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Book Review: Showing A New Side to Rommel At War

Jerry D. Morelock — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 18:25:03 +0000

“Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!” shouts a triumphant U.S. Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. (as played by Best Actor Oscar winner, George C. Scott in 1970’s Best Picture, Patton) while watching the March-April 1943 Battle of El Guettar in Tunisia, North Africa. This “gotcha!” exclamation implies the American general gained the key to victory over the German-Italian Axis forces he mistakenly thought were then commanded by Rommel from reading Rommel’s own impressive account of his development as a daring, tactically-innovative troop commander fighting French, Romanian, Russian and Italian units in World War I.

An avid reader of all things military history—his extensive, personally-annotated military history library was donated to the West Point Library—the real Patton probably did read Infanterie greift an, published by then-Lt. Col. Erwin Rommel in Germany in 1937, two years before World War II began and four years before Rommel earned his nickname, “The Desert Fox”. But the first English language edition—heavily abridged and edited by (understandably) anti-German wartime military censors only initially appeared in 1943.

What is certain, however, is that Patton never read this excellent, insightful, and revealing new English translation—which is much truer and exceedingly more faithful to Rommel’s highly nuanced, original German account than the extremely poor, indifferently translated wartime 1943 and 1944 English editions. Comparing Zita Steele’s (pen name of award-winning writer-historian-editor, Zita Ballinger Fletcher) brilliant new translation of Rommel’s classic book is akin to comparing Shakespeare’s Hamlet to a fourth-grade “Dick and Jane” grammar book. Steele’s deft translation finally does justice to Rommel’s original German text.

Bringing the Original Text To Life

Rommel’s original text comes vividly alive through Steele’s superb German-to-English translation and his account of how he reacted to and developed his innovative small-unit tactics to consistently defeat the forces arrayed against his own unit is exceptionally well-revealed in her new book. Usually outnumbered and outgunned, German mountain ranger assault troops under the young Rommel, time and time again overcame their enemies’ superior numbers and greater firepower to achieve their often daunting objectives. Steele consistently, and much more correctly, translates “German alpine troops” as “mountain rangers,” thereby better capturing the true nature of these, in effect, early versions of what would eventually be known as “special operations forces”.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

Rommel describes how and why he developed the tactics he used to prevail in each engagement, revealing his constant development as an innovative troop leader. This excellent new translation traces the gradual but proceeding development during combat in France and in the mountains of the Eastern Front of the young Rommel whose later operational genius would suddenly burst forth upon the Belgian, French and North African battlefields of World War II. This translation demonstrates the roots of Rommel’s operational genius, showing “how Rommel became Rommel.”

Rommel As A Person

Steele also reveals Erwin Rommel as a person, with the all-too-human flaws he possessed. Although the enduring image of Rommel was that of a homebody “family” man, a devoted, doting husband to his wife Lucie (they married in 1916), his relationship with another woman produced an illegitimate daughter, Gertrud, in 1913, whom he manfully acknowledged and for whom he provided financial support.

Additionally, Steele presents a convincing argument—based on Rommel’s admitted life-long insomnia and recurrent nightmares—that he suffered from PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. Given his WWI wounds, the nightmarish combat he endured in that war, and the loss of many close friends, that diagnosis seems completely credible. Coincidentally, Patton’s best biographer, Carlo D’Este, concludes—very convincingly—that Patton also suffered from PTSD. This reviewer strongly concurs with both authors’ “diagnoses.”

Was Rommel A Nazi?

Steele also delves into THE question involving Rommel: Was he or was he not a “Nazi?” Although it is a historical fact that Erwin Rommel was never a member of the Nazi Party, his promotions by Adolf Hitler always beg the question of was Rommel a “secret” Nazi, whether an official member of the Party or not? Steele concludes—correctly in this reviewer’s opinion—that Rommel was definitely not a Nazi. Clearly, Rommel personally benefited from Hitler’s support and indulgences, but so did other non-Nazis if they served Hitler’s interests when that service was beneficial to the Nazi dictator. Rommel was enough of a non-Nazi that he paid the ultimate price—Hitler’s toadies forced the field marshal to commit suicide on Oct. 14, 1944 in the wake of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler of which Rommel knew but of which he was not an integral part.

Zita Steele’s new book which is based on her new, insightful, nuanced and authoritative English translation of Erwin Rommel’s classic of military history 1937 book, Infantry Attacks, is a hands’-down, “must-have” book in any military history enthusiast’s library. It not only makes earlier English translations of Rommel’s book obsolete, it’s a “classic” account of World War I combat. Above all, it’s an insightful preview of one of the most famous commanders of World War II—and how he learned his trade! Buy it! Read it! Enjoy it!

ERwin Rommel: First War

A New Look At Infantry Attacks
By Zita Steele

get it on amazon

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How Erwin Rommel Has Been Lost in Translation

Zita Ballinger Fletcher — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 18:27:49 +0000

In late October 1917, a detachment of German mountain troopers weary from hard Alpine fighting on the Isonzo front were crossing the river Torre with a group of Italian prisoners. The ordinarily calm waters of the river had swollen into a raging flood after constant heavy rain. Suddenly an Italian prisoner was dragged away by the current. Screaming and flailing, he whirled downstream, sinking under the weight of the large pack he was carrying. An unexpected rescuer came to his aid. The battle-hardened German officer who had defeated the Italian’s comrades and overseen his capture went galloping after him. Driving his horse straight into the torrent, the German risked getting washed away as he drew the helpless prisoner, hanging onto one of his stirrups, to safety.

The German officer was young Oberleutnant Erwin Rommel, and this act of compassion was typical of him. It would be a cornerstone of his career during two world wars in which contempt of one’s enemies and xenophobia were idealized by authorities in power in Germany. Surprisingly, Rommel chose to write about this rescue and other similar anecdotes of humanity in his 1937 World War I memoir, Infantry Attacks! Then a military instructor, Rommel intended to use the book as teaching material for future soldiers training to fight in the Wehrmacht—during a dark era when popular culture in Germany was at its most unmerciful. His original German text offers valuable insights about his outlook and approach to war that censorship and mistranslation had hidden from history.

A Controversial Character

Erwin Rommel is one of the most controversial figures in World War II and German history. Awarded Imperial Germany’s highest decoration for valor, the Pour le Mérite, for his impressive actions as a junior officer during World War I, Rommel reached the pinnacle of his fame during World War II as a brilliant Panzer leader in the 1940 conquest of France and as the daring “Desert Fox” who fought—and ultimately lost to—British and Allied troops in North Africa from 1941 to ’43. Rommel would go on to direct the fortifications of the Normandy coast in preparation for the Allied invasion of France, and command Germany’s Army Group B during the D-Day landings in 1944.

Erwin Rommel in 1912.

Rommel never joined the Nazi Party nor did he receive any Party decorations, despite the fact that joining would have boosted his career—as it did conversely for Ferdinand Schörner, also a professional soldier, World War I veteran and Pour le Mérite recipient who opted to become a Nazi Party member.

Despite the best efforts of Nazi propaganda to cast Rommel as a hardline ex-SA storm trooper, which he was not, and Allied efforts to depict him as a coldblooded fascist thug, Rommel confounded the expectations of both sides with his unpredictable and humanistic behavior during the war. He disobeyed Adolf Hitler’s infamous Commando Order of 1942 demanding that all Allied “irregular” troops captured were to be delivered to Heinrich Himmler’s security services for immediate execution. Numerous Allied POWs attested to Rommel’s humane treatment of them.

Among them was Capt. Roy Wooldridge of the British Army’s Royal Corps of Engineers, who credited Rommel with saving his life. Wooldridge was captured by a German U-Boat crew while on a secret 1944 mission to scout obstacles around the Normandy coast.

Although Wooldridge was told by interrogators that he would be shot, Rommel unexpectedly summoned Wooldridge, sparing him from a firing squad and sending him off to France after giving him a beer and a pack of cigarettes. “When I got to the prisoner of war camp, a German guard who spoke English said, ‘You’re a very lucky man. If you hadn’t been to see Rommel you would have been shot as a saboteur,’” Wooldridge told the BBC in 2014.

Plotting Against Hitler?

Disillusioned with Hitler’s leadership as early as 1942, Rommel became part of a group of German Army officers conspiring to remove Hitler from power. Contrary to common perceptions, there was not an absence of German Resistance nor did such resistance only come into existence when the war appeared to be closing in around Germany in 1944; pockets of dissent had existed within Germany’s military from much earlier and became more active over time.

Having burned many of his personal papers, particularly from early 1944, to protect himself and others, Rommel’s activities against Hitler—particularly his knowledge or lack thereof regarding Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed July 20 assassination attempt—remain debated.

Erwin Rommel, on horseback center left, passes through a village along with fellow officers and men of the 124th (6th Württemberg) Infantry Regiment during World War I. This photo was one of many saved in Rommel’s personal estate.

What is indisputable is that Hitler and other leading Nazis perceived Rommel to be a threat and acted quickly to get rid of him. Severely wounded by a plane that strafed his staff car in Normandy on July 17 and left him with a fractured skull, Rommel was executed on Hitler’s orders on Oct. 14, 1944. Representatives of Hitler came to Rommel’s home and threatened to harm his family unless he agreed to commit suicide—immediately. With the house surrounded by Gestapo and SS men, Rommel complied, and took cyanide he was given on an isolated roadside less than 15 minutes from his driveway. Nazi officials concealed the cause of Rommel’s death, initially claiming he had succumbed to wounds from a “car accident” without mentioning a plane strafing.

Doctors who examined Rommel’s body were threatened to falsify his cause of death. Authorities transformed Rommel’s funeral into a propaganda spectacle to rally public support for Hitler. Witnessing Rommel’s executioners use his funeral as political theater was a lifelong source of pain and anger for Rommel’s then 15-year-old son Manfred, aware of the true cause of his father’s death. News of Rommel’s demise was initially celebrated in the Allied press. The darker story emerged after the war was over.

Since then, Rommel has been the focus of endless debate—celebrated, reviled, doubted and admired. Was he a hero? A hopeless fence-sitter? A would-be assassin? A military genius or a blunderer? Although this author is prepared to venture well-researched opinions on these matters, that is not the purpose of this article. Instead, readers of this story are invited to cast an eye back to the start of Rommel’s career and the experiences he recorded in the original German text of his 1937 book, Infantry Attacks! (Infanterie Greift An), which provides valuable clues about Rommel’s philosophy and ethos.

Censoring Rommel

The book is inextricably bound up with the story of Rommel’s life and had a propelling effect on his career. It launched him to the heights of military command, unlocked barriers to armored warfare, and paved his road to Africa and Normandy—and, most fatefully, brought him into contact with Hitler, the man who sealed his doom. It was also poorly translated into English. The U.S. Army produced translations of the book in 1943 and 1944, which were heavily redacted and contained errors. Phrases and entire passages were removed. All color and emotion were drained from the original language. This changed not only the content but the tone of the writing.

This photograph showing smoke rising from a North African battlefield was one of many taken by Rommel with his Leica camera during World War II. Rommel became famous as “The Desert Fox” in part due to his World War I book.

With Rommel’s personality scrubbed out of the book, readers were left only with a bare skeleton of his work. That bare skeleton has shaped perceptions of Rommel among English readers. It might appear to anyone picking up the U.S. Army’s rendition of Rommel’s writing that he was a bland technocrat who produced one of the most convoluted and tedious war memoirs written by any officer who ever dared to pick up a pen. The contrast between the common 1944 English translation, which is about as exciting as reading an encyclopedia, and the otherwise dashing figure of Rommel is enough to leave a person baffled.

Although Rommel was a meticulous teacher of troops and intended his experiences to be used as a textbook—a blend of memoir with “lessons learned”—the original German book has much more historical value than the tactical teachings it contains, which so far have been the only thing that most English readers have been able to appreciate about it.

Nothing in the material that was censored contained gory, obscene or political language, but ordinary passages for any soldier’s wartime memoir. Many removed passages were ones in which Rommel came across as more relatable or sympathetic on a human level, such as his anecdote of finding a wounded Frenchman by a mountain hut who is subsequently tended by Rommel’s troops, his care for his horse, and friends’ funerals.

Working to produce English translations in the middle of World War II, the U.S. Army also removed passages that they may have worried would intimidate Allied soldiers or civilians, such as some passages describing soldiers’ deaths, violence, or grim scenes. Some praise for German troops was removed, as well as a reference in which Rommel clearly states that he has no fear of Russians. The Russians—allies in World War II, of course—in that sentence were conveniently changed to “Romanians.”

Clues About Rommel From His Writing

Rommel’s use of the German language makes for interesting study. His writing is distinctly straightforward with a colloquial South German twist. Patterns of expression emerge. As an author, Rommel showed a tendency to remove direct references to himself from his own narrative. While this is not unusual in the German language, the lengths that Rommel went through to avoid focus on himself is unique—especially when it comes to describing the hardships of battle or frontline conditions.

Although he didn’t hesitate to describe himself in decision-making, he tended to make difficult or uncomfortable situations into “we” and “us” experiences, or simply speak of the tribulations of war in a more abstract sense. It is clear that Rommel did not wish to complain nor describe his own sense of suffering, but referred to himself as part of a group—and above all, focused on the sacrifices of his comrades. This attitude can often be found in the memoirs and statements of war veterans who wish for others to focus on the deeds of their friends around them rather than on themselves.

German soldiers charge up a hill during the spring 1940 Battle of France in this photo also taken by Rommel. A dedicated instructor of infantry troops, Rommel also had keen interest in armored warfare.

A sense of deep affection for his comrades is manifest in Rommel’s writing. He referred to his troops in endearing terms, in many cases as “mein Häuflein”—meaning “my little flock,” as if they were a flock of sheep who need to be tended or a small handful of something to be looked after. He stressed his feelings of responsibility towards his men, particularly in situations where they were in danger and he felt compelled to protect them; in one instance, Rommel risked his entire force to save a group of their comrades who were stranded amid enemy forces, taking a “one for all, all for one” type of attitude.

Rommel wrote tributes to fallen comrades, recording their achievements, deaths and funerals. He later revisited former battlefields and photographed his friends’ graves. Additionally, Rommel devoted what sometimes seems like an inordinate amount of energy into building fortifications to protect his men from harm, spending much time analyzing and improving shelters and dugouts. The amount of effort he put into improving structures for defense suggests that Rommel was actually more cautious and circumspect on the front than he is commonly perceived to have been.

‘Homeland’ not ‘Fatherland’

Thought-provoking word choices pop up frequently in Rommel’s writings. While it has been assumed that Rommel had no taste for music or literature, his narrative contains several references to songs and culture, including an ironic reference to a scene from a Richard Wagner opera.

It’s also worth noting that Rommel never used the word “Vaterland” (“Fatherland”) to describe Germany, instead preferring to use “Heimat”—a folksy term meaning “homeland” which wasn’t quite German nationalists’ cup of tea. While the term “Vaterland” was often used by the Nazis to stress the concept of Germany as a strong unified country under Hitler’s rule, “Heimat” is an old-fashioned term that can refer to one’s native region and is non-political. Since the book was published within the Third Reich, when Nazism and support for Hitler were encouraged on every level of society, Rommel had no reason not to appeal to mainstream Nazi political sentiments in his book; indeed, it might have made his work more popular. Yet the book contains no mentions of a Führer nor a “new Fatherland”.

Rommel was a native of the Swabian Alps, and after serving as an infantryman on the Western Front early in World War I, was selected to become part of the Württemberg Mountain Battalion, an elite unit of Gebirgsjäger troops—German army mountain rangers. These rangers are highly mobile, extremely resilient and adaptable, and trained to maneuver and fight in all manner of harsh mountain environments. They were and continue to be among the most elite units in German-speaking nations. Entitled to great cultural esteem due to their abilities and affinity with the mountains, they are entitled to wear the symbol of the Edelweiss flower.

Training troops For the Wilderness

The Edelweiss, whose name means “noble white,” is a legendary bloom known for growing in the most austere mountain environments and being difficult to reach. It is a symbol not only of beauty but of hardiness and resilience. Still worn by Gebirgsjäger troops today, the Edelweiss patch was also a hard-earned symbol that Rommel was entitled to wear. It is visible on his cap in several of his World War I photos.

Rommel’s writings reveal his strong sense of identity as a mountain ranger, which arguably has never been properly appreciated by historians. Although he built strong bonds with his men in the trenches of the Argonne, one of the singular events in World War I that truly had a transformative effect on Rommel and his future leadership was his becoming a mountain ranger. Within this close-knit group, Rommel quickly developed a strong sense of pride, along with confidence in harsh training and an attitude of fearlessness. Camaraderie and the tests of combat convinced Rommel that, together, he and his men could accomplish nearly anything.

Rommel interacts with his troops from his Sd.Kfz. 250 “Greif” armored half-track command vehicle in North Africa. Becoming disillusioned with Hitler as early as 1942, Rommel was implicated in a conspiracy to remove the Führer from power and was forced to take poison by Hitler’s representatives after being severely wounded at Normandy in July 1944.

The Rommel that emerged as a skilled commander of mountain rangers was the same Rommel who would become the “Desert Fox” in North Africa—a man who excelled in the wilderness and at molding soldiers into masters of mobile combat, who could all withstand not only battle but the very elements of nature. An intense spirit of individuality, pride and elite group identity, as well as feelings of a close personal bond with Rommel as their commander, remained with many Afrika Korps veterans for their whole lives. The seeds of this future success are clear to be seen in Rommel’s proud and emotional writings about his love for the mountain troops.

Themes and Slang

Nature forms a major theme in Rommel’s narrative. He had a special flair for describing natural environments such as forests, trees, mountains, and geographic features, as well as elemental forces like thunder, lightning, clouds and different types of storms. Even in the midst of grim battles, Rommel somehow appreciated his natural surroundings and found a way to draw attention to it in writing. His writings on nature are poetic, highly descriptive and sometimes romanticized. In one instance, for example, Rommel compared meadows to the Elysian Fields of Roman mythology.

Despite Rommel’s sense of poetry about nature, his writings abound with slang common to soldiers’ memoirs. Rommel wrote with an understated and ironic sense of humor, and—with a sly attitude similar to the Civil War’s “Gray Ghost,” Col. John Singleton Mosby—clearly enjoyed taking enemies by surprise and chasing fleeing foes. Rommel’s writings on action are far from clinical. Gunfire “rips through” things, men are “gunned down,” and planned actions will be a “piece of cake”—or even “fun”. Rommel’s mix of slang, irony and hard-edged soldierly humor is characteristic of the memoirs of many military professionals.

Humane Treatment of Enemies

Another factor that stands out throughout Rommel’s book is his humane treatment of enemies. The amount of times that Rommel gave his enemies opportunities to surrender rather than shoot them is surprising—in fact, there are several cases when, as Rommel gained opportunities to surprise formidable enemy forces, readers might fairly wonder if opening fire might have been a more practical battlefield measure than yelling at foes to give themselves up.

Rommel however made a constant habit of requesting surrenders even when it seemed clearly inconvenient or downright dangerous to do so. He frequently spoke with prisoners afterwards and gives them cigarettes. In a mirrorlike foreshadowing of events at St. Valery during World War II in 1940, Rommel invited captured officers to have a meal with him. As in 1940, the captured officers were understandably too upset by their situation to appreciate this gesture. But it’s worth noting that this naïve attempt at magnanimity was one that Rommel would repeat in World War II.

Young Rommel also helped enemy wounded, and in one instance intervened to stop his own men from harming POWs. It’s worth mentioning that Rommel, in describing these anecdotes and choosing to include them in his military textbook, risked coming across as “weich,” or “soft,” in Nazi Germany. His anecdotes of showing kindness to enemies did not correspond to the general sense of bloodthirsty nationalism whipped up by Kaiser Wilhelm II during the First World War nor the iron-hearted cruelty advertised as being “strong” in Hitler’s Germany. Rommel could arguably have gotten farther by describing himself being merciless rather than being empathetic.

If anything, the passages attest not only to Rommel’s inner principles but his independence. As a military instructor during the Third Reich, Rommel must have been aware of the values that the regime wanted to instill in future soldiers, but instead chose to set an example of humanity for his students even if it did not match popular ideology. His behavior also forms a continuum with what Allied POWs witnessed during World War II—that Rommel’s compassionate treatment of POWs was not part of any postwar mythologizing, but was rather a real part of his character that was evident when he was a young man.

World War I had a profound impact on Rommel. Haunted by his experiences, Rommel would return to his former battlegrounds, form a veterans’ group, write about, teach about and dwell on his battlefield experiences for the rest of his life. He also wore his Pour le Mérite medal, earned among his beloved mountain troops, constantly until it chipped and faded. There are many more insights to be gained about Rommel’s early transformation into an effective war leader from his memoir—too many to describe in one article. However, what truly stands out is that, contrary to the commonly read, clinical English translations produced during World War II, Rommel was a gifted writer who expressed more about ethics in war than has been previously realized.

Zita Ballinger Fletcher is Editor of MHQ and the author of Erwin Rommel: First War, A New Look at Infantry Attacks, published in 2023.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

Mercy Dogs: Meet the Heroes Who Delivered Aid and Comforted the Dying on the Battlefields of World War I

Claire Barrett — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 17:49:47 +0000

In the agony of trench warfare and no man’s land, the sound of a skitter and a wet nose — typically a rat, doubled in size after gorging on the flesh of man — usually spelled trouble.

