Now all roads lead to France and heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead returning lightly dance.
Edward Thomas, Roads

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Appreciating Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge Mysteries


Start Here with #1, Purchase HERE


Since 1996, the mother-and-son writing team of Carolyn and David Watgen—posing as Caroline and Charles Todd—have churned out nearly 40 critically acclaimed historical mysteries. Some two dozen star Inspector Ian Rutledge, a Scotland Yard detective active in the prewar period and the early 1920s, who served four years on the Western Front in between. Coincidentally,  all of the Rutledge cases have connections to the war that need to be understood before the case can be solved. The Watgen/Todd team also have a series featuring a World War I nurse named Bess Crawford, which I've not ventured to explore.  (I'm afraid I'm a committed Maisie Dobbs fan, and I fear getting my WWI nurses confused.) 



#3 My Current Read, Purchase HERE


War veteran Rutledge has severe shell shock. He unceasingly hallucinates the voice of Hamish MacLeod, a young Scottish corporal he was forced to execute for refusing to attack at the Somme. Almost immediately afterward, Rutledge was buried alive with the man’s fresh corpse by an explosion. Hamish's ghost, now on permanent haunting assignment in the back of Rutledge's brain, is a remarkable and unforgettable literary device. He provides a running commentary on Rutledge's cases, which is sometimes helpful, sometimes not. In times of stress, however, the frequently droll Hamish becomes extremely vindictive, and makes it impossible for Rutledge to think clearly. 


#24 Series Conclusion, Purchase HERE


I've probably read half the Rutledge set over the years, and I've never been disappointed.  After reading the initial volume, I've jumped around the series randomly, and that doesn't seem to make a difference. The plots are always challenging. The settings—most often English country villages—feel authentic. The World War One content is historically accurate or credible when made up to help the narrative along. Most pleasurable of all, I'm just very comfortable hanging around my old pals Inspector Rutledge and that irrepressible, entertaining, and irritating Hamish.  

Sadly, since all good things come to an end, the most recent volume A Game of Fear (#24) concludes the Rutledge series. Co-author Carolyn Watgen died in 2021. All the team's works remain in print, though—and I'm sure the books will be easy to find for years to come. I recommend all their works, but especially the three covers shown here. A full list of the books with synopses can be found on the authors' website HERE

Sources: StarnewsonlineCharlesTodd.com




Monday, March 18, 2024

Remembering a Veteran: Corporal John H. Pruitt, 6th Marines, 2nd Division (KIA), Medal of Honor


Corporal Pruitt


John Henry Pruitt was born on 4 October 1896 in Fallsville, Arkansas. He entered military service from Phoenix, Arizona, in May 1917. At a very early age, Pruitt, along with his family, moved to Jerome, Arizona, where his older brother was a blacksmith in the local mines. Little is known of Pruitt’s early years. It is believed that he attended school in Jerome before the family moved to Alhambra, a Phoenix suburb. He enlisted as a private in the U.S. Marine Corps on 3 May 1917 and joined the 6th Regiment of Marines in July 1917. He went overseas with the 78th Company, 6th Regiment.

He participated in engagements with the enemy at Chateau-Thierry, Bouresches, and Belleau Wood before he was gassed on 14 June 1918 and sent to a base hospital. Upon his recovery, he returned to the front and fought in the Marbache Sector, St. Mihiel, Thiaucourt, and later at Blanc Mont in the Champagne Sector. He was officially cited for bravery in action, near Thiaucourt, France, 15 September 1918, for aiding in the capture of an enemy machine gun.


Fellow Members of Pruitt's Unit, the 6th Marines


At Blanc Mont Ridge on 3 October 1918, Pruitt singlehandedly attacked two machine guns, destroying them and killing two of the enemy. He then captured 40 prisoners in a dugout nearby. This gallant Marine was killed the next day by shell fire while he was sniping at the enemy. It was his 22nd birthday. He was posthumously presented the Medal of Honor. Pruitt was also awarded the Purple Heart twice and both the Silver Star and Bronze Star four times.

John Henry Pruitt's remains were returned to the United States and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The United States Navy named a destroyer USS Pruitt (DD-347) in his honor in 1920. Pruitt Hall on Marine Corps Base Quantico is named for him.

Sources: Marine Corps University; Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Sunday, March 17, 2024

St. Paddy's Day Special: Irish-Americans and World War I Music


The Stirring Marching Song of the AEF
 by Irish-American George M. Cohan (PLAY)


By Sharon Mckinley, at the Library of Congress Website

WWI was a time of conflicting loyalties for Irish-Americans. Many still felt strong ties to the old country, and their feelings reflected the sentiments of friends and relatives back in Ireland. Still chafing under British rule, Irishmen from the South as well as the North nonetheless volunteered to fight in the British Army. Unionists supported the English cause from the start. Nationalist leaders were, on the whole, committed to helping England because home rule was in the process of being instituted, although it wasn’t finalized until after the end of the war. The Easter Rising of 1916 was a bitter event that didn’t make life easier for Irish volunteers, but by then thousands had enlisted and were serving in Europe. Some men joined out of economic necessity. Many joined because they felt that the Germans were a threat that must be stopped.



Irish-Americans, whether long-established citizens or new immigrants, felt the tug of the sentiments of their brethren across the seas. Many wanted the United States to remain neutral rather than fight alongside England, but once the U.S. entered the war, thousands joined the Armed Forces and served with distinction.

