100 Years Ago On The Western Front

A month before the Armistice, the second in command of the German forces, Erich Ludendorff,* advised the Kaiser that victory was no longer possible and that peace should be sought. The principle factors, he said, were the depletion of German manpower and British tanks.

[As they] looked towards the English the blood froze in veins as two mysterious monsters came creeping over the crater fields...They have learned not to fear men, but there was something approaching which the human brain, with tremendous mechanical powers, had fitted out for a devil's trick, a mystery which approached and shackled the powers because one could not comprehend it with understanding -- a fatality against which one seemed helpless. One stared and stared as if paralyzed.

The monster approached slowly, hobbling, moving from side to side, rocking and pitching, but it came nearer. Nothing obstructed it; a supernatural force seemed to drive it onwards. Someone in the trenches cried "the devil comes," and that word ran down the line like lightening. Suddenly tongues of fire leapt out of the armoured skin of the iron caterpillar, shells whistled over our heads, and a terrible concert [from] a machine gun orchestra filled the air. The mysterious creature had surrendered its secret, and sense returned with it, and toughness and defiance, and the English waves of infantry surged up behind the devil's chariot. 

~ The Devil's Chariots

The early tanks were hazardous even under normal conditions:

Bullet splash was a hazard peculiar to the tanks. When standard issue rifle and machine-gun bullets hit armour, their lead cores flattened and became molten, the resultant "splash" entering the hull through the slightest crack as a super-hot spray of atomized shrapnel. Entry points included the knife-thin gaps surrounding a loophole and vision slit covers, and the junction of sponson with hull where severe stresses tended to open the felt-packed joint to a crack of daylight. Concentrated Maxim fire could so hammer a section of plate as to cause its internal face to spall, throwing off hot steel fragments and leaving a characteristic rank smell of burned paint. Splash lodged under the skin of face and hands as black pinpricks, emerging weeks later, and commanders and gunners were particularly at risk of being blinded. Various forms of face shield were issued later -- principally steel goggles with inadequate vision slits and a square of chain mail beneath to protect nose, mouth, and throat -- but most men soon discarded them. Hull exteriors could quite literally become shot-blasted, as Lt. Henry Williamson, an infantry supplies officer, confirmed to his father in the spring of 1917: "My experience of the Hindenburg line is that it is bloody awful. One of our tanks that did comeback shined like hell from the bullets but the bloke inside was mad." Yet in spite of all, if any crewman had a fleeting moment to consider his position he thanked God he was not outside in the infantry.

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*Ludendorff was a major malefactor in the Weimar years. He remained active in politics. He participated in Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch but was acquitted, no doubt because of political influence.  He viewed peace as a mere lull between wars.

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Dr. Elsie Maud Inglis

DR. ELSIE MAUD INGLIS 

Commandant, Scottish Women’s Hospitals 

Educated Edinburgh School Of Medicine for Women. Active in Women’s Francise Movement. Founder of Scottish Women’s Hospitals and commanded units in Serbia and Russia. Died of illness due to war service, Newcastle, 26 November, 1917, at the age of 53.
                                                                 [Reni, Rumania] 

                                                                                     March 23, 1917 

We have been awfully excited and interested in the news from Petrograd.* We heard of it, probably long after you people at home knew all about it!  It is most interesting to see how everybody is on the side of change, from Russian officers, who come to tea and beam at us, and say Heresho (good) to the men in the wards. In any case, they say we shall find the difference all over the war area.... 

Do you know we have all been given the St. George Medal? Prince Dolgourokoff, who is in command on this front, arrived quite unexpectedly, just after roll call. The telegram saying he was coming arrived a quarter of an hour after he left!  General Kropensky, the head of the Red Cross, rushed up, and the Prince arrived about two minutes after him. He went all over the hospital, and a member of his gilded staff told matron he was very pleased with everything.  He decorated two men in the wards with St. George's Medal, and then said he wanted to see us together, and shook hands with everybody and said, "Thank you," and gave each of us a medal too; Dr. Laird's was for service, as she had not been under fire. St. George's Medal is a silver one with "for Bravery" on its back. Our patients were awfully pleased, and impressed on us that it carried with it a pension of a rouble a month for life. We gave them all cigarettes to commemorate the occasion. 