But occasionally, the wet nose brushing across both Allied and Central Power soldier’s faces meant that help, or at the very least comfort, was on its way.

Over 16 million total animals were in service during the Great War, with dogs hauling machine guns and supply carts, serving as messengers and delivering the all-important cigarette cartons to the troops.

However, Mercy Dogs, also referred to as casualty dogs, were specifically trained to aid the wounded and dying on the battlefield. First trained by the Germanic armies in the 19th century, these sanitätshunde, or medical dogs, began to see widespread use as World War I swept across Europe.

Trained to find and distinguish between the dead, wounded and dying, Mercy Dogs were set loose on the battlefield to bring medical supplies to the wounded, “getting as close as possible so the soldier could access the dogs’ saddle bags, which contained first aid supplies and rations. Instead of barking and alerting the enemy, the dogs were trained to bring back something belonging to the soldier,” according to the Red Cross.

The dogs were trained in triage, able to indicate who needed aid the most and who was too far gone to establish any medical care. In the case of the latter, the dog would often stay with the mortally wounded soldier to ensure that, in his final moments, he wasn’t alone.

The idea of Mercy Dogs was first introduced in 1890 by German painter, Jean Bungartz, who founded the Deutschen Verein für Santiätshunde or German Association for Medical Dogs.

Five years later, Britain took notice after Maj. Edwin Richardson observed that English-bred dogs were being shipped to Germany in bulk.

“I took notice of a ‘foreigner’ buying a sheepdog from a shepherd and learned that the man was a German, sent over by his government to purchase large quantities of collie dogs for the German Army,” Richardson recounted.

Maj. Edwin H. Richardson with Red Cross war dogs during World War I.

Seeing a similar need, Richardson and his wife opened the British War Dog School, just prior to the outbreak of war in 1914 — the first of its kind in the nation. While Richardson trained several different breeds, his favorite was Airedales for their intelligence, devotion and coolness under fire.

Trained under realistic battle conditions, one visiting journalist recounted that “Shells from batteries at practice were screaming overhead, and army motor lorries passed to and fro. The dogs are trained to the constant sound of the guns and very soon learn to take no heed of them.”

Once on the Western Front, these dogs “not only had to survive but to perform critical duties in ghastly conditions which saw the natural world obliterated daily — grass was virtually nonexistent, trees were blown to pieces or harvested into oblivion for wood, the air was rife with poisonous gases in addition to the sounds and shell fragments of explosions, water was contaminated with heavy metals, decomposing bodies were omnipresent and the earth’s surface tended to be wildernesses of bomb craters or oceans of mud,” writes MHQ editor, Zita Ballinger Fletcher.

Under these conditions, the animals silently toiled, utilizing their noses and devotion to ultimately save roughly thousands of lives, according to the Red Cross.

One British surgeon noted, “They sometimes lead us to bodies we think have no life in them, but when we bring them back to the doctors…always find a spark. It is purely a matter of their instinct, [which is] far more effective than man’s reasoning powers.”

In 1915, British soldier Oliver Hyde published a long-forgotten work entitled “The Work of the Red Cross Dog on the Battlefield.”

In it, he captures the small but mighty group of heroes:

“To the forlorn and despairing wounded soldier, the coming of the Red Cross dog is that of a messenger of hope.

“Here at last is help, here is first aid. [The soldier] knows that medical assistance cannot be far away, and will be summoned by every means in the dog’s power.

“As part of the great Red Cross army of mercy, he is beyond price.”

Tragically, albeit unsurprisingly, a large number of Mercy Dogs died during the war. By the time the Armistice was signed on Nov. 18, 1918, some 7,000 Mercy Dogs had been killed in service to their respective countries.

The World’s Most Visitor-Friendly Battlefields

David T. Zabecki — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 14:00:00 +0000

Battlefields are where history happened—for better or for worse. As Winston Churchill once observed, “Battles are the punctuation marks in history.” Battles, however, are very complex events. You can read many books and look at countless maps and still not have the gut-level understanding of what really happened and why it happened that way. Thus, the classic military adage, “See the ground.” That’s sage advice whether you are planning to fight a battle or trying to understand it long after the fact. No two battles are the same—even battles fought on the same piece of ground at different points in history. The compositions of the opposing forces, the contemporary weapons technologies, the tactics of the period, and the weather the day the battle was fought are never the same. The ground, however, changes very little, and the terrain can often be the dominating factor in the battle. Broken and compartmentalized ground usually favors the defender, wide-open terrain habitually favors the attacker, and gravity always confers an advantage on the side that holds the high ground. Very little in the brave new world of cyber operations will help a military force conduct an opposed river crossing. Kinetic energy still counts. No two historical battlefields are alike. Some have been almost completely built over, while others have changed relatively little since the swords were sheathed or the guns fell silent. Fortunately, there are many excellent battlefields that are historically significant, comprehensible, visitor friendly and (mostly) easy to reach. On the following pages are photos of Military History’s top recommended sites for any battlefield enthusiast’s bucket list.

Beautifully preserved Fort Ticonderoga, near the south end of upstate New York’s Lake Champlain, was the site of several battles in 1758–59, during the French and Indian War, and in 1775–77, during the American Revolutionary War.

This Martello tower was erected on Quebec’s Plains of Abraham a half century after British forces under Maj. Gen. James Wolfe climbed bluffs like those visible on the far side of the St. Lawrence River to defeat the French under Lt. Gen. Louis-Joseph de Montcalm on Sept. 13, 1759, amid the French and Indian War.

An 18th century cannon and a 19th century field gun stand side by side on the field at Yorktown, Va., which was both the site of the last major land battle of the American Revolution, in 1781, and a key Civil War battle during Union Maj. Gen. George McClellan’s Peninsula campaign, in 1862.

This marble marker stands where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer fell on June 25, 1876, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

A memorial to the 7th U.S. Cavalry surmounts Last Stand Hill at Little Bighorn Battlefield. Markers on the field indicate where soldiers fell in combat against Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors.

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

Ordered built by King Herod the Great in 31 bc atop a plateau near the Dead Sea, Masada was occupied by Jewish rebels during the First Jewish-Roman War. It fell in 73 after besieging Roman troops built a ramp to the very rim of the plateau.

The scenic ruins of the ancient city-state of Carthage, on the Mediterranean coast of Tunisia, speak to the devastation wrought on it by Roman besiegers in 146 bc during the Third Punic War.

Norman forces under William, Duke of Normandy, defeated Anglo-Saxon forces under King Harold II at the Oct. 14, 1066, Battle of Hastings. On the orders of William the Conqueror this Benedictine monastery, known today as Battle Abbey, was established on the field in 1094, its high altar constructed atop the spot where Harold fell in battle. The abbey ruins stand on Senlac Hill, some 6 miles northwest of the East Sussex town of Hastings.

Somewhere in the mists of the 13th or 12th centuries bc Achaean Greeks conducted a long siege against the city of Troy, on the coast of present-day Turkey near the entrance to the Dardanelles. The archaeological site is on the outskirts of the town of Canakkale and features a large wooden reconstruction of the mythological Trojan Horse, for which no historical evidence exists aside from mentions in the works of Homer and Virgil.

This view takes in the shell-damaged rear of Fort Douaumont, outside Verdun. During the 1916 battle German heavy artillery relentlessly shelled the French fortress before a single German pioneer infantry squad captured it on February 25. It took three French divisions to finally recapture Douaumont, on Oct. 24, 1916.

This retractable, rotating turret on the roof of Fort Douaumont housed an automatic-firing 155 mm howitzer. In the background is one of the fort’s armored observation cupolas. Today the massive subterranean structure houses the most impressive museum in the expansive national battlefield park.

The Canakkale Martyrs’ Memorial commemorates the quarter million Turkish troops who fought off the landings by British Commonwealth forces in 1915–16. The memorial sits atop Hisarlik Hill in Morto Bay, just inside the mouth of the Dardanelles, at the south end of Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula Historical National Park.

Perched atop bluffs between the American landing beaches of Omaha and Utah in Normandy, France, Pointe du Hoc was the site of a battery of 155 mm guns that could interdict the landings at Utah. On the morning of June 6, 1944, the U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled the cliffs under fire, ultimately tracking down the since relocated guns and destroying them.

The monthlong battle for the Imperial City of Hue, the capital of Vietnam under the Nguyen Dynasty (1802–83), was among the most fiercely fought engagements of the 1968 Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War. Serving as the headquarters of the 1st Division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the citadel at center was captured by North Vietnamese troops on the first day of the battle. The fight for control of the citadel raged back and forth for 25 days before it was recaptured by U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese troops.

A re-enactor pops up from a “spider hole,” surprising tourists at the Viet Cong tunnel complex of Cu Chi, northwest of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).

The Vietnamese government has preserved the 75-mile network of tunnels as a memorial park, enlarging sections of it to accommodate Western tourists.

The USS Arizona Memorial rests at the heart of Pearl Harbor, site of the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese surprise attack that drew the United States into World War II. Sunk that morning by Japanese dive bombers, the battleship is the final resting place of 1,102 sailors and Marines killed in the attack.

Iwo Jima’s 554-foot Mount Suribachi looms over landing beach Green, where the 28th Marines came ashore on Feb. 19, 1945. Guided tours visit the island, which lies 750 miles south of Tokyo.

Chuuk (formerly Truk) Lagoon, in the Pacific island nation of Micronesia, is the graveyard of more than 60 Japanese ships sunk and scores of aircraft downed by U.S. forces in February 1944 during Operation Hailstone. Some 1,100 miles northeast of New Guinea, Chuuk is one of the world’s premier wreck diving sites.

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An Inside Look At 100 Years of Honoring America’s War Dead

Zita Ballinger Fletcher — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 21:45:29 +0000

America is a nation built on distinct individualism as well as common values. This sense of diversity in unity is something reflected in a very physical sense in the war cemeteries and monuments maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), which in 2023 marked its 100^th year anniversary.

The commission maintains 26 cemeteries and 32 battlefield memorials across 17 countries around the globe. No two sites are the same. In fact, they are non-standard by design. In an aesthetic contrast with the war cemeteries maintained by other nations, ABMC cemeteries are designed to appear unique in every aspect of their architecture, layout and memorial artwork, yet uniting the fallen with common headstone styles.

The chapel interior with names of the missing is shown at the Somme American Cemetery in Bony, France.

“I think what our nation does is a statement about our people and what it means to be an American,” Charles K. Djou, ABMC Secretary, told Military History Quarterly in an interview. “Every single site has something amazing and beautiful.”

Despite its tradition of individualism, the ABMC has several important factors common to every memorial site. “Where people are buried is not distinguished by race, rank, color or creed. This is something we take pride in,” said Djou. “Black and white soldiers are buried side by side. Generals are buried side by side with privates. There will always be a flagpole flying the American flag and that will be the highest point in all of our cemeteries.”

One Hundred Years of History

The ABMC originated in the wake of the First World War. It owes its name to the shared efforts of U.S. authorities to find fitting and respectful ways to preserve American war graves and battle monuments, which were then scattered across Europe and needed to be consolidated and maintained in a respectful manner.

“During the course of the war, temporary burials were marked in a number of different ways. If people had time, sometimes they would construct a wooden cross or sometimes stick a rifle in the ground with a helmet on it,” explained Michael Knapp, ABMC’s Chief of Historical Services. “People who made it back to rear areas and hospitals were buried in temporary gravesites that were more established and those generally had wooden crosses or some sort of grave marker.”

As these cemeteries were consolidated, graves were temporarily marked with white wooden crosses, with the exception of Jewish soldiers whose graves were instead marked with a white wooden Star of David by request of the Jewish community. Although many people argued for headstones similar to those in Arlington National Cemetery today to serve as the permanent grave markers, the ABMC’s first chairman, Gen. John J. Pershing, insisted that the white crosses be preserved.

“Pershing was adamant that we keep the look similar to the look of the temporary headstones with white crosses row on row – almost taken verbatim from the words of John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields,’” said Knapp.

Art and flags are displayed in the Brittany American Cemetery at St. James, France,

Therefore all war dead, apart from those of Jewish faith, are buried with crosses regardless of their religious beliefs. “The Latin Cross in the ABMC cemetery usage is considered symbolic rather than religious,” explained Knapp. “Although predominantly it’s a Christian symbol, it was not chosen specifically as such.”

In contrast to the war burial arrangements of other nations, the U.S. government allowed American families to choose whether their loved one was brought back to the United States for burial or whether he would be buried overseas. This was the case in both world wars, Knapp said, and all expenses were paid by the U.S. government regardless of the family’s choice.

Works of Art

What sets each war cemetery apart is the artwork and conceptual design unique to each space. The ABMC consulted prominent architects and artists to propose designs for each war cemetery.

“You see a lot of variation,” said Knapp. “It’s fascinating because no two are alike. There is no standard blueprint. Even the physical layout of all the cemeteries is different. Every aspect of ours is different. It’s very unique. I don’t believe any other country does it that way.”

The art is particularly evident in the non-sectarian chapel found in each cemetery. This offers family members and visitors a quiet place to reflect. The design, architecture, and art inside also reflect different themes and images to honor the dead.

“The art tends to be symbolic and allegorical,” said Knapp. For example, the Brittany American Cemetery in France is arranged to resemble the flaming sword within a shield which was the emblem of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). The ceiling of the chapel in at the Sicily-Rome Cemetery reflects the constellations at the precise moment that Allied troops landed in Anzio.

The Need to Reflect and Respect

What stands out most of all to Djou, however, are the sheer number of war dead in each location. Standing amid the vast armies of white crosses is an overpowering experience. “It takes your breath away honestly,” he said.

Many of the cemeteries and war memorials, particularly in Europe, are within easy reach of major cities and popular tourist locations. However, Djou expressed the view that not enough Americans are coming to pay their respects to the fallen despite having opportunities to do so.

The white crosses stand row on row in the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery.

“So many Americans will go to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower. They will go to Rome and see the Colosseum,” he said. “They don’t realize that the reason that you can visit those places is because of all of those thousands of young American service members who fought to free all these places.”

Djou encourages all Americans traveling abroad to stop at a war memorial or cemetery even briefly, to visit those lost in battle who never had the chance to go home. “So many of these sites are just a few minutes away and so many Americans don’t realize how close they are.”

How Do World War I’s Top Generals Stack up?

David T. Zabecki — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 14:00:00 +0000

No general, the old saying goes, ever wakes up in the morning and decides he is going to lose a battle. Yet for every general who loses a battle, there is an opposite number who wins the fight. This has been a constant of warfare for as long as man has kept historical records. World War I, however, has been recorded somewhat differently by history, or at least by popular history. Given the four years of carnage in the trenches, the likes of which the world had never seen, the myth of “lions led by donkeys” still holds great sway a century later.

Yet, despite the appeal and apparent clarity of such a view, the truth on the ground was nowhere near as simplistic. World War I was a war unlike any other ever fought. It was a war of future shock. Newly emerging technologies in weaponry, communications and, later, mobility rendered all the old tactics and mechanics of warfighting obsolete. Nor did the new dynamics of warfighting remain static between 1914 and ’18. They evolved rapidly, constantly changing the harsh realities of the battlefield. Thus, the senior military leaders on all sides spent most of the first three years of the war trying to keep up with and come to terms with the new technologies. Unfortunately, when you are in the middle of fighting a war, trial and error is the only viable mechanism for such a process. Thus, World War I was a 20th century war fought by 19th century soldiers. From the most senior field marshal to the most junior platoon leader to the privates on the front lines, all faced a steep learning curve, and they had to climb it rapidly. The starting point for any analysis of senior-level military leadership must be a working definition of generalship itself. The art of generalship—and it is very much an art, rather than a science—involves far more than the command of large formations of troops. It also comprises the formation, organization, equipment and training of an army; the transportation of forces to a theater of operations; the logistical sustainment of troops throughout their deployment; the collection, processing and analysis of intelligence on the enemy; the planning of operations and committal of forces to battle; and the direction and coordination of their actions once committed. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz grouped these diverse activities of generalship into two primary categories—preparation for war and the conduct of war proper—and argued that precious few commanders are equally skilled in both categories. History bears him out.

Circa 1915 propaganda depicts German Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (seated at right) and an Austrian ally besting buffoonish Allied rivals, though by that point the war was in stalemate.

Do generals single-handedly win battles? Of course not. But they can single-handedly lose them. During World War I Britain’s then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill referred to Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the commander of Britain’s Grand Fleet, as “the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.” Any close analysis of the battles of 1914–18 clearly demonstrates that a great deal turned on the planning and execution decisions made by the senior-most commanders. There is much to learn from the study of those decisions, the men who made them and the conditions under which they carried out their duties as they saw them.

Paul von Hindenburg.

Erich Ludendorff.

There is no such thing as a wartime general who does everything perfectly all the time. All are flesh-and-blood human beings. All at one point or another rate some degree of legitimate criticism for their actions and decisions. But by necessity such judgments always come after the fact. Most of us cannot possibly imagine what it is like to be responsible for the lives of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of one’s own countrymen; having to make decisions under extreme pressure, in the environment of the fog and friction of war; and with partial, incorrect and even intentionally deceptive information on which to base those decisions. Even if the general does everything right, his troops still wind up suffering casualties while killing and wounding huge numbers of the enemy. It is just this mass expenditure of human life in war that results in the tendency to classify generals into neatly self-contained categories: heroes (cult icons such as World War II German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel), villains (World War I’s butchers and bunglers) or fools (World War I’s donkeys). In modern-day estimation virtually no World War I general ranks in the hero class, yet to one degree or another every battlefield commander in history can be included simultaneously in all three categories. The following analysis will focus on the six senior-most Western Front battlefield commanders of 1918, namely:

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, chief of the General Staff of the German field army (Feldheer)

General of the Infantry Erich Ludendorff, first quartermaster general of the German army

Marshal of France Ferdinand Foch, general in chief of the Allied armies

General of Division Philippe Pétain, commander in chief of French armies on the Western Front

Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force

General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Forces

Chief of the German General Staff Hindenburg (left) and Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff acted in concert during the war, the latter as chief tactician.

Ferdinand Foch.

Philippe Pétain

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

Sir Douglas Haig.

John J. Pershing.

Despite broad rejection today in most academic circles of the “great man theory” of history, these six generals had the major influence on the outcome of the campaigns of 1918 and, ultimately, the war. It was these senior-most commanders who made the decisions, and it is impossible to understand the Western Front in 1918 without studying them.

The judgment of history still has not been settled on these six warlords. Judgment rests far more heavily on three of the six than the records of their wartime commands merit. Pétain is rightly remembered as the savior of France on two separate occasions—at Verdun in 1916 and again in the spring of 1917 after mutinies threatened his ranks. But he is better remembered as the man who as chief of state of Vichy France from 1940 to ’44 sold out his country to the Third Reich. Hindenburg was the “Wooden Titan” (der Nagelsäulen), Germany’s only true national hero during the war. He was also the last president of the doomed Weimar Republic and the man who appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany in January 1933. The debate continues on Ludendorff. He was either the greatest military genius of the war, or he was the man whose strategic ineptitude and personal military and political overreach resulted in a complete loss of focus that cost Germany the war. He also was an early supporter of the Nazis, later tried along with Hitler for the infamous Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923. Of the six, Haig is the one most often branded today as a “château general,” or one who led from the rear. Foch had a reputation as a fighter, while every frontline poilu knew that Pétain, more than anyone else, would be more careful with their lives. Pershing had comparatively little experience commanding in combat, certainly not enough to acquire any significant negative repute among doughboys.

Unfortunately, space limitations restrict the following assessment. For more detail see my 2018 book The Generals’ War: Operational Level Command on the Western Front in 1918.

Paul von Hindenburg

Hindenburg is the most enigmatic of the war’s senior commanders, certainly more than the mere figurehead he appears today. The German command system was significantly different than those of the Allies. The relationship between a German commander and his chief of staff (Ludendorff’s de facto role by war’s end) was a far closer partnership. Thus, it is impossible to consider one or the other alone. Although by the last year of the war Hindenburg appeared to be little more than Ludendorff’s political top cover, one can never forget that, unlike many other German senior commanders, he was a fully qualified General Staff officer, one who had graduated with honors from the Kriegsakademie. The field marshal’s principal British biographer, John W. Wheeler-Bennett, said Hindenburg’s greatest contribution was his “never-failing capacity and willingness to accept responsibility, a feature of his character which became less apparent in his later life.” Those cracks in his armor began to show as early as October 1918.

By war’s end Hindenburg looked on as Ludendorff coordinated German tactics. When the end came and Ludendorff broke down, Hindenburg defended him.

Erich Ludendorff

Although Ludendorff arguably was the most brilliant tactician of the war, he had a blind spot for the operational level and virtually no understanding of the strategic. The five German offensives of 1918 did not constitute a coordinated, integrated and sequentially phased operational campaign, but rather five huge, costly and largely unconnected tactical actions. After the failure of the first offensive in March 1918, each subsequent offensive was a reaction to the failure of the one before it. As British historian David Stevenson has argued, rail lines were the key to the 1918 campaigns. The Allies, especially Foch, continually targeted the German rail network. The Germans, though sensitive to the security of their own network, failed to focus sufficiently on the significant vulnerabilities of the shallow and fragile Allied rail system. Rather than attacking vital Allied vulnerabilities, like the BEF’s key rail nodes of Amiens and Hazebrouck, Ludendorff repeatedly tried to win with force-on-force attacks. While the Germans did have a fleeting force superiority early in 1918, it was not large enough for that kind of strategy. And in May, when the third German offensive pushed from the Chemin des Dames ridge south to the Marne River, the Germans were left holding a large and ultimately indefensible salient that had no major rail lines leading into it. The outcome was inevitable. By then many of the staff officers at Oberste Heeresleitung (supreme army command) and subordinate headquarters were complaining that Ludendorff combined total strategic indecision with endless interference over minor tactical details.