Much of the Irish-themed music published during and just after the war reflects a vision of bravery and skill in combat. For example, the 69th Infantry Regiment (New York), started in 1849 by Irish revolutionaries and still heavily Irish in 1917, attracted many recruits. Poet Joyce Kilmer fought in the 69th and died in France in 1918. There are many songs extolling the skill and bravery of this often-decorated unit. Known variously as the Fighting Sixty-Ninth or the Fighting Irish, their reputation was well deserved.

Other songs took a humorous view of the same fighting spirit, telling of what would happen after the war. There is more than one song in the Library’s collections with references to the Blarney Stone; Michael Fitzpatrick’s The Irish Volunteers (New York: Fitzpatrick Bros., 1917) features the German Kaiser kissing it under duress.



Edwin Forrest Kamerly’s The Irish Kaiser (Philadelphia: Edwin Forrest Kamerly, 1917) takes a similar approach, but with a vaudeville feel. By the time World War I started, the Irish had been established in the U.S. for a few generations, and were moving into the ranks of the skilled working class rather than occupying only the bottom rungs of society as unskilled laborers and domestic servants. Still, they were often portrayed as drunks and ne’er-do-wells. The cover of this song portrays an offensive stereotype of Paddy, the new “Kaiser.” His face is brutish. He’s slouched on a throne smoking, holding his shillelagh, while dressed in a German military uniform, complete with a shamrock in place of the Iron Cross. One has to wonder what the real goal of this song is: to extol the virtues of the Irish soldier, or to make fun of him. Despite the cover’s apparent racism, the lyric paints a humorous depiction of life in Germany after the Irish vanquish the foe.

In a different kind of performance, actor Al. H. Wilson toured in a musical play, The Irish 15th, which featured  Dave Reed’s The Irish will be There (New York: William Jerome Publishing Co., 1917), an upbeat account of all the Irish boys in the military, with a photograph of Wilson in uniform on the cover. 




You may be wondering why Harry Williams and Jack Judge’s famed It’s a Long Way to Tipperary is not among these songs. This chestnut in fact predated the war and became a marching song for soldiers in 1914. It has a delightful, if slightly convoluted history you can read about at the BBC 

Saturday, March 16, 2024

The Wartime Rats of Lucien Laforge


Scheduled for publication in 1917, The Rat Wins [Ronge-maille vainquer in French], written by Lucien Descaves and  illustrated by Lucien Laforge was banned in France for its antiwar and anti-military—(dare we say pro-rat)—stance. Thus, Descaves’ incendiary little work did not appear until 1920, when the censors finally waved their white flag and surrendered to reality. Lucien Laforge (1889–1952) was a French pacifist cartoonist associated with the libertarian movement. What the rats of these illustrations embody should not need explanation.









































Source: Ronge-maille vainquer [The Rat Wins] by Lucien Descaves, illustrated by Lucien Laforge; Amazon.com

Friday, March 15, 2024

13 Memorable Quotes from Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel




[Editor's Note:  I have drawn on Ernst Jünger's biography and writings a number of times over the years.  Click HERE to see a selection of those articles. MH]


1. We had come from lecture halls, school desks and factory workbenches, and over the brief weeks of training, we had bonded together into one large and enthusiastic group. Grown up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war.


2. Books and bullets have their own destinies.


3.  Throughout the war, it was always my endeavour to view my opponent without animus, and to form an opinion of him as a man on the basis of the courage he showed. I would always try and seek him out in combat and kill him, and I expected nothing else from him. But never did I entertain mean thoughts of him. When prisoners fell into my hands, later on, I felt responsible for their safety, and would always do everything in my power for them.


4. This was the home of the great god Pain, and for the first time I looked through a devilish chink into the depths of his realm. And fresh shells came down all the time.


5.  Even if ten out of twelve men had fallen, the two survivors would surely meet over a glass on their first evening off, and drink a silent toast to their comrades, and jestingly talk over their shared experiences. There was in these men a quality that both emphasized the savagery of war and transfigured it at the same time: an objective relish for danger, the chevaleresque urge to prevail in battle.


6. In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high.


7.  These moments of nocturnal prowling leave an indelible impression. Eyes and ears are tensed to the maximum, the rustling approach of strange feet in the tall grass in an unutterably menacing thing. Your breath comes in shallow bursts; you have to force yourself to stifle any panting or wheezing. There is a little mechanical click as the safety-catch of your pistol is taken off; the sound cuts straight through your nerves. Your teeth are grinding on the fuse-pin of the hand-grenade. The encounter will be short and murderous. You tremble with two contradictory impulses: the heightened awareness of the huntsmen, and the terror of the quarry. You are a world to yourself, saturated with the appalling aura of the savage landscape.


8.  Trench fighting is the bloodiest, wildest, most brutal of all. … Of all the war’s exciting moments none is so powerful as the meeting of two storm troop leaders between narrow trench walls. There’s no mercy there, no going back, the blood speaks from a shrill cry of recognition that tears itself from one’s breast like a nightmare.


9.   Leaving out trifles such as ricochets and grazes, I was hit at least fourteen times, these being five bullets, two shell splinters, one shrapnel ball, four hand-grenade splinters and two bullet splinters, which, with entry and exit wounds, left me an even twenty scars.


