The Graveyard Detective has an interesting post here with pictures of a memorial card created by someone who visited the St. Julian battlefield in 1934. It’s a very moving artifact.
In Memorium
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Monthly Archives: September 2012
Celebrating Yom Kippur
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
This grave in an unknown German cemetery is marked with a cross, as are all the others, but the prayer shawl tells a true story of the soldier buried here.
Move over, Beethoven!
Drakegoodman has his photo in his collection on Flickr.com.
It reminds me of the 1950s fad of trying to stuff as many people as possible into a phone booth.
Studio portrait. Men of the 62 Feldartillerie Regiment
A studio portrait taken in Hohenzollern (Prussia) circa 1910.
“Toby’s Room” — link fixed
George Simmers, blogging at Great War Fiction, has the first review I’ve seen of Pat Barker’s new novel, “Toby’s Room.”
He writes: “Pat Barker’s latest novel, Toby’s Room, is a sequel of sorts to Life Class (2007) and is much better than the earlier book. Life Class wI found a rather disjointed ramble through the miseries both of peace and of war, whose unrelieved gloominess and grimness seemed rather in excess of the facts. … Don’t look to Toby’s Room for a continuation of the stories that were left arbitrarily unfinished in the middle of Life Class.”
I regret to report that the review contains spoilers. It didn’t especially bother me because I disliked “Life Class” and have no burning desire to read “Toby’s Room,” but others might be disappointed.
Anyway, reader beware.
http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/pat-barkers-tobys-room/#more-3190
National World War I Seminar — correction
I wrongly identified Mike Bullock and Laurence Lyons’ book “Missed Signals on the Western Front: How the Slow Adoption of Wireless Restricted British Strategy and Operations in World War I.”
I called it “Mixed Signals” — my apologies to the authors, and thanks to bochumshapenotesinger for pointing out the error.
Here’s more about the book:
http://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/680.asp
British submarine E-20
Our Facebook friend Mustafa Emre Çınar has this question for you. Can you help?
Can anybody please help me to find pictures of the British submarine E-20 (commander,crew,interior etc) ?
Hew Strachan at the National WWI Museum
The National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial is proud to host Great War scholar Hew Strachan on Saturday, Sept. 22, 2012.
Strachan, who is Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford University, Director of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War, and a Fellow of All Souls College, will present a special lecture entitled, “The First World War: Commemoration or Celebration?”
“We are thrilled to welcome such a renowned expert to America’s only World War I museum,” says Interim Museum President & CEO Dr. Mary Davidson Cohen. “As the centennial of the Great War quickly approaches, it is increasingly important that we explore what it means to observe the anniversary of a global event whose effects are still felt today.”
The free lecture, made possible with funding support from Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P., will take place in the J.C. Nichols Auditorium. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.; lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. No reservation is necessary. Strachan will be available to sign books after the lecture, and copies of his work will be available for purchase in the Museum Store.
About Hew Strachan
Strachan’s research focuses on military history from the 18th century to date, including contemporary strategic studies, but with particular interest in the First World War and in the history of the British Army. He is the author of several highly acclaimed books on military history, including European Armies and the Conduct of War (1983), The Politics of the British Army (1997), and The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms (2001). His multi-part documentary series for television formed the basis for The First World War: a New Illustrated History (2003), and Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography (2007).
Three officers of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (West Riding) are sitting around a table. The table is laid with a vase of flowers, plates and mugs, but there is no food visible. The bottle appears to be labelled, ‘Dark Port.’ This photograph, which is attributed to John Warwick Brooke, shows the easier conditions often enjoyed by the officers.
The collar badges of the regiment show small elephants to commemorate the regiment’s earlier service in India.
National Library of Scotland
War goat!
Thanks to World War I Tommies Not Forgotten, here’ s Taffy, the mascot of the Welsh Regiment. This is a pre-war photo:
Here’s a later photo, with perhaps a later Taffy, posing with the Goat Major — there’s a job! How would you like to be the Goat Major? Both are looking very elegant.
World War I National Seminar report
Here, in chronological order, are the notes I posted to Facebook on the talks presented at the seminar Sept. 8-9 at the Marine Corps Career Colleges in Quantico, Va.:
Friday: I’m at the World War One Historical Association’s national seminar at Quantico. Just heard Graydon (Jack) Tunstall’s talk on the Carpathian Winter War — the Carpathian Mountains are in the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, and Romania. I may have left out a few countries. During WWI, they were fought over by the Russians and the Austro-Hungarians. Jack’s book “Blood on the Snow: The Carpathian Winter War of 1915” is going to the top of my pile! — at Marine Corps Base Quantico.
