It Was a War of Entrenchments—But Never Entirely

By John Terraine

Earliest Trenches on the Western Front, Aisne Sector, 1914

There are, undoubtedly, close resemblances between this field entrenchment warfare, and siege warfare—so close in fact that the British Official Historian, Sir James Edmonds, insists that trench warfare was really only siege warfare by another name, and that giving it another names was actually mischievous. He tells us:

“A fresh vocabulary was created to meet that supposed new conditions. Instead of using the old-fashioed word ‘breach’, the higher commands called upon the troops to make a ‘gap’; a ‘retrenchment’ became a ‘switch’; a ‘sap’ was not made by sapping; ‘mining’ was renamed tunneling; ‘subsidiary’ attacks, were demonstrations that could not possibly be developed into a ‘break-through’, took the place not only of ‘false’ attacks, but also of the minor attacks of old days; and the new words were misleading. The Germans stuck closer to the older methods …”

Well, I think Sir James Edmonds was right to be critical of this habit—which proves to be characteristic of the twentieth century—knowing better than previous generations, changing the names of things for the sake of change, and causing a great deal of confusion thereby.

But I think he is wrong on the large point. Siege warfare, after all, is no novelty; one of the very earliest military operations of which we have an extended account was a siege—the 10-year siege of Troy by the Greeks in the 12th century B.C. History has been sprinkled with famous sieges ever since. World War II affords a number of examples—Malta, Tobruk, Sebastopol, Stalingrad spring to mind. A somber turning point of affairs in Vietnam was marked by the siege of Dien Bien Phu.

There is no mystery about sieges; they are what happens when one side is trapped by the other in a position from which it cannot retreat, where it cannot be reinforced, and where it cannot be supplied (or can only be supplied with very great difficulty). The classic form of a siege is, of course, to surround the enemy force completely.

None of these conditions applied to the Western Front.

From the end of 1914 the Germans always had plenty of enemy territory to retreat in, if it suited them; not until they ran out of manpower at the very end did they run short of reinforcements and they were always able to supply their army. The Western Front was not a siege, whatever Sir James may say. It was a war of field entrenchments—and there was nothing new about that either.

The first regular use of them, I should say, was by the Romans, who used to dig in at the end of every days’s march, constructing a fortified camp surrounded by a ditch and a parapet. The Duke of Marlborough knew all about field entrenchments and he suffered very sever casualties indeed when he tried to rush the French of of theirs at Malplaquet. Napoleon’s Grand Army suffered heavy losses attacking the Great Redoubt at Borodino in 1812

Union Trenches Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia

But the most outstanding war of field entrenchments was the American Civil War, especially in its latest stages. Like the Romans, both sides in America habitually dug in when they took up new positions, making lavish use of timber, which there was plenty available, to construct the parapets, and chopping the branches—they were called “slashings”—to make the same sort of obstacle that barbed wire later served to supply only too well.

European soldiers, before 1914, paid very little attention to the American Civil War, because they thought is was a performance by amateurs. It received much more notice in Britain Colonel G.F.R. Henderson, whose biography of Stonewall Jackson is still the classic work on him today, was Chief Instructor at the Staff College when the “top brass” of World War I were students there. Unfortunately though, military science at that time tended to concentrate far more on “Great Captains” and “The Art of War” than on such mundane subjects as muck-shifting-which is what the business of entrenching is mostly about.

And so, for reasons with which I should think we are all pretty familiar in this room, the armies took to their field entrenchments in 1915 as they had done in Virginia in 1864–65, and they stuck in them for three years.

Those three years have been allowed to form the image of the whole war - that’s where the stereotype comes in and when people speak of its “standard tactics” they are always thinking of trench warfare. This is quite wrong, and I hope this association will do all it can to discourage that error.

Even within the trench warfare period itself, it is really absurd to speak of “standard tactics;” the whole time from 1915–1917 was one of constant change, constant experiment to try to overcome the astonishing deadlock brought about by the simple fact that the trench line extended from the sea to Switzerland, with no open flanks anywhere that could be turned

Post Trench Warfare: German Assault, Spring 1918

That, at least, was unique.