It was rather satisfactory to see how the hospital looked in its ordinary, and even I was fairly satisfied.    I tell the unit that they must remember that they have an old maid as commandant, and must live up to it!  I cannot stand dirt, and crooked charts and crumpled sheets. One Sister, I hear, put it delightfully in a letter home: "Our C.M.O. is an idealist!"  I thought that was rather sweet; I believe she added, "but she does appreciate good work." Certainly, I appreciate hers. She is in charge of the room for dressings, and it is one of the thoroughly satisfactory points in the hospital. 

The Greek priest came yesterday to bless the hospital. We put up "Icons" in each of the four wards. The Russians are very religious people, and it seems to appeal to some mystic sense in them. The priest just put on a stole, green and gold, and came in his long grey cloak.  The two wards open out of one another, so he held the service in one, the men all saying the responses and crossing themselves. The four icons lay on a table before him, the three lighted candles at the inner corners, and he blessed  water and sprinkled them, and then he sprinkled everybody in the room. The icons were fixed up in the corner of the wards, and I bought little lamps to burn in front of them, as they always have them. We are going to have the evening hymn sung every evening at six o'clock. I heard that first in Serbia from those poor Russian prisoners, who sang it regularly every evening... 

I have heard two delightful stories from the Sisters who have returned from Odessa.  There is a great rivalry between the Armoured Car men and the British Red Cross men about the capabilities of the Sisters. (We, it appears, are the Armoured Car Sisters!). A B.R.C. man said their Sisters were so smart they got a man on to operating table in five minutes after the other went off. Said an Armoured Car man: "But that's nothing. The Scottish Sisters get the second one on before the first one is off."  The other story runs that there was some idea of the men waiting all night on a quay, and the men said, "But you don't think we are Scottish Sisters, sir, do you?" I have no doubt that refers to Galatz, where we made them work all night. 

_____________________

*The Russian Revolution which led to an early ceasefire on the Eastern Front.

The letter is part of series called "Letters From Their Eleventh Hour" which I began a few years ago. The letters come from two books described here.

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Albin Müller (1892-1915)

ALBIN MÜLLER 

Student of Theology, Bamberg Lyceum 

Born December 16th, 1892, at Tiefenstockheim, Unterfranken. Died March 28th, 1915, in the military hospital at Tourcoing. 

Comines, January 19th, 1915 

Here with us it pours with rain every day. You can’t possibly imagine how filthy we get, wet to the skin. To-day we had to lie down in such filth that it made me shudder. But then I said to myself: ‘Into it, in the name of God!’ And while the others were cursing I thought of the story of our Holy Father St. Francis, how he said to one of the Brothers: ‘When we get home, soaked with rain and besmirched with mud as we are, and knock at the door of the Convent, and the porter strikes us and calls us thieves and rogues, therein is perfect joy.’* 

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*My Google search of St. Francis and the keywords from that St. Francis story was fruitless. I wish I knew his writings well enough to recall.

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Friedrich Sohnrey (1887-1914)*

FRIEDRICH (FIDUS) SOHNREY 

Student of Political Economy, Berlin 

Born December 21st, 1887, at Möllenden.
Killed November 8th, 1914, near Clamecy. France 

In the trenches near Clamecy, October 24th, 1914. 

    I go everyday into the village here to see a family with six children. The father is in the war.¹ The woman says that he is a Reserve Dragoon. She innocently believes that he has not yet been under fire, but she has no news for two months. She sheds tears when she tells me that and hears that we get letters from home every day. I get hot water there so as to have a good wash after four days' interval., but I can't stop too long, as suspicious scratchings on the part of the children indicate undesirable house-mates.² 

    One does feel sorry for these poor people, who have hardly a stitch of underclothing to change into, not to speak of anything to eat--nothing left but potatoes, and the woman is always tearfully asking me how much longer she and her children will have to go on living like that. She is always lamenting over the war: 'C'est triste pour nous et pour vous." She lays the blame for it on the English and curses them. It makes her very unhappy when I tell her that we are making preparations for the winter and shall probably spend Christmas in the village. She just sobs helplessly. By way of thanks I leave her some bread and an army biscuit, which the children fall upon with shouts of delight. The youngest is five months old. It is true that one cow has been left in the village, by order of the Area-Commandant, to supply milk for the babies, but even so that is little enough. On the second day I gave each of the children two sous. The woman was very much pleased and touched by my sympathy. She followed me to the door and assured me that her house always 'à votre disposition.' 