10.  What a beautiful country [Germany] was, and eminently worth our blood and our lives. Never before had I felt its charm so clearly. I had good and serious thoughts, and for the first time I sensed that this war was more than just a great adventure.


11.  We stand in the memory of the dead who are holy to us, and we believe ourselves entrusted with the true and spiritual welfare of our people. We stand for what will be and for what has been. Though force without and barbarity within conglomerate in sombre clouds, yet so long as the blade of a sword will strike a spark in the night may it be said: Germany lives and Germany shall never go under!


12.  A bloody scene with no witnesses was about to happen. It was a relief to me, finally, to have the foe in front of me and within reach. I set the mouth of the pistol at the man’s temple — he was too frightened to move—while my other fist grabbed hold of his tunic, feeling medals and badges of rank. An officer; he must have held some command post in these trenches. With a plaintive sound, he reached into his pocket, not to pull out a weapon, but a photograph which he held up to me. I saw him on it, surrounded by numerous family, all standing on a terrace. It was a plea from another world. Later, I thought it was blind chance that I let him go and plunged onward. That one man of all often appeared in my dreams. I hope that meant he got to see his homeland again.


13.  When once it is no longer possible to understand how a man gives his life for his country—and the time will come–then all is over with that faith also, and the idea of the Fatherland is dead; and then, perhaps, we shall be envied, as we envy the saints their inward and irresistible strength.

 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

The Great War Triggers an International Strike Wave


9 November 1918: Call for a Berlin General Strike


By Jay Winter

From: "The Second Great War, 1917-1923," Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar, Vol. 7. 2018


My argument is that  there was a fundamental difference in the way war was waged in 1914–17 compared to 1917–24. What separates these two phases is that prior to 1917, war mobilization entailed the forced unification of social classes and ethnic groups behind the war effort. To be sure, this effort succeeded in a muffling or masking of internal conflicts in order to provide the armies with the men and materiel needed for victory. After 1917, internal conflicts re-emerged, perhaps with added force because of their suppression over a period of three years, and turned a culture of war mobilization on both sides into a culture of war anxiety. The first aimed at unity; the second focused on internal divisions, hatreds, and resentments, some of long standing, some just invented.

In effect in early 1917, all combatants faced the emergence of a second war culture different from the culture of war mobilization of the first 20 months of the war. Alongside l’Union sacrée the suspension of partisan politics was a host of fractures, in which the suspicion or worse of one’s fellow countrymen provided the basis for attacks, rhetorical or physical, which had focused, in the first part of the war, on the foreign enemy. Now the enemy lived within, and posed a threat to the nation and the war effort. This was as true of Irishmen in revolt against Britain in 1916, as it was of Jews in  Imperial Germany, whose supposedly low levels of military participation became the subject of a botched army Census which wound up proving the  opposite. Jews were disproportionately present at the front. The Jew Census was quickly shelved, the archives destroyed, but the sentiments behind it festered. 

On the Ides of March 1917, with the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the old  order on both sides faced a new menace: the prospect of social unrest leading to revolution and civil war. The specter of trans-national class conflict intersecting with global military conflict, justifies our sense of rupture in the midst of the Great War. That threat fed the new culture of war anxiety, which emerged as the material and human toll the conflict exacted spiraled to unprecedented levels. What requires us to divide the war into two parts is this rupture, this sense that the bitterness felt about domestic traitors grew from early 1917 onward and deepened ominously after the Armistice of  November 1918. The politics of domestic division and hatred dominated political, economic, and social life for years thereafter. 

This difference between imperial and revolutionary perspectives was made blindingly explicit when, on 23 November 1917, the new Bolshevik regime in Russia published verbatim in Pravda documents from the tsar’s Foreign Ministry, producing undeniable evidence of the imperial future the Allies had in mind. These imperial ambitions became problematic when the United States entered the war in April 1917. President Wilson’s commitment to open diplomacy and the principle of national self-determination cut right across the imperial outlook and designs of the other belligerents. If tens of millions of men had suffered and died on both sides so that imperial power could change hands, then those betraying these nations at war were the liars and hypocrites in power. 

Multiple social divisions re-emerged in a deepened form, in this, the first phase of the second Great War, and on both sides. Independently of the Russian Revolution, domestic conflict broke out in industry. After three years of industrial mobilization, the first stage of a series of massive strike waves spread through Europe. [As shown in this graph] these strike waves lasted until roughly 1923. 


Click on Image to Enlarge

Scale on Left Represents Man-Hours Lost Due to Strikes


The phenomenon was both war-related in the way it reflected wartime inflation and inequality of sacrifice and followed secular trends. Since the 1880s, moments of major trade union growth were often followed by strike activity. The year 1917 presented no exception; there had been a massive influx into trade unions in all combatant countries after 1914. Furthermore, the intensity of the strikes in 1917 and after suggested that the postponement of workers’ demands on wages and conditions of labor, which had occurred in all belligerent countries and some neutral ones since 1914, acted like the lid of a pressure cooker. Inflation fueled the fire, and trade unions and other social groups, in particular women protesting shortages and  outrageous food and fuel prices, took to the streets or downed tools. They  did so despite understanding the desperate needs of the war machine. Indeed, the March revolution in Russia was triggered by a women’s protest over bread prices.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The U.S. Secret Service Goes to War



On May 14, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson directed the secretary of the treasury to have the Secret Service investigate espionage in this country in regard to alleged violations of the president’s Neutrality Proclamation, which noted in part that, “No person within the territory and jurisdiction of the United States shall take part, directly or indirectly, in the said war, but shall remain at peace with all the said belligerents and shall maintain strict and impartial neutrality.” As a result, before and after the U.S entered the war, the Secret Service investigated sabotage plots, food hoarding, illegal food monopolies, and individuals or businesses that traded food or commodities with the enemy.