Opposing generals Ludendorff and Pétain each overhauled the tactics of his army, the former bogging down in that task to the detriment of strategic concerns.

The two key French generals of 1918, Foch and Pétain, were very different men. Pétain was by far the better tactician, but he was overcautious and pessimistic at the operational level. Foch had serious shortcomings as a tactician, but at the operational level he was the best general of the war. Fortunately for the Allies, they were the two right generals in the right positions at the right time—Foch as the overall Allied commander, and Pétain as commander of the French army. A similar division of duties existed between Generals Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton in 1944–45. Neither could have done the other’s job half as well.

Ferdinand Foch

Foch remains largely underrated. As Australian historian Elizabeth Greenhalgh noted, “Most historians dismiss the First World War version of supreme command as of little value, and Foch’s role in the victory as minimal.” But, Greenhalgh argued, Foch’s role in the Allies’ final victory was anything but minimal, and the precedent of his appointment to the supreme command and the lessons derived therefrom proved the essential foundation for the successful British-American combined command of World War II. Foch’s operational strategy of concentric attacks across a broad front between August and November 1918 essentially broke the German army. Unlike the uncoordinated and piecemeal German offenses during the first half of 1918, the Allied attacks during the second half were focused, synchronized and systematically timed.

From July 18 through war’s end Hindenburg and Ludendorff were forced to react to Foch, rather than the other way around. Perhaps his old friend and sometime critic General Sir Henry Wilson summed up the generalissimo best when after the war he observed, “[Foch] jumps over hills and valleys, but he always lands in the right place.”

As general in chief of the Allied armies, Foch managed to coordinate French, British and American efforts and achieve victory.

Philippe Pétain

As British historian Sir Alistair Horne wrote, “Pétain may not have had any original concepts on how the Great War should have been fought, but he understood better than either his colleagues or his opponents how it should not have been fought.” Actually, Horne’s assessment is somewhat parsimonious, for Pétain’s overhaul of French army tactics in 1917 was every bit the equal of Ludendorff’s initiatives.

Pétain depicted here reviewing French troops at Verdun.

Sir Douglas Haig

Much criticism, fair and unfair, has been heaped upon Haig over the last eight decades. For almost 20 years following the war the British public held him largely in high esteem. That changed radically in the mid-1930s, when wartime Prime Minister David Lloyd George started publishing his war memoirs. As American General William Westmoreland would experience in the wake of the Vietnam War, Haig became a lightning rod for almost everything that had gone wrong during World War I, including things over which he really had no control. Haig was hardly a stellar battlefield general, and he was a rather unimaginative tactician; but by the second half of 1918 he had become a reasonably competent and effective operational-level commander. Haig also had significant input on Foch’s concept for the Allied general offensive of the final two months of the war. There can be little doubt the key to the final Allied success was the difficult but ultimately effective partnership between Haig and Foch. The two met some 60 times between April and November 1918. It was Haig who convinced Foch the AEF’s main effort in late 1918 should be toward Mézières rather than Metz, as Pershing wanted, turning the Allied offensive into a gigantic, sequential pincer attack.

While assessments of Haig have become more nuanced over the last 30 years, British historians remain divided. In 2008 Paul Harris wrote of Haig during the Hundred Days that despite his shortcomings, “He commanded the most combat effective of the Allied armies at this period in the war, and there were few, if any, others who had the authority and determination to use the instrument with such vigor.”

Haig put in a mixed performance as British commander.

John J. Pershing

Though “Black Jack” Pershing has long held a reputation as one of the United States’ greatest generals, his reputation abroad was somewhat lower and admittedly closer to the mark. Pershing was a brilliant organizer of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). He also was an efficient trainer—but not an effective one, as he trained his troops for the wrong things. Pershing came late to the war, infused with a belief in American exceptionalism and an unstinting faith in superior marksmanship and the power of the bayonet. Ignoring the experiences of the previous three years, he believed that the tired and dispirited enemy troops cowering in their trenches could never stand up to his robust and fresh doughboys. Accordingly, he discounted the effects of new weapons like machine guns, trench mortars, artillery and aircraft, pushing his troops forward in relentless frontal attacks. Pershing’s misreading of the World War I battlefield was a major contributor to the U.S. Army having suffered a staggering 117,000 dead and 204,000 wounded in little more than six months of major combat operations. Despite Pershing’s serious tactical shortcomings, the AEF most likely would never have made it to the European battlefields of 1918 without him. He was a tireless organizer and had a talent for overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Regardless, his prejudices against modern weapons and lack of understanding of their firepower meant his AEF units were trained and equipped inadequately for the war they had to fight.

Pershing, commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, arrives in France in June 1917. Though a brilliant organizer, he underestimated the devastating firepower of modern weaponry.

A century after the outset of World War I there remains much to learn from a study of it, especially the last year of the war. Its conduct changed the way wars have been fought ever since. The basic outlines of the warfighting mechanics it introduced are still valid. A general of 1918 would recognize many of the basic challenges facing a general of 2018. As retired British Maj. Gen. Jonathan B.A. Bailey has observed, “The new thinking of 1917–18 formed the seedbed for the new techniques of fire and manoeuver practiced in the Second World War.” Indeed, and far beyond.

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. David T. Zabecki is HistoryNet’s chief military historian. For further reading he suggests his own The Generals’ War: Operational Level Command on the Western Front in 1918, which shared the 2018 Tomlinson Book Prize from the World War I Historical Association. Zabecki also recommends Reputations: Ten Years After, by B.H. Liddell Hart.

This story appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Military History magazine.

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World War I Enemies Played Football During A Christmas Truce–Except Maybe They Didn’t

Andrew Hamilton — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 15:52:52 +0000

Over the Christmas period in 1914, fraternization took place in No Man’s Land between British and German soldiers at St. Yvon in Belgium. Memorials in the Belgian villages of St. Yvon and Messines commemorate a football game played between the British and the Germans during the Truce. Whenever this author mentions that his grandfather Robert Hamilton, a captain in the 1st Battalion of the British Army’s Royal Warwickshire Regiment, was involved in the Christmas Truce at St. Yvon, he is invariably asked whether Hamilton played in a game of football against the Germans.

It is a fair question given that it is now widely accepted that there was an ‘international’ match there. However, evidence from accounts by those who took part in the Truce casts doubt over whether such a game took place at all and calls into question the justification for the installation of the three memorials, one on the edge of Ploegsteert Wood and two in Messines.

Where Did the Story Come From?

One of the most compelling accounts of the Christmas Truce and the warfare that preceded it, is to be found in Hamilton’s diary which he kept throughout his five months on the Western Front. It offers a graphic and harrowing account of mobile fighting before the onset of attritional trench warfare.

He vividly described the rain, mud, dangers and discomforts of life in the trenches and the daily fight for survival against shelling and sniping. His descriptions of life behind the lines, billets, estaminets and local hospitality are detailed and perceptive. His record of the humor and comradeship of his fellow soldiers is also heartwarming and entertaining.

This artistic interpretation of the Christmas Truce of 1914 depicts German and British troops mingling on the battlefield to exchange tokens of goodwill.

At the war’s outbreak in 1914, Hamilton was 37 years old. He had been brought up in Tiddington, a village near Shakespeare’s Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, England and was educated at Glenalmond College in Scotland, after which he became a regular in the British Army. He joined the Norfolk Regiment with whom he fought as a 2nd lieutenant in the Boer War 1899-1902.

By 1914 he had been transferred to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, whose men were commonly known as the Royal Warwicks. It is clear from his diary entries that he was a good friend of Bernard Law Montgomery, the future Field Marshal and architect of notable victories over Germany in World War II. On Aug. 8, 1914, Hamilton recorded when at Shorncliffe in Kent waiting to cross the Channel to France that, “Bernard and I walked down to get our valises, which they refused to let us fetch. This was the first major piece of red tape rot, which Bernard and I quite made up our minds must cease.”

Thirty-mile marches and ducking German shells exacted a toll on the Royal Warwicks. Hamilton complained on Sept. 12 that, “This is the hell,” and on Sept. 19 that, “I am sure I look fifty, I feel seventy.” Hamilton was promoted to the rank of captain after his superior, Charles Bentley, was court martialled for constant drunkenness, much to his and Montgomery’s relief.

On Oct. 13, 1914, in one of their first major actions of the war, the Royal Warwicks fought in the battle of Meteren, losing 42 men killed and 85 wounded. The battle ended Montgomery’s front line action when he was hit in the lung and knee. He was hospitalized in St. Omer and returned to Southampton, England via Boulogne on Oct. 18 to recover.

Andrew Edwards’ famous sculpture called “All Together Now” at the garden of St. Luke’s Church (the bombed-out church) in Liverpool.

Prior to the Christmas Truce, Hamilton and the Royal Warwicks were based in trenches on the edge of Ploegsteert Wood which on Nov. 22 were, he wrote, “in a shocking way. Dead bodies everywhere and the stink awful.” On Dec. 11, he wrote: “It rained all night and the whole of today. When I went round the sentries, I found them quite resigned to another flood. They were amused. One Private Carter said “it will lay the dust, sir, won’t it?” at which I laughed heartily and so did they. But poor fellows were on their last legs for this trench trip.”

Christmas at St. Yvon

In November, Hamilton had been delighted that Bruce Bairnsfather, a family friend from prewar days in Stratford-on-Avon, had arrived at the front. Bairnsfather would become celebrated for his cartoons of life in the trenches published in The Bystander magazine, especially his British “Tommy” characters Alf, Bert and most famously “Old Bill.” Bairnsfather captured life in the trenches in an inimitable style—for example, a Tommy caught in the light of a German star shell having drunk a whole jar of rum, the meeting of a British and a German officer in No Man’s Land, and the spectacle of a Birmingham barber cutting the locks of a long-suffering private of the Royal Warwicks with the warning, “Keep yer ’ead still or I’ll have yer blinkin’ ear off.”

At 6.30 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1914, Hamilton’s A Company of the 1st Battalion Royal Warwicks set off from their billets at La Crèche in France to relieve the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the trenches at St. Yvon over the border in Belgium. Over 100 years later, if one follows in their footsteps from the magnificent Ploegsteert Memorial along Mud Lane to Prowse Point Military Cemetery, one will find the memorial unveiled in December 2014 by French football star and administrator Michel Platini, which has since been swamped by football shirts and scarves and surrounded by footballs. Behind the original German front line at Messines the main football-inspired memorial is a replica of a memorial first unveiled in 2014 in Liverpool outside St. Luke’s Church.

A wealth of accounts of what happened over the Christmas period at St. Yvon shed a different light on what actually transpired there. These accounts include firsthand British reports by four officers including Hamilton, three NCOs, nine privates and an account by a German officer, Leutnant Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxon Regiment.

Of the many truces that took place on the Western Front in 1914, this one is unquestionably the best documented. Using this material, it is possible to paint a comprehensive and detailed picture of what happened during the fraternisation in that sector of the Western Front—including about whether the legendary football match ever took place.

Despite the doubt about whether men on opposing sides played football together, the football has become a symbol of the Christmas Truce and features in several memorials, including Flanders, Belgium.

Most of the British soldiers who had been at the Front since August 1914 were “regulars”—professional soldiers—rather than the thousands of volunteers who answered Horatio Herbert, 1st Earl Kitchener’s call to arms. Assured the war would be “over by Christmas” they found themselves tired and homesick after four months of tough combat.

Unsurprisingly they were, according to Hamilton’s diary, “a little sad at spending Christmas Day” in the trenches when they set off for them at 6.30 p.m. When the men approached their trenches, it was clear something was amiss. Hamilton recalled that, “Crossing the well worn danger zone to our consternation not a shot was fired at us.’ After much shouting to and fro across No Man’s Land, Private Gregory, was given permission by Hamilton to go and parley with the Saxons “at your own risk”. On his return, he informed his officer that, “they [the Germans] wanted me to meet their officer and after a great deal of shouting across I said I would meet him at dawn, unarmed.”

Meeting the Germans

For the Royal Warwicks who had suffered several weeks of wind, rain, flooded trenches, shelling and sniping, the interaction with the 134th Saxons on Christmas Eve was extraordinary and unexpected. Carols were sung by both sides. Leutnant Zehmisch ordered Christmas trees to be lit with candles along the trenches.

Lt. Cave recalled that “they had their Christmas trees blazing all night” and Pvt. Day wrote that on Christmas Day at “about 1 o’clock they struck up with a band of concertinas and a cornet; they played ‘Home Sweet Home’ first, then a lot of other tunes finishing up with “God save the King.” Pvt. Charlie Pratt was in awe that “the Germans sent up a star shell which lit up the place lovely and then for the first time we saw friend and foe.” Pvt. Walter Cooke considered that “the band sounded great, much better than hearing shells whistle overhead” while Pvt. Langton recalled that “we would sing a carol first and they would sing one. I tell you they can harmonize alright.”

It was inevitable that fraternization would take place on Christmas morning. Hamilton wrote he “went out and found a Saxon officer of the 134th Saxon Corps, who was fully armed. I pointed to his revolver and pouch. He smiled and said, seeing I was unarmed, ‘Alright now.’ We shook hands, and said what we could in double Dutch, arranged a local armistice for 48 hours, and returned to our trenches. This was the signal for the respective soldiers to come out. As far as I can make out this effort of ours extended itself on either side for some considerable distance. The soldiers on both sides met in their hundreds and exchanged greetings and gifts. We buried many Germans, and they did the same to ours.”

In the evening a number of officers enjoyed a concert in ‘D’ Company’s dugout until midnight. It was, according to Hamilton, “a very merry Xmas and a most extraordinary one.” There was nonetheless a feeling that the enemy could not be trusted, so Hamilton “doubled the sentries after midnight.”

Exchanging gifts

Hundreds of soldiers swapped postcards, photos, pipes, mufflers, tobacco, cakes, buttons, tins of bully beef and cap badges. The most popular exchanges were, as Day noted “cigarettes for cigars, a gift from the Kaiser.” He also received “some of their postcards which they signed and addressed.” Pvt. Layton was impressed with the Germans’ language skills: “There were a good many amongst them who could speak broken English alright and they said ‘You make it no shoot, we make it no shoot.’” For William Tapp, it was “a strange sight, unbelievable that we were all mixed up together.”

A Christmas Truce memorial located at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, England.

The armistice meant that an important job could be carried out. The Brigade War Diary recorded that ‘men of the Somerset Light Infantry, 134th Saxons, Hampshires, a Prussian and an Uhlan were all buried. The Germans helped in the digging with the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwicks supplied the “tools” since the Germans stated they had none. Burial of the dead was a convenient excuse for the Brigade commanders to play down the enormity of what had happened.

At the time when British soldiers were fraternizing with the enemy in No Man’s Land, their superiors, Generals John French, Douglas Haig and Horace Smith-Dorrien were lunching in St. Omer. They were furious to hear reports of what had taken place. On Boxing Day, Smith-Dorrien sought details of officers and units who had taken part in the Christmas Truce “with a view to disciplinary action.”

Fraternizing with the Enemy

He wrote in his memorandum of Dec. 27: “This is only illustrative of the apathetic state we are gradually sinking in to… to finish this war quickly we must keep up the fighting spirit and do all we can to discourage friendly intercourse.” For the author of the 1/ Royal Warwicks War Diary, Christmas Eve was “a quiet day. Relieved the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the trenches in the evening.”

There was no mention of what had taken place. The Brigade War Diary also played down the event and observed a positive opportunity for intelligence gathering: “A quiet day. No firing. The Germans appear to think that an armistice exists for Christmas Day. An informal interchange of courtesies took place between troops in the fire trenches of both belligerents. Some valuable information was gleaned during the intercourse. The trenches seem fairly strongly held, the enemy cheerful and well fed.”

Fraternizing with the enemy during a war was unacceptable and unheard of, so concerns about potential sanctions were expressed. Hamilton was told that “the General and staff are furious but powerless to stop it.” William Tapp feared the worst: “I don’t know what our General would say if he knew about this.” Pvt. Harry Morgan wondered that “if all the troops along the line had refused to fight on both sides, would the War have ended there and then?” In the event no one was reprimanded.

Hamilton returned home on leave in early January, recording in his diary on Jan. 12 that “All’s well that ends well.” He had suffered throughout the campaign with troublesome ears and visited an Army doctor in London who spared him further active combat. His diary then chronicles the “battles” he fought with Conscientious Objectors’ and “red tape” as Commandant of the Hereford Military Detention Barracks, a role he detested but which was arguably a small price to pay for avoiding further involvement on the Western Front and the huge losses suffered by the Royal Warwicks in April 1915 during the 2nd Battle of Ypres when the Germans used poisonous chlorine gas for the first time.

What About The Football?

So was a game of football played during this particular Christmas armistice? Although the many accounts contain numerous details about the truce, no evidence exists whatsoever to justify the creation of the three memorials to an “international” football match. Zehmisch wrote that “a couple of English brought a football out of their trench and a vigorous match began.” Pvt. Smith commented that the “Germans were interested spectators” of the kickabout. Zehmisch recorded that towards evening the English officers asked whether a big football match could be held on the following day, but he was unable to agree to a match as his company would be returning to their billets. Hamilton’s diary entry corroborates Zehmisch’s account: ‘’A’ Coy would have played the 134th Saxon Corps tomorrow only that the company was relieved.” Pvt. Walter Cooke was disappointed that “the Germans wanted to play at football but that fell through” and Tapp, a Birmingham City supporter, was upset that a game could not be arranged.

There can be no doubt that if a game of football had taken place, Bairnsfather would have captured the event in a cartoon with his characters Alf, Bert and ‘Old Bill’ flooring their opponents with crunching tackles, no doubt breaking legs and sending Saxon pickelhaubes flying to all parts of No Man’s Land. Bairnsfather limited himself to describing the football as just “a kickabout amongst the Royal Warwicks” (not with the Germans) and later in 1929 concluded in The American Magazine that “there had not been an atom of hate shown by either side. It was a punctuation mark on all the combatants’ lives of cold and humid hate.” A contemporary photograph of No Man’s land at St. Yvon shows it pitted with shell holes and extremely uneven—conditions hardly conducive for a football match.

For those who participated in the Truce at St. Yvon, it was a truly memorable event that would have been beyond their wildest dreams. Words that appear frequently in their accounts are “astounding,” “extraordinary,” “strange,” “unbelievable,” and “unique.” Morgan was impressed that “there were no guns, no bullets, no voices.” Zehmisch felt it had been “marvelous and strange” and his opposing officer Hamilton, admittedly resorting to hyperbole, started his diary entry for Christmas Day 1914: “A Day Unique in the World’s History.” For Tapp, “it was like a clock that had stopped ticking… it was very different to the other Christmas days I had spent, especially the one in 1910 when I stood under the mistletoe with the girl I later married.” Tapp was later killed during the German gas attack on April 25, 1915 and his name is, along with nearly 500 other Royal Warwicks with no known grave, recorded on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.

Flimsy Evidence of a Match

The Truce at St. Yvon was similar to many held along as much as two thirds of the British-held trenches along the Western Front. This Christmastide there will be the usual references to games of football in the media and social media…but how many actually took place?

In the most comprehensive work on the Christmas Truce, Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton are skeptical about the numbers, stressing that the ground in No Man’s Land was too pockmarked and uneven for there to have been many matches. They do however assert that “there are a sufficient number of references to games which allegedly took place for it to be difficult to believe that this is all smoke without fire.”

Yet in most cases the evidence is flimsy to say the least. The most likely game to have taken place may have been across the border at Frelinghien in France where Leutnant Johannes Niemann of the 133rd Saxon regiment recorded that a soldier in the Scottish 2nd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders produced a football and “now there developed a proper game of football with caps put down as goalposts. Quite a happening on that frozen field.” He concludes that “the game ended 3-2 to Fritz.” The Germans were much amused that the Scots were not wearing underpants beneath their kilts: “This delighted us hugely …” Unfortunately, Niemann’s evidence is not confirmed by any British accounts.

One thing we can be certain about is that a football match at St. Yvon is a myth and that the three memorials do no more than promote a legend. But at Christmas time why be Scrooge-like about this and let the truth get in the way of a marvelous story of peace and reconciliation—even if it was for only a day or two before the bitter war resumed in the New Year?

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

How A French Orphan Became the ‘Mascot’ of Australian Airmen at the End of World War I

Claire Barrett — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 14:02:48 +0000

For four years Honore Hermene wandered across the battle-scarred landscapes of the Western Front, surviving by scavenging through the wastelands of Europe’s no man’s lands and the kindness of Allied soldiers.

On Christmas Day 1918, motivated by the gurgling in his gut, the young Hermene sniffed out the decadent Christmas lunch of the Australian Flying Corps 4 Squadron, hosted in the airmen’s mess at Bickendorf Air Base in Germany.

Cold, hungry and alone, the boy invited himself to share in the Australians’ feast. Although introducing himself as Honore, according to the Australian War Memorial, the aviators “couldn’t pronounce it, so he became known to them as Henri, and was nicknamed ‘Little Digger’ or ‘Digger.’”