    We all pity these poor people who are clinging to the last remnants of their former happy existence, though in constant danger of seeing all their possessions burnt and smashed up by their own artillery, and I hardly think that a single one of our soldiers would treat them with anything but friendliness. Many of the men habitually give them some of their bread. The inhabitants of the place gather round our field-kitchens regularly to collect their tribute. So we are seeing to it that our enemies' belongings do not starve. Kindliness is probably that part of the German character from which it derives its greatness. 'It is the German soul, that makes a sick world whole'³ -- and no doubt that means the German heart. 

_______________________

*The letter is part of series called "Letters From Their Eleventh Hour" which I began a few years ago. The letters come from two books described here.

¹France and Germany lost comparable numbers of soldiers, but France and Belgium bore the brunt of civilian casualties on the Western Front.

²Lice?

³He was quoting someone -- who?

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Rudolf Hauer (1894-1914)

RUDOLF MOLDEN HAUER 

Student at the High School of Commerce, Munich* 

Born March 18th, 1894, at Munich.
Killed December 13th, 1914, near Peronne. 

Halle, near Perone, December 9th, 1914. 

...When we have the treat of a beautiful sunset over the watery marshes of the Somme; when a beautiful, cold, December morning breaks through the mist of dawn and the red clay of the trench glows in the sunshine: then we are happy and rejoice like children over the beauty of it. We watch our men in their fleld-grey uniforms; they come out of the dug-outs, stretch themselves, wash themselves and clean their rifles. They look over the edge of the trench with shining eyes, and their bodies seem to be bursting with health and fitness. They are all young, full of joy in Nature, are living parts of that most wonderful whole--a nation developed into full beauty, goodness and strength.

_______________________

*Quite possibly the Königlich Bayerische Technische Hochschule München, the forerunner of today's Technical University Munich.

The letter is part of series called "Letters From Their Eleventh Hour" which I began a few years ago. The letters come from two books described here.

Hauer's words are so striking and full of color that I chose a WW I color photo to illustrate.

100 Years Ago On The Western Front

The winter of 1916-17 seemingly froze movement in the trenches. The French and British commanders awaited the spring thaw to resume the Somme Offensive. On the German side, elaborate plans for a calculated retreat were in motion. The German High Command, feeling attrition on two fronts, wished both to strengthen and to shorten their Western front line. Work began already in September of 1916 on new fortifications along what they called the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) -- about 25 miles east of the front line. The new defense would delay any French or English assaults in the spring of 1917. This would buy the Germans another year of trench warfare. Operation Alberich commenced on Feb 9, 1917.

Elsewhere, two ominous events would forever change the world. The first was the entry of the US into the war against Germany, triggered by Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in February, 1917.* The second was the collapse of Imperial Russia in March of 1917, the subsequent rise of Lenin's power, and the consequent peace treaty with the Russians. The latter event allowed the Germans to fight a single-front war and to transfer men and materiel to the West. The arrival of American Doughboys bolstered the dwindling French morale and lessened the horrific casualties of the British. All in all it guaranteed another 23 months of fighting.
_______________________
*The Germans had suspended unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915, after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. 

100 Years Ago On The Western Front

Link to original

100 years ago, the Battle of the Somme was winding down. The fighting lasted another week before both sides, exhausted, hunkered down for the winter.  Fighting resumed in the Spring of 1917.

Tommy vs. Gerry: 1916

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Restart and play both videos at the same time to get the full effect.

The Somme -- A BBC Dramatization

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The focus is on the Thiepval assaults on the first day. Not the usual lefty diatribe, there is plenty of blame to go around -- mostly for the men in trees.