President Wilson wanted the Secret Service to break up a German sabotage network that was plotting against France, England, and the United States. As a result, Secret Service Chief William J. Flynn established an 11-man counter-espionage unit in New York City. Their most publicized  investigation concerned the activities of a Dr. Albert and his infamous briefcase.


The Notorious Dr. Albert


In July 1915, Secret Service agents placed a German sympathizer and his acquaintance, Dr. Heinrich Friedrich Albert, under surveillance.  Dr. Albert, officially in America as commercial attaché and financial adviser to the Kaiser’s ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff, had diplomatic immunity. On 24 July, as the two targets parted company, Dr. Albert boarded a train in New York City and in his haste to get off at his stop, momentarily forgot his briefcase. An agent seized the brown case and managed to elude the panic-stricken Dr. Albert, who, realizing what had occurred, chased after him. Two days later an advertisement appeared in the newspaper offering a $20 reward for the case. Unfortunately for Dr. Albert, the evidence in the briefcase was the breakthrough that the Secret Service was seeking. The contents exposed intricate, organized plots to undermine the Allied cause.

Dr. Albert was found to be the principal financial agent of the German empire in the United States. His account books revealed that he had received more than $27 million from the German government to use in carrying out espionage-related activities. This included bombing munitions areas and factories manufacturing supplies for the allies, monopolizing the supply of liquid chlorine used for poison gas, and a plan to invade New York City.  

Heinrich Albert’s debut as a New York headline personality came on Sunday, August 15, when the World pieced together the nature of his business at 45 Broadway. Starting on page 1, the paper ran three pages of stories and documents bathing the German subversives in the light of publicity. Albert was portrayed as a meticulous, bookkeeping master spy through whom all chicanery cleared and who was principally concerned about getting value for his Kaiser’s money and maybe even making a profit. The United States took no official action against him, and when America entered the war he was returned to Berlin, where he was placed in charge of foreign assets in Germany. Albert was later an important official in the Weimar Republic.


Two Agents Guarding President Wilson in 1918


The Secret Service also continued to thwart counterfeiting and remained vigilant with its existing protective mission. That mission expanded in 1917 when Congress authorized protection for the president’s immediate family and enacted legislation that made it a crime to threaten the president by mail or any other manner. 


Food Administration Poster from the War


World War I brought other duties to the Secret Service. President Wilson established the U.S. Food Administration to prevent food hoarding and illegal food monopoly activity during the war years. On 15 September, 1917, President Wilson authorized the Secret Service to investigate any related violations. Thousands of violations were uncovered, some of which were sufficiently aggravated to be the subject of criminal prosecutions. In addition, the Secret Service assisted the War Trade Board in investigating more than 1,800 individuals and corporations to ensure that there was no trading of food or commodities with the enemy. 

Sources:  U.S. Secret Service publications; "The Thrifty Spy on the Sixth Avenue El," American Heritage, December 1965

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Haig's Intelligence: GHQ and the German Army 1916-1918


Purchase a Copy of the Title HERE


By Jim Beach
Cambridge University Press 2013
Reviewed by Dr. Jack Sheldon


Originally presented in the British Journal for Military History, Volume 1,  October 2014

Just occasionally a book appears which explores a genuinely new topic in great detail and adds substantially to our knowledge. Haig's Intelligence is one such. The fruit of meticulous research and presented in clear, elegant, language it is a worthy and much needed addition to the historiography of the First World War. In a series of firm, penetrating, chapters in Part 1, Jim Beach guides the reader through the complexities of Organisation, Leadership, Personnel, Frontline, Espionage, Photography, Signals and Analysis and then moves on in Part 2 to a series of fascinating case studies: Somme, Arras, Third Ypres, Cambrai, German Offensives and the Hundred Days.

Part 1 could potentially have been a dry, though thoroughly informative read, but clever and apposite use of pithy quotation brings it to life. We read of one conference, "dominated by a windy, flatulent monologue from Charteris" then, after Cambrai, 'The wolves got their teeth into Charteris, who, being plump and short of breath, fell an easy victim." In between these events, however, we are left in no doubt about the increasing professionalization of intelligence in the BEF, nor of the immense difficulties those responsible for it faced. So often the intelligence staff, under extreme pressure, found itself trying to make bricks without straw and to provide cast iron predictive clarity when the raw intelligence yielded nothing more than a hazy overview. Nevertheless, Beach is surely correct when he concludes that, "… intelligence had by 1918 come of age as a distinct military support function within the British army. Later generations would refine it, but its foundations were laid on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918."

