Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in the Great War

IrishTimes.com: Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in the Great War

ROBERT GERWARTH

HISTORY: With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 By David Stevenson Allen Lane, 688pp. £30

IN THE SPRING of 1918, after more than three years of gruelling and often calamitous trench warfare on the Western Front, Britain and France were facing a disastrous situation. No end to the war was in sight, hundreds of thousands of young men were dead or mutilated, and the territorial gains made since the beginning of the campaign were negligible.

Moreover, the Allies were confronted with a strategic nightmare: despite the American entry into the war in 1917 the US forces on the ground remained comparatively small, the Italian army had been routed by the Austrians and Germans during the Battle of Caporetto, and Russia had dropped out of the conflict after the revolution that toppled the Romanov dynasty. The Central Powers now controlled central and eastern Europe, and the strongest adversary of the Allies, Germany, was therefore able to move more than 40 divisions to the Western Front. Yet less than a year later, on November 11th, 1918, the war ended with a decisive Allied victory.

How this extraordinary reversal of fortunes was possible is the central question addressed in David Stevenson’s new book on the final 12 months of the “great seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century. Stevenson, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, is well placed to write such a book, being widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on the first World War. But this is not the only reason why his new analysis of victory and defeat in 1918 will receive much attention. While the Great War is hardly a neglected subject, its final phase has not previously been the subject of a single-author study that gives equal attention to both sides of the conflict. This book fills that void.

Drawing on archival research in several countries, Stevenson explores the events and decisions that led to Germany’s defeat in 1918, analysing the reasons for Allied success and the collapse of the Central Powers. The strength of the book lies in his ability to weave together astute analysis of the antagonists’ abilities and weaknesses, from food supply to finance, strategy to technology, and logistics to morale. Cultural historians of the Great War may feel that the book is too top-heavy, focusing on strategy and generals while the soldiers and lower-rank officers doing most of the actual fighting remain largely nameless and faceless. But Stevenson nonetheless delivers on his promise to write a definitive account of the military history of the Great War’s endgame.

Paradoxically, he traces Germany’s ultimate defeat to the stunning initial success of Gen Ludendorff’s great spring offensive of 1918, which tested the British army to the limits of its capacity. Following the US’s entry into the war the German high command, under Ludendorff and Hindenburg, felt that it had to seize the initiative before sizeable US reinforcements could arrive, making use of the temporary numerical advantage triggered by Russia’s exit from the war. Supported by huge artillery attacks and aided by fresh divisions freed up from the Russian campaign, the Germans advanced more quickly between March and July than at any time since the Battle of the Marne, leading to Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s famous “with our backs to the wall” order to his troops to fight to the last man.

Ultimately, however, this quick advance proved to be the German army’s undoing. A point too little appreciated about the first World War is that the slaughter, so often attributed exclusively to trench warfare and the strategy of attrition, was actually at its worst when either side embarked on an offensive strategy, thus making themselves vulnerable to their enemies’ firepower.

Hopelessly overstretched and with supplies outpaced by the rapidly advancing infantry troops, the Germans lost many of their best men and officers during the spring offensive. Consequently they were ill prepared for the Allied counter-offensive that began in the summer and overran some of the Germans’ key strategic positions. By mid August the Allies had recaptured most of the territories conquered by the Germans during their advance, undermining the morale of the German soldiers, who had thought that victory was almost in reach. Had the Germans remained in their well-equipped defensive positions, Stevenson argues, the equally worn-out Allies would have had a much more difficult time beating them.

The spring offensive was, however, not the only reason for the victory of the Allies: they also benefited from substantial advantages in natural resources and industrial production, notably after the US’s entry into the war, without which an Allied victory would have been highly unlikely.

In the end the Allies won a decisive victory on the battlefield but shied away from conquering Germany. Historians have argued endlessly about whether this decision, made so as to end the conflict as soon as possible and avoid further military losses, was the right one. The “incomplete” victory of 1918 contributed to a postwar climate in which many Germans subscribed to the stab-in-the-back myth or the idea that Germany was undefeated on the battlefield but betrayed by revolutionaries at home. An Allied march on Berlin would have prevented the emergence of that powerful myth, as it did in 1945, but Stevenson does a good job of explaining that the desire to end the war overrode all other considerations in late 1918.

For those interested in the strategic and logistical background to Allied victory in the Great War, this book is highly recommended. Told with verve and analytical vigour, Stevenson’s book is a compelling and authoritative study of one of the most significant turning points in 20th-century military history.