Henri engaging in a round of fisticuffs with two unknown airmen.

“He is one of those little kids who is a true casualty of war,” Australian War Memorial Historian Dr. Meleah Hampton stated.

His father, most likely a soldier, was killed in the early weeks of the war in 1914, and his mother — and possibly a sister — were killed shortly after that when a German shell struck his house.

“From what we can work out,” Hampton continued, “he had been going from unit to unit, spending a little bit of time with them, getting food and whatever, before moving on to the next one, and that’s what he was doing when he wandered into to the Australian Flying Corps mess on Christmas Day 1918. We don’t know when he was born, and we’re not even sure what town he really came from, or what his surname really was, or anything.”

After his years of rambling, Henri found a home among the Aussies. He was quickly “adopted” by the unit, becoming something of a mascot for the squadron — catching rats, sneaking into planes and enjoying the general camaraderie at the base.

Timothy Tovell showcasing how he smuggled Henri out of Germany.

While his age was never determined, Australian doctors estimated that the young “Digger” was roughly nine years old by the war’s end. The men chose his birthday as Christmas Day — one that Henri would use for the rest of his life.

Husband and father Timothy Tovell, an air mechanic with the squadron, became the boy’s unofficial guardian. With the armistice signed on Nov. 11, 1918, the squadron got word that the military drawdown was taking place and that they would soon be sent home.

Tovell wrote to his wife, Gertie, requesting that they open their home to the young boy.

“Tovell determined that he was going to bring the boy home to Australia, and that created quite a stir,” Hampton relayed. “The French and the English authorities didn’t want him to go. They wanted him to go and live in an orphanage, so the Australians decided to smuggle him home with them on a troopship. They carried him on board in a kit bag, and then hid him in a bag of bread, or a bag of oats, until it was too late to turn back.”

Timothy and Henri circa 1925.

He became the beloved son of Timothy and Gertie. However, just as Henri’s life began in tragedy, so too did it end with it.

In May 1928, Henri was killed in a motorcycle accident while traveling in Melbourne.

Despite not being a member of the R.A.A.F., the “Little Digger” was buried with full military honors.

“Tim Tovell was a steady and strong person for Henri to cleave to,” wrote Hampton. “He really needed that, and I think Tovell was happy to be the person that he needed.“

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The Project That Puts U.S. Veterans First

Jon Guttman — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Monica Mohindra.

Monica Mohindra On July 27, 1953, the Korean War ended with an armistice but no official treaty, technically meaning a state of war still exists between the combatant nations. Among the multinational participants in that significant flare-up in the Cold War were nearly 7 million U.S. military service personnel, of whom more than 1 million are still living. The 70th anniversary of the armistice spurred the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project to redouble its efforts to record for posterity the memories of those participants while it still can. Military History recently interviewed Veterans History Project director Monica Mohindra about its collection, the pressure of time and ongoing initiatives to honor veterans of that “Forgotten War” and all other American conflicts.

What is the central mission of the Veterans History Project?

Our mission is to collect, preserve and make accessible the first-person remembrances of U.S. veterans who served from World War I through the more recent conflicts. We want all stories, not just those from the foxhole or the battlefronts, but from all veterans who served the United States in uniform. The idea, developed by Congress in October 2000, was to ensure we would all be able to hear directly from veterans about their lived experience, their service, their sacrifice and what they felt on a human scale about their participation in service and/or conflict.

Is your recent emphasis on the ‘forgotten’ Korean War mainly due to the anniversary?

Correct. But there is so much to share from the history of the Korean War that is relevant. We’re also marking the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of the U.S. military, and researchers have been using our collections to understand, for instance, nurses’ perspectives on what it was like to serve in a desegregated military. Our collection speaks to what it was like prior to and after desegregation.

To what extent do memories tied to both anniversaries overlap?

One of the real strengths of the Veterans History Project, and of oral history projects in general, is that one can pull generalized opinions from a multiplicity of voices. For example, there’s a story about a veteran named James Allen who “escaped” racially charged Florida to join the military. Serving in Korea in various administrative tasks, he experienced a taste of what life could be like under desegregation. When he returned to the United States, he moved back to Florida, the very place he’d escaped, to help veterans and advance such notions.

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

You’re the spouse of a Navy veteran. Does that shape your perspective on history overall and the project you’ve taken up?

It absolutely adds another layer to the Veterans History Project and what it means on a human scale. This is personal. My husband’s experience, just like each veteran’s, is unique. He’s not ready to share his story—maybe not with me ever. His father, who also served, is not ready to share his story—maybe not with me, maybe not ever. Both of his grandfathers served. My grandfather served, too. So, I feel a personal imperative to help those veterans who are ready to share their stories.

It’s that seriousness of purpose, to create a private resource for future use, the Veterans History Project offers individuals around the country. We already have more than 115,000 such individual perspectives, and that gives us the opportunity to share the wealth of these collections.

Their 1950 introduction to combat was a shock for the Borinqueneers, many of whom had never seen snow.

How does the project handle contributions?

Individuals may want to start by conversing with the veterans in their lives or by finding the collection of a veteran.

To what use does the project put such memories?

People use the Veterans History Project—often online and sometimes in person here at the Folklife Center Reading Room—for a variety of reasons. More than 70 percent of our materials (letters, photographs, audio and video interviews, etc.) are digitized, and more than 3 million annual visitors come to the website. They’re using our materials for everything from school projects to enlivening curricula. Recently researchers have conducted postdoctoral research on desegregation during the Korean War. The project is also useful for beginning deeper conversations among friends and family members.

In this time of AI [artificial intelligence], the collection is a primary resource from those who had the lived experience. What did they hear? What did they see? How did they keep in touch with loved ones? These are the kind of questions we pose.

What was unique about the Korean War experience?

Perhaps the extraordinary scope of injuries service members suffered because of the cold. Consider the Borinqueneers [65th U.S. Infantry Regiment], out of Puerto Rico, many of whom had never seen snow. On crossing the seas, they arrived in these extreme conditions, and it’s all so foreign. They received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2014, and we are fortunate to have memories from 20 Borinqueneers in our collection.

Recently, the last American fighter ace of the Korean War died. Are you concerned about the time constraints you face?

Yes. The weight of that actuarial reality was quite heavy on World War I veterans. We had the pleasure to work with Frank Buckles [see “Frank Buckles, 110, Last of the Doughboys,” by David Lauterborn, on HistoryNet.com] several times, and he became sort of an emblem of his cohort, if you will. That was a heavy weight on him, one that he did not shy from.

The burden now is on people like me, you, your readers, to make sure we do sit down with the veterans in our lives. We want people 15 and up to think about doing that.

Frank Buckles, the last surviving doughboy of World War I, worked with the Veterans History Project to honor his generation.

What about the memories of U.N. personnel from other nations who served in Korea?

The legislation for the Veterans History Project is very clear. It limits our mission to those who served the U.S. military in uniform. That does include commissioned officers of the U.S. Public Health Service, an often forgotten uniformed service. We cannot accept the collections of Allies who served alongside U.S. troops. However, we do collaborate with other organizations within our sphere. For instance, in cooperation with the Korean Library Association we held an adjunct activity at the Library of Congress, a two-day symposium.

Do you accept contributions from Gold Star families?

We do. The legislation for the Veterans History Project was amended in 2016 with a new piece of legislation called the Gold Star Families Voices Act. Before that we accepted collections of certain deceased members, including photographs or a journal, diary or unpublished memoir that could capture the first-person perspective.

However, the 2016 legislation put a fine point on a definition for Gold Star families to contribute. Under the Gold Star Family Voices Act, those participating as either interviewers or interviewees must be 18 or older, as one is speaking about a situation that involves trauma. Our definition calls for collections of 10 or more photographs or 20 or more pages of letters or a journal or unpublished memoir. The other way to start a collection is to submit 30 or more minutes of audio or video interviews. This enables us to gain a full perspective of a veterans’ experience, whether they are living or deceased.

Where can an interested veteran or family member get more information?

There is all sorts of information on our website [loc.gov/vets]. They should also feel free to come to our information center at the Library of Congress [101 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, D.C.], with extended hours on Thursdays until 8 p.m.

This interview appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Military History magazine.

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Using Tiny Submarines, These Men Sneaked Onto the Normandy Beaches Before the 1944 Invasion

Gavin Mortimer — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 16:40:09 +0000

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The two frogmen slipped into the dark cold waters of the English Channel and started swimming towards the shore. The sea was lumpy and the pair could feel the current pulling them further east than they wished. The rain was torrential and all they could see was the lighthouse beam as they swam hard for land. They came ashore opposite the village of La Rivière, staggering up the beach at a crouch, relieved that they were screened from the lighthouse’s beam by buildings and trees.

For a few moments Maj. Logan Scott-Bowden and Sgt. Bruce Ogden-Smith recovered their breath in the lee of some groynes. From the buildings above them they could hear revelry. It was the last day of 1943 and the Germans were seeing in the New Year with plenty of beer and song.

The two Englishmen set off down the beach, heading west for nearly a mile towards the original landing spot. The intelligence briefing had stated the beach was not mined. On this stretch of the Normandy coast the strong tides and shifting sand meant they would not stay in position. The rain was now nearly horizontal, a filthy night but a perfect one for their task.

Checking his map, Scott-Bowden announced that they had reached their place of work. They were to take samples of sand from the beach in an area designated in the shape of the letter ‘W’. The sand was collected by an auger, which, when inserted into the sand and given one half turn, dredged up a core sample. These were collected in twenty 10-inch tubes held in a bandolier worn by one of the men.

Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden worked swiftly, moving up and down the beach, taking samples but glancing now and again east to check that no Germans were clearing their groggy heads with a stroll down the beach. With their samples stashed in the bandolier, the pair left the beach and began wading through the breakers. But the wind had picked up and they were flung back into the sea. They tried again but without success. Apprehension began to rise. If they were caught on the beach with their bandolier the game would be up?

A Secretive Special Forces Unit

This was one of the most crucial moments of the war. Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden ran up the beach. With the lighthouse beam to help them, they worked out the wave pattern. On the third attempt they made it through the surf and swam furiously towards the recovery boat. Suddenly Scott-Bowden heard a cry through the wind. Turning, he saw Ogden-Smith waving an arm. “I swam back somewhat alarmed, thinking he had either got cramp or his suit had sprung a leak,” recalled Scott-Bowden. “When I got close, he shouted ‘Happy New Year!’”

Bruce Ogden-Smith and Logan Scott-Bowden belonged to one of the most secretive special forces units in the British army. To those who served it was known by its acronym, COPP, short for Combined Operations Pilotage Parties.

From left: Maj. Logan Scott-Bowden was one of the frogmen who scouted the beaches prior to the D-Day landings; Sub-Lt. Jim Booth volunteered from the Royal Navy and was tasked with switching on beacons for the invasion force; Lt. Commander Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott, shown here in a COPP suit, organized and led the top secret recon force.

COPP was the brainchild of Lieutenant-Commander Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott, who had joined the Royal Navy between the wars, partly inspired by tales he’d heard as a young boy from his uncle Henry. He’d served in the First World War and had taken part in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915, when the Allies had attempted to knock Turkey out of the war by landing on the Gallipoli peninsula. It had been a bloody failure. Thousands of British, Australian and New Zealand troops were slaughtered attempting to establish a beachhead on clifftop ridges well-fortified by Turkish soldiers. Had the British planners been better briefed about the peninsula they might not have risked such an audacious amphibious assault. To Willmott’s dismay, the British military appeared not to have learned their lesson when the Second World War started. The Norwegian campaign in 1940, in which Willmott participated, was hampered by the Royal Navy’s ignorance of the fjords as they attempted to land British troops.

Beach Surveillance

In early 1941 Willmott was appointed navigation officer for a planned invasion of Rhodes, a strategically important island in the Mediterranean Sea. There was scant intelligence on the approach to the beaches or shoreline itself. Might there be sandbars or rocks just under the water? Were the beaches mined? Were they suitable for vehicles? Were there accessible exit points so soldiers could quickly move inland? Answers to these questions had to be found.

Willmott requested permission from Rear Adm. Harold Tom Baillie-Grohman, in charge of overall responsibility for planning the assault, to carry out a reconnaissance from a dinghy. It was a time in the war when the British, fighting a lone battle against the Axis forces, were at their most inventive out of necessity.

Small raiding units, dubbed ‘private armies’ were being formed with the encouragement of Prime Minister Winston Churchill: the commandos, the Long Range Desert Group and the Special Boat Section [SBS], the latter commanded by Maj. Roger Courtney, an adventurer before the war who had canoed the length of the White Nile in Africa. Courtney was only too happy to paddle Willmott ashore. Their reconnaissance proved invaluable, revealing perilous aspects of the shoreline that would have hampered any amphibious assault.

Private Armies?

Not all British senior officers approved of ‘private armies.’ Some regarded these units as unbecoming of the British military and it was another 18 months before Willmott was authorized to raise a naval reconnaissance force. It took the shambles of the Dieppe Raid in August 1942 to convince the British that better reconnaissance was imperative for future operations. Intelligence about the Dieppe coastline had been so poor that the British planners were reduced to studying prewar postcards of the coastline for clues about its topography. Three thousand Canadians and British commandos were killed or captured because of this ignorance, plus three killed in action, five wounded and three POWs of the 50 U.S. Army Rangers that took part while assigned to a commando unit.

Willmott’s unit gathered intelligence for Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of Vichy-controlled French North Africa in November 1942. As a consequence, the following month the force was expanded and officially designated COPP.

X-class submarines were powered by 4-cylinder 42 hp diesel engines–the same type used in London double-decker buses–plus a 30 hp electric motor. The midget submarines were usually crewed by three men, sometimes four.

Scott-Bowden was recruited to COPP as Willmott’s second-in-command in May 1943, a few months before Sub-Lt. Jim Booth. Scott-Bowden was a soldier but Booth volunteered from the Royal Navy, where he’d tired of life as a junior officer mine-sweeping in the North Sea. “I’d heard nothing of COPP prior to my arrival,” recalled Booth in a 2017 interview with the author. “But it was soon apparent that I was among a different breed. They were mad, really, but in a nice way. I think for most of us the motivation for volunteering was to do something different.”

New recruits to COPP underwent training at Hayling Island, off the south coast of England near Portsmouth. Willmot was ruthless in weeding out those men he judged to be deficient physically or mentally for his unit. “He was very nice but bloody tough,” said Booth. “During the autumn and winter of 1943, he led us in training every day. He was methodical in our navigational training because he knew the problems caused by poor navigation.” While Booth completed his training, Willmot and Scott-Bowden were told to report to Combined Operations HQ in London in December 1943.

Invading France

The planning for the invasion of France was underway. A 50-mile stretch of Normandy coast had been identified as a potential beachhead. But there were concerns. “Scientists had anxieties about the beach bearing-capacity of the Plateau de Calvados beaches for the passage of heavy-wheeled vehicles and guns, particularly in the British and Canadian sectors,” said Scott-Bowden. In ancient times there been peat marshes close to the sea. These had been covered with sand over the centuries, but the Allies feared that peat was often accompanied by clay, which could be catastrophic for a large invasion force.

The Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington wanted a conclusive estimate of how much beach trackway would be required for the invasion force. Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden undertook a trial run on Dec. 22, 1943 on a beach in Norfolk, eastern England. It was an opportunity to gain valuable practical experience of using the auger to collect samples. It was also a chance for COPP to prove to sceptical Allied planners that they could do their work undetected by sentries. Having proved their point, the pair sailed to Normandy on New Year’s Eve and the real thing was as fruitful as the dress rehearsal.

“[Lt.] General [Omar N.] Bradley commander in chief of all the American [D-Day assault] forces… having heard that we had examined the British beach [Gold] wanted Omaha Beach—as it came to be known—to be examined too,” remembered Scott-Bowden.

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach was five miles west of ‘Gold’ beach. Bradley and his planners already knew it posed a formidable challenge to a putative invasion force. The beach was exposed, rising gently to a low sea wall, beyond which was a no-man’s land of marshy grassland. It was overlooked by bluffs, steep in places, which were cut by five valleys, the only exit points for vehicles and all heavily guarded by German concrete bunkers. COPP was instructed to bring back as much intelligence as they could about ‘Omaha’ beach in an operation codenamed Postage Able. Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden were again part of the team, accompanied by Willmot.

However, there was a significant difference to this mission compared to the one undertaken on New Year’s Eve. This time the audacious men would be traveling in an X-craft—a midget submarine that COPP had been conducting training on for several weeks in Loch Striven, a sea loch off the west coast of Scotland.

An X-craft midget submarine in a training exercise in late 1944.

The X-class, or X-craft submarines were powered by 4-cylinder 42 hp diesel engines of the type used in London double-decker buses, and a 30 hp electric motor. Its maximum surface speed was 6.5 knots (a knot less when submerged). The midget submarines were usually crewed by three: the commander, pilot and engineer. Some also carried a specialist diver/frogman as a fourth member of the crew. “The X-craft were 52 feet long and 5 feet in diameter,” Jim Booth recalled, adding that they could remain at sea for to 10 days. The worst aspect of the midget submarines, certainly for the six-foot Booth, was their size. “The facilities were very cramped,” he remembered. “You had a bunk, cooking facilities, a gluepot for a hot meal, and you could just about stand.”

COPP had two midget submarines—X-20 and X-23—and it was the former that sailed from Portsmouth for Omaha beach on Jan. 17, 1944 under the command of Lt. Ken Hudspeth. It was a joint effort, his pilotage skills and the navigation of Willmot. “To reach the destination precisely, at [low] speed and in the strong cross-rides of Baie de Seine, was a measure of Willmott’s remarkable navigational skill,” commented Hudspeth.

At 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 18, the midget submarine was about 380 yards from the beach. It was nearly high tide. The vessel beached at periscope depth in 8 feet of water on the left-hand sector of ‘Omaha’ beach. Willmott took a couple of bearings to be sure of their position, then turned over the periscope to Scott-Bowden. “I took a quick general view and was astonished to see hundreds of [German] soldiers at work, and how hard they were working,” he recalled. “From our low-level view and pointing slightly up due to the slope of the beach, it was often possible to see under the camouflage netting and so verify the types of [gun] emplacement being constructed.”

Inside the Submersible

That night, Scott-Bowden and Ogden-Smith swam ashore to get a closer look. “We examined the beach with our augers over a wide area as planned,” said Scott-Bowden. The pair had special instructions to investigate the shingle bank at the back of the beach to determine if it might impede the progress of armoured vehicles. “It appeared to have been man-made and was above normal high water,” noted Scott-Bowden. “There were masses of wire immediately behind and a probable minefield. We each took one stone.” The next night the pair carried out another beach reconnaissance.

During daylight on Jan. 20 the midget submarine moved along the coast, observing different areas of the beach through the periscope. Then in the late afternoon they sailed for England. It was another two hours before Hudspeth felt it safe to surface, to the relief of the five men on board (the fifth was the engineer officer). Willmott recorded in his journal that the air was “very bad (none fresh for 11 hours) and everyone showed signs of distress.”

They reached Portsmouth at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 21—after no less than five days inside X-20. Several high-ranking officers were on the quayside to greet them but when the rear hatch was opened “the reception committee took a large step back.” Scott-Bowden didn’t blame them. The stench had been unbearable. A midget submarine was no place for a soldier.

An X-craft could travel up to 6.5 knots while at the surface and one knot less while underwater. At 52 feet long and 5 feet in diameter, they contained facilities for crews to sleep and cook, but there was barely standing room inside.

The midget submarine had gathered vital intelligence on what became known as Omaha Beach for the planning for D-Day. Its role in assisting with the invasion of Normandy was not over. A new destination for X-20 was Juno Beach, the middle of the three Anglo-Canadian landing sectors with Gold to the west and Sword to the east. Arriving off the coast on June 4, the submarine acted as a beach marker for the main amphibious assault as they approached on the morning of D-Day.

COPP’s other midget submarine, X-23, was tasked with performing a similar task at Sword beach, the eastern extremity of the invasion task force. The crews of both vessels had been ordered to Portsmouth with their craft at the end of May. “We booked into the wardroom and so we knew it [the invasion] was imminent,” said Jim Booth. “Everything had been done in the greatest secrecy, however, and while we had done a lot of training, we had no clue to the date of the invasion or the location.”

On the morning of June 2, the skipper of X-20, Lt. George Honour, assembled his crew, which comprised Booth, Lt. Geoff Lyne (chief navigator), George Vause (engineer), and First Lt. Jimmy Hodges (diver). The invasion was on, he told them. They would depart in the evening. Their operational orders were to sail the 90 miles to Normandy and then lie on the bottom of the Channel a mile off Sword beach until the early hours of D-Day on June 5. Then they would surface, erect their masts with their lights shining seaward, activate their radio beacons and guide in the invasion fleet.

Switching on the Beacons

Booth’s job was to climb into a dinghy and erect the masts and switch on the beacons. The operation was codenamed “Gambit,” a word Honour explained to his men was a chess move in which a piece is risked so as to gain advantage later. The men laughed sardonically.

The rest of the day was one of frenetic activity as they loaded the midget submarine with equipment: 2 small CQR anchors, three flashing lamps with batteries, several taut-string measuring reels, two small portable radar beacons, an eighteen-feet-long sounding pole and two telescopic masts of similar length. Twelve additional bottles of oxygen were hauled down the access hatch, to complement the vessel’s built-in cylinders, and three RAF rubber dinghies were also brought on board.