The constant problems with which the intelligence branch grappled, the fact that it was dealing with an inexact science, means that its practitioners attracted much subsequent criticism from men equipped with 20:20 hindsight. It is always easier to explain why something has happened than to predict what is going to occur and, ultimately, Charteris paid the price. Beach is particularly good on the manoeuvering which led ultimately to his sacking at the end of 1917 and although he makes a strong case that his alleged deficiencies were overstated, nevertheless one theme which runs through the entire book is that, even if Haig's heads of intelligence were not simply feeding him from first to last what he wanted to hear, there was certainly a tendency to put the best gloss on the situation–to the point on occasion of wishful thinking–and, over time, this can only have diluted the quality of analysis and advice which Haig was receiving. 


Charteris on the Left with an Unidentified Officer


One example will serve to illustrate this point. At the end of June 1916 the German lines opposite the British on the Somme were subjected to repeated releases of cylinder gas and, in a GHQ Summary of Information published the following month, it was estimated that five percent of the troops manning the first position were gassed. In truth, Infantry Regiment 180 at Ovillers, for example, suffered 'a few' fatal gas casualties and Reserve Infantry Regiment 99, defending Thiepval, only one. This brief illustration brings into focus one way in which this excellent book could have been made even better. Its time frame means that for all but the months of July and August 1916, the battles which form the case studies were directed on the German side by Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht, the files of which—huge quantities of them—are available for study in Munich and, in addition, large amounts of relevant information is archived in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart and the Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv in Freiburg im Breisgau, which holds a priceless cache of documents concerning the German manpower crisis. As a result, it would be entirely feasible to test many of the intelligence assessments made against the actual facts. 

This would be a thoroughly worthwhile and interesting follow up to this outstanding piece of research and writing which I recommend unreservedly.

Dr. Jack Sheldon

Monday, March 11, 2024

The Cairo Conference That Determined the Future of the Middle East




The Paris Peace Conference ensured there was no peace in the Middle East. Five years after the Sykes-Picot Agreement, uprisings in Iraq and Syria were ruthlessly crushed by the occupying powers. Britain's military, overstretched in the postwar period, was particularly concerned about the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Winston Churchill, colonial secretary, saw an opportunity to develop a new strategy for the Middle East and asked the cabinet to authorize a conference to find some new solutions. He received an approval and the conference opened in Cairo on 12 March 1921. During this conference, Churchill would help establish the government, ethnic composition, and political boundaries of Iraq and other portions of the Middle East.


Churchill with Some of the "40 Thieves" at
the End of the Conference

Forty experts on the region attended, (Churchill called them his "40 Thieves," including T.E. Lawrence, "Mother of Iraq" Gertrude Bell, A.T. Wilson representing the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, assorted High Commissioners, and Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, present to make a pitch for the RAF taking over internal security in Iraq.

The two main issues on the agenda were the selection of Iraq's new monarch and the Arab response to the choice, and the second was the military situation in Iraq. Lawrence's argument for outsider Hashemite Kings in Iraq and Trans-Jordan based on the thinking that a non-native ruler could be independent of the rival allegiances was accepted. Feisal bin Hussein kAli al Hashemi, recently dethroned and banished from Syria, received the throne of Iraq with the understanding he would govern in consultation with the British High Commissioner. Feisal's brother, Abdullah, received the throne of Trans-Jordan. Lawrence was convinced this settlement gave the Arabs all Britain had ever promised.

With Churchill's support, Trenchard's air policing scheme won out. On the other big issue, British troops were to be phased out and replaced by an RAF-led "air policing" establishment in lieu of ground forces.

During the week-long proceedings, Britain also took on a League of Nations mandate for Palestine. By the summer, this would prove the thorniest issue for Churchill to deal with in the aftermath, as Chaim Weizmann's Zionists demanded a Jewish majority in the mandate, while Arab Christians and Muslims demanded a repudiation of the Balfour Declaration.

The only public announcement on the decisions made during the conference, was a report made by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on 14 June 1921. It drew little comment from the press and the conference is barely mentioned in the published letters and autobiographies of the main participants.

Sources: Wikipedia, PBS



Sunday, March 10, 2024

The Irish Guards Are Called On to Save Hazebrouck by Rudyard Kipling


An Irish Guardsman Somewhere on the Western Front


Editor's Note: The sacrifice by the Irish Guards during the First World War was immense. The two battalions of Irish Guards had suffered 2,349 officers and men killed and well over 5,000 wounded. The regiment was awarded 406 medals, including four Victoria Crosses, during the Great War. Its 2nd Battalion was resting from its ordeal in the first German Spring Offensive of 1918, when the enemy it second big attack, known as Operation Georgette or the Battle of the Lys. The unit would be called upon to help defend the critical rail center of Hazebrouck.


By Rudyard Kipling

On the 31st of March [the 2nd Battalion was] relieved and went to rest-billets. They had dug, wired, fought, and fallen back as ordered, for ten days, and nights heavier than their days, under conditions that more than equalled their retreat from Mons. Like their 1st Battalion in those primeval days, they had lost most things except their spirits. Filthy, tired, hoarse, and unshaven, they got into good billets at Chelers, just ripe for clean-up and “steady drills” . . .