Brothers weathered Great War together

StatesvilleRecord&Landmark: Brothers weathered Great War together

Jim Sloan, 71, a U.S. Army veteran, was kind enough to show me some memorabilia he has from World War 1: a gas mask cover, a French bugle, a magazine printed by the 81st Division, a bugler's cloth insignia, some photographs and a letter.
Two Iredell County brothers, Ernest Neal Sloan Sr. and George Norman Sloan, Jim's father and uncle, respectively, served together in the U.S. Army in World War I. The brothers were overseas for 22 months. Brothers serving together in the same unit was discouraged by the War Department, but somehow the brothers enlisted together and stayed together. The family story is that they told the officials they might be "distantly related." George was a bugler and a communications runner and is known to have been in Company "B" of the 321st Infantry Regiment, 81st "Wildcat" Division, while his younger brother Ernest (Jim's father) was a machine-gunner and was said to be in the "same unit," but it is unclear if they were in the same company, regiment or brigade.
Up through the American Civil War, brothers had often served together in the same unit. If one brother was injured or sick, his brother could do something toward helping his sibling. But this arrangement was a two-edged sword: If the brothers' unit was engaged in heavy combat, the loss to a single family could be catastrophic.
Originally composed of drafted men from North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, the men of the Wildcat Division were trained at Fort Jackson, near Columbia, S.C., and then received further training at Camp Sevier, near Greenville, S.C.
On Oct. 19, 1918, the division was attached to the First U. S. Army and with that organization was initiated into real combat. The 81st Division soldiers were ordered "over the top" to attack the German trenches on the very morning the armistice was to take place --- Nov. 11, 1918. Unfortunately for the German and American troops, there was no official word that the fighting was about to cease. The Wildcats slowly advanced through the heavy fog and withering German fire and made their way between the trenches, a barren, treeless, muddy area dotted with artillery shell holes and barbed wire called "No Man's Land," and made it to the German positions. At precisely 11 a.m., firing abruptly stopped all up and down the line.
Although in action for only about a month, the Wildcat Division sustained 1,104 casualties, 248 killed or dead from wounds and 856 wounded, in November 1918. Although not officially part of the 3rd Army --- the Army of Occupation --- it was not until June 1919, seven months after the cessation of hostilities, that members of the division were shipped home and released from service. The 81st was officially deactivated at Hoboken, N.J., on June 11, 1919.
Back in civilian life, George went to college and became a Methodist preacher. This calling did not last long as he had been exposed to poison gas while service in the war and developed tuberculosis and spent much time in sanatoriums. He died in 1930 at the age of 38. His obituary in The Landmark stated "he was said to have been one of the most promising young ministers of his church in this state." George married, but had no children.
Brother Ernest became a farmer and also worked as a custodian at Central School and worked for the schools' maintenance department in the summer. He was generally a quiet man and spoke little of his experiences in the Great War. Ernest survived his brother by 45 years, dying in 1975 at the age of 79. Ernest was survived by son Jim, three other sons and four daughters.
His Uncle George died nine years before Jim was born. Jim said his father was "the greatest man I ever knew." Both men are buried at Mountain View United Methodist Church Cemetery in north Iredell.

* * *

George Sloan sent the following letter, slightly edited for readability, to his home from France. The letter was written while on the march, some two weeks after the cease fire and Armistice. It has not been published previously. The religious service referred to may have been a thanksgiving service, the men thanking God that they had survived and would be going home.

France, 11-24-18 Dear Father:

As this is Father's day we are all requested to write to "Dad" with the promise that it won't be censored. I have been on the front twice, first on the Vosge sector which was a quiet sector. We went into the trenches on Sept. the 19th and held this front about 21 days. Moved back for a two weeks rest and then hiked several miles and rode some in boxcars to the Historic Verdun front at which place we "went over the top" in a big drive on Oct. 10th. We had to drive over a big marsh --- mud and water and lakes. On the night of the 10th I slept(?) in a water ditch partly filled with water. Under a heavy shell fire early in the morning I was told to get on my pack. We was going to move up; I got up and plunged into the chilly water the shells were falling all around and I was expecting every one that came whistling over to have my name on it. I can't imagine how I ever got through alive.

So we went forward until 11:00 a.m. when orders came to cease firing. We found that we had advanced about 2 kilo[meter]s, lost five men and about 8 wounded in Co. B. The Germans told us that they laid down the heaviest barrage on us that morning they ever put on this front and never knew of anyone advancing our Infantry under such heavy shelling.

We were fighting the 5th Prussian Guard, Germany's very best troops. I don't want to seem to brag but the 81st Division did something that the famous 26th [Division] failed to do. The French told our general before we started to drive that it was impossible to drive over such a marshy district, but when the firing stopped we was across and had them on the run toward German soil. Sounds good, Eh?

We have hiked many, many miles since coming here. We are on a 200 kilo hike now. It is likely we will sail for the U.S. soon. My feet is sore but I am too ambitious to "fall out." It is very cold and don't often get by any fire, sometimes have to sleep on the frozen ground. I am so cold now I can't half write.

Well, I have preached to my comrades some. While we were in the trenches I held services for them. I am trying to live out my good training wherever I go. I feel like I want to tell you this.

The first time I held services the commanding officer and officers gathered around me in a barn yard. I was feeling the best I ever felt in my life.

We open[ed] by having prayer and it wasn't long before you could hear weeping all around. The Spirit seemed hovering over us. After the prayer I talked and it seemed I got lost in myself. I forgot all about my captain being a big college professor and the officers being college graduates. As soon as I finished the captain made the remark that without exception that was the best service he ever attended. I never heard such high tribute paid me as he did. I give God all the glory. This is the best news I could think of to write you for Xmas, so I close by hoping you all will have a real fine Yuletide.

Your devoted son

Geo. N. Sloan

Co. B, 321st Inf.

***

During and right after the First World War the conflict was known as "The World War," or "The Great War." Many also believed that it would be "The War to End All Wars."

As we now know, it was not.