But year by year the attempt was made to overcome this overwhelming difficulty.

Source: John Terraine’s 1983 Address to the Western Front Association

Don't Miss Your September 2020 ST. MIHIEL TRIP-WIRE

Don't Miss 

Our August 2020 St. Mihiel Trip-Wire

http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/smtw.htm

Main Focus: 

Belgium's Critical Contributions in 1914

• Editor's Introduction: Bravo Belgium
• To the Yser, Part I: Retreat from Antwerp
• King Albert's Message to Parliament
• The Wrath of Big Bertha

• To the Yser, Part II: Flooding the Lowlands
• Albert I, King of the Belgians & National Hero
• The Strain of Occupation
• 11 Belgium 1914 Links
• 
  

Other Topics:

• 100 Years Ago: Poland's Victory in the Battle of Warsaw
• The Menin Gate Last Post Ceremony Goes On
• WWI Film Classic: The Heritage of Love
• Plus all our regular updates and features

Next Month:  The 100th Anniversary of the Antwerp Olympic Games

Have a great September,

Mike and the Editorial Team

Recommended: World War I and the Zipper

By Cynthia Green

Originally Published in the JSTOR Daily, 24 January 2018

From jeans to suitcases to sofa covers to boots, chances are we’ve all used more than one “slide fastener” (AKA “zipper”). Hard as it is to imagine life without them, zippers have  been around for only about 100 years.

The actual idea of a sliding fastener is attributed to Elias Howe, an American inventor who worked on the first sewing machine. In 1851 he patented his idea, but he did nothing with the patent, too busy promoting the sewing machine.

According to Lewis Weiner, writing in Scientific American, in 1893 an entrepreneur called Whitcomb L. Judson secured “two U.S. patents for an automatic closing device actuated by a slide mechanism.” He called it the “Clasp Hooker.” The following year he set up a company with a lawyer named Lewis A. Walker to actually make it. By 1904 they had improved the design, patented a machine to make it, and come up with the slogan: “A Pull and It’s Done.” And in 1906 they hired a Swedish-American engineer called Gideon Sundback to continue innovations. But the idea didn’t fly. The fasteners had sharp and awkward hooks. They tore fabric, and they even popped open.

Then, in 1917, Sundback applied for his own patent. His fastener looked very much like our modern zipper, in that it was metallic and hookless. In expectation, Walker raised more capital, reincorporated as the Hookless Fastener Company, and set himself up as president. That same year, a New York City tailor called Robert J. Ewig put Hookless Fasteners into money belts.

The money belt became an instant success among WWI U.S. sailors, whose uniforms did not have pockets. Almost all the Hookless Fastener Company’s 24,000 sales that year were for the money belts. And in 1918, the Navy ordered fasteners for 10,000 flying suits.

1917 Zipper (Separable Fastener) Patent Application

Public interest was now growing. In 1923, Sundbeck patented a new fastener-making machine that left no waste, and B.F. Goodrich put the fasteners in their rubber boots. This let people close their boots quickly, and with one hand. The word “zip” had appeared in the mid-1800s, meaning to “move rapidly.” It is possible that this influenced B. F. Goodrich’s choice of a name for the boot. They called the model “zipper,” and trademarked the name.

By the time of the Great Depression, the boots were no longer popular, but the name “zipper” and the public’s love of the new fastener stayed. By 1934, Hookless Fastener Company’s turnover exceeded 60 million pieces, and on the other side of the world, Tadao Yoshida formed the Japanese company that the world would come to know as YKK. (Go on, check your zipper. What does it say?)

With the end of WWII, destroyed German zipper factories and polymer advancements led to the development of plastic zippers. Inventors from Germany to Australia to the United States applied for patents to refine the manufacturing process. By the 1970s, annual zipper production was in excess of two billion, and by the 1980s, the industry leader was YKK.