The Somme: From Defeat to Victory challenges the traditional view of the battle as a disaster and reveals how it was on the Somme that the British Army learnt to fight a modern war.

The Somme Then And Now

The assault phase of the Battle of the Somme commenced 10 minutes after the blowing of the Hawthorne mine. The original black and white footage is from a full-length, silent documentary film, The Battle Of The Somme (1916).  That film has been digitized and set back to the original camera speed (something I worried about back here). Watch the original film here. It's lengthy, but worth it.

A couple years ago, two amateur filmmakers skilfully blended past and present cinematography. You won't realize what they've done for a minute or so but then it's incredible! The film is poignant too: Most of these men would be dead 40 minutes after this film was made.

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Britian's Secret Terror Weapon At The Somme

100 years ago tonight, British engineers were secretly installing four 56 ft long, 2.5 ton machines called "Squirts" by their operators and "Judgements" by more senior officers. History calls them Liven's Large Gallery Flame Projector.

British Flame Projector. First used by British at the Battle of the Somme, 1st July, 1916. Range 40 to 50 yards. Oil was forced through pipes under pressure, and ignited at a jet.

Here is a British TV presentation of the weapon and its excavation at the Somme battlefield in France. Yes it was real and yes, they did find the remains.

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Landscape Still Scarred Where The Somme Battle Was Fought In France

Drone imagery shows how the landscape from the Battle of the Somme is still scarred 100 years later

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Cold Gray Relics That Sparked A War For US

The remains of the RMS Lusitania lie on the sea floor off the coast of Ireland. The wreck is festooned with fishing nets and live mines which prevent fuller exploration:

SM U-20, the German sub that sank Lusitania, was stranded off the coast of Denmark in 1916. She was partially destroyed and abandoned by her crew. The wreck rusted there until 1925 when she was destroyed by the Danish government:

100 Years Ago On The Western Front

--Otto Dix Sturmtruppe gehen unter Gas vor (1924)

1915 was relatively quite on the Western Front. The action was at Gallipoli and the Eastern Front. After declaring war on each other the previous summer, the French and British allies fought the Germans through that first winter to an entrenched stalemate. The Western Front snaked from the Alps through France to the North Sea via Belgium. So horrendous was the scale of killing that at the trench level, both sides considered surrendering by Christmas 1914. link  But their leaders wouldn't hear of it. The following spring the grinding war resumed.

100 years ago this week, the small but once a powerful Belgian city called Ypres will mark a grim centenary: the first military use of chlorine gas.

Why Ypres?

The [1914] fighting at Ypres left the British saddled with a most unfavorable defensive position. It was a salient some six miles deep, with the town of Ypres [Ieper in Flemish] at the center of the base. The Germans held positions on low hills that gave them excellent observation over the entire salient. The area was so low that the construction of entrenchments was difficult, ground water being struck in many places at a depth of a one foot. A far better defensive position would have been one extending north and south just behind Ypres--giving up the salient and the town. Ypres, however, had become a symbol of Allied resistance; and the effect on public opinion of pulling back would have been unfortunate. Therefore, the troops held onto it, year after year. [1]

The Ypres salient hosted perennial WW I battles. The first was in 1914, then again in 1915, and last and worst of all, in 1917. But the second one--100 years ago this week--saw the first use of chlorine gas by the Germans.

On the morning of 22 April 1915 the Germans commenced to shell the Ypres salient. At 1730 a strange green vapor (chlorine gas) drifted toward the Allied lines from some 5,000 gas cylinders in the forward German trenches. The cloud engulfed the portion of the line held by some French Territorials and African troops, who promptly fled and left an undefended gap of over four miles. Not only did the Germans lack reserves to push through the gap but the darkness and the fear of their own gas by the German troops prevented them from realizing the extent of the rout. Even with only the few reserves available, the Germans could have accomplished more than they did. [2]

Chlorine gas had been known since 1630 or so. Sir Humphry Davy first recognized its elemental nature in 1810 and he was allowed to name it and he did so after its color: chloros: yellowish or light green (cf. chlorophyll). The use of chlorine as a bleach and a disinfectant dates back to the late 1700's. By the time of WW I, chlorine was being made on an industrial scale throughout the world. 