O.C. Stonestreet is a columnist for the R&L.

World War I memories surface in basement flood at Bay Village hom

Cleveland.com: World War I memories surface in basement flood at Bay Village home
Life is like a flooded basement. You never know what's going to surface.

Such was the case -- or trunk, specifically -- when 6 inches of icy water gushed into the basement of Linda Manoloff's Bay Village home in February, and soggy boxes of memories poured out in the subsequent cleanup.

Among them was an old wood and metal trunk that Manoloff's husband, Samuel (now deceased), packed when the couple cleaned out her father's house in New York after he died in 1970.

She hadn't seen what went into the trunk, but her eyes widened when she saw what came out of it, including her father's wool, button-fly, moth-holed World War I uniform. With leggings.

And a vintage gas mask, too. Old letters written during the war. Postcards depicting scenes of World War I. Military buttons, photos and decorations. A veritable time capsule of the so-called "war to end all wars."

Manoloff, 72, was stunned at the find. "Oh my gosh, this stuff was here all along and I never knew it," she said. "I was too busy bringing up kids and teaching." (Among those three children is Plain Dealer sportswriter Dennis Manoloff.)

She remembered that her father, Fred "Fritz" Bittner, never talked much about his military service, but she did know that he'd grown up on a farm outside Rochester, N.Y., and joined the army right after graduating from high school in 1917.

Severe illness kept Bittner from joining his unit when it left for Europe, and the war ended while he was hospitalized in Indiana. After graduating from the University of Rochester, he worked as an engineer.

And, "he pack-ratted," said Manoloff, who remembered that when they were cleaning out his house after his death, they found filing cabinet drawers filled with empty tooth-powder cans and old razor blades, and a map to sealed mason jars filled with coins buried around the property.

She pulled out the gas-mask instructions which advised: Read this booklet until you know by heart what it contains.

"Not memorize. 'Know by heart.' I found that so touching," she said.

The uniform and war memorabilia will be kept in a safer and drier place until Manoloff figures out what to do with it.

But before she packs it off again, would she consider trying it on for size? You know, literally get the feel of history?

"Oh no," Manoloff said, waving the notion aside like a pesky fly. "It looks terribly . . . itchy."

Catapult Aircraft: Seaplanes that Flew from Ships Without Flight Decks

Catapult Aircraft: Seaplanes that Flew from Ships Without Flight Decks, by Leo Marriott
Pen & Sword Aviation, 2006
157 pages plus Appendices, Bibliography and index
Library: 623.746 MAR

Description
During World War I, the navies of the opposing forces discovered the value of aerial reconnaissance and many experiments were made to allow larger warships to carry one or sometimes two aircraft aboard. In the early days these were float planes that were lowered by crane into the sea and then lifted back aboard upon their return. This was a length affair and when a speedy departure was necessary, time was of the essence. A new system was devised so that a powerful catapult system or a short ramp could, with the added speed of the ship, get an aircraft airborne in a fraction of the time previously required. Thus was born a highly specialized type of aircraft.

This book includes all the major designs that flew in the First and Second World Wars and includes aircraft used by all the combatants. It looks at how the aircraft evolved and how the warships were modified to accommodate the aircraft and the catapult system. Eventually these fixed-wing aircraft were superseded by the helicopter in the early post WW II years.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Glossary
1. British and Commonwealth Navies
2. United States Navy
3. Imperial Japanese Navy
4. Germany
5. Italy
6. France
7. Other Nations
Appendix 1: Aircraft and Submarines
Appendix 2: Aircraft Technical Data
Bibliography
Index

Tommy's War: British Military Memorabilia, by Peter Doyle

Tommy's War: British Military Memorabilia 1914-1918, by Peter Doyle
The Crowood Press, 2008
Oversize, 201 pages, plus Suggested REading , Bibliography and index. Full color photos scattered throughout
Library: 940.4075 DOY

Description:
The First World War has left an almost indelible mark on history, with battles such as the Somme and Passchendaele becoming watchwords for suffering unsurpassed. Five million men of the British empire bore arms in this great conflict; almost a million were to lose their lives, and a great many more were scarred for life, physically and emotionally.

As the last veterans pass away, so direct memory of life in the trenches will pass with them; in future, only archives and published accounts will be available to those wishing to find out what it was really like to be a British soldier - Tommy Atkins - in the War.

Yet what is missing from the growing literature of the GReat War is an appreciation of what the objects so closely associated with four years of warfare "in the trenches" really looked like, how they were used, and what they meant to Tommy himself.

This book fills the gap, providing a visual reference that is usually only provided by the contents of museum cases. Through a multitude original surviving objects of Tommy's life - the recruiting posters and patriotic song sheets, uniforms and weapons, postcards and keepsakes, barbed wire and hand grenades, amongst others, Peter Doyle tells the story of what it was really like to serve as an infantryman in the Great War, principally on the Western Front, buut also in the other "sideshows" across the world.

Through an exploration of what anthropologists and archaeologists call "material culture" it recounts the sory of Tommy Atkins, from enlistment to demobilization, from trenches to memorials-and creates a unique visual encyclopedia of the time.

