Tagged: OnThisDay

The Blue Army

Poland did not exist as a state since the Partition of 1795, during which the autocracies of Austria, Russia, and Prussia divided up the country amongst themselves. 122 years later, in 1917, the Great War presented an opportunity for a free and independent Poland carved from Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire after their defeat, an opportunity fully embraced by President Woodrow Wilson’s administration. To this end, Polish immigrant communities across the Northeast and Midwest of the United States sought volunteers and formed training camps for the inevitable call to arms. Local barracks were established, and recruiting began among the members of Polish fraternal organizations, the Falcons and Polish National Alliance, in coal and steel towns such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Chicago. Officer training camps were created in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania and, after a secret deal with the Canadian government, Toronto. By March 1917, the Polish communities in the United States had over 12,000 men in training and prepared to fight for an independent Poland.

Just three weeks before the United States entered the war, Dr. Theophil Starzynski organized an “extra-ordinary” meeting of the leaders of the various Polish groups in America. Many traveled from across the country to attend. In a small hall on the corner of 18th and Carson Street on the South Side of Pittsburgh on 3 April, 1917, Dr. Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a renowned pianist and composer (and future Polish prime minister) who had recently emigrated to California, spoke to the packed assembly on the creation of a Polish Volunteer Army to fight in France. Within a week, thousands more volunteered. Unfortunately Dr Paderewski’s call was ill timed: The United States declared war on Germany just three days later.

The United States’ entry into the Great War on the 6th divided the Polish community in America – not for or against the war, but whether the men standing-by should volunteer for the rapidly expanding US Army, or wait for the formation of a Polish Army. Thousands joined the US Army rather than wait. The formal call for the formation of a Polish Army of expatriates and emigrants wouldn’t come from America as expected. The call for a Polish Army to fight for its independence came from a different source, France.

On 4 June 1917, Raymond Poincare, the President of France, (Not to be confused with Georg Clemenceau, the more famous Prime Minister of France) authorized the formation of a Polish Army to fight on the Western Front in exchange for France’s support for an independent Poland at the end of hostilities. France was in desperate need of men to fill the trenches and give respite to the exhausted and demoralized French soldiers who at that moment were mutinying in ever greater numbers. Tens of thousands of Poles from the Polish diaspora willing to fight were a godsend until America’s vast resources could arrive in force.

The first units in the Polish Army in France were formed from prisoners of war. As Poland had been occupied since 1795, many Poles fought in the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Imperial Germany and were subsequently captured by the Allies. Furthermore, the Poles (and many Russians) of the Russian Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, which was consumed by mutiny at the time, volunteered for the new Polish army, if only to get away from the front. As word of the new formation spread, Poles across Europe deserted from the armies of the Central Powers or left their homes and made their way to France, most via Italy or through Sweden. From around the world the Polish diaspora responded, whether through the organized efforts of the Polish fraternal organizations in the United States, or through newspaper ads and formal announcements, then taking the long boat ride to Canada from their homes in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, among others. They in-processed and were given rudimentary training in a camp outside of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and they were subsequently organized for their trip in a convoy across the U-boat infested Atlantic to France. Over one hundred thousand Poles arrived in France to fight on the Western Front throughout 1917 and 1918.

The volunteers were sent to Camp le Ruchard outside Tours where they were trained by the French. They were issued old “Horizon Blue” French uniforms, and thereafter became known as “The Blue Army”. Further training camps opened as more volunteers arrived, including an officer cadet school, an NCO academy, and specialist training centers for logistics, artillery, engineering and signals. The Blue Army was integrated with the French Fourth Army, with Polish units partnered with French units as they formed and down to platoon level. Initially, their officers were French until suitable Polish replacements arrived, or could be found or trained. The first Polish regiment of the Blue Army went into combat alongside the French in January 1918, and the first division was formerly presented its colors by President Poincare in June. But the Blue Army itself still lacked cohesiveness, and more importantly, a Polish leader above the rank of colonel.

After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between the Central Powers and Russia in March, 1918, the Polish Legions of the Austrian and German armies in the Ukraine were interred alongside Polish troops of the Russian Army to prevent them from joining their comrades in France. Nevertheless, many Polish soldiers and officers escaped in the confusion that was endemic to Eastern Europe with the fall of the Imperial Russian Empire and the Bolshevik Revolution. In the summer of 1918, the former commander of Austria’s 2nd Polish Legion, Brigadier General Josef Haller Von Hallerburg, made his way to Moscow, then Murmansk, and eventually France. On 4 October, 1918, the Polish National Committee, the newly recognized Polish government in exile, offered Haller command of the Blue Army. Gen Haller accepted command of a force which had grown to eight modern divisions, including a training division, seven squadrons of airplanes, and a tank regiment, nearly 110,000 men and women in total. The Blue Army fought on the Western Front until the armistice ending the Great War was signed in November.

In March, 1919, the Blue Army, now known as Haller’s Army, boarded trains for the newly independent Poland, where they were directly incorporated into the fledgling Polish Army then fighting to establish the borders of the Second Polish Republic. The regiments of Haller’s Army were the only formally trained units in Poland at the time. When the Red Army invaded in early 1920 to spread Bolshevism to a weakened Germany and France, Haller’s men, still in their trademark horizon blue uniforms, held the gates of Warsaw along with the population of the city against an overwhelming mass of Soviet soldiers. They bought Marshal Pilsudski just enough time to counterattack and break the Soviets in what is now commonly known as, “The Miracle on the Vistula”, thus saving Europe’s neck from the iron boot of Communism, at least for a few years.

After the Polish-Soviet War, Marshal Pilsudski, the defacto leader of the Second Polish Republic saw the members of the Polish National Committee as his main political rivals, and hastened the disbandment of the Blue Army, whom he thought were more loyal to the PNC than him. In 1920, the Polish government began making arrangements for Blue Army volunteers who wished to return home. A camp was set up outside Warsaw that organized travel, though the funding for such had to come from their home countries. Many languished in this camp for more than a year. Furthermore, the volunteers who wished to return were not formally discharged and therefore not recognized as veterans in Poland or in their home countries. These issues caused much bitterness, particularly with those from the Americas and Australia who traveled thousands of miles to fight for a country that no longer needed them and were now stuck in Eastern Europe. This break with the country of their forebears would manifest itself almost two decades later, when another call to fight for Poland came in 1939, this time against Communist Russia and National Socialist Germany. The volunteers from the Polish diaspora didn’t respond to Poland’s plea. There would be no second Blue Army to fight in 1939. However, to their everlasting credit, the Polish diaspora did loyally respond in great numbers to the calls to arms from their adopted homelands during the Second World War.

The Battle of Bir Hacheim

On 26 May 1942 German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel launched his offensive in Libya with the intention of capturing the Allied port of Tobruk and pushing on to Egypt. This would keep the British at bay so the Italian Army and Navy and German Paratroops could capture Malta in Operation Herkules, which was in the final stages of preparation. The PanzerArmee Afrika feinted along the coast road, and sent the Afrika Korps with most of the German and Italian panzer and armored divisions around the south of the British Gazala line.

The Allies fortified the Gazala