Click on Map to Enlarge

Note Location of Hazebrouck on Left Edge;
Asterik Marks the Irish Guards' Deployment


On the 9th of April was a brigade rehearsal of “ceremonial” parade for inspection by their major-general next day. A philosopher of the barracks has observed: “When there’s ceremonial after rest and fat-up, it means the General tells you all you are a set of heroes, and you’ve done miracles and ’twill break his old hard heart to lose you; and so ye’ll throt off at once, up the road and do it all again.” On the afternoon of that next day, when the Brigade had been duly complimented on its appearance and achievements by its major-general, a message came by motor-bicycle and it was “ordered to proceed to unknown destination forthwith.” Buses would meet it on the Arras-Tinques road. But the Battalion found no buses there, and with the rest of its brigade, spent the cool night on the roadside, unable to sleep or get proper breakfasts, as a prelude next morn to a twelve-hour excursion of sixty kilometres to Pradelles. Stripped of official language, the situation which the 4th Guards Brigade were invited to retrieve was a smallish but singularly complete debacle on Somme lines. Nine German divisions had been thrown at our front between Armentières and La Bassée on the 9th April. They had encountered, among others a Portuguese division, which had evaporated making a gap of unknown extent but infinite possibilities not far from Hazebrouck. If Hazebrouck went, it did not need to be told that the road would be clear for a straight drive at the Channel ports. The 15th Division had been driven back from the established line we had held so long in those parts, and was now on a front more or less between Merville and Vieux-Berquin south-east of Hazebrouck and the Forest of Nieppe. Merville, men hoped, still held out, but the enemy had taken Neuf Berquin and was moving towards Vierhoek. Troops were being rushed up, and it was hoped the 1st Australian Division would be on hand pretty soon. In the meantime, the 4th Guards Brigade would discover and fill the nearest  or widest gap they dropped into. It might also be as well for them to get into touch with the divisions on their right and left, whose present whereabouts were rather doubtful.


These matters were realised fragmentarily, but with a national lightness of heart, by the time they had been debussed on the night of the 11th April into darkness somewhere near Paradis and its railway station, which lies on the line from the east into Hazebrouck. From Paradis, the long, level, almost straight road runs, lined with farmhouses, cottages, and gardens, through the villages of Vieux-Berquin, La Couronne, and Pont Rondin, which adjoin each other, to Neuf Berquin and Estaires, where, and in its suburb of La Gorgue, men used once to billet in peace. The whole country is dead flat, studded with small houses and cut up by ten-foot ditches and fences. When they halted they saw the horizon lit by distant villages and, nearer, single cottages ablaze. On the road itself fires of petrol sprang up where some vehicle had come to grief or a casual tin had ignited. As an interlude a private managed to set himself alight and was promptly rolled in some fresh plough. Delayed buses thumped in out of the night, and their men stumbled forth, stiff-legged, to join the shivering platoons. The night air to the east and southward felt singularly open and unwholesome. Of the other two battalions of the Brigade there was no sign. The C.O. went off to see if he could discover what had happened to them, while the Battalion posted sentries and were told to get what rest they could. “Keep a good look-out, in case we find ourselves in the front line.” It seemed very possible. They lay down to think it over till the C.O. returned, having met the Brigadier, who did not know whether the Guards Brigade was in the front line or not, but rather hoped there might be some troops in front of it. Battle order for the coming day would be the Battalion in reserve, 4th Grenadiers on their left, and 3rd Coldstream on the right. But as these had not yet come up, No. 2 Company (Captain Bambridge) would walk down the  Paradis-Vieux-Berquin road southward till they walked up, or into, the enemy, and would also find a possible line for the Brigade to take on arrival. It was something of a situation to explain to men half of whom had never heard a shot fired off the range, but the personality behind the words conveyed it, they say, almost seductively. No. 2 Company then split in two, and navigated down the Vieux-Berquin road through the dark, taking special care to avoid the crown of it. The houses alongside had been abandoned, except that here and there an old woman still whimpered among her furniture or distracted hens. Thus they prowled for an hour or so, when they were fired at down the middle of the road, providently left clear for that purpose. Next they walked into the remnants of one or two North Country battalions lying in fresh-punched shell-holes, obviously trying to hold a line, who had no idea where they were but knew they were isolated and announced they were on the eve of departure. The enemy, a few hundred yards away, swept the road afresh with machine-gun fire, but made no move. No. 2 Company lay down in the shell-holes while Bambridge with a few men and an officer went on to find a position for the Brigade. He got it, and fell back with his company just as light was breaking. By this time the rest of the Battalion was moving down towards Vieux-Berquin and No. 2 Company picked them up half an hour later. The Grenadiers and Coldstream appeared about half-past three, were met and guided back by Bambridge more or less into the position originally chosen. There had been some notion originally of holding a line from Vieux-Moulin on the swerve of the Vieux-Berquin road where it straightens for Estaires, and the college a little north of Merville; but Merville had gone by now, and the enemy seemed in full possession of the ground up to Vierhoek and were spreading, as their machine-gun fire showed, all round the horizon. The two battalions adjusted themselves (they had hurried up in advance of their rations and most of their digging tools) on a line between the Le Cornet Perdu, a slight rise west of the main Vieux-Berquin road, and L’Epinette Farm. The 2nd Irish Guards lay behind them with Battalion Headquarters at Ferme Gombert—all, as has been said in dead flat open country, without the haziest notion of what troops, if any, lay within touch.