Contents
Foreword by Professor Richard Holmes
Preface and Acknowledgments
1. Introducing Tommy's War
2. Joining Up
3. Tommy's Uniform and Equipment
4. Up the Line
5. On Rest and At Home
6. Aftermath
Suggested REading
Bibliography
Index

Booklist: The Living Unknown Soldier, by Jean-Yves Le Naour

The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War, by Jean-Yves Le Naour
Translated by Penny Allen
Metropolitan Books, 2002
204 pages plus notes. 8 pages of b&w photos
Library: 940.412 LEN

Description
In February 1918, a derelicy soldier was discovered wandering the railway station in Lyon, France. With no memory of his name or his past, no identifying possessions, marks or documents, the soldier-given the name Anthelm Mangin-was sent to an asylum for the insane. When, after the Great War ended, the authorities placed the soldier's image in advertisements to locate his family, hundreds of "relatives" claimed him-as their father or son, husband or brother who had failed to return from the front.

Marshaling a vast array of original material, from letters and newspaper articles to accounts of battlefield deaths, hospital reports, and police files, French historian Jean-Yves Le Naour meticulously re-creates the long-forgotten story of the single soldier who came to stand for a lost generation.

With humane sympathy and the skill of a novelist, he recounts the twenty-year court battles waged by the families competing to take the amnesiac soldier home. In the process, he portrays not just the fate of one individual but the rank and file's experience in the trenches, as well as an entire nation's inconsolable grief at the loss of more than one million of its men.

Dramatic, taut and powerfully relevant to our own times, this heartrening history depicts the pain and turmoil of a society that, without bodies to bury, is caught between holding on and letting go.

Table of Contents
1. The Soldier without an Armistice (1918-1922). (pg 5-37)
2. The Impossible Grief for the Missing (pg 38-79)
3. The REturn of Colonel Chabert (pg 80-106)
4. The Pilgrimage to Rosez (pg 107-124)
5. Against All Odds: Three Accounts of GRief (pg 125-147)
6. Lemay vs. Monjoin (pg 148-168)
7. The Double Death of Anthelme Mangin (pg 169-199)
Conclusion
Notes

WAR MEMORIAL GARDENS ISLANDBRIDGE, DUBLIN

IrishTimes: WAR MEMORIAL GARDENS ISLANDBRIDGE, DUBLIN
Royal destinations: THE IRISH National War Memorial Gardens, to give the location its full, official title, is the memorial dedicated to the 49,400 Irishmen who died in the first World War.

The memorial, recognised as one of the most beautiful of its kind, has a chequered history replete with good intentions, followed by indifference and neglect, before, in recent years, finally being granted an official place in the nation's narrative.

The gardens were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the great English memorialist and one of Britain's foremost architects of the 20th century. His works include the vice-regal palace of New Delhi. As one of the three principal architects hired by the Imperial War Graves Commission, he designed numerous war memorials, the Cenotaph (meaning empty tomb) in Whitehall, London, being chief among them.

Lutyens's Irish creations include Heywood Gardens in Laois, extensions and alterations to Lambay Castle on Lambay Island, similar changes to Howth Castle and Stormont House in Belfast, designed as a home for the speaker of the Northern Ireland parliament. He was also commissioned to design the unbuilt Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.

His design for the Islandbridge memorial included a sunken, circular Garden of Remembrance with rose beds, overlooked by a pair of matching, square book rooms.

The garden encloses a so-called War Stone, a piece of granite symbolising an altar. The way to the garden is via Lime Avenue on which sits a small, dome-shaped open temple held aloft by six pillars.

The memorial was probably the last to be erected to the memory of those who sacrificed their lives in the first World War and is one of the finest, if not the best in the world, according to the British Legion Annual (Irish Free State Souvenir Edition 1925-1935).

The idea of a war memorial to commemorate all Irish men and women who died in the first World War originated at a meeting in 1919 at which a trust fund was established. It took until 1924 for an organising committee to be established which debated the merits of St Stephen's Green and Merrion Square as possible sites. Discussion continued until December 1930, when WT Cosgrave suggested the Islandbridge site, then known as the 60-acre Longmeadows Estates. Cosgrave recognised the importance of the memorial, whose supporters insisted it should be an all-Ireland monument. "A project so dear to a big section of the citizens should be a success," he said. His successor, Éamon de Valera,

was also supportive, approving grants and allowing construction to begin in 1932.

The memorial was built by unemployed ex-servicemen, half of them ex-British army soldiers, half ex-Irish Army men. To maximise the work, mechanical equipment was restricted and even granite blocks several tonnes in weight from Ballyknocken and Barnaculla were hauled into place.

Although finished in 1939, the second World War intervened and an official opening was postponed. From 1948 small private commemorations took place under the auspices of the Royal British Legion, the charity that provides help and welfare for ex-service members. The commemorations were abandoned in 1969, however, as the political climate deteriorated due to events in Northern Ireland.

A lack of maintenance staff and official neglect reduced the gardens to a state of disrepair and at times in the 1970s and 1980s, they became a halting site for Travellers. In the late 1980s a committee of trustees, supported by the British Legion, redoubled their efforts, restoring the gardens and hosting the long-postponed opening on September 10th, 1988. But no government representative attended.

