November 1914 Interview

Reason died in 1914, November 1914. . . after that everybody began to rave.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, North (1960 novel)