So why were the Germans the first to use chlorine gas in war? The French had used tear gas the year before.  One reason was an acute shortage of ammunition and a desire to end the carnage. The latter reasoning is essentially the same used to justify Hiroshima. But technological prowess and a dedicated mastermind also led its use as a WMD by the Germans.

Rudolf Knietsch's work at BASF before the war made it possible to liquefy chlorine using compressors lubricated with petroleum. [Fritz] Haber's idea, explained in detail to [Field Marshall Erich von] Falkenhayn and the top military leadership, was to put siphon tubes into steel cylinders, each containing about 20 kilograms of gas. These were then brought to the trenches, where they were positioned and buried in the ground at intervals of about one meter along a continuous front. A lead pipe was screwed into the opening of the cylinders, then brought up over the top of the trench and aimed in the direction of the enemy. When the wind direction was favorable, that is, blowing toward the enemy, all cylinders were opened simultaneously, and the chlorine was released. The liquid chlorine immediately turned into a gas and mixed with air, forming a yellow-green to white cloud containing about 0.5 percent chlorine at a distance of 50 to 100 meters from the cylinders. Since chlorine is two and a half times as heavy as air, this cloud rolled forward into the enemy trenches and foxholes and forced the enemy troops to flee their positions rapidly. The gas also damaged their weapons with corrosion. The German troops could follow the cloud and penetrate into enemy positions.[3]

Chlorine liquefaction was key because it allowed the transport and positioning of sufficient amounts of the latent gas. British and especially French industrial counterparts had no such capacity for producing liquid chlorine. British production went from 5 to 150 tons per week after Ypres.[4]

This map shows the geographic extent of the chlorine gas dispersion. The gas was released and rolled south across the French lines and towards the town of Ypres [Ieper]:

Link To Original

The hoped for result was to force the French troops out of their trenches and into marauding machine gun fire. In retreating however, the French soldiers simply moved back along with the advancing gas cloud and increased their exposure to its effects.

Both sides were unprepared for the consequences. The French had no protections in place. Within days and before the next gas attack on Canadian troops, word had spread that urine-soaked rags or cloth held against the mouth and nose afforded some protection: urea, a base, neutralized some of the HCl and HOCl.[5] As already mentioned, the Germans failed to follow through with troops.

Two days later the Germans gassed British and Canadian troops. Retaliation occurred in kind the following year.

100 Years Ago On The Western Front

Read more here

[Added]: An edited dramatization from the BBC:

If At Day's Dawn Dies...

If at day's dawn 


My dear love dies, 


Tell not the day, 


Lest the laughing eyes 


Of the day grow dim 


And the bird-song cease. 


Until eventide 
Let her lie in peace.

If at day's death 


My dear love dies,

My own hands 
Will close her eyes,

And the rising moon 
And the stars shall shed 


Their silver tears 
Round her white death-bed.

____________________
Captain Ivar Campbell,
1st Seaforth Highlanders
Died of wounds received in action,
8 January 1916, aged 25,
No known grave

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Ivar Campbell (1891-1916)

Captain Ivar Campbell wrote this while fighting in the trenches of France:

France, 1915: 

The sputter of shrapnel, the red squeal of field guns, N.E.; the growl of the heavies moving slowly through the air, the cr-r-r-r-ump of their explosion. But in a bombardment all tones mingle and their voice is like machinery running not smoothly but roughly, pantingly, angrily, wildly making shows of peace and wholeness. 

You perceive, too, in imagination, men infinitely small, running, affrighted rabbits, from the upheaval of the shells, nerve-wracked, deafened; clinging to earth, hiding eyes, whispering "O God, O God!"  You perceive, too, other men, sweaty, brown, infinitely small also, moving guns, feeding the belching monster, grimly, quietly pleased. 

But with eyes looking over this land of innumerable eruptions, you see no line. The land is inhuman. 