The official "opening and dedication" took place on the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme on July 1st, 2006. It was attended by President Mary McAleese - whose predecessor, Mary Robinson, had used her office to help change attitudes towards honouring the war dead - taoiseach Bertie Ahern, whose predecessor John Bruton attended an earlier commemoration in Islandbridge, and members of the Oireachtas. Also present was an Army guard of honour and the Army band.

The names of the 49,400 who died in the first World War are inscribed in two manuscripts, beautifully illustrated by the artist Harry Clarke. They are kept in the two book rooms which remain closed, because of the threat of vandalism, except by appointment with Dúchas.

'Lots and lots of love, Little Girl. Your own boy, Cap'

TheChronicleHerald.ca: 'Lots and lots of love, Little Girl. Your own boy, Cap'
In October 1917, Captain Roome crossed the English Channel and landed in France, where he waited for orders that would send him and the other "boys" into the dark uncertainty of the front lines of the Great War.

By candlelight, on a quiet Saturday night, Roome penned these words to his love, Miss Annie Belle Hollett, the woman he would one day marry.

This love letter is one of 31 he wrote to her between 1915 and 1919. They were recently discovered secreted away in a wall of the Dartmouth home he began building his sweetheart when he returned home more than 90 years ago.

Oct. 20 - 17

Base France

My Own Little Girl,

Here is Saturday evening again, so I’ll get started on a line. I’m writing under the old difficulties again, stretched off on the floor of a tent. Everything is quiet here at present. Most of the boys have gone into the city to look around. I was in last night, so I guess I’ll stick to the camp this evening.

Mailed you a card just to let you know we crossed safely. Hope you received it okay. We had a lovely trip across although of course it’s only a short run. The Channel was nice and smooth and the day fine and warm.

Had quite a march when we struck this side but good supplies and sleep put us in shape again.

It’s hard to realize that we really are in France. Everything around here looks peaceful enough. We went to a movie last night and it was funny to see everything in French. One soon picks up a word here and there though and just here a great many of the people understand English.

Don’t know how long we’ll be here, maybe some days. No mail has come in yet. I don’t think we will get any soon until we get up to the Battery. . . .

I’m writing this by the light of a candle stuck on top of my steel helmet and the grease is running all over it. But things like that are mere trifles now. Haha. Palmeter, Mac and I are still in the same tent. Guess we won’t see much of the other boys now. Still, I don’t think we’ll be very far apart and we may get a chance to see each other now and then.

Have done nothing all day but sleep and eat. Was working fairly hard yesterday morning but had the afternoon off. Guess we’ll make up for this long rest when we get to the line. They say the mud is something fierce up there now. I’ll be right in my element. . . .

Well, I have to stop for a minute, darling, and fix things up more comfortably. There, that’s better. Gee, it seems a long time since I had any mail. I suppose coming across here really makes it seem longer. . . .

Well Girlie, there is very little more that I can tell you this time. You understand why my letters will be shorter now, dear. Believe me, it isn’t that I don’t want to write just as much as in England, but there is no sense writing a letter half of which would be struck out by the censor.

Guess I’ll roll over now for an hour or so and by that time, the boys will be back. I’ll drop a card soon.

Good night and bye bye for this time.

Lots and lots of love, Little Girl.

Your Own Boy,

Cap

Loyalty and Rebellion During WWI

Below is link to an audio interview with Adam Hochschild. You will need to go to the link via your computer to listen to it.

The Leonard Lopate Show: Loyalty and Rebellion During WWI

Adam Hochschild discusses World War I, which stands as one of history’s most senseless spasms of carnage. In To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, he focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war’s critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain’s leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper on toilet paper for his fellow inmates. He looks at whether we can ever avoid repeating history.

To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 is available at Amazon.com

WWI remains the quintessential war-unequaled in concentrated slaughter, patriotic fervor during the fighting, and bitter disillusion afterward, writes Hochschild. Many opposed it and historians mention this in passing, but Hochschild, winner of an L.A. Times Book Award for Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, has written an original, engrossing account that gives the war's opponents (largely English) prominent place. These mostly admirable activists include some veteran social reformers like the formidable Pankhursts, who led violent prosuffrage demonstrations from 1898 until 1914, and two members of which enthusiastically supported the war while one, Sylvia, opposed it, causing a permanent, bitter split. Sylvia worked with, and was probably the lover of, Keir Hardie, a Scotsman who rose from poverty to found the British Labor party. Except for Bertrand Russell, famous opponents are scarce because most supported the war. Hochschild vividly evokes the jingoism of even such leading men of letters as Kipling, Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and John Galsworthy. By contrast, Hochschild paints equally vivid, painful portraits of now obscure civilians and soldiers who waged a bitter, often heroic, and, Hochschild admits, unsuccessful antiwar struggle

From WIkipedia
Adam Hochschild (born 1942) is an American author and journalist.

BiographyHochschild was born in New York City. As a college student, he spent a summer working on an anti-government newspaper in South Africa and subsequently worked briefly as a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1964. Both were politically pivotal experiences about which he would eventually write in his book Finding the Trapdoor. He later was part of the movement against the Vietnam War, and, after several years as a daily newspaper reporter, worked as a writer and editor for the left-wing Ramparts magazine. In the mid-1970s, he was one of the co-founders of Mother Jones.