Unidentified British Troops Arrive to Secure a Rail Crossing


The morning of April 12th broke hot and sunny, under a sky full of observation-balloons that seemed to hover directly above them. These passed word to the German guns, and the bombardment of heavies and shrapnel began—our own artillery not doing much to keep it down—with a careful searching of all houses and shelters, and specially for Battalion Headquarters. The Battalion, imperfectly dug in, or to the mere leeward of cottages and fences, suffered; for every movement was spotted by the balloons. The officers walking about between cottage and cottage went in even greater peril; and it was about this time that Lieutenant M. B. Levy was hit in the head by shrapnel and killed at once.

Meantime, the Coldstream on the right and the Grenadiers on the left, the former trying to work south towards Vierhoek and the latter towards Pont Rondin through the houses along the Vieux-Berquin road, were being hammered and machine-gunned to pieces. The Grenadiers in particular were enfiladed by a battery of field-guns firing with open sights at three hundred yards down the road. The Coldstream sent back word about ten o’clock that the 50th Division, which should have been on their right, was nowhere in view and that their right, like the Grenadiers’ left, was in the air. Two companies were then told from the 2nd Irish Guards, No. 3 Company, under Captain Maurice FitzGerald, in support of the Grenadiers, and No. 2, Captain Bainbridge, to the Coldstream. No. 3 Company at first lay a little in front of Ferme Gombert, one of the Battalion Headquarters. It was wiped out in the course of that day and the next, with the 4th Grenadiers, when, of that battalion’s nineteen officers, but two (wounded) survived and ninety per cent of the rank and file had gone.

No. 2 Company’s road to the Coldstream lay across a couple of thousand yards of ploughed fields studded with cottages. Their officer left his people behind in what cover offered and with a few men made a preliminary reconnaissance to see how the passage could be run. Returning to find his company intact, he lectured them shortly on the situation and the necessity of “adopting an aggressive attitude”; but explained that the odds were against their reaching any destination unless they did exactly as they were told. So they advanced in four diamonds, working to word and whistle (“like sporting-dog trials”) under and among and between shrapnel, whizz-bangs that trundled along the ground, bursts of machine-gun fire and stray sniping. Their only cover was a few willows by the bank of the Bourre River which made their right flank, an occasional hedge or furrow, and cottages from which they noticed one or two old women called out. They saw, in the intervals of their earnest death-dance (“It must have looked like children’s games—only the sweat was dripping off us all”), cows and poultry at large, some peasants taking pitiful cover behind a fence, and a pair of plough-horses dead in their harness. At last the front was reached after only four killed and as many wounded; and they packed themselves in, a little behind the Coldstream.

The enemy all this while were well content with their artillery work, as they had good right to be; and when morning, checked it with machine-gun fire. One account of this period observes “there seemed to be nobody on the right or left of the Brigade, but all the morning we saw men from other divisions streaming back.” These headed, with the instinct of animals, for Nieppe Forest just behind the line, which, though searched by shell and drenched by gas, gave a semblance of shelter. Curiously enough, the men did not run. They walked, and before one could question  them, would ask earnestly for the whereabouts of some battalion or division in which they seemed strangely interested. Then they would hold on towards cover.

(“They told us the Huns were attacking. They weren’t. We were. We told ’em to stop and help us. Lots of ’em did. No, they didn’t panic a bit. They just seemed to have chucked it quietly.”)


Rail Station at Hazebrouck Today


About two-thirty the enemy attacked, in fairly large numbers, the Coldstream and the division on its right which latter gave—or had already given. No. 2 Company of the Irish Guards had made a defensive flank in view of this danger, and as the enemy pressed past punished them with Lewis-gun fire. (The German infantry nowhere seemed enthusiastic, but the audacity and bravery of their machine-gunners was very fine.) None the less they got into a little collection of houses called Arrewage, till a counter-attack, organised by Bambridge of the 2nd Irish Guards, and Foster of the Coldstream, cleared them out again. In this attack, Bambridge was wounded and Captain E. D. Dent was killed.

By dusk it would have puzzled any one in it to say where our line stood; but, such as it was, it had to be contracted, for there were not men enough for the fronts. Of No. 2 Company not more than fifty were on their feet. No. 3 Company with No. 4 were still in support of the 4th Grenadiers somewhere in front of Ferme Gombert (which had been Battalion H.Q. till shelled out) and the Vieux-Berquin road; and No. 1 Company, besides doing its own fighting, had to be feeding the others. Battalion Headquarters had been shifted to a farm in Verte Rue a few hundred yards back; but was soon made untenable and a third resting-place had to be found—no easy matter with the enemy “all round everybody.” There was a hope that the Fifth Division would that evening relieve the 2nd Irish Guards in the line, but the relief did not come; and Captain Moore, Second in Command of the Battalion, went out from Verte Rue to Arrewage to find that division. Eventually, he seems to have commandeered  an orderly from a near-by battalion and got its C.O. to put in a company next to the remnants of No. 2. All the records of that fight are beyond any hope of straightening, and no two statements of time or place agree. We know that Battalion Headquarters were shifted, for the third time, to a farm just outside the village of Caudescure, whose intact church-spire luckily drew most of the enemy fire. No. 4 Company, under Heard, was ordered to line along the orchards of Caudescure facing east, and No. 1 Company lay on the extreme right of the line which, on the night of the 12th April, was supposed to run northward from Arrewage and easterly through Le Cornet Perdu, where the 4th Grenadiers were, to the Vieux-Berquin road. Whether, indeed, it so ran or whether any portion of it was held, no one knew. What is moderately certain is that on the morning of the 13th April, a message came to Battalion H.Q. that the enemy had broken through between the remnants of the Coldstream and the Grenadiers, somewhere in the direction of Le Cornet Perdu. Our No. 3 Company (Captain M. FitzGerald) was despatched at once with orders to counter-attack and fill the gap. No more was heard of them. They went into the morning fog and were either surrounded and wiped out before they reached the Grenadiers or, with them, utterly destroyed, as the enemy’s line lapped round our left from La Couronne to Verte Rue. The fighting of the previous day had given time, as was hoped, for the 1st Australian Division to come up, detrain, and get into the Forest of Nieppe where they were holding the edge of the Bois d’Aval; but the position of the 4th Guards Brigade outside the Forest had been that of a crumbling sandbank thrust out into a sea whose every wave wore it away.