A handful of submachine guns and revolvers (and false identification papers) were stashed inside the sub in the event they were forced to abandon the vessel and make for Nazi-occupied France. At 9:40 p.m., X-20 and X-23 sailed out of Portsmouth and rendezvoused with two naval trawlers that towed them part way across the Channel.

The submarines slipped their tows at 4:35 a.m. June 3 and headed independently towards their respective beaches. X-23’s orders was to position itself at the point where the amphibious Duplex Drive Sherman [DD-swimming] tanks were to be launched onto Sword Beach. The pressure on the shoulders of Lt. Lynne, the navigator of X-23, was therefore immense: a slight error in position could have appalling ramifications.

The chief pre-occupation of X-23’s skipper, George Honour, was their oxygen supply; to conserve it as best he could he carried out a procedure every five hours of what submariners call “guffing through”—coming to periscope depth and raising the induction mast, then running the engine for a few minutes to draw a fresh supply of air through the boat. This brought obvious risks, particularly as they would lying just off the enemy coastline.

This map depicts how the Allied invasion of Normandy unfolded on D-Day, June 6, 1944, with the British landing on “Gold” and “Sword” beaches, Canadians on “Juno” and U.S. on “Omaha” and “Utah.”

At 8:30 a.m. June 4 Honour wrote in his log: “Periscope depth, ran to the East. Churches identified and fix obtained.” They had arrived at their position off Sword beach. The churches they could see were those at Ouistreham. Booth peered through the periscope. On the beach was a group Germans playing football. “Poor buggers don’t know what’s going to hit them,” he muttered.

Enough Oxygen?

In less than 24 hours the invasion would be underway—or so they thought. But when they surfaced at 1:00 a.m. Monday June 5 and hoisted their radio mast, they received bad news. “The postponement was sent out in a broadcast,” remembered Booth. “There were several messages and the phrase to let us know invasion was off was ‘Trouble in Scarborough’. [Scarborough is a coastal town in eastern England]. That caused a bit of tension because we didn’t know the length of the postponement and we weren’t sure we would have enough oxygen.” X-23 remained on the surface until 3:00 a.m. June 5. The men enjoyed the stiff wind on their faces and the fresh air in their lungs.

Reluctantly they climbed back inside their 52-foot submarine, closed the hatch and bottomed. Honour said the lack of oxygen inside the midget submarine left him feeling like he’d drunk “a couple of stiff gins.” He added: “It was murky, damp and otherwise very horrible.” X-23 surfaced at 11:15 p.m. on Monday, June 5. They began their wireless watch. The weather was still foul.

The crew believed the invasion would again be postponed, but the message they received confirmed it was on. They dived once more, then surfaced at 4:45 a.m. on Tuesday June 6. The sea was too rough for Booth to launch his rubber dinghy so instead he rigged up the lights above the submarine. The lights flashed the letter D for Dog for 10 seconds every 40 seconds from 140 minutes before H-hour—the start time of the assault.

“We had a few problems with the boat because it was rocking and rolling,” recalled Booth. “We secured the main one, a green light, and also some red and white lights, and then because it was so cold and miserable out on deck we went down below and put the [tea] kettle on.” The radio beacon had also been activated. There was nothing else to do but have a cup of tea and wait. The tension was as unbearable as the foul air they breathed. Aircraft began bombing the German coastal positions. Soon the guns of the naval armada joined the bombardment.

Invasion Day

Booth and his comrades went back on deck just as dawn broke on June 6. For several minutes they peered south through the murk, straining to see the armada they knew was coming their way.

“Suddenly we saw them,” recalled Booth. “It was a case of ‘bloody hell, look at that lot’! It was literally ships as far as the eye could see. A very spectacular sight.”

As the invasion fleet loomed into view another danger confronted X-23—being sunk or shelled by one of their own vessels. The commanding officer of the destroyer, HMS Middleton, Lt. Ian Douglas Cox, was standing on his ship’s brige when “a small submarine suddenly loomed out of the faint mist.” He and his lookout assumed it was an enemy vessel. Middleton gave orders for ‘full ahead.” “As we gathered speed to ram her, a figure stood up on the conning tower waving a large White Ensign,” he recalled. “We laughed nervously and sheared away.”

X-23 avoided any further unpleasant encounters and made its way to HMS Largs, the headquarters ship, where it rendezvoused with a naval trawler. A relief crew exchanged places with Booth and his comrades, who gratefully boarded the trawler. The operation had lasted 72 hours—of which 64 had been spent underwater. The men craved fresh air as much as they did sleep. Operation Gambit had indeed been a risk, but above all it had been a success.

The COPP force and the midget “X-craft” submarines were vital to the success of the D-Day landings, anddeserve more credit than has yet been given to them. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of German-occupied France on the Normandy coast, was the single most complicated human endeavor undertaken before the “computer age,” and its success is due to the incrediblecoordination of all branches of service of the Allied powers.

Popular history and films tend to focus on the June 5–6, 1944 airborne operations and the deadly ordeal the infantry assault troops suffered and endured at bloody Omaha Beach, but the ultimate goal of the operation—establishing a secure Allied foothold on the European continent in the face of fierce German resistance, was only achieved by the total commitment and supreme effort of every single member of all Allied forces taking part—on land, sea and in the air. This article recounts only one of those efforts.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

This World War I Draftee Hated Mornings And Wrote A Song About It. It Made Him A Superstar.

Zita Ballinger Fletcher — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 15:13:52 +0000

A night owl’s lament about wanting more sleep became an unexpected hit song in 1918 with lasting popularity. Irving Berlin’s “Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning,” swept across music halls in World War I and was performed all over the U.S. in World War II.

Perhaps America’s most influential composer, Berlin was born Israel Beilin to a Jewish family in Russia and emigrated to New York City at age 5. He became a singer as a teenager living a hardscrabble existence on the Lower East Side, performing songs and parodies in music halls and nightclubs. Berlin won the hearts of audiences and quickly rose to fame in the city’s “Tin Pan Alley” as a composer and singer. His 1911 hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” sparked a wild craze for what was then seen by older folks as “scandalous” dancing. Berlin was a rising star.

World War I turned Berlin’s world upside down. Drafted into the U.S. Army and packed off to Camp Upton in Yaphank, Long Island in 1918, he was reduced to despair at being dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn. Berlin preferred moonlit streets, crowded clubs and staying up late to write music.

“There were a lot of things about army life I didn’t like, and the thing I didn’t like most of all was reveille. I hated it. I hated it so much I used to lie awake nights thinking about how much I hated it,” he later said. Needing to vent, Berlin expressed himself with a song that was not so much an artistic effort as an ode to drowsy grumpiness. It incorporated reveille into its refrain.

Oh! How I hate to get up in the morning, Oh! How I’d love to remain in bed; For the hardest blow of all, is to hear the bugler call: Youv’e got to get up, You’ve got to get up, You’ve got to get up this morning!

Someday I’m going to murder the bugler, Someday they’re going to find him dead; I’ll amputate his reveille and step upon it heavily, And spend the rest of my life in bed.

The song spread like wildfire. It appeared in a 1932 Betty Boop cartoon as well as Berlin’s popular 1942 Broadway show, “This is the Army.” Although Berlin wrote many other hit songs, including “God Bless America,” and received a Congressional Gold Medal for his achievements, his anti-morning ballad is among his most famous.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

Nepal is the Birthplace of Buddha. It’s Also Home to Some of the World’s Toughest Fighters

Chuck Lyons — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 15:36:23 +0000

The heavy fighting at the Siege of Delhi during the 1857 Indian Mutiny left the 462 men of Maj. Charles Reid’s Sirmoor Battalion with 327 casualties. Despite the carnage, during the fighting Reid, desperate for replacements and hoping to salvage some of his wounded and return them to duty, went to the battalion hospital to look for volunteers. Every one of the wounded who could walk volunteered to rejoin the fighting. In the spring, the Sirmoors moved against the mutineers holding Delhi, overrunning a strong enemy position, capturing 13 guns, and taking the Badli-ki-Serai ridge six miles west of the city. On June 8, joined by two companies of the 60th Rifles, they occupied a house on the southern end of the ridge known as the Hindu Rao’s House where they were immediately attacked.

For the next 16 hours, they fought in the heat and swirling smoke before finally repelling the attackers. They held the ridge and the Hindu Rao’s House for the next three months beating off another 25 attacks. When mutineers came out from behind the stone walls where they had taken cover, the Sirmoor Battalion attacked them. By Sept. 20, it was over. The British had blown open Delhi’s Kashmiri Gate and taken the city.

The Sirmoor Battalion’s 490 men were Gurkhas. By the time the fighting at Badli-ki-Serai ended they were boasting among themselves that the mutineers were offering 10 rupees for the head of a Gurkha, the same price they were paying for an Englishman’s head. Reid wrote in his diary that British authorities who previously had their doubts about the Gurkhas “are now satisfied.”

Gurkha soldiers of the Indian Army open fire on a Japanese position with a Vickers machine gun in 1944.

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The Gurkhas have continued to nobly and bravely serve the British Crown until today. Field Marshal William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim who fought alongside them in Burma during World War II called the Gurkha an “ideal infantryman … brave, tough, patient, adaptable, skilled in field-craft, intensely proud of his military record, and unswerving loyalty.” Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener and the hero of British operations in the Sudan called them “some of our bravest” and in his 1930 Gallipoli Diary 1915, Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton, commander in chief of Britain’s Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in World War I wrote that each Gurkha fighter was “worth his full weight in gold at Gallipoli.”

The Legendary Kukri Knife

Over the past 200 years an estimated 200,000 Gurkha fighters have served in Britain’s colonial conflicts, in both World Wars, in the Falkland Islands, the Middle East, and Afghanistan with 46,000 of them living up to the Gurkha motto: “Better to die than be a coward.”

These fighters from the mountains of Nepal average about 5 foot 3 inches tall, diminutive by European and American standards, but for centuries the image of charging Gurkhas, waving their kukri knives, and shouting their battle cry of “Aayo Gurkhali” (“The Gurkhas have arrived!”)have emboldened their allies and terrorized their enemies. The kukri alone is terrifying and well known.

These distinctive knives—the Gurkha emblem is two crossed kukris, with a crown above them—have been employed by the Gurkhas for centuries and may have evolved from the Greek kopis, the single-edged curved swords carried by Alexander the Great’s cavalry when it entered northern India in the fourth century bce. Basically a chopping weapon, the kukri is up to 18 inches long, weighs between one and two pounds, and is curved downward with a roughly quarter-inch spine tapering to a point.

The kukri knife is the traditional weapon of Gurkha warriors.

The widest portion of the kukri blade is in the front portion of the blade, between the tip and where the downward curvature begins. This “well-forward” blade weighting adds substantial power to the downward thrusting motion, greatly increasing the blade’s penetration when slicing through a target—such as an unlucky enemy soldier!

Generally, there is a notch in the blade just below the handle that is there for multiple reasons: symbolic; religious; and practical. For one, that simple notch allows blood to drain away, rather than coat the kukri’s handle making it slippery. Military issue kukris typically come with two much-smaller wooden-handled bladed knives contained in their own separate sheaths integrated into the main sheath: a karda utility knife; and a chakmak sharpening tool. The kukri’s handle is usually made of hardwood, but other substances such as buffalo horn, metal, and even ivory have been used. The Gurkha kukri is sheathed in a leather-wrapped wooden scabbard.

Legend has it that once a kukri has been unsheathed it must “taste blood” before it can again be sheathed. In truth, however, the kukri serves both as a weapon and a general utility knife used by the Gurkhas for cooking and various camp tasks.

All Gurkha fighters are trained in its use for hand-to-hand combat. Stories have circulated for centuries about the kukri’s fierceness and effectiveness including one from a Gurkha unit fighting in North Africa during World War II that reported enemy losses of 10 killed and “ammunition expenditure nil,” a mute acknowledgement of the kukri’s effectiveness.

During the Falklands War in the 1980s, a photograph of a Gurkha sharpening his kukri circulated and was said to have unsettled Argentinians troops to such an extent that members of the 1st Battalion 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles captured several heavily armed Argentine combatants by doing little more than brandishing their kukris.

Military Tribes

There is “no agreement as to who is and who is not a Gurkha,” Byron Farwell wrote in his 1984 book, The Gurkhas. “There are some who would call all Nepalese ‘Gurkhas’ regardless of their origin, tribe, or social class. Others would limit the term to those who live in the hills around the town of Gurkha, some twenty-five miles northwest of Kathmandu.”

What is accepted is that the Gurkha fighters come from the mountains of Nepal (and parts of northeast India) and generally from four of what Great Britain has traditionally called that country’s “military tribes” that inhabit the region: Magars; Gurungs; and to a lesser extent, Limbus and Rais.

Gurkha veterans of the Siege of Delhi are pictured together in 1857. The Gurkhas are known for their military tradition.

Nepal, today a country of about 30 million people, has been settled for at least 2,500 years. Venetian traveler Marco Polo passed through there in the 13th century calling it “wild and mountainous.” It is also the legendary birthplace of Gautama Buddha, born at Lumbini in what is today southern Nepal. Most of the area’s history is filled with war rather than the Buddha’s peace and serenity. It is a history of battle and betrayal; tribes, individuals, and various sections fought for supremacy. It is a martial history.

When Great Britain’s East India Company, formed in 1600 to “exploit” trade with eastern and southeast eastern Asia and India, moved men and supplies into India and Nepal in the early 19th century, Gurkha tribesman from the north harassed them. These skirmishes led to a May 29, 1814, raid by tribesman on three British police stations that killed twenty people including one Englishman and led to the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816. The British retaliated with separate invasions of Nepal in 1814, 1815, and 1816. The tribesman repelled the first two expeditions but were defeated in 1816 at Malaom in northeast India.

An Unlikely Alliance

In the process, however, the British had become impressed with the fighting ability of the Nepalese. John Ship of the 87th Foot, who fought them in the 1814 campaign, wrote about the tribesmen that, “I never saw more steadiness or bravery exhibited in my life. Run they would not, and of death they seemed to have no fear though their comrades were falling thick around them, for we were so near that every shot told.”

Farwell also tells that during the Anglo-Nepalese War “in the middle of a British bombardment a Gurkha came out of the fort [at Kalunga] and approached the British line waving his hands; the first surrender the British thought. A cease-fire was ordered, and he was welcomed into the lines. His lower jaw was shattered and he was happy to be patched up by the surgeons, but this done, he asked permission to return to the fort and continue the fight”—an attitude more appropriate to a soccer game than a war.

India’s Governor General (1813-1823) Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings, authorized the establishment of the first Gurkha regiment, the Sirmoor Battalion, in April 1815 under the command of Lt. Frederick Young of the East India Company, who would command the Sirmoor Battalion for the next 28 years. (It first saw action in 1817 during Britain’s 3rd Mahratta War). After the signing of the Treaty of Segauli in 1816, which formally ended the Anglo-Nepalese War, the East India Company began recruiting other Gurkha regiments to serve as British mercenaries.

The Gurkhas demonstrated loyalty and willingness to fight alongside the British during the Indian Mutiny, distinguishing themselves in combat during the Siege of Delhi.

The war left both the English and the Gurkhas with an increased respect or each other. The British erected two obelisks at Kalunga, the location of a hill fort Gurkhas had defended in November 1814. One obelisk commended the bravery of the British who had fought there and the other the courage of the fort’s Gurkha defenders.

Regardless of the reputation the Gurkha fighters had earned, the English still considered them to be “sepoys”—a slightly disparaging term applied to all the native soldiers the Crown employed, and the respect the Gurkhas had earned was a respect qualified with caution.

The Indian Mutiny changed that. The Mutiny, a generalized rebellion of local Indian troops against British rule broke out in 1857 in northern India, spread like a wildfire, and quickly became centered around the city of Delhi, where what has come to be called the Siege of Delhi began in June 1857. It would last for the next four months. During the fighting, the British still distrusted their Gurkha regiments’ loyalty; British commanders often stationed Gurkha troops close to the British artillery so that artillery could be turned against the Gurkhas at any sign of disloyalty. Such an action was never required. By the end of the of the Mutiny in July 1859, Gurkhas had established their loyalty, and British authority, as Reid wrote, had been “satisfied.”

“The British began to take a serious and studied view of the Gurkhas [and] to regard them as something more than good ‘native infantry,’ but as something special,” Farwell wrote. “In an era when British regiments of the line were filled with society’s rejects and it was felt that fierce discipline was required to keep the men under control, Gurkhas were enthusiastic soldiers requiring little discipline.”

In one seven-year period, he wrote, only one Gurkha faced a court martial. “No British battalion could make such a boast, and probably such a record could not be duplicated by any battalion in any European or American army,” he wrote. (Meanwhile, the East India Company had deteriorated and after 1834 was little more than the manager of British government of India. It ceased to exist in 1873).

From World War I to Today

Gurkhas fought in the Britain’s colonial wars including the Sikh Wars of 1845-46 and 1848-49, the three Burma Wars of 1824-26, 1852, and 1885, the Afghan wars of 1839-42, 1878-81, and 1919. They also took part in the expedition led by Maj. Francis Younghusband into Tibet in 1903-04.

In World War I, more than 50,000 Gurkhas fought in Gurkha regiments (as well as 16,544 Gurkhas who served in the regular Indian Army), suffered 20,000 casualties and received 2,000 individual awards for bravery, including two Victoria Crosses. (A third VC was won by a British commander of a Gurkha unit). Nothing in their history, David Bolt wrote in his 1967 book Gurkhas, “prepared [the Gurkha force] for the conditions under which it was called upon to fight in Flanders: the sodden chill of a European winter, with its full-scale artillery barrages and acceptance of mass casualties, and the murderous hazard of occupying trenches dug previously by the much taller British soldiers so they could not see over the parapets.”

British general Sir James Willcocks, who commanded the Indian Corps in France in 1914, pointed out that the Gurkha regiments also fought without hand grenades or mortars, were “exposed to every form of terror, and they could reply only with their valor and their rifles and the two machine-guns per battalion with which they were armed, and yet they did it.”

A camouflaged soldier of a Gurkha company prepares to be sent to Bosnia in 1995.

They fought at the Loos, where Gurkhas kept fighting to the last man, at Givenchy, and Neuve-Chapelle in France, at Ypres, as well as in Mesopotamia, Persia, Palestine, and at Gallipoli where Gurkha fighters captured a heavily guarded Turkish position by climbing a 300-foot-high bluff under cover of a bombardment. Gurkha troops served with T.E. Lawrence, the famous Lawrence of Arabia, on the Arabian Peninsula.

Yet despite their recognized courage and loyalty during these years, it was only in 1911 that Gurkhas became eligible for Britain’s highest military honor, the Victoria Cross.

Since then, individual Gurkha fighters have won 26 VC’s including the two won during World War I. One of those two VC’s went to 26-year-old Rifleman Kulbir Thapa of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Queen Alexandra’s Gurkha Rifles for his rescue of wounded men during the fighting at Fauquissart, France, in September 1915. He found a wounded man behind the first line of German trenches and stayed with him until the next morning when he dragged him through the German barbed wire in what has been called “spitting distance” of German troops.

Leaving him at the Allied lines, Thapa returned and brought in two other wounded, and in full daylight went back yet again to carry out a wounded British soldier. He was the first Gurkha to win a VC. (The first Indian enlisted man to receive a VC was Darwan Singh Negi of the 39th Garhwal Rifles of the Indian Army for his bravery in clearing a trench near Festubert, France). The second Gurkha to win a VC in World War I was Karanbahadur Rana, also of the 3rd Queen Alexandra’s Gurkha Rifles, who won his award at El Kefr, Palestine in 1918 for taking an enemy machine gun while under heavy fire.

The Gurkhas’ reputation as fighters expanded even more during World War II. During that conflict, over 110,000 served in 40 Gurkha battalions in Africa, Italy, Greece, and Southeast Asia. In all 30,000 of them were killed or wounded, and 12 Gurkha fighters won Victoria Crosses including 19-year-old anti-tank gunner Ganju Lama of the 1st Battalion, 7th Gurkha Rifles. Though wounded in the leg and arm and with his wrist broken, he crawled through a Japanese crossfire in Burma (now Myanmar) to destroy two enemy tanks.

The incident occurred only three weeks after Lama had won the British Military Medal, a forerunner of the Military Cross, for taking out a Japanese tank in a similar situation. Sgt. Gaje Ghale of the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles suffered leg, arm, and upper body wounds but still engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Japanese defenders, overran a Japanese position and then repelled a counterattack.

Tul Bahadur Pun, armed with a Bren gun, singlehandedly overran a Japanese position under heavy fire, killing three of its defenders and putting five others to flight. Havildar Manbahadur, was shot in the spleen and slashed in the back of the head by a Japanese officer’s sword, but survived—and walked 60 miles to rejoin his unit and seek medical attention.

The Royal Gurkha Rifles

In 1947, when Independence was granted to India, 10 Gurkha Regiments existed. Six remained in the Indian Army and four transferred to the British Army, the 2nd King Edward VII’s Own Gurkha Rifles (The Sirmoor Rifles), and the 6th, 7th and 10th Gurkha Rifles. They served in the Falklands, Cyprus, Bosnia, Southeast Asia, and today in the Middle East and Afghanistan. (Under Article 47 of the Geneva Convention, Britain’s Gurkha fighters—like fighters in the French Foreign Legion—are not considered mercenaries but as regular British infantry units receiving regular pay and treatment while serving a stated enlistment period).