Hochschild's first book was a memoir, Half the Way Home: a Memoir of Father and Son (1986), in which he described the difficult relationship he had with his father. His later books include The Mirror at Midnight: a South African Journey (1990; new edition, 2007), The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (1994; new edition, 2003), Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels (1997), which collects his personal essays and reportage, and King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998; new edition, 2006), a history of the conquest and colonization of the Congo by Belgium's King Léopold II. His Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, published in 2005, is about the antislavery movement in the British Empire. His latest book, concentrating on the opposition to World War One, is To End All Wars (2011).

Hochschild has also written for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. He was also a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Hochschild's books have been translated into twelve languages.

A frequent lecturer at Harvard's annual Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference and similar venues, Hochschild lives in San Francisco and teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He is married to sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild.

Into the Breach, by Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider

Into the Breach: American Women Overseas in World War I, by Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider
toExcel Press, 2000
285 pages plus appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. 8 pages of photos
Library: 940.315 SC

Description
The story of the 25,000 American women who went overseas during the First World War in a variety of functions to aid the war effort and to save lives--often at the risk of their own. Vividly and entertainingly told, the account offers quotes from letters, diaries, written memoirs, novels, and interviews, all of which evoke the exuberance and the despair that these women experienced in war-torn Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The result is an immensely readable book, a living, breathing slice of Americana.

Although most of these women have vanished completely from memory, the accounts they left of themselves remain to reveal them in all their remarkable diversity. Memoirs, letters, newspaper reports, novels and diaries, from doctors, pilots, photographers,, journalists, interpreters, telephone operators and entertainers tell the story of these neglected veterans of World WAr I.

Table of Contents
Preface
1. The Entrepreneurial War
2. Common Experiences
The Participants
3. To the rescue
-The American community abroad
-Ad hoc organizations
-The American REd Cross
-The American Friends
-College Groups
4. Binding up Wounds
-The Medical Needs
-American Women in Foreign Medical Systems
-American Organizations
-American Medical Women: Who Did What
5. Aid and Comfort
-Canteening
-In Service to Womem - the YWCA
-Books for Sammies
-Trouping for the Troops
6. The Black Record
7. The Hello Girls
The REcorders
8. The Reporters
-Amateurs and Chance Observers
-Journalists on the Western Front
-Reporting the Russian Revolution
9. The Novelists
The Protesters
10. The Women's War Against the War
Conclusion
11. The Front as Frontir
Appendices
1. Numbers of American Women in Europe in war-connected activities (1914-1918)
2. World War I Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
-Fiction and poetry
-Memoirs and biographies
-Organizations
-Reference works
-Women and war
-World War I
Acknowledgments
Index

Op-Ed: Last post for World War One

Digital Journal: Op-Ed: Last post for World War One

Perth - An obituary and an article contrasting the lives of the last three veterans of the First World War, and the lessons we should have learned from their sacrifice.
On July 18, 2009, Britain’s oldest man died, but Henry Allingham was more than that; he was also the oldest man in the world, and the oldest surviving veteran of what was known at the time as The Great War.

Seven days later, Harry Patch died. A Briton like Henry, Harry was also “the last Fighting Tommy”, the last man to go “over the top”, to personally experience the horror of the trenches. Jack Babcock, the last Canadian veteran died last year aged 109; Frank Buckles, the last American veteran, died February 27 this year aged 110. Now, they have all gone; on May 5, Claude Choules died at Perth, Australia, aged 110. He was the last man, the last person alive, to see active service in World War One.

Now, there is only one person left from that era, Florence Green, who was born in 1901, was a member of the Women’s Royal Air Force; she joined in 1918, and worked as a steward in the officers’ mess in an era when it was not considered “sexist” for female military personnel to be employed only in non-combatant roles.

The veterans of the first great conflict of the Twentieth Century, the war to end all wars, were a modest bunch. Only in the last few years before their deaths did they really speak in public. Henry Allingham was arguably the most dignified; Harry Patch, who published his memoirs only in 2007, the most introspective and thoughtful. And, from what we have seen of Claude Choules in video footage released or re-released since his death, he was the most “chirpy”.

Henry Allingham was an engineer by profession; Harry Patch was a plumber; and Claude Choules, who emigrated to Australia, spent forty years in the armed forces. These three radically different men had little in common besides experiencing the horrors of war, and increasingly, especially towards the end, speaking out against it. And it was Claude, the professional sailor, who took the lead.

Like Henry and Harry, Claude was an Englishman by birth; he was born March 3, 1901, and after lying about his age, joined the British Navy in April 1915 aged only 14. He witnessed the surrender of the German Imperial Navy, and in 1926 travelled to Australia on loan, but was never to return, transferring to the Royal Australian Navy with which he served in the Second World War.

After leaving the Navy in 1956, he became a pacifist, refusing to march in the Anzac Day parades. In an interview with Bonnie Malkin published in the London Daily Telegraph, on Armistice Day last year, Adrian Choules said of his father: "He used to say that while he was serving in the war he was trained to hate the enemy, but later he really grew to understand that they were just young blokes who were the same as him", adding "He said wars were planned by old men and fought by young men and they were a stupid waste of time and energy. “

Like Harry Patch, Claude Choules left it until the eleventh hour before writing his memoirs; produced with the help of his daughters, they were published in 2010 as The last of the last : the final survivor of the First World War.