Today, sliding fasteners still move into new areas. Medical zippers now sometimes replace sutures. And at the March 2017 Los Angeles Fashion Week, Talon presented the world’s longest zipper. It is 3.1 miles long.

An Outstanding Trench Art Specimen

 

Click on Image to Enlarge

Above are two images of a German 77mm shell casing turned into a memento of the battle for Montfaucon. One side has been inscribed with "Montfaucon 1918" and the Corps of Engineers castle insignia in relief on an embossed background. The reverse is decorated with "304th E." [Engineer Regiment] and the badge of its parent formation, James M. Cain's 79th Division (a Cross of Lorraine within a shield) on an embossed background. Cain mentions these engineers several times in his account. This specimen is from the collection of trench art expert and author Jane Kimball. She has published an outstanding source book on her specialty, Trench Art: An Illustrated History.

 

Episode 9 of BBC's Great War Series

 

Please God send us a victory

 

Football in a Time of Pandemic: The Nittany Lions in 1918

Having been a fan of my college's football team for over a half century, I have been VERY  annoyed recently over the Big 10 (you know, the conference that can't count; it actually has 14 teams) decision not to play football this year. This means for the first time since my undergrad days  I will not be able to follow my Penn State Nittany Lions throughout the fall.

I first thought that I might be able to fill this gnawing gap in my life by vicariously temporarily adopting another program. Being a former USAF veteran and 90-day Wonder, my first candidate was the Fighting Falcons of the Air Force Academy, but then I discovered they only planned to play two games in 2020.  I next auditioned the LSU Tigers, because they're the defending champions and lions and tigers are sort of cousins. Then, however, it dawned on me that I needed some school with a substantial and positive connection to Penn State. The "positive" part of that ruled out the two Pennsylvania school that is playing this year, Temple and the University of Pittsburgh. Believe me, though, those folks really, really hate Penn State. 

After a nationwide search of the limited number of colleges that are playing football in 2020, I could only come up with one final candidate—the Kansas State Wildcats. What do the two schools have in common, besides feline mascots, you ask? Well, there are two other connections, one weak, one strong. Both are land grant colleges, but that's not unique amongst the teams that are being allowed to play this year. The strong connect is Milton Eisenhower, one of America's greatest educators.  Ike's brother was a trans-formative president of both universities and was a hero of my favorite Penn State professor, Earl P. Strong. Most important, upon arriving in State College, Dr. Eisenhower encouraged the newly hired head football coach, the great Rip Engle, who had brought along an assistant from Brown named Joe Paterno. The one time President of Kansas State University, therefore, is strongly linked to the next 70 years of rarely crappy, usually pretty good, and sometimes great Penn State football.

So, for a week, or so, I really tried to absorb the power of the Kansas State purple, reading about  recent Wildcat squads, the team's 2020 prospects, learning the lyrics to the "Wabash Cannonball," and so forth.  Sadly, it did not take. I found I could not pledge allegiance to a school I've never attended or even visited. Finally, after wandering the football desert for over a week, in my slumber I dreamed one night I found myself back in State College, Pennsylvania. But I must have tripped over Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine somewhere, because the only building I recognized was Old Main, and all the students were in army uniforms. I asked on of the cadets what year it was. He replied, "1918, Sir!" And then I asked, "Is the football team, playing this year?" "Damn right, sir," he replied, "as soon as this Spanish flu gets behind us." When I woke, I decided my vicarious team for the 2020 football season would be the 1918 Penn State Nittany Lions.  Researching that season, though, turned out to be a challenge.