Very interesting talk by Laurence Lyons on George Owen Squier and the development of American tactical radio. To be honest, I was afraid the topic would be too technical for me, but the speaker did a great job of explaining how wireless telephonic communication was invented and kept the human element in focus, too. His book is “Mixed Signals on the Western Front: How the Slow Adoption of Wireless Restricted British Strategy and Operations in World War I.” That is a lo-o-ong subtitle. But wireless communcation would have saved many, many lives on the Somme. Add it to the pile!
“The Myths of Belleau Wood,” presented by J. Mark Miller of the USMC Library: The importance of Belleau Wood was the impression it gave the Germans: that the Americans were there to fight. Morale was everything in the summer of 1918 and Belleau Wood gave the Allies a tremendous boost. (I’m paraphrasing.) Marines of today don’t want to let those guys down.
I wrote a post about our third talk, but my friend’s computer ate it. Marine archivist James Glincher gave a presentation on early Marine aviation that focused on five pilots who fought in the war. The best detail was the alligator that pilots training in Louisiana made their mascot — and, yes, they did give it a ride. War gator!
Marine college history professor Edward Erickson speaks on Mustafa Kemal, the Ottoman Empire army officer who stopped the ANZACs at Gallipoli on April 25-27, 1915, later the first president of the Republic of Turkey. (You might know him as Ataturk.) He was an excellent fighter and commander, and a hard drinkin’ gambler and womanizer, and an obnoxious loudmouth when it came to criticizing his superiors. This actually is a little over my head — my reading is too Euro-centric. (Stirling Rasmussen, a Facebook friend, added: “He also overthrew the Ottoman leadership, banned polygamy, changed the written form of Turkish from an Arabic to a Latin script that is so phonetically matched to the language that once learned, all could read, and set up what eventually became a democratic government. Oh, and he kicked the Greeks out of Turkey after the end of the war. To me, he was one of the great men of the 20th century.”)
Kevin Seldon, a former Marine and now a history teacher, presented a selection from his slideshow about the Battle of Belleau Wood told through the experiences of the men who fought there: face after face of those who were killed, gravely wounded or witnesses to terrible combat. In 2002, Seldon met and talked with the last survivor of the battle, then 105 years old.
Saturday. Last night Scott Stephenson, a professor of military history at the Army, gave a lively talk about the final days of the war and the poor guys who had to tell the Kaiser that he didn’t have the troops to march into the homeland and defeat the revolutionaries. And by the way, you just abdicated. Stephenson’s book is “The Final Battle: Soldiers of the Western Front in the German Revolution of 1918”; it won the 2011 WW1HA Tomlinson Prize for best book in English about the Great War.
Richard DiNardo, professor of national security at the Marine college, gave a lively talk on the German/Austro-Hungarian/Bulgarian attack on Serbia in 1915. Of course the Serbs were beaten back — Serbia suffered more than 70 percent casualties in the war. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians were set on getting a path through Serbia to get supplies to Turkey. The Serbs rereated, the attack was concluded — and Germany and Austria-Hungary began the squabbling that eventaully destroyed their alliance. DiNardo’s latest book is “Breakthrough: The Gorlice-Tarnow Campaign, 1915.” Top of the book pile!
Bradley Meyer is the dean of academics at the USMC school of advanced warfare. Here’s the best I can summarize of his fascinating talk. The Germans used stormtroopers to attack as fast and as far as they could, with covering fire from machine guns in their own lines. Then more troops moved forward to exploit the gaps the stormtroops created. A blitzkrieg is a combination of breaking through the enemy’s defenses and operational exploitation to surround and destroy enemy units. All the Germans needed to achieve blitzkrieg in WWI was motorization for more speed. (Facebook friend Philip Meluch added: “The operative word is “achieve”. The issue for the Germans was being able to sustain their breakthoughs. The Allies in the final year tailored their offensives to the means available.”)
Patrick Mooney of the National Museum of the Marine Corps speaking: We just suffered 83 percent casualties as the 1/5, 4th Marine Brigade, trying to capture Blanc Mont Ridge on Oct. 4, 1918. There’s a very beautiful monument on Blanc Mont to the Marines and the 2nd Infantry Division.
Geoffrey Rossano has written several books on Naval aviation including “Stalking the U-Boat: US Naval Aviation of World War.” He’s speaking about U.S. Naval aviators who served with the British in the WWI. Many interesting photos of airfields, planes and rosters.
Nic Galvan Gunnery Sgt has us all tasked with taking Hill 142. First we were the major, and now we’re Capt. Hamilton and our Marines are lying in a wheatfield getting their packs shot off their backs. He keeps barking, What are you gonna do, SIR? Well, we do eventually win the war, so I guess things will work OK (at least for some of us).
And that, sadly, was that — until next year!
“Searchlights Over London”
Ghosts of 1914 posts a beautiful image from the Imperial War Museum’s collection, with some reflections the painting inspires.
WW1HA 