The legacy of these grand old men is a loathing for war and all it stands for, yet since they first took up arms for their country we have seen not only a second and even greater world war, one in which the atomic bomb was used, but hundreds of regional conflicts which persist to this day. And, in recent years, from the 1970s especially, we have witnessed a new phenomenon: the war by proxy of international terrorism. Terror is of course nothing new; the Fenian Brotherhood, the forerunner of the (now defunct) Provisional IRA was founded in America in 1858, and terrorism was not new even then, but it is only really since the late 1960s early 1970s that we have seen innocent civilians including women and children targeted by those who would overthrow the existing order, or even destroy us.

The culmination of this terror was the atrocities of 9/11, which those with sick minds and of a certain perverted ideology saw as a latter day replay of David and Goliath, the valiant warrior striking at the Great Satan on behalf of the oppressed peoples of the world.
Claude Choules died three days after Osama Bin Laden, and lived to twice his age. While we must never forget Bin Laden and the evil that he brought to the world, let us remember above all this grand old man, and those other grand old men Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, and all those who unlike Henry, Harry and Claude, saw the horrors of war, but did not live to tell.

Looking for a home for First World War medals

TheSpec.com: Looking for a home for First World War medals
His name was Private Alfred Pearson. And he was one of more than 60,000 Canadian soldiers killed in the First World War.

Now, 96 years after the Hamilton native’s death — and one year after the passing of the last known surviving Canadian veteran from the war — his name has surfaced on eBay as part of a collection of war memorabilia including a memorial cross and memorial plaque, sometimes called a death penny.

But Dave Thomson, of St. George, is hoping to angle the material back into the hands of Pearson’s family or into a public institution collection because he feels it is the right thing to do.

For the past five years Thomson has been watching online for medals on the auction block, and then trying to alert families that the mementoes are available if they want them. So far he has managed to redirect military memorabilia of more than 500 veterans to families or museums.

He often goes to the media, hoping a story will catch the eye of a relative. In the case of Private Pearson, he knows the following:

• He was apparently unmarried.

• He was the son of Alfred and Mary Ann Pearson, of 568 Catharine St. N., Hamilton.

• He was born on Aug. 28, 1896 and died on Feb. 21, 1915 (“by sniper,” according to one online military source).

• He was with the Canadian Infantry, 2nd Battalion (Eastern Ontario Regiment) and buried at La Chapelle D’Armentières Communal Cemetery in France.

The item on eBay had a bid of $107.50 as of Wednesday afternoon, with May 9 being the final day for bids.

The memorial cross on eBay is a medal given to next of kin of Canadian military personnel killed in active service. The memorial plaque was issued by the British government to families of empire soldiers killed in the First World War. It is sometimes called a Dead Man’s Penny because it looks like a large coin, about the size of a compact disc. The soldier’s name is marked on the plaque.

The seller on eBay is also offering for sale a photo of Pearson and a picture of the gravesite, a cemetery map and other documents.

“I sure would like to see this brought back to Hamilton for local honours,” says Thomson, who searches for the medals as a hobby.

“I would really like to see his valour off the auction block.”

Thomson can be reached at 519-448-1967.

UK: Last combat veteran of first world war dies aged 110

Guardian.co.uk: Last combat veteran of first world war dies aged 110
The old man of the sea had outlived all other known combat veterans of the first world war, served again in the second, and became possibly the oldest published author in the world at the age of 108.

Claude Stanley Choules, former military volunteer who served 41 years in two countries' armed services, later sceptic of war anniversaries, and a swimmer until he reached three figures, had three children, 13 grandchildren, 26 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren. He finally died, blind and almost totally deaf, in a nursing home in Perth, Australia. He was 110.

Choules put the secret of his long life down to "breathing" and cod liver oil. On 3 March – his birthday – one of his daughters, Anne Pow, told a journalist: "He doesn't have medication because there is nothing wrong with him."

Born just six weeks after the death of Queen Victoria, in 1901, he saw the first motor car to drive through the village of Wyre Piddle, Worcestershire, witnessed the surrender of the German fleet in 1918 and its scuttling at Scapa Flow the following year, and – having emigrated to Australia in 1926 – laid charges on boats in Fremantle harbour, near Perth, in 1942 amid fears of a Japanese invasion.

Choules, who had dual British and Australian nationality, was nicknamed Chuckles for his personality. He had been determined to create a happy home for his growing family. "My family is the most important thing, " he told The West Australian in a 2009 interview.

Family life had not always been straightforward. At five he was told his mother had died. The truth was more painful. She had left to pursue an acting career.

Choules's son Adrian told the Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday he had been overwhelmed with phone calls offering condolences over a man who had become Australia's man and something of a national hero. It was not a time to mourn but to celebrate his father's life and the memories, he said. "He treated his family very, very well, and so they all responded by looking after him very well," Adrian said. "He knew you only get out what you put in, and he was a fine example of that. He was a good family man. He's certainly going to leave a gap in our family."

Choules was renowned for avoiding parades on Anzac Day, the April day when Australians commemorate their military dead. "He always said that the old men make the decisions that send the young men into war," Adrian said.

His daughter, Daphne Edinger, 84, said: "We all loved him. It's going to be sad to think of him not being here any longer but that's the way things go."