This is what I've discovered about that immortal squad since I've awakened. The Penn State Collegian (Penn State’s student newspaper at the time) didn’t issue any copies between May 1918 and December 1918, so I've had to draw on other sources. Incidentally, the Collegian triumphantly returned on 8 January 1919, with a headline reading, “College Assumes Normal Aspect,”

The 1918 Penn State Squad

An April 2020 Article from the York, PA, Record sets the stage nicely:

Penn State had nine games scheduled in 1918, but the combination of World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic compelled the cancellation of five games. The nine originally scheduled 1918 football opponents were: Muhlenberg, Gettysburg, at Washington and Jefferson, at Dartmouth, Lebanon Valley, at Cornell, Rutgers, at Lehigh, and at Pittsburgh. However, by summer, Penn State’s entire varsity football team had enlisted in the armed services, including head coach Dick Harlow. The same happened at many other colleges, such that several schools canceled football outright.  

The War Department heavily encouraged intramural sports at colleges, since they found one-third of draftees were being rejected as physically unfit. They also encouraged intercollegiate sports to continue, if at all possible. Penn State decided to move forward with football after they hired future Hall of Famer Hugo Bezdek as Director of Massed Athletics, with him also taking on the job as head football coach.

New Beaver Field

Penn State’s opening day home football game was called off with the news: “There will be no football at Muhlenberg College this fall. This announcement was made last night when the game scheduled with Penn State was officially called off. The changed conditions created by the new draft law caused the decision to give up football.” The following week’s home game against Gettysburg College was canceled for the same reason, though Gettysburg fielded a team later in the season. The away game against Washington and Jefferson was canceled as a precaution by health officials, due to the extent of Spanish flu in the Pittsburgh area.

The away game against Dartmouth, in New Hampshire, was canceled since the travel distance exceeded maximums specified by health officials. However on that Saturday, 19 October, Bucknell was available for a short trip to State College. The football teams were suiting up in their locker rooms, when health officials made the call canceling the game. Likewise, a home game the next Saturday against Lebanon Valley was canceled. Cornell had already made the decision to cancel its game, hosting Penn State at Ithaca, New York, on 2 November, prior to travel restrictions being relaxed. 

Action at Beaver Field

The Student's Annual La Vie for 1918 seems to provide the only details on the season as it was played out that have been preserved.

Incidentals:

Well, 1-2-1 is not an impressive record by any means. The tie with a bunch of sailors and the loss to Pitt are especially galling. But, as James Coburn's character said in Hard Times: "After playing and winning, next best is playing and losing." There was one notable freshman on the 1918 Penn State Squad.  Glenn Killinger doesn't appear in any accounts of the games, but he would go on to be an All American halfback in 1921 and future member of the College Football Hall of Fame. He would be a key player in the 30-game undefeated streak for Coach Bezdek's postwar Nittany Lions. The most famous opposing player was Rutgers's All-American End Paul Robeson, future gifted show business performer and ardent Communist. 

A Most Valuable Training Camp: Camp Crane, Allentown, PA

Click on Images to Enlarge

One of the most valuable training facilities for the AEF is long forgotten, except possibly by the citizens of Allentown, PA.  Camp Crane was a military installation established by the War Department at the Allentown Fairgrounds in May 1917. The 46-acre tract in west Allentown was turned into Camp Crane, the only training ground for the U.S. Army Ambulance Service during the First World War. It remained in use until April 1919. It was named for Brigadier General Charles Henry Crane, surgeon general of the Army, 1882–83.

Camp Entrance Signage

At the Fairgrounds

Barracks in the Former Poultry & Pigeon Building

 

Drilling at the Fairgrounds Grandstand

Company Section

Originally, Camp Crane's mission was to train men to serve as ambulance drivers in evacuating wounded from frontline aid stations to rear echelon hospitals. As months passed, base hospital units and other medical corps personnel also were trained there. Also, a special school was included for gas mask instructors. The camp was originally only intended to house approximately 2,500 men. Before the camp was brought up to full speed, however, that number had increased to 4,500 and then to 7,500. In all, 20,310 volunteers (2,085 officers and 18,225 enlisted) trained at Camp Crane. Among the volunteers who became notable figures was America's last Doughboy, Frank Buckles.