But thousands of men are there; men who are below ground, men who have little bodies but immense brains. And the men facing West are saying, "This is an attack, they will attack when this hell's over," and they go on saying this to themselves continually. 

And the men facing East are saying, "We have got to get over the parapet. We have got to get over the parapet--when the guns lift." 

And then the guns lift up their heads and so a long, higher song. 

And then untenanted land is suddenly alive with little men, rushing stumbling--rather foolishly leaping forward--laughing, shouting, crying in the charge... 

There is one thing cheering. The men of the battalion--through all and in spite of that noisy, untasty day; through the wet cold night, hungry and tired, living now in mud and water, with every prospect of more rain to-morrow--are cheery. Sometimes, back in billets, I hate the men--their petty crimes, their continual bad language with no variety of expression, their stubborn moods. But in a difficult time they show up splendidly. Laughing in mud, joking in water--I'd "demonstrate" into Hell with some of them and not care. 

Yet under heavy shell-fire it was curious to look into their eyes--some of them little fellows from shops, civilians before, now and after: you perceived the wide, rather frightened, piteous wonder in their eyes, the patient look turned towards you, not, "What the blankety, blankety hell is this?" but "Is this quite fair? We cannot move, we are like little animals. Is it quite necessary to make such infernally large shells to kill such infernally small and feeble animals as ourselves?" 

I quite agreed with them, but had to put my eye-glass fairly in my eye and make jokes; and, looking back, I blush to think of the damnably bad jokes I did make...

__________________________
Captain Campbell was killed in action in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), January 8, 1916, aged 25 years. Prior to his service, he had been educated at Eton and at Christ Church College, Oxford, and had traveled to America.  I blogged another letter of his last year as part of a series "Letters From Their Eleventh Hour" in remembrance of 11/11/18. Link

Campbell's family published an entire series of his letters posthumously.  This one came from a collection of British soldiers' letters called "War Letters Of Fallen Englishmen." More about this remarkable book here. Link

Ligation Was His Religion But His Love Was Platonic

A relatively obscure Swiss chemist named Alfred Werner won the Chemistry Nobel Prize in 1913. In retrospect, it was ironic (but coincidental) that someone from a neutral country won for ostensibly organizing things, a year before things really started to fall apart in Europe. Stockholm did the same thing the following year when they awarded T.W. Richards, an American, the prize in the midst of the Great War. They even gave the prize to a German, Richard Willstätter, in 1915 for his seminal work on chlorophyll (which happens to an example of a magnesium-ligand complex: link). Then the Nobel Prize was suspended for two years until 1918 when another German, Fritz Haber won it, despite his innovations in poison gas warfare. But back to Alfred Werner.  What did he do that so moved the committee?

For starters, he reorganized the Periodic Table and he taught generations of chemists how to think about it. Secondly, he got chemists to think beyond carbon and the tetrahedron--to octahedra and polyhedra. What le Bel and van 't Hoff did for carbon, Werner did for everything else. He introduced the general notion of the coordination complex, merging the novel concept of a central atom surrounded and ligated with ligands arrayed like classical Platonic solids. Something new and something old.

An elderly professor once showed me the carefully preserved remnants of Alfred Werner's laboratories at the University of Zurich. They're stored under lock and key these days, partly out of lack of space, partly out of lack of interest. And yet Werner's long forgotten contributions changed chemistry as much as any of his peers.

The Band Played 'Waltzing Matilda'

Conversations with Henry about another Henry

Henry: Henry Moseley really convinced everyone that atomic numbers were real. Atomic number was just Bohr's theory until Henry Moseley proved it true.

Me: Moseley's Law?

Henry: Yes. A theory becomes a law when it gets tested beyond disproof. He proved the atomic number using X-rays.

Me: How come Moseley never got the Nobel Prize like you did?

Henry: He was killed--took a Turkish bullet in the head at Gallipoli in 1915--the same year I was born.
 ___________________________
 

Henry Moseley (1887-1915)

At the link, Isaac Asimov is quoted: "In view of what he [Moseley] might still have accomplished ... his death might well have been the most costly single death of the War to mankind generally."