The Gurkhas reputation had a chilling effect on Argentine opponents during the Falklands War

In 1994, these four regiments were merged into one unit, the Royal Gurkha Rifles, as part of the Brigade of Gurkhas of the British Army and Britain’s only Gurkha infantry regiment.

There are currently about 3,000 fighters in the Gurkha Brigade and competition for any openings is fierce. In 2019, for example, 10,000 young Nepalese signed up to compete for about 500 openings. To be considered, these young Nepalese men—and women beginning in 2020— from the rural and largely impoverished mountains must pass one of the world’s most grueling military selection processes, which includes completing a three-mile, uphill run with a 55-pound pack that must be completed in 45 minutes and doing 70 sit-ups in two minutes. Both men and women applicants face the same qualification test. To apply they must also be at least 5 foot 1 inch tall and weigh at least 110 pounds.

During May of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s 2022 Platinum Jubilee year, the Queen’s Own Gurkha Logistic Regiment was responsible for guarding the monarch and Gurkha guards stood at attention at Buckingham Palace, St James’ Palace, Windsor Castle, and the Tower of London. Gurkhas also marched in her funeral procession four months later.

Aayo Gurkhali.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

Did Scottish Warriors Invent The Man Bag?

Zita Ballinger Fletcher — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 17:59:25 +0000

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Kilts allowed Scottish warriors increased mobility in battle as they dashed around the Highlands, but these proud traditional tartan garments had one major problem: no pockets. A man without pockets to stash things in is a man in a state of clutter and confusion. This was as true in the Middle Ages as it is today. Yet as early as the 12th century, Highlanders had developed a clever solution in a small all-purpose bag which became known as the sporran.

The sporran, which is still a part of traditional Scottish menswear, was the ideal travel bag for the Scottish warrior on the go. Worn slung from a belt over the kilt, the sporran could be used to stash knives, food, bullets as soon as they were invented and whatever else an enterprising warrior wanted to take on the road. Early sporrans were made from leather or animal hide. Starting in the late 17th century, sporrans were furnished with metal clasps and gradually came to incorporate more intricate metal designs.

Ceremonial sporrans were developed for military use in the 18th century. These are made with animal hair and are known as sporran molach. Animal hair used to make them have typically included goat hair, horsehair and rabbit fur. Soldiers’ sporrans feature tassels, which swing when the kilt-wearing trooper is marching. The number of tassels, as well as their placement, weave and colors, are rich in meaning and vary depending on regiment and wearer.

Some officers have had custom sporrans made for them. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders have traditionally worn a tassel arrangement known as the “Swinging Six” style and sporrans made from badger heads. Sometimes fox heads have been used for sporrans as well. A sporran can be worn sideways over the hip or more boldly front and center.

An officer’s sporran of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders features six bullion-style tassels, oak leaves and battle honors.

Thistle engravings mark this 20th century sporran made of gray horse hair.

The reverse of a sporran from the University of Glasgow’s Officer’s Training Corps shows the intricate leatherwork that goes into each piece.

This officer’s sporran of the renowned Black Watch regiment is crafted with five tassels, elegant loops plus the regimental emblem of St. Andrew and his cross.

A pouch for storing items is hidden behind a dress sporran’s showy facade.

This 19th century sporran for enlisted men of the London Scottish Regiment is simple but ruggedly appealing.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

Did Churchill Redeem His Reputation After Gallipoli With the Invention of the Tank?

John Miles — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 13:00:00 +0000

On the first day of the Allied offensive on the Somme River of northern France in July 1916 the British suffered 57,470 battle casualties, making it the bloodiest single day in that nation’s military history. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, realized he must change tactics. Thus, he gave orders that all the newfangled tanks that had reached the Western Front be employed in a subsequent assault on German-held French villages dubbed the Battle of Flers-Courcelette. A dozen Allied infantry divisions and all 49 available tanks attacked the German front line that September 15. The tanks psychologically shattered the Germans, instilling in them a fear they termed “Panzer Angst” and prompting many to flee. Those who held their ground found that their most potent weapons—artillery shrapnel and machine guns—were useless against the lumbering armored beasts. In the first three days of fighting the British captured more than a mile of German-held territory.

In 1915 Australians and New Zealanders, below, participated in Allied landings that targeted Ottoman positions on the Gallipoli peninsula. First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill was a chief advocate of the failed campaign.

Thanks for the British success was due in part to an unlikely early proponent of armored mechanized warfare—Winston Churchill.

That summer Churchill’s service as commander of the 6th Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers had come to an end. He’d been serving on the Western Front for the past six months after having taken a break from politics. The reason for that break was his undeniable link to the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in Turkey. As first lord of the Admiralty, Churchill had been among the chief advocates for opening another front in the Dardanelles. In the wake of the sub-
sequent military fiasco, Churchill temporarily left politics and resumed his previous commission as a British army officer. What he witnessed in the trenches refocused his attention on a technological innovation he’d championed in the Admiralty—an armored vehicle that could break the stalemate on the Western Front.

Winston Churchill’s service to Great Britain as a cigar-chomping, no-nonsense prime minister during World War II has been the subject of countless books, articles and films. Less well known is his service as a British army officer after his graduation from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. As a young cavalry officer he saw active duty in the far reaches of the empire, including Cuba, India and the Sudan. After having served some five years, he resigned his commission to pursue politics and was elected a member of Parliament in the House of Commons. While Churchill served primarily as a politician for the rest of his life, he never abandoned his interest or involvement in military matters.

Among the tank’s supporters was then Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George, at left, strolling with Churchill.

In 1911, after a decade in public office, Churchill was appointed first lord of the Admiralty by Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith. Winston had always expressed a keen interest in naval matters, as a member of Parliament often pushing for increases in defense spending for the Royal Navy. As first lord he pushed for higher pay for naval staff, ramped up production of submarines and beefed up the nascent Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Churchill encouraged the navy to determine how aircraft might be used for military purposes, coined the term “seaplane” amid debate in the House of Commons and ordered 100 of the latter for naval use. His advancements were timely. Three years into his appointment as first lord Britain entered World War I.

With the onset of war Churchill grew increasingly obsessed with the Middle Eastern theater. Hoping to relieve Ottoman pressure on Allied Russia in the Caucasus, he proposed a combined naval expedition against Turkish gun emplacements in the Dardanelles. Churchill hoped a successful outcome there might enable the Allies to seize the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), force Turkey out of the war and allow British naval forces to transit the Bosporus Strait into the Black Sea. Churchill anticipated that Romania, a neutral nation bordering the Black Sea that harbored hostility for its Austro-Hungarian neighbor, would ultimately allow Allied troops to use its territory to open a southern front against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Allied representatives signed off on Churchill’s ambitious plan, and in February 1915 an Anglo-French fleet dubbed the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force sailed to commence a naval bombardment of Turkish defenses in the Dardanelles. On March 18 the Allied fleet, comprising 18 battleships and an assortment of cruisers and destroyers, launched its main attack against Turkish defenses at the narrowest point of the Dardanelles, where the straits between Asia and Europe are only a mile wide. The British first ordered civilian-crewed minesweepers into the straits, which soon retreated under significant artillery fire from Ottoman shore emplacements, leaving the minefields largely intact. At the outset of the attack the French battleship Bouvet struck a mine, capsized and sank within minutes; just 75 of its crew of more than 700 survived. The British battlecruiser Inflexible and pre-dreadnought battleship Irresistible also struck mines. Inflexible was severely damaged and compelled to withdraw. Irresistible was lost, though most of its crew was rescued. Sent to Irresistible’s aid, the battleship Ocean was damaged by shellfire and then struck a mine, sinking soon after its crew abandoned ship. Also damaged by shellfire, the French battleships Suffren and Gaulois had to withdraw. With his combined fleet bloodied, Rear Adm. John de Robeck, the British commander, ordered a withdrawal.

First Lord Churchill championed and directed Admiralty funds toward the development of tracked vehicles he dubbed “landships”.

A Killen-Strait armored tractor undergoes testing.

Field Marshal Haig was slow to adopt the tank but used it to effect at Cambrai in 1917.

Churchill and others in favor of opening a southern front remained determined. If the Turkish emplacements could not be silenced by naval gunfire, then a ground invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula would serve the purpose. The planned assault called for Allied forces to conduct amphibious landings and then attack the Ottoman forts from the landward side. Initiated on April 25, the landings targeted several beaches on the peninsula. The Allied assault was conducted primarily by British and Commonwealth soldiers, including Australian and New Zealand troops, but also included a French contingent.

Organized on short notice, the amphibious assault suffered from a dearth of intelligence regarding enemy defenses and lacked accurate maps. Seeking to overcome both shortfalls, planners turned to seaplanes from No. 3 Squadron of Churchill’s vaunted RNAS. Unopposed by the small Ottoman air force during the preparation phase, the squadron initially provided aerial reconnaissance. Once the invasion was under way, the planes conducted photographic reconnaissance, observed naval gunfire and reported on Turkish troop movements. The squadron also conducted a handful of bombing raids in support of Allied ground troops.

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

One handicap Allied planners were unable to overcome was the fact Ottoman forces held the high ground in the interior beyond the beachheads. The Turks knew their own geography and had modern artillery and machine guns provided by their German allies. The campaign devolved into a stalemate, with the Allies unable to break out from the beachheads, and the Turks unable to overrun them. A rare Allied highlight of the campaign was that Churchill’s Royal Navy was able to interdict most enemy merchant shipping seeking to resupply Ottoman forces in Gallipoli. That alone might have ultimately forced Turkey to sue for peace. But the Allied situation at Gallipoli soon devolved after Bulgaria joined the Central Powers. In early October 1915 the latter opened a land route through Bulgaria, connecting Germany and the Ottoman empire and enabling the Germans to rearm the Turks with modern heavy artillery capable of devastating the Allied positions. Germany also supplied Turkey with the latest aircraft and experienced crews.

Rolls-Royce armored car.

Seabrook armored truck.

Armored car with tracks.

Churchill tracked the Landship Committee’s progress with tank designs. Inspired by such existing vehicles as the Rolls-Royce armored car and Seabrook armored truck, the initial versions were little more than automobiles with bolted-on armor. None could traverse trenches or gain traction in mud. Later iterations added tracks, but not until “Little Willie” did the recognizable tank begin to take shape.

‘Darth’ Tanker

British tank helmet.

Actually harking back in appearance to medieval Japanese samurai armor, this 1916-issue leather British tanker’s helmet with mask was designed to protect its wearer from head injury. When leather proved too flimsy, British tankers switched back to the steel Brodie helmet.

Seeing no realistic way to turn the situation to their favor, the British Cabinet made the difficult decision to evacuate in early December 1915. While Churchill hadn’t been the sole proponent of the disastrous campaign, he’d been among its most vocal, thus many ministers of Parliament held him personally responsible. The following May the prime minister agreed under parliamentary pressure to form an all-party coalition government on the condition Churchill be removed from his Cabinet position.

Unceremoniously booted from his appointment as first lord of the Admiralty, Churchill took a break from politics and resumed frontline service as an army officer. In January 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and given command of the 6th Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers. After training, the battalion deployed to a sector of the Belgian front. For more than three months they experienced continual shelling and sniping while preparing to meet the expected German spring offensive. As the Germans were focused on taking Verdun, Churchill’s sector remained relatively quiet. In May the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers were absorbed into the 15th Division. Churchill didn’t seek a new command in the division, instead securing permission to leave active duty and return to politics. But his military contributions were far from over, and the seeds of an earlier endeavor were about to bear fruit.

In 1914, when the war slipped into stalemated trench warfare, First Lord Churchill had fished about for solutions and came to believe an armored motorized vehicle of some sort was the answer. Seeking ownership of the technology on behalf of the Admiralty, he’d labeled such futuristic armored vehicles “landships.” Eventually conceding the technology was more appropriately an army initiative, Churchill transferred £70,000 (more than $8 million in today’s dollars) from the navy to the army to develop what became known as the tank.

The man most often credited with having invented the tank is Lt. Col. Ernest D. Swinton. Appointed at the outset of the war by Secretary of State for War Horatio Herbert, 1st Earl Kitchener, as the official British war correspondent on the Western Front, Swinton moved back and forth between France and England and to and from the front lines. Witnessing the death, destruction and deadlock of trench warfare, he initially conceived an armored variant of the American-made Holt caterpillar tractor. While Kitchener proved lukewarm over Swinton’s armored tractor, it resonated with First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill, who in February 1915 ordered formation of an exploratory Landship Committee, tasked with developing the technology.

Passing its trials with flying colors in early 1916, the Mark I went into action that fall on the Somme. Unfortunately, of the 49 sent to Flers-Courcelette, 17 broke down.

Under Churchill’s ministry oversight were naval air squadrons based in Dunkirk, France. Perpetually at risk of enemy attack, the squadrons were ably defended by armored car squadrons. Thus, Churchill recognized the importance of and need for armored forces. He kept abreast of developments as the Landship Committee experimented with armored vehicle designs. The initial versions were essentially wheeled automobiles with bolted-on armor. However, it soon became clear wheeled variants could neither traverse trenches nor function properly in mud. Churchill’s Admiralty experimented with attaching bridging equipment to such vehicles, but the results proved disappointing. Swinton’s Holt caterpillar tractor proved far more promising. Offering greater grip and more weight-bearing surface, the tracked vehicle was just the ticket for crossing the no-man’s-land between trenches.

On June 30, 1915, Churchill arranged a demonstration of a prototype tractor’s ability to cross barbed-wire entanglements. A manufacturing company working on the project eventually produced the Killen-Strait armored tractor. Capped with the superstructure from a Delaunay-Belleville armored car, its tracks comprised an unbroken series of steel links connected by steel pinions. Churchill and David Lloyd George, then head of the Ministry of Munitions, were present for tests of the Killen-Strait. The promising results prompted Lloyd George to assume the responsibility for producing a steady supply of landships once the Royal Navy settled on a satisfactory design. For his part, Churchill was a total believer, convinced the new machine would enable Allied forces to readily traverse the muddy, shell-pocked landscape of the Western Front and smash enemy defenses.

Rebounding from its lackluster debut on the Somme, the Mark I spearheaded Haig’s Nov. 20, 1917, attack at Cambrai. Hyacinth was among the more than 400 tanks that enabled an unprecedented push of 5 miles that day, validating Colonel Ernest Swinton’s innovative doctrines.

Meanwhile, Swinton managed to persuade the newly formed Inventions Committee in the House of Commons to fund development of a small landship. He drew up target specifications for the new machine, including a maximum speed of 4 miles per hour on flat ground, the ability to perform a sharp turn at top speed, reversing capability, the ability to climb a 5-foot earthen bank and the ability to cross an 8-foot gap. Additionally, the vehicle was to accommodate 10 crewmen and be armed with two machine guns and a 2-pounder cannon. Though the landship was no longer under the purview of the Admiralty, Churchill went out of his way to write Asquith in praise of Swinton’s developments.

Ernest Swinton.

Under Swinton’s oversight, the prototype landship, nicknamed “Little Willie” had 12-foot-long track frames, weighed 16 tons and could carry a crew of three at a top speed of just over 2 miles per hour. Its speed over rough terrain, however, dropped considerably. Moreover, it was unable to traverse trenches more than a few feet wide. But while the initial trials proved disappointing, Swinton remained convinced a modified version would prove a breakthrough weapon.

Its manufacturers immediately began work on an improved tank. The resulting Mark I, nicknamed “Mother,” was twice as long as “Little Willie,” keeping the center of gravity low and helping its treads grip the ground. Sponsons were fitted to the sides to accommodate two 6-pounder naval guns. During initial trials in January 1916 the tank crossed a 9-foot-wide trench with a parapet more than 6 feet high.

With that, Swinton decided it was time to demonstrate the new tank to Britain’s leading political and military figures. Thus, on February 2, under conditions of utmost secrecy, Secretary of State for War Kitchener, Minister of Munitions Lloyd George and Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna gathered with other key personnel to see the Mark I in action. Lord Kitchener remained unimpressed and skeptical of the tank’s potential contribution toward victory. Fortunately for the Allies, Lloyd George and McKenna, the two with oversight of the government purse strings, did recognize the Mark I’s potential and by April had placed orders for 150 tanks. Churchill was ecstatic.

Foreshadowing the German Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg tactics, Churchill believed the army should wait to field the Mark I until factories had rolled out 1,000 tanks and then employ the shock value of a combined armor assault to win a great battle. Though Field Marshal Haig harbored doubts about the value of tanks, the British Expeditionary Force commander did order all available Mark Is to assist during that summer’s Somme Offensive. Unfortunately for their advocates, many of the tanks broke down, and the British army was unable to hold on to its gains.

Truth be told, the tank’s debut was not as great a success as the British press reported it to be. Of the 59 tanks that had arrived in France, only 49 were in good working order. Of those, 17 broke down en route to their line of departure for the attack. It must be noted that Swinton had cautioned commanders to carefully choose fighting ground that corresponded with the tank’s powers and limitations. Had they followed his recommendations, the initial results would have been better. Regardless, the sight of the tanks created panic and had a profound effect on the morale of the German army.

For his part, Colonel John Frederick Charles “J.F.C.” Fuller, chief of the British Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps (later Tank Corps), was convinced his machines could win the war and persuaded Haig to ask the government for another 1,000 tanks. Churchill, who by then had returned home as a politician, did everything he could to endorse Haig’s request.

Though primitive in appearance and fraught with mechanical failings, the Mark I proved decisive and became the infantryman’s best friend.

Meanwhile, Fuller and others refined tank operating procedures, and just over a year later, during the Cambrai Offensive, Haig ordered a massed tank attack at Artois. Launched at dawn on Nov. 20, 1917, without preparatory bombardment, the attack wholly surprised the Germans. Employing more than 400 tanks, elements of the British Third Army gained up to 5 miles that first day, an incredible amount of territory to be captured so rapidly on the stalemated Western Front. Churchill’s belief in the tank as a combat multiplier had been validated. The British army remembered his tireless efforts, and at the outset of World War II it named its primary infantry tank, the Mk IV, the Churchill.

Retired U.S. Marine Colonel John Miles writes and lectures on a range of historical topics. For further reading he recommends Thoughts and Adventures, by Winston S. Churchill; A Company of Tanks, by William Henry Lowe Watson; and Eyewitness and the Origin of the Tanks, by Ernest D. Swinton.

This story appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Military History magazine.

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What Are the Limits of Firepower? Maj. Gen. Robert Scales Speaks About America’s Way of War in Vietnam

Warren Wilkins — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:02:29 +0000

Robert H. Scales.

One of the nation’s foremost authorities on firepower and land warfare, Robert H. Scales retired from the Army in 2001 after more than three decades in uniform, much of it influenced by his service in Vietnam. A 1966 graduate of the United States Military Academy, Scales initially served in Germany before joining the 2nd Battalion, 319th Artillery in Vietnam. Scales commanded a howitzer battery in the battalion and earned a Silver Star in 1969. He would later lead artillery units in Korea, command the Field Artillery Center at Fort Sill, and serve as the Commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Scales holds a doctorate in history from Duke University and has written a number of critically acclaimed books, including Firepower in Limited War, Certain Victory, and Yellow Smoke: The Future of Land Warfare for America’s Military. In an interview with Vietnam contributor Warren Wilkins, he discusses his experiences in Vietnam, the role of firepower in that conflict, and the defining characteristics of American war-making.

On the night of June 14, 1969, you were in command of a 105mm howitzer battery at Firebase Berchtesgaden, located on a hill on the eastern side of the A Shau Valley, when a force of approximately 100 North Vietnamese sappers attacked the base. You received a Silver Star for your actions during the battle. Tell us about that night.

My four guns and two 155mm howitzers were clustered together on this mountaintop. In May 1969, the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] attacked my sister battalion on Firebase Airborne. They destroyed guns, killed 13 soldiers, and completely eviscerated that unit. One month later, they attacked us. They attacked early in the morning, and the hole that I lived in was right on the edge of the perimeter. My battery was the first thing they attacked. The goddamn infantry that protected us had decided that they were going to be in charge of illumination. The key to defeating a night attack is illumination. So the infantry said that they would handle it, but I didn’t believe them. If you look at Berchtesgaden on Google, you will see this one lone gun at the very top of the firebase with the tube sticking up almost vertically. Well, that was my gun. I kept that gun at 1100 mils [milliradians], one-and-a-half second delay on an illumination round, pointed straight up.

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We got involved in this horrendous fight, and I had to get to that gun because the infantry never fired a round of illumination. The first sergeant and I fought like hell to get to that damn gun. Finally we got to it, and I pulled the lanyard. When that illumination round went off, it changed the whole complexion of the battle. All of the sudden, the light went on and the troops started killing those guys. They [the NVA] were literally caught in the open. We fought like hell, beat them back, and killed a whole bunch of them. Our main mission as artillerymen was to shoot artillery, but an equally important mission for young gunners is to be able to defend your position. That was a lesson I learned.

Prior to the sapper attack, your battery had provided artillery support for the 101st Airborne Division during the battle for Hill 937, better known as “Hamburger Hill.” How did the employment of artillery in Vietnam compare to other American wars?