The Royal Australian Navy, only two days older than its oldest former member, paid tribute. Captain Brett Wolski, Commanding Officer HMAS Stirling, said: "His career has spanned some of the most significant events in maritime history."

Choules's other daughter, Anne, said: "Dad was always proud of his navy service and considered it his other family. We are grateful for the navy's continued association with the family and their recognition of our father's life."

The last three first world war male veterans living in Britain – Bill Stone, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch – all died in 2009. Florence Green, who was serving as a waitress at RAF Marham, Norfolk, on Armistice Day 1918, is 110. She, however, did not see the front line.

Choules had dropped out of school at 14, was rejected when he applied to join the army as a bugler, and lied about his age to join the navy in 1915. His brothers had fought at Gallipoli before going on to the western front in France, where one, Douglas, was gassed and died a year later; the other, Leslie, won the Military Medal.

By the time Choules saw the German surrender, he was on the battleship HMS Revenge. "There was no sign of fight left in the Germans as they came out of the mist at about 10am," Choules wrote in his autobiography. The German flag was hauled down at sunset. "So ended the most momentous day in the annals of naval warfare," he wrote. "A fleet of ships surrendered without firing a shot." In 1926 he was dispatched to Australia as a naval instructor in the state of Victoria. On the six-week boat trip he met Ethel Wildgoose, whom he married 10 months later. She died 76 years later at the age of 98. "I think it was love at first sight," he wrote in his autobiography. "Certainly on my part anyway." He then settled in Australia and served in the Australian navy.

During the second world war, Choules was the acting torpedo officer at Fremantle and also the chief demolition officer on the western side of Australia.

Early in the war he was flown to Esperance, on Western Australia's southern coast, to identify a mine washed ashore nearby. Eventually it was identified as German and Choules duly disposed of the first mine to wash up on Australian soil during the war.He also had the task of destroying facilities and oil storage tanks in Fremantle harbour, rendering them useless in the advent of a Japanese invasion. He had depth charges placed in ships that had been unable to sail from Fremantle for a safe harbour, with the intent of sinking them should the Japanese invade.

Later he transferred to the naval dockyard police, which allowed him to remain in the service until 1956. In those days, naval ratings had to retire at 50, while police could serve until 55.

Then it was time to go cray fishing. Choules bought a boat and spent 10 years fishing off the Western Australia coast.

In his 80s, encouraged by his children, he took a creative writing course and recorded his memoirs for his family. The memoirs formed the basis of his autobiography, The Last of The Last, which was finally published three decades later in 2009. "I was nobody," he told Australian radio in November 2009. "But I was somebody here." Summing up his life, he said: "I had a pretty poor start, but I had a good finish."

The White War, by Mark Thompson

The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919, by Mark Thompson
Basic Books, 2009
394 pages plus Appendix, Notes, Bibliography and Index. 16 pages of B&W photos
Library: 940.4145 THO

Description
In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire, hoping to seize its "lost" territories of Trieste and Tyrol. The result was one of the most hopeless and senseless wars of modern times. Nearly 700,00 Italians and perhaps half as many Austro-Hungarian troops were killed, with most of those deaths occuring on the bare, stony hills north of Trieste, and in the snows of the Dolomites.

Outsiders who witnessed these battles were awestruck by the incredible difficulty of attacking on such terrain. To maintain discipline in the face of desperation and low morale, the IOtalian chief of general staff restored the Roman practice of decimation, executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled. Italy was plunged into chaos, and, eventually, fascism. Some would say it has never recovered from the havoc of World War I.

With great skill and pathos, Mark Thompson relates the saga of the Italian front. Not merely a history of the cruelty and destruction of battle, The White War tells the story of the nationalist frenzy that preceded the conflict, the poetry it inspired, the haunting landscapes and political intrigues, and the outsize personalities of the statesmen, generals ad writers who were drawn into the heart of the chaos.

A work of epic scale, The White War does justice to one of the most remarkable untold stories of the First World War.

Table of Contents

Quotes: David Lloyd George

"We all muddled into war." (Lloyd George on 1914)

David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was a British Liberal politician and statesman. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the head of a wartime coalition government between the years 1916–22 and was the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1926–31.

During a long tenure of office, mainly as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was a key figure in the introduction of many reforms which laid the foundations of the modern welfare state. He was the last Liberal to be Prime Minister, as his coalition premiership was supported more by Conservatives than by his own Liberals, and the subsequent split was a key factor in the decline of the Liberal Party as a serious political force. When he eventually became leader of the Liberal Party a decade later he was unable to lead it back to power.

He is best known as the highly energetic Prime Minister (1916–22) who guided the Empire through the First World War to victory over Germany. He was a major player at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that reordered the world after the Great War. Lloyd George was a devout evangelical and an icon of 20th century liberalism as the founder of the welfare state. He is regarded as having made a greater impact on British public life than any other 20th century leader, thanks to his leadership of the war effort, his postwar role in reshaping Europe, and his introduction of the welfare state before the war.

He is so far the only British Prime Minister to have been Welsh and to have spoken English as a second language, with Welsh being his first.

____________
"Causes of War,"
The Military Quotation Book: More than 1,200 of the Best Quotations About War, Leadership, Courage, Victory and Defeat, edited by James Charlton, 2002.