The enemy, after several minor attacks, came on in strength in the afternoon of the 13th, and our line broke for awhile at Arrewage, but was mended, while the Brigade Headquarters sent up a trench-mortar battery under a Coldstream officer, for the front line had only rifles. They were set between No. 4 and No. 2  Company in the Irish Guards’ line. Later the C.O. arrived with a company of D.C.L.I. and put them next the T.M.B. (It was a question of scraping together anything that one could lay hands on and pushing it into the nearest breach.) The shelling was not heavy, but machine-gun fire came from every quarter, and lack of bombs prevented our men from dealing with snipers in the cottages, just as lack of Very lights prevented them from calling for artillery in the night. The Australians were reported to be well provided with offensive accessories, and when Battalion Headquarters, seeing there was a very respectable chance of their being surrounded once more, inquired of Brigade Headquarters how things were going, they were told that they were in strength on the left. Later, the Australians lent the Battalion some smoke-bomb confections to clean out an annoying corner of the front. That night, Saturday 13th April, the men, dead tired, dug in as they could where they lay and the enemy—their rush to Hazebrouck and the sea barred by the dead of the Guards Brigade—left them alone.


French Refugees in Hazebrouck After the Fighting Ended


Vieux-Berquin had been a battle, in the open, of utter fatigue and deep bewilderment, but with very little loss of morale or keenness, and interspersed with amazing interludes of quiet in which men found and played upon pianos in deserted houses, killed and prepared to eat stray chickens, and were driven forth from their music or their meal by shells or the sputter of indefatigable machine-guns. Our people did not attach much importance to the enemy infantry, but spoke with unqualified admiration of their machine-gunners. The method of attack was uniformly simple. Machine-guns working to a flank enfiladed our dug-in line, while field-guns hammered it flat frontally, sometimes even going up with the assaulting infantry. Meanwhile, individual machine-guns crept forward, using all shelters and covers, and turned up savagely in rear of our  defence. Allowing for the fact that trench-trained men cannot at a moment’s notice develop the instinct of open fighting and an eye for the lie of land; allowing also for our lack of preparation and sufficient material, liberties such as the enemy took would never have been possible in the face of organised and uniform opposition.

Source: The Irish Guards in the Great War, Vol. II  (2nd Battalion)

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Lonesome Memorials #5: Audenarde, Belgium, American Monument


Click on Image to Enlarge


This relatively small monument to the AEF's effort in the last days of the war in helping King Albert's army push the occupying forces out of his country with the interesting address of 6 General Pershing Straat was among the hardest for me to locate during my very first visit to the European battlefields. Worse, it was the only one where I had difficulty finding a parking place. Years later, when I had a group tour there, I had to send the bus driver on a tour of the countryside while we got a look at the monument. Nevertheless, it is well worth a visit, especially combined with a visit to the nearby Flanders Field American Cemetery in Waregem, 10 miles to the west, and the 37th Ohio Bridge across the Scheldt River, one to the north. Frankly, all these sites are forgotten by most Americans and deserve more visits from our countrymen.


91st Division Troops in the Sector, 1918


Background

The Allies attacked Germany’s last major defensive line in Belgium in late October 1918. Led by the King of Belgium, Allied forces launched a campaign to drive the Germans beyond the Scheldt River. The U.S. 37th and 91st divisions redeployed from the Meuse-Argonne Offensive to reinforce the French Army on the Flanders front. East of Waregem, the 91st Division turned the enemy out of the densely wooded Spitaals Bosschen before advancing east. On 2 November 1918, the 91st Division captured Audenarde. 


1937 Dedication and Unveiling


After the war, ABMC constructed this monument to honor the American divisions that fought in this area. It is also the only monument constructed by ABMC that also honors a military unit smaller than a division—the 53rd Field Artillery Brigade. This brigade, made up of soldiers from Pennsylvania, fought with the 91st Division. After the war the State of Pennsylvania intended to construct a memorial dedicated to the 53rd but instead worked with ABMC to ensure that the unit would be honored on the ABMC memorial.


Striking American Eagle Detail


How to Get There 

Audenarde American Monument is located in the town of Oudenaarde (Audenarde), Belgium, 18 miles south of Gent (Gand), 45 miles west of Brussels, and 183 miles north of Paris. The Audenarde Monument is in a park at General Pershing Straat in the center of Audenarde. Its map coordinates are  50.846858299679106, 3.6023223970598774.



Sources:  Google Maps and the American Battle Monuments Commission's website and World War I Battlefield Companion, to which your editor was a humble contributor.