You can almost draw a graph, starting with the 25th Infantry Division at Guadalcanal, that traces the density of supporting fires dedicated to the maneuver mission up through the Pacific battles, the Battle of the Bulge and the push into Germany, and then forward to Korea. That graph or curve goes way up in terms of the ratio of firepower expended versus the maneuver forces employed. Entire ships full of ammunition were expended in 1951-52 to preserve American lives.

By the time we got to Vietnam, this idea of trading firepower for manpower really started to take hold. So when I was there, no infantry unit was allowed to maneuver outside the artillery fan. The infantry in Vietnam would literally maneuver by fire. Artillery was also used as a navigation aid, to recon by fire and clear the way as units moved through the jungle, and to fire defensive concentrations.

Speaking of “Hamburger Hill,” you’ve noted that your battery hammered that hill with thousands of 105mm rounds, air strikes blasted its slopes and summit, and yet the enemy continued to fight. Did this cause you to reconsider the efficacy of firepower on the battlefield?

When I was at Berchtesgaden, I was higher than Hamburger Hill and could look down on it through my scope. By the time our infantry had conducted their fifth or sixth assault, the top of that mountain was completely denuded. I would sit there with my scope, and we’d fire and fire and fire. If our troops got down, behind a log or something, we could shoot within 40 meters [of them] if we were very careful.

I would look through that scope, and as soon as we lifted our fires, I could see those little guys [the NVA] come out from those underground bunkers and take up positions and start shooting back. I remember saying to myself—and this has been kind of a thesis of all the books I’ve written about firepower—that firepower has a limitation. We saw this in the First World War when artillery was shocking to both sides early in the war. By 1917, there were images of the British “Tommy” [soldier] brewing tea in the middle of a barrage.

U.S. Marines man a 155mm gun position on Guadalcanal during World War II. Scales asserts that “you can almost draw a graph” tracing the “density of supporting fires dedicated to the maneuver mission” in American warfare beginning at Guadalcanal.

In the age of “imprecision”—before what we now call “precision” munitions—the primary impact of artillery was psychological and not physical. It’s what’s called the palliative effect of artillery. By the time I got to Vietnam [in 1968] the psychological effects of artillery had dropped off considerably, and the enemy was no longer as intimidated by our killing power as he was in 1965. Two things always amazed me about artillery—one is the enormous pyrotechnic effect of artillery going off over the enemy, and the other is the remarkably few enemy it actually kills.

So from my experience at Hamburger Hill, I learned that there is a crossover point in the use of artillery and firepower at which its ability to influence the maneuver battle diminishes considerably. If a soldier is warm and protected—in other words, if he’s down or better yet under cover—it takes an awful lot of rounds to kill him. And no matter how much artillery and firepower you pile onto that—again I’m talking about “dumb” artillery and “dumb” firepower—its ability to influence the battle diminishes with time. That was reinforced in Korea and Vietnam.

The U.S. military—particularly the Army—clearly favored firepower over maneuver in Vietnam. Was this emphasis on firepower unique to that conflict, or was it merely a reflection of what some have called the “American way of war”?

We do emphasize firepower, but the Russians do the same. Although the Russians are far more willing to sacrifice human lives than we are, they have a very similar doctrine…. In Vietnam it was a career ender if your maneuver force was caught outside the reach of your artillery. And that psychology continued all the way into Desert Storm. As late as Desert Storm, one of the cardinal tenets of the American way of war was to never exceed the limits of your artillery.

The American army was caught in a dilemma in Vietnam. We had reached the limit, before the point where we could achieve our maneuver objectives, when artillery was no longer all that helpful. So what do you do? Do you start expending more human lives to achieve your objectives because you are no longer protected by firepower? Or do you fall back under the protective arcs of your artillery and refuse to maneuver beyond that and give the enemy the advantage? And until the “precision” revolution in 1972, that’s sort of where we were.

In retrospect, do you believe that a firepower-first approach in Vietnam was justified, given the operating environment and the existing political climate, or do you agree with critics who argue that the military’s overreliance on heavy supporting fires undermined American pacification efforts and failed to address the true nature of the enemy threat?

I argue in my book [Firepower in Limited War] that in a counter-insurgency campaign, firepower has its limits. But I failed to mention the psychological impact of firepower on the civilian population and the deadening effect it has on the innocent. That is particularly important when you’re fighting a war seeking popular support. So the presence of innocents on the battlefield greatly diminishes your ability to apply overwhelming firepower. The second thing we learned in Vietnam was that, after a while, firepower becomes an inhibitor rather than a facilitator of your ability to maneuver. So the days of using light infantry as a find, fix, and finish force were greatly diminished because of its inability to move outside the arc of artillery.

The Army was on the horns of a dilemma. The center of gravity of the American military in Vietnam was dead Americans, and the NVA knew it. In World War II, Col. [Hiromichi] Yahara, who served with the Japanese army on Okinawa, wrote a series of missives in which he said, essentially, the only way you can beat America is to kill Americans. We lost in Vietnam not because we were not able to defeat the enemy in battle, or that we had too little or too much firepower, but because too many Americans died and we tired of it first, just as Ho Chi Minh predicted the French would do before us. The only way to save lives in the close fight in Vietnam was through the use of protective fires. But firepower became a millstone around our necks in terms of our ability to maneuver. It also had a debilitating effect on our ability to maintain the “hearts and minds” of the people.

When discussing the limitations of firepower, Scales notes that although artillery was at first shocking to soldiers in World War I, men soon became accustomed to it–enough to brew tea during barrages on the front.

So we reached a plateau in our use of firepower, beyond which we could not go, and for which we had no alternative by 1970. Anytime you put maneuver forces forward in close contact with the enemy, soldiers are going to die. Yet we got to a point by 1970-71 where, anytime an American soldier died, it would end up on the front page of the New York Times. So you have two choices to keep those soldiers safe: lock them in firebases and let the enemy run amok in the countryside and control the population, or put them out there under the protective umbrella of firepower but greatly limit their ability to maneuver. It was that juxtaposition between keeping soldiers safe—our vulnerable center of gravity—or being able to maneuver and control territory, and we were never able to reconcile that.

The traditional role of the infantry has always been to close with and destroy the enemy. American infantry units in Vietnam, however, typically sought to find the enemy so that firepower could destroy him. Did this change in tactics occur organically within individual platoons and companies in the field, or was it mandated by some higher headquarters and then codified by formal regulations?

Actually, it was both. One of the amazing things about the American way of war—and we saw this in World War II, particularly as American soldiers became more literate and as the American army became more egalitarian—is that tactical innovation in the American army, beginning in North Africa, really came from the bottom up, not the top down. That’s different than the Russian army, which is ruled by norms driven by the general staff. The American soldier, when he learns something that will keep him alive, will embrace it and proliferate it very quickly. You build a firepower system around what the soldiers are telling you makes it most effective.

Firepower in Limited War.

In his book Firepower in Limited War, Scales examines the advantages and limitations of firepower by analyzing its effects in several pivotal recent conflicts. The book was placed on the Marine Corps Commandant’s Reading List.

Part of the reason that we rely so heavily on the artillery was that the revolution at Fort Sill [home of U.S. field artillery] was such that we came up with by far the best artillery firepower system in the world. We just were never really able to embed it into the Army’s system until our experiences in North Africa taught us how to do it and how to provide close support. But we just hit the wall in terms of our ability to do that, because the enemy has a vote.

What did the Japanese do at Okinawa? What did the Chinese and North Koreans do? What did the NVA do? They learned how to effectively counter American firepower dominance by maneuvering outside of the [firepower] range fan, hugging maneuver units so that they couldn’t bring in heavy close supporting fires, using camouflage, and going to ground.

To reduce the destructive effects of American firepower, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese would frequently “hug” American infantry units in battle. How effective was that tactic?

It was very effective. I saw that firsthand. They were literally willing to die under our artillery fan to stay in their holes, frankly longer than we ever would, in order to continue to kill us. Remember, their purpose was not to hold ground. Their purpose was to kill us.

Gen. Vuong Thua Vu, former deputy chief of the North Vietnamese Army General Staff, characterized the American practice of generating contact with enemy troops and then calling in artillery and air strikes to destroy them as an “outmoded fighting method of a cowardly but aggressive army.” Similarly, some of our Australian and South Korean allies have suggested that the American infantryman, while certainly not “cowardly,” nevertheless relied too much on firepower. How did American soldiers and Marines perform in infantry combat?

For a drafted army and to some extent a [drafted] Marine Corps, they performed remarkably well. Whenever the U.S. Army got involved in what [retired Marine Corps general and former U.S. Secretary of Defense] Jim Mattis and I call “intimate killing,” they did it remarkably well, considering what was at stake. The critics have this wrong, because I suspect if you were South Korean, or Australian, or whomever and had that firepower available to you, you would fight precisely the same way. The problem is that you want to avoid intimate killing, and in that sense the American army had it right. But the limits of technology precluded the American army from avoiding intimate contact without the cost of logistics being so great that it was no longer effective.

So I have no problem whatsoever with the tactics that the American close combat forces used in Vietnam. My critique has always been with the firepower system that supported them. I have no problem whatsoever with finding, fixing, and finishing—the three words we used to describe Vietnam combat. I do have a problem with the technology that we used in our firepower system to do the finishing part. It was always inefficient, logistically burdensome, and reached a point of diminishing returns. What the “precision” revolution has allowed us to do is reverse that.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

this article first appeared in vietnam magazine

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Does Britain’s WWI B.E.2c Deserve its Bad Rep?

Robert Guttman — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 14:00:00 +0000

For more than a century the Royal Aircraft Factory’s B.E.2c has been denigrated as one of the worst aircraft ever made. Even during World War I, when it was on active service with the British Royal Flying Corps (RFC), the B.E.2c was condemned as a death trap that lacked the speed and maneuverability to evade attack as well as any effective armament with which to defend itself. Although there was some justification for those assessments, critics overlook the fact that the aircraft originated before WWI began, and before those criteria were even considered. In fact, the principal considerations in the B.E.2c’s design were stability, ease of handling and safety, not speed, agility or defensive capability.

In fairness, the B.E.2c’s negative reputation may be an exaggeration. Much of that stems from the fact that the airplane remained in production and operational long after it clearly had become obsolete. In addition, the Royal Aircraft Factory in general, and the B.E.2c in particular, received negative publicity generated by a segment of the British aircraft industry, particularly by Noel Pemberton-Billing, a vocal member of Parliament and self-proclaimed aviation expert.

The Royal Aircraft Factory (RAF, not to be confused with the Royal Air Force, which wasn’t formed until April 1918) was established at Farnborough in 1906 when the Army Balloon Factory branched into development of heavier-than-air flying machines. Although assigned to create aircraft for the British Army’s newly established Royal Flying Corps, from the outset the institution was more of an experimental and developmental establishment than a production facility. Indeed, despite accusations from the aircraft industry that the British government was unfairly competing against private enterprise, the vast majority of RAF designs, including the B.E.2c, actually were manufactured by private companies rather than by the RAF itself.

The story of the B.E.2c begins with the B.E.1, the airplane from which it derived. The B.E.1 project was supposed to have been simply the repair of a damaged airplane; instead, in 1911 designer Geoffrey de Havilland created an entirely new one. His B.E.1 was a two-seat general purpose tractor biplane, with the “B.E.” signifying “Blériot Experimental.” (To the RAF “B.E.” meant any tractor-type airplane, while pusher airplanes received the designation “F.E.” for “Farman Experimental.”) All that remained of the airplane de Havilland was supposed to repair was the engine, a 60-hp liquid-cooled Wolseley V-8. In December 1911 de Havilland piloted the B.E.1’s first flight himself and he delivered it to the RFC early in 1912.

De Havilland’s B.E.1 provided the basis for the B.E.2 and its variants.

The B.E.1 was a two-seat airplane with unstaggered biplane wings and tail surfaces consisting of a fixed airfoil-section horizontal stabilizer ahead of the elevators and a vertical rudder without a fixed vertical stabilizer. The observer sat in front of the pilot and occupied the center of gravity, enabling the aircraft to be flown without any alteration in trim if the observer’s seat was unoccupied. The airframe was wood, with the top and bottom of the fuselage covered with plywood for additional strength. Despite the early date of its design, the B.E.1 included all the characteristics one would currently recognize in an airplane save for the fact that, rather than ailerons, it employed wing warping for lateral control. On March 14, 1912, the B.E.1 became one of the very first aircraft to receive an official Certificate of Airworthiness.

In February 1912 the B.E.1 was succeeded by the B.E.2, which was almost identical save for the substitution of a 60-hp air-cooled Renault V-8 engine for the B.E.1’s less-than-satisfactory Wolseley. It also became the first standard type of aircraft the RFC adopted for use. In March 1912, less than a month after the B.E.2 entered service, the RAF used it to flight test a newly developed radio transmitter.

Only two B.E.2s were constructed before it was succeeded by the incrementally improved B.E.2a, a total of about 80 of which were manufactured, mostly by Vickers and Bristol. The total number of B.E.2bs manufactured is not certain, however, because many were apparently completed as the later and substantially improved B.E.2c version.

Geoffrey de Havilland was hired by the Royal Aircraft Factory in 1910 as a test pilot and aircraft designer.

Once the RFC adopted the B.E.2 series for mass-production, the airplane became the subject of a series of experiments conducted by another brilliant young RAF designer and test pilot, Edward Teshmaker Busk. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, Busk became interested in perfecting aircraft stability. At the time, the British Army considered stability of vital importance—more than speed or maneuverability—because it wanted well-behaved reconnaissance airplanes in which the pilot could take his hands off the controls while making notes of enemy positions, taking photographs or even operating a radio transmitter. Positive stability was also important because early airplane pilots lacked blind flying instruments and could easily become disoriented in clouds and fall into a spin, something only an experienced pilot could survive.

Busk was both a theoretical and empirical engineer and he tested many ideas, including increasing dihedral, adding stabilizing fins to various parts of the airframe and even installing interplane struts incorporating additional side area. Although he test-flew many of his alterations himself, he also made use of a huge whirling arm, like an enormous centrifuge, to which he attached entire airframes in place of a wind tunnel.

As a result of his research, Busk redesigned the aircraft into the B.E.2c. While resembling earlier versions, this was almost an entirely new design. Not only did Busk add a large fixed vertical stabilizing tail fin, but he replaced the horizontal stabilizer with an entirely new design without the earlier version’s lifting airfoil section. He also revised the mainplanes with a new airfoil shape, new planform, positive stagger and added dihedral. Most noticeably, Busk replaced the old wing warping system with ailerons on all four wings, a change that strengthened the wing structure because the wings no longer needed to be flexible.

A B.E.2c pilot demonstrates the art of aerial photography. To fly and take photographs, a flyer needed a stable airplane.

Powered either by a 70-hp Renault V-8 or a 90-hp RAF1a, both air-cooled V-8 engines, the B.E.2c could achieve a maximum speed of 72 mph, a ceiling of 10,000 feet and had an endurance of 3½ hours. From the first flight on May 30, 1914, pilots appreciated the B.E.2c’s docile qualities. On June 9, Major William Sefton Brancker flew his B.E.2c for 40 miles without ever having to touch the controls until he reached his destination and began to descend for a landing. Immediately popular with service pilots, the B.E.2c quickly superseded earlier versions of the aircraft on the production lines and was manufactured by no less than 20 aircraft companies. While initially intended for reconnaissance and observation, the aircraft later came to serve as bombers, trainers and even as fighters.

Edward Busk did not live long enough to enjoy his success. On November 5, 1914, he died when a B.E.2c he was test-flying caught fire in midair and crashed. Although it has never been confirmed, the fire may have been caused by the premature detonation of a new type of incendiary bomb developed by the RAF. Whatever the cause, Britain lost one of its most brilliant and promising engineers and test pilots at the age of 28.

The various B.E.2s may not have been the most warlike of airplanes, but no one could accuse the pilots who flew it of lacking aggressiveness. B.E.2 variants equipped the first RFC squadrons deployed to support the British Expeditionary Force in France. On August 13, 1914, B.E.2a No. 347, flown by Lieutenant Hubert D. Harvey-Kelly, became the first British warplane to fly across the English Channel. Twelve days later Harvey-Kelly and his observer, W.H.C. Mansfield, flew the same B.E.2a to score the first British air-to-air victory—after a fashion—when they attacked a Rumpler Taube with small arms they had brought with them. Forcing the startled Germans to the ground and driving them into the nearby woods for cover, Harvey-Kelly landed and, after collecting souvenirs from the Taube, set it on fire and took off again.

On April 26, 1915, 2nd Lt. William B. Rhodes-Moorhouse flew his B.E.2b into Belgium to drop a 100-pound bomb on the Kortrijk railroad junction. Wounded by ground fire, he managed to return to base and report the success of his mission before going to the hospital, where he died the next day. Rhodes-Moorhouse became the first pilot to receive the Victoria Cross.

After German U-boats began menacing British coastal shipping, the Royal Navy retaliated by ordering a fleet of anti-submarine patrol blimps. Rather than design a control car for the new airships, the Navy simply suspended B.E.2c fuselages beneath the envelopes. The Navy produced 27 “Submarine Scout” airships this way.

Noel Pemberton-Billing was a vociferous critic of the Royal Aircraft Factory. An airline enthusiast himself, he created the cumbersome Supermarine Nighthawk to deal with the German Zeppelin menace. The quadraplane was not successful.

When German Zeppelin airships initiated night bombing raids on British cities, the B.E.2c took on a new role as a night interceptor. Although lacking the performance of single-seat scouts, the B.E.2c’s positive stability made it the safest choice for the role of a night fighter in the absence of night-flying instruments. B.E.2cs received credit for shooting down seven Zeppelins. After the first such instance, on the night of September 2-3, 1916, B.E.2c pilot Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson received the Victoria Cross.

During the first year of the war, few airplanes flew over the front, and they rarely encountered each other in the air. When they did, more often than not they lacked any effective armament with which to attack each other. However, the notorious “Fokker Scourge” against Allied aircraft began as early as July 1915 when the Germans introduced the Fokker Eindecker (monoplane), the first single-seat fighter to be effectively armed with a synchronized forward-firing machine gun. They produced only 416 of them, however, and never had many over the front lines. Moreover, the Eindeckers left a good deal to be desired as fighter planes. Since they relied on wing warping for lateral control, they were not very maneuverable and their wings were relatively thin and fragile. Furthermore, the limited power of available engines and the weight of the machine gun and ammunition meant that they could achieve a maximum speed of only 87 mph. Initially the Eindeckers were not deployed in specialized fighter squadrons but issued piecemeal, a few at a time, to mixed Feldflieger Abteilungen (Field Flying Companies), which operated several different aircraft types suited to perform a variety of aerial missions. As a result, the success of the Eindeckers during 1915 and early 1916 depended on luck and the aerial tactics developed by individual pilots. Even Oswald Boelcke, the most successful German fighter pilot of the first half of WWI, shot down only six Allied aircraft throughout 1915.

Nevertheless, the introduction of armed enemy aircraft highlighted the slow and stable B.E.2c’s vulnerability, transforming its positive qualities into liabilities. Although the British made attempts to install defensive machine guns on the B.E.2c, the observer/gunner’s position in the forward cockpit meant his field of fire was obstructed by the pilot, propeller, wings, struts and bracing wires. The RAF addressed the problem late in 1915 with the R.E.8, a two-seat reconnaissance plane with the observer seated more effectively in the rear with a machine gun. Due to the nature of the British War Office’s procurement system, however, many aircraft manufacturers could not shift production to the R.E.8 until they had fulfilled their B.E.2c contracts. The R.E.8 did not reach squadrons until November 1916, so the B.E.2c had to soldier on far longer than it should have done. By the time the R.E.8 appeared it, too, was becoming outdated, generating even more criticism of the RAF.

Much of that criticism came from Noel Pemberton-Billing. Born Noel Billing in 1881, he adopted the “Pemberton” during a brief stint as an actor. After fighting in the Boer War, he returned to England and became interested in aviation, getting his pilot’s license and launching an aviation company, Pemberton-Billing Ltd., which later became the foundation of the Supermarine company of Spitfire fame after Pemberton-Billing sold his interests. Pemberton-Billing won election to Parliament in 1916 and turned his attention and skills at invective to attack Britain’s aviation establishment. “The Government and its advisors, expert and otherwise, never believed in the reality of the air menace,” he wrote in his 1916 book Air War: How to Wage It. “They sneered at the Zeppelin, they laughed at the aeroplane. Who laughs today? Who pays the price for the work that was not done?” Pemberton-Billing even built a huge and grotesque twin-engine, multi-seat quadraplane, the Supermarine Nighthawk, for intercepting Zeppelins. It proved an abject failure in that role.

The RAF did attempt to address the B.E.2c’s lack of speed by introducing the improved B.E.2e version early in 1916. (The “d” variant was a dual-control training version of the B.E.2c produced in modest numbers.) The B.E.2e featured an entirely new set of unequal-span single-bay wings, similar to the R.E.8’s. The new version had a top speed of 82 mph and the climb rate was slightly better, improvements deemed sufficient to warrant production orders. The dual-control trainer version of the B.E.2e was known as the B.E.2f.

B.E.2cs shot down seven Zeppelins during World War I. The first time, pictured here, Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson destroyed the SL.11 on the night of September 2-3, 1916. Robinson received the Victoria Cross for his actions that night.