First Aid Dogs

Nurses in Training

Stretcher Practice

Knights of Columbus Hut

Practice Trenches

Graduation

Sources: the Lehigh Valley Morning Call, Allentown, PA; Wiki Commons

Recommended: The Beatty-Hipper Internment Correspondence

The arrangements for the surrender of Germany's major ships and submarines stipulated in the Armistice agreement of 11 November 1918 were highly complicated. Grand Fleet commander Admiral Sir David Beatty and Vice Admiral Franz Ritter von Hipper, commander-in-chief of the German High Seas Fleet, depended heavily on radio communications to effect the transfer of the ships. Correspondence began on the day of the Armistice and continued until the 24th of November. The surrender itself, designated Operation ZZ, took place on 21 November 1918.

First, Admiral Beatty needed to alert the fleet that an Armistice had been signed.

FROM - C IN C G F (Commander-in-Chief Grand Fleet)

TO - GENERAL

Date - 11-11-18

[Message:] The armistice has been signed but it is doubtful whether there is sufficient authority in Germany to enforce it. Hostilities are to be suspended with the exception that anti-submarine defense measures are to remain in force.

Next came some odd signals from Germany

FROM - NAUEN, GERMANY

TO - EIFFEL TOWER.

[Message:] Nauen wireless station in the hands of the soldiers and laborers council. Please send us your latest news.

/s/ Soldiers and Laborers Council.

FROM - NAUEN, GERMANY.

TO - BROADCAST.

Date - 11-11-18

[Message:] At 1020. Monday morning the Prime Minister made the following announcement: The Armistice was signed at five this morning and hostilities are to cease on all fronts at eleven this morning."

NAUEN WIRELESS SERVICE.

The next day, the two admirals finally connected:

FROM - C IN C BRITISH GRAND FLEET

TO - C IN C GERMAN HIGH SEAS FLEET

Date - 12-11-18

Time - 2255

[Message:] In order to arrange details for giving effect to terms of Naval Armistice suggest you send a Flag Officer, authorized as necessary, in Light Cruiser to a rendezvous will then be given. Reply on eight hundred metres. AR.

FROM - C IN C GRAND FLEET

TO - C IN C GERMAN HIGH SEAS FLEET.

Date - 12-11-18

Time - 2314

[Message:] Is message received?

FROM - C IN C GERMAN HIGH SEAS FLEET

TO - C IN C GRAND FLEET

[Message:] Received.

On 13 November, the process seems to be getting under way:

Vice Admiral Hugo Meurer

FROM - C IN C GERMAN HIGH SEAS FLEET

TO - C IN C BRITISH GRAND FLEET

Date - 13-11-18

Time - 1030.

[Message:] I have designated Vice Admiral Meurer as my representative. He is ordered to leave at 2 P.M. this afternoon on board the cruiser Konigsberg from Wilhelmshafen to proceed to rendezvous to be determined upon in the North Sea.

SMS Hindenburg Surrenders, 21 November 1918

Read the full correspondence in which the intricate details of the massive and unprecedented surrender are worked out here:

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/manuscripts/u-z/world-war-i-british-and-german-naval-messages-1918.html

Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command

Ace of the Black Cross

by Ernst Udet

Introduction by Richard Overy

Originally published as Mein Fliegerleben 

(My Flying Life), 1935

Frontline Books, 2020.

RG Head, PhD, Reviewer

Ernst Udet with His Fokker D.VII

We have been treated to a wealth of aviation memoirs and biographies over the centennial of the First World War. Ernst Udet was the second-highest German ace of the war with 62 victories (to von Richthofen's 80). This new release of Udet's classic by Frontline Books is his memoir describing his flying in the war and afterward in China, South America, Africa, and the United States. I first encountered this book while searching for German instances of battle fatigue, which none of the earlier German pilots wrote about. Udet's experiences, however, were life-like and revealing.

Ernst Udet was born in Frankfurt but moved to Munich, where at age 13 he helped found the Munich Aero-Club. In 1914 he tried to enlist but was turned down because of his short stature. Undeterred, he took private flying lessons and was accepted in the German Air Service in 1915 as an enlisted pilot. By January 1918 he had 16 victories and was asked by Manfred von Richthofen to join Geschwader 1 and command Jasta 11, von Richthofen's old squadron. With the target-rich environment of 1918, Udet's victory count continued to climb, peaking in August, when he downed 20 Allied aircraft. Two final downings in September brought his total to 62.

Udet lived through the war and became an acrobatic pilot at airshows and races and starred in several movies, traveling all over the world. He even came to Hollywood where he became the darling of the stars. Four later films and a video game feature his role in aerial combat.

In 1935 he published this memoir, and it sold over 600,000 copies the first year. You will enjoy this book. Udet's writing style is informal, as if you were sitting in a pub with him, having a drink together. His memoir is very informative about life in the fighter squadrons; I'd compare it to Cecil Lewis's Sagittarius Rising, Ian Mackersey's No Empty Chairs, and Peter Kilduff's Iron Man: Rudolph Berthold. Richard Overy's introduction gives additional facts about his later sad life under Hitler and Goering. This work is a great companion to Lance Bronnencant's Blue Max Airmen, Volume 15, which is dedicated to Udet.

RG Head, PhD, is the author of Oswald Boelcke: Germany First Fighter Ace and Father of Air Combat (Grub Street, 2016)

Creating the 42nd Rainbow Division

 

The Rainbow Division's Colors Unfurled for the First Time in France

When the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, it federalized National Guard divisions to quickly build up an Army. Sixteen National Guard divisions were planned for the AEF.  Large states like Pennsylvania and California had sufficient Guardsmen to man full divisions. Less populous states were pooled together with adjacent states to form a division, such as was the case with the 26th New England Division. 

42nd Division Troops Dealing with a Sniper

Here is a list of the states that contributed forces to the division:

In addition, Douglas MacArthur, then a major, suggested to William A. Mann, the head of the Militia Bureau, that he form another division from the non-divisional units of several states. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker approved the proposal and recalled Douglas MacArthur saying that such an organization would "stretch over the whole country like a rainbow." The division was created using units from 26 states and the District of Columbia. The name stuck, and MacArthur was promoted to colonel as the division chief of staff.

Sources: An American Soldier (George Browne) in World War I, Univ. of Nebraska Press: Wikipedia

Forming the St. Mihiel Salient

Source: The Americans in the Great War, Vol II.; Michelin & Company, 1920

Episode 8 of BBC's Great War Series

 

Why don't you come and help!

 

Remembering a Veteran: Cpl. Paul L. Albright, Medical Corps, Philippine Islands

The Army Will Make a Man or a Hobo Out of You

By Paul Albright Jr.

Paul Albright, Sr.

My father left home at 17 to seek his way in the world. In this case, “home” was a railroad boxcar sitting adjacent to the Colorado & Southern Railroad tracks alongside Fossil Creek, on the edge of Fort Collins, Colorado. The boxcar had been converted into a residence for my grandfather, a section foreman on the C&S, and his wife and two sons. 

In March 1919, Paul L. Albright traveled by train to Kansas City to enroll in the Sweeney Auto Mechanical School. After receiving his mechanic’s certificate, he visited friends and relatives in southern Illinois where he had been born in 1901. Less than three months after his 18th birthday—and without informing his parents—he enlisted for three years in the Army. Following basic training in Illinois, he was assigned to the medical corps and shipped to Fort Mills, which was located on Corregidor Island in Manila Bay in what was then the U.S. colony of the Philippines. (En route, his transport stopped at Vladivostok, Russia, for four days in August to deploy troops and supplies as part of the AEF intervention in Siberia.)

His mother was not happy that her oldest son had joined the Army without his parent’s knowledge or permission. In her letters, Retta Albright repeatedly raised the possibility of contacting military authorities to have him released and returned home. 

Fort Mills, Corregidor Island

For months, Albright tried to assure his parents that he liked the Army and his assignment as an ambulance driver on Corregidor Island; that he was well fed and adequately clothed; and that he was saving his wages. In January 1920, Albright, who had been promoted to corporal, noted the arrival of American soldiers who had been serving in frigid Siberia. This may have stirred a fervent, patriotic reaction to his mother’s persistent complaining about his having joined the Army. On 3 February 1920, he sent this handwritten letter to his mother:

The Army is all right and I don’t care who I tell it to. If any of those people go to saying anything against it, tell them that this is the reason I enlisted. I enlisted because I thought it my duty, I wanted to see some foreign country, I wanted to learn a trade, I wanted to serve my country. There are many young men (who) died in France in defence (sic) of the good old U.S.A. So, am I, or any other young man, any better than they?

It is absolutely necessary that we should keep the Philippine Islands guarded because they are ignorant and very weak. We are missionaries of civilization and Christianity, are we not? It is not that we do not love home and our loved ones, but that we do. These people ask our help. How can we refuse? 

Would Jesus refuse a lamb refuge from a lion? No! Then neither will we refuse the Islands refuge from Japan and Spain. Japan would jump on the islands the minute we left the harbor. This is the reason I enlisted, and also to help out my countrymen who were already here. We all (most of us) love home as good as well as any one, and it is true that the Army will make a man or a hobo out of you.

Despite this ardent declaration, his mother did not drop her objections. On 26 April 1920, Retta Albright wrote the adjutant general’s office in Washington that her son had left home at age 17, had joined the Army without her consent, and “I need my son at home. He is to (sic) young to be in the Army. I need his assistance at home very bad.” 

The adjutant general’s office denied her request since her son was 18 years old when he enlisted and there was no evidence that he was needed at home because of a death or disability in the family.

My father completed his military service in 1922 and utilized in civilian life the mechanical, telegraphy, and Spanish language skills that he had learned in the Army. And he did not become a hobo. 

What Might WWI Veteran C.S. Lewis Say About Our COVID Situation?

C.S. Lewis as a Student Cadet

(Keble College)

Here’s what C.S. Lewis said in 1948 about the mental shift required by living with the threat of the atomic bomb:

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

Recommended by Donna Wagner

CS Lewis's WWI Service

World War I broke out in 1914, just as Lewis was leaving school to be tutored privately by William Kirkpatrick, a family friend who had tutored Lewis's father. As an Irishman, Lewis was not compelled to serve in the British Army, but nevertheless he chose to volunteer, joining the thousands of men already fighting in France. Lewis completed his military training, and shortly before his 19th birthday he was shipped to the front line near Arras, France.

At first Lewis did enjoy the sense of brotherly love shared by his comrades in arms, and he was proud to be engaged on behalf of a patriotic and glorious cause. However, as he witnessed the death, disease, and destruction all about him, he came to lose a good deal of his idealism. After he was wounded by an exploding shell in April 1918, he was sent home to recover. The signing of the Armistice in November 1918 marked an end to the war and Lewis's military service. Shortly afterward, he returned to Oxford.

Source: Infoplease

WWI Artwork from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection

These works, none of which I've ever seen before (and I've seen a lot of WWI imagery), are from 15,000 digitized prints, drawings, and watercolors, of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection held at Brown University.  So far, I've been able to track down about 100 of the images that are related to the Great War.  Hopefully, more will be added to the specimens available for online viewing.  The collection can be searched by subject HERE.

Royal Field Artillery Officers Relaxing, Woodville

Austrian Infantry Attacking a Russian Village, Neumann

Le Guetteur (the Watcher) in Champagne, Herve

German Marine in Flanders Dunes, Unknown

French Mountain Artillery Column, von Schriltz

Trones Wood in Distance, Handley-Read

Attack of the Bersaglieri, Tallone

Their Own Home Folks, Ladies' Home Journal

Three Poilus, Coussens

Soup in the Trenches, Rockman