One development of the B.E.2 that has come under a particular degree of unfair criticism was the B.E.12, which many aviation historians have derided as the RAF’s failed attempt to create a single-seat fighter. Actually the B.E.12 first flew in July 1915, long before effective forward-firing armament was available in Britain, and the RAF conceived it as a single-seat bomber and photo-reconnaissance platform. It received a forward-firing machine gun much later, after the perfection of synchronizing mechanisms. Although lacking the maneuverability needed by a front-line fighter, the B.E.12’s excellent stability and forward-firing armament made it a useful home-defense night fighter. One contributed to the destruction of Zeppelin L48 on June 17, 1917.

Although the exact figures are not precisely known, it is estimated that the total production number of all B.E.2 variants was about 3,500, the vast majority being the B.E.2c version. The B.E.2c equipped no less than 72 RFC squadrons and four Navy squadrons. Belgium’s small air service used B.E.2cs and B.E.2ds powered by Hispano-Suiza engines after sensibly modifying theirs to put the pilot up front with a synchronized Vickers machine gun and the observer aft, manning a .303-inch Lewis machine gun on a ring mounting. In August 1918 the U.S. Army Air Service purchased B.E.2es for training purposes. B.E.s served not only over the Western Front but also the Mediterranean, the Middle East, South Africa and Australia.

The B.E.2c was essentially a good airplane that simply outlasted its time but performed as intended until the evolving air war made it obsolete. Its large production, a huge number for such an early airplane, belies the undeserved bad reputation of an airplane that successfully fulfilled a wide variety of military roles all over the world right to the end of World War I.

this article first appeared in AVIATION HISTORY magazine

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At the Outset of WWI, Winston Churchill Gave ‘Little Willie’ His Marching Orders

Jon Guttman — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Specifications:

Length: 26 feet 6 inches
Height: 8 feet 3 inches
Width: 9 feet 5 inches
Track width: 20½ inches
Weight: 16 tons
Armor: 10 mm
Power: Rear-mounted Daimler-Knight 6-cylinder, 105 hp tractor engine
Maximum speed: 2 mph
Main armament: 2-pounder Vickers gun in rotating turret (not installed)
Crew: Five

When World War I settled into static trench warfare, even the most advanced armored cars were effectively immobilized by the Western Front’s combination of muddy terrain, trenches, barbed wire, heavy machine guns and artillery.

To meet such challenges, in February 1915 British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill formed a Landship Committee tasked with designing an armored vehicle capable of mastering mud, bridging an 8-foot gap, climbing a 5-foot earthwork and other specifications outlined by British army Lt. Col. Ernest Swinton. Under the guidance of mechanical engineer Major Walter Wilson of the Royal Naval Air Service and agricultural engineer Sir William Tritton, the committee purchased twin “creeping grip” track assemblies from the Bullock Tractor Co. of Chicago, Ill., and fitted them beneath a boxlike crew compartment of riveted steel plates. Powering the vehicle was a Daimler-Knight 6-cylinder, 105 hp tractor engine provided by Tritton’s Foster & Co., of Lincoln, England. On discovering the Bullock tracks were too small to accommodate the vehicle’s weight, Tritton designed longer, wider tracks. He also added twin rear wheels to facilitate steering. A proposed round turret packing a 2-pounder Vickers gun was never installed.

Officially known as the No.1 Lincoln Machine or Tritton Machine, the prototype landship was nicknamed “Little Willie” (a derisive name then applied to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia). When not undergoing testing, it was kept under the strictest wraps, a backstory claiming it was a new mobile “water tank.” The abbreviated tank reference became universal for Little Willie’s descendants.

Little Willie was found to be top-heavy, but by that time a better design was in development, with a rhomboid-shaped track running above and below the superstructure and 6-pounder guns in sponsons on either side. Nicknamed “Mother,” the improved variant was further refined into the Mark I tank, which first saw combat at the Somme on Sept. 15, 1916. Today the tank’s forebear, Little Willie, is in the collection of the Tank Museum in Bovington, England.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Military History magazine.

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A Look at the Dreyfus Affair: Why Was This Soldier Betrayed?

Jon Guttman — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 18:14:26 +0000

As a housekeeper for the German Embassy in Paris, Marie Bastian had two tasks. She was expected to gather the day’s paper trash twice a week…unless she recognized something worth pocketing to pass to her other employer, Maj. Hubert-Joseph Henry of the Section de Statistiques (“statistics section,” the innocuous-sounding title for French counterintelligence). Making her rounds on Sept. 26, 1894, she noticed a handwritten note in French lying torn up in the wastebasket of German military attaché Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen. She wasted no time in taking it to Henry, who passed it to his superior, Lt. Col. Jean Sandherr.

Pieced together, it proved to have only minor military secrets. Far more serious was the evidence of its origin. Someone in the French General Staff was passing secrets to the Germans.

A Spy In Their Midst

It had been 23 years since the Franco-Prussian War, in which the Second Empire of Napoleon III collapsed and the collection of kingdoms and duchies that brought it down united into a single entity called Germany. Peace had reigned since then between the French Third Republic and the German Second Reich, but each power eyed the other suspiciously.

Behind a seeming high point in European civilization, spy games went on as secret agents from all the powers sought out any foreign secrets that might give them an edge, should another war ever break out. Although the French army had recovered from its humiliating defeat, it remained insecure to the brink of paranoia. This new revelation seemed to suggest that the paranoia was warranted.

What became known as “The Dreyfus Affair” exposed discriminatory attitudes in French society. German military attache Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen received intelligence reports from a double agent; Picquart defied his superiors by seeking the truth; Sandherr was determined to rest the blame on Dreyfus.

Sandherr had been aware that someone was leaking information to Schwartzkoppen, but the note was the first solid evidence to fall into his hands. Matching the handwriting against documents among the General Staff, he found at least two specimens that seemed to match. Since the intelligence being passed was a list of new artillery components, including technical details for a hydraulic brake in a new 120mm howitzer and modifications to artillery formations, Sandherr narrowed the search down to an artillery captain on the staff: Alfred Dreyfus.

Soldier and Patriot

A thorough examination of Dreyfus suggested dubious spy material. Born on Oct. 9, 1859 in Mulhouse, Alsace, he was the youngest of nine children whose father had risen from a street peddler to a textile manufacturer. When the Germans seized Alsace and Lorraine in 1871, the Dreyfus family moved to Basel, Switzerland, then to Paris. There Alfred chose to pursue a career in the army, enrolling in the Ecole Polytechnique to study military sciences.

In 1880 he was commissioned a sub-lieutenant and from then until 1882 studied artillery at Fontainebleau before being assigned to the 31st Artillery Regiment at Le Mans and then the 1st Mounted Artillery Battery of the First Cavalry Division in Paris. In 1885 he was promoted to full lieutenant and in 1889 served as adjutant to the director of the Etablissement de Bourges with the rank of captain.

Emile Zola’s editorial “I Accuse” protested his innocence.

Dreyfus married Lucie Eugènie Hadamard on April 18, 1891. Three days later he was admitted into the Ecole Superieure de Guerre (war college), from which he graduated ninth in his class in 1893. He was assigned to the headquarters of the Army General Staff—and ran into the first serious career obstacle stemming from his being the only Jewish officer on the staff.

One of his evaluators, Gen. Pierre de Bonnefond, gave him high marks for his technical acumen but lowered his overall score with a zero rating for “likeability” (what in modern U.S. Army jargon amounted to an “attitude problem”), adding that “Jews were not desired” on his staff. Although admitted to the staff, Dreyfus and some supporters protested Bonnefond’s blatant bias—an act that would be used against him when he came under investigation.

Dreyfus Framed

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Despite two of three examiners expressing doubts as to the similarity between Dreyfus’ writing samples and the handwriting on the note, Sandherr made it the cornerstone of his evidence against the captain. On Oct. 15, Dreyfus was ordered to appear at work in civilian clothes and was questioned by a self-styled handwriting expert, Maj. Armand du Paty de Clam, who, feigning an injured hand, asked Dreyfus to write a letter for him. Dreyfus did, giving no indication that he recognized the message he was transcribing as the same one to Schwartzkoppen. Upon his completing it, Du Paty fleetingly examined both documents and informed Dreyfus he was under arrest.

After four days of a secret court martial, Dreyfus was convicted of treason on Dec. 22 and sentenced to life imprisonment. At a public ceremony on Jan. 5, 1895, he was publicly stripped of every accoutrement on his uniform and had his sword broken before being sent to serve his life imprisonment at the penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. His last statement before being taken away was: “I swear that I am innocent. I remain worthy of serving in the army. Vive la France! Vive l’Armée!”

As Dreyfus was led away, he faced a barrage of insults, not only from brother officers but crowds stirred up by army provocateurs to undermine any sympathy for the traitor. The emphasis was on his religion, the most common cry being “Death to the Jews!” One Hungarian correspondent covering the event for the Austrian Neue Freie Presse took special notice.

Although he then believed Dreyfus guilty, he commented on the nature of the aftermath in his diary in June 1895: “In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism…above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.” Despairing of his co-religionists ever finding acceptance anywhere in Europe, Theodor Herzl turned his thoughts toward the idea of their finding a homeland of their own.

In Search of Justice

While Dreyfus endured heat, insects, malaria, dysentery and all the horrors that gave Devil’s Island its dreaded reputation, his older brother Mathieu spent all the time, energy and money at his disposal to have Alfred’s case reexamined, seemingly in vain. One appeal after another was rejected. The French army staff, obsessed with maintaining an image of infallibility, was not about to reconsider its rush to justice against the homegrown “foreigner” in its midst.

When Sandherr, promoted to colonel, left the Section de Statistiques to command the 20th Infantry Regiment at Montauban on July 1, 1895, his successor, Lt. Col. Marie-Georges Picquart, was instructed by Assistant Chief of the General Staff Charles-Arthur Gonse to find more incriminating evidence to ensure that Dreyfus stayed right where he was.

Picquart, however, proved to be of different moral fiber. Investigating more on his own than his superiors authorized, the more he found the less the case against Dreyfus rang true to him—especially in March 1896, when he found a telegram from Schwartzkoppen, intercepted before it left the embassy, addressed to the actual author of the note.

Dreyfus is depicted at his trial proceedings. Many of the officials charged with dispensing justice turned out to be biased against him.

That and other handwritten documents revealed a more precise handwriting match than Dreyfus’s. The handwriting was traced to Maj. Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, another staff officer who had served in intelligence from 1877 to 1880. In a scenario common in the world of espionage, Esterhazy had fallen deeply in debt and sought a way out by selling secrets to the Germans. Confronted by Picquart on April 6, he made a full confession. Picquart submitted his revised report, with a recommendation that the Dreyfus case be reexamined.

A Military Cover-Up

The response was hardly what he expected. His demand ran into brick walls at every turn from senior officers like Chief of Staff Gen. Raoul le Mouton de Boisdeffre and Minister of War Gen. Auguste Mercier, who remained determined that army intelligence not be sullied with having to admit that a mistake led to a miscarriage of justice. In regard to letting the real traitor slip away, Gonse went so far as to say, “If you are silent, no one will know.” “What you say is abominable,” replied an outraged Picquart. “I refuse to carry this secret to my tomb.”

Picquart’s strong sense of justice led to his undergoing a series of transfers “in the interest of the service,” first to a unit in the French Alps and ultimately to command the 4th Tirailleurs Regiment in Sousse, Tunisia. In a further attempt to discredit his findings, Boisdeffre and Gonse ordered Picquart’s deputy in the Section de Statistiques, Maj. Henry, to fortify Dreyfus’ file with more incriminating evidence. This Henry did on Nov. 1 by producing what he declared to be further correspondence between Dreyfus and the Germans. However, when Boisdeffre and Gonse brought the most incriminating letter to then-Minister of War Jean-Baptiste Billot, they realized that it was a forgery clumsily created by Henry himself.

Dreyfus’ innocence was becoming too clear to deny. Yet Billot joined Boisdeffre and Gonse in agreeing that the verdict must stand—and to persecute Picquart, “who did not understand anything.” Henry conjured up an embezzlement charge against his former superior and sent him an accusatory letter. This only brought Picquart back to Paris, armed with a lawyer.

Dreyfus was imprisoned in a tiny cell on Devil’s Island, where he despaired of ever being released. His family never gave up on his cause.

Far from being buried, by mid-1896 the Dreyfus case had grown into a cause célèbre attracting partisans on both sides. Most French journals upheld the guilty verdict and opposed a retrial, reinforcing their arguments with accusations that Jews could only be expected to betray any country they inhabited.

Besides the army, the partisans who came to be called “anti-Dreyfusards” were mainly conservatives, nationalists and traditionalists. The tradition they conserved was hundreds of years of antisemitism that had supposedly ended with the Revolution and the Rights of Man, but which the General Staff tacitly encouraged in its ongoing campaign to keep the brand of traitor on Dreyfus. Among the foremost civilian mouthpieces was Edouard Drumont, whose publication La Libre Parole became an open forum for anyone with bile against Jews in general.

The Spy Escapes

In spite of all this, a growing cross-section of the French intelligentsia began taking up Dreyfus’ case. The first of these “Dreyfusards” was anarchist journalist Bernard Lazare, who after examining the existing evidence published an appeal from Brussels, Belgium. The conflict between of the Revolution’s ideals and the revival of old prejudices in “defense” of a Catholic France came to virtually split the entire country in two, breaking up lifelong friendships even in the world of impressionist art. Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, Paul Signac and Camille Pisarro, for example, were Dreyfusards, while Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir were anti-Dreyfusards.

With evidence of Esterhazy’s guilt and Dreyfus’ innocence leaking into public scrutiny, the General Staff took a new step to address the matter head-on. On Jan. 10, 1898, it tried Esterhazy before a closed military court, Mathieu and Lucie Dreyfus’ appeals for a civil trial having been denied. The three army-supplied “experts” testified that Esterhazy’s handwriting did not match that on the bordereau. The next day, after three minutes of deliberation, the court acquitted Esterhazy and all officers present cheered. Dreyfusards protested in the streets, to be beaten down by mobs of rioting anti-Dreyfusards and antisemites.

Dreyfus suffered on, but the trial’s real victim was Picquart, who was discredited, subsequently arrested for “violation of professional security” and imprisoned in Fort Mont Valérien.

Having been publicly exonerated, Esterhazy was discretely discharged from the army and exiled to Britain via Brussels. Settling in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, he lived out his life comfortably until 1923.

Esterhazy was proven to have been the real spy. Henry deliberately fabricated evidence against Dreyfus and was found dead in prison. Famed writer Emile Zola led efforts to exonerate Dreyfus with vehement essays but met with an untimely death.

The Dreyfusards swiftly changed tactics, doubling down on Lazare’s use of the press with a vehement 4,500-word open letter to President Félix Faure by novelist and social critic Emile Zola in the Jan. 13, 1898 issue of the newspaper L’Aurore. It was aimed directly at the high command’s perfidy with a title suggested by fellow journalist Georges Clemenceau:“J’Accuse!”

Clemenceau himself was equally accusatory when he declared, “What irony is this, that men should have stormed the Bastille, guillotined the king and promoted a major revolution, only to discover in the end that it had become impossible to get a man tried in accordance with the law.” Others who took up Dreyfus’ cause included Léon Blum, Anatole France, Marcel Proust, Sarah Bernhardt and even Mark Twain.

A Forgery discovered

J’Accuse exposed all that was known of the army’s morally corrupt handling of both Dreyfus and Esterhazy and included the General Staff members involved by name. L’Aurore’s circulation was normally 30,000 but it sold 200,000 copies on Jan. 13. The anti-Dreyfusards’ reaction was so violently negative that Zola needed a police escort to walk to and from his home. On Jan. 15 Le Temps called for a new public review of Dreyfus’ case. Minister of War Billot struck back by filing a public complaint against Zola and Alexandre Perrenx, manager of l’Aurore, for defamation of a public authority, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies by a vote of 312 to 22.

Held at the Assises du Seine between Feb. 7 to 23, the trial ended with Zola condemned to the maximum sentence, a year in prison and a 3,000-franc fine. Again, the verdict was accompanied by street riots against Zola and against Jews. After another trial on July 18, Zola took friends’ advice and exiled himself to England for the following year. In the process, so much of the Dreyfus Affair was exposed to public scrutiny that Zola’s two courtroom defeats ultimately amounted to a tide-turning victory.

France got a new minister of war, Godefroy Cavaignac, who was eager to prove Dreyfus’ guilt but was completely in the dark about the high command’s obstruction of justice. He ordered the case files examined and was astonished to find out how much evidence had been withheld from Dreyfus’ defense.

On Aug. 13, 1898 one of his staff, Louis Cuignet, holding a key document before a lamp, noticed that the head and foot were not the same paper as the body copy. The forgery was soon traced to Major—now promoted to lieutenant colonel—Henry.

Alfred Dreyfus, in uniform on right, undergoes a retrial at Rennes in 1899 in which he was still found guilty but had his sentence reduced; he then received a “pardon.” His supporters fought for justice and he was declared innocent in 1906.

A court of inquiry was called for Esterhazy, who admitted his treason and revealed the high command’s collusion in framing Dreyfus. On Aug. 30 the council questioned Henry in the presence of Generals Boisdeffre and Gonse. After an hour of interrogation from Cavaignac himself, Henry broke down and confessed to having falsified the evidence. He was promptly arrested and imprisoned in the Fort Mont Valérien. The next day he was found with his throat cut. Nobody found a straight razor on his person when he entered his cell. How it got there—and whether his death was suicide or murder—remains a mystery.

With the news reports of Henry’s act of deceit, the anti-Dreyfusards declared him a martyr. Lucie Dreyfus pressed for a retrial. Cavaignac still refused, but the president of the council, Henri Brisson, forced him to resign. Boisdeffre also resigned and Gonse was discredited. While the partisans continued to struggle, sometimes violently, new revelations were gradually shifting the political landscape. A growing number of French Republicans recognized the injustice that hid behind the military’s veneer of “patriotism.”

Pardoned?

On June 3, 1899, the Supreme Court overturned Dreyfus’ verdict and sentence. Dreyfus himself had little or no access to news of the maelstrom brewing in the wake of his arrest. It was days later that he learned that he was being summoned back to France.

On June 9 Dreyfus departed Devil’s Island—only to be arrested again on July 1 and imprisoned at Rennes, where he was to undergo his retrial. This began on Aug. 7, presided over by Gen. Mercier, who was still determined to maintain the guilty verdict, and attended by as much popular rancor as before. On Aug. 14 one of Dreyfus’ lawyers, Fernand Labori, was shot in the back by an assailant who was never identified. As the original case against him crumbled, the president of the council, Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, sought a compromise.

Although five of the seven court members upheld the original verdict, on Sept. 9 Waldeck-Rousseau declared Dreyfus guilty of treason “with extenuating circumstances” and reduced his life sentence to 10 years. The next day Dreyfus appealed for another retrial. Eager to put the “affair” behind France, Waldeck-Rousseau offered a pardon. Exhausted from his time on Devil’s Island, Dreyfus accepted those terms on Sept. 19 and was released on Sept. 21. Still, being pardoned implies guilt. Dreyfus’ supporters remained unsatisfied with anything short of exoneration. Beyond France, protest marches broke out in 20 foreign capitals.

Not Guilty

Among other literary responses, Zola added to his previous essays, L’Affaire and J’Accuse! with a third, Verité (truth). On Sept. 29, 1902, however, Zola died, asphyxiated by chimney fumes from which his wife, Alexandrine, narrowly escaped. In 1953, the newspaper Liberation published the dying confession by a Paris roofer that he had blocked the chimney. Dreyfusards like socialist leader Jean Jaurès kept up the pressure for the next several years.

Dreyfus, facing left, later served in World War I and fought on the Western Front.

On April 7, 1903 Dreyfus’ case was investigated once more—and eventually its conclusion was finally reversed. On July 13, 1906 he was declared innocent. He accepted reinstatement in the army with the rank of major, backdated to July 10, 1903, and was also made a chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. He commanded the artillery depot at Fort Neuf de Vincennes until June 1907, when he retired into the Reserve. Also exonerated was Georges Picquart, who rejoined the ranks, was promoted to brigadier general and served as Minister of War from 1906 to 1909. He died in a riding accident on Jan. 19, 1914.

On June 4, 1908 Dreyfus found himself literally the target of residual antisemitic hatred. As he attended the transfer of Emile Zola’s ashes to the Pantheon, journalist Louis Grégory fired two revolver shots, slightly wounding him in the arm. Although apprehended, Grégory was acquitted in court.

The question of Dreyfus’ loyalty to his country got a final test when World War I broke out. Returning from the reserves at age 55, he commanded an artillery depot and a supply column in Paris but as the French army suffered heavy attrition in the field, in 1917 he transferred to take up an artillery command on the Western Front, fighting at Chemin des Dames and Verdun. His son, Pierre, also served as an artillery officer, being awarded the Croix de Guerre. Two nephews also became artillery officers but were both killed in action. The only other major player in the Dreyfus Affair to see combat during the war was Armand du Paty de Clam.

In 1919 Dreyfus’ honors were upgraded to Officier de la Légion d’Honneur. He died on July 12, 1935, aged 75, and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery. For all the French military’s efforts to make it go away, the Dreyfus Affair long outlived its namesake, leaving behind a number of political, legal and social aftereffects. In France it held up a mirror that showed two psyches—which would recur five years after Dreyfus’ death with new evocative names, such as Charles de Gaulle and Pierre Laval. Sadly, it still hasn’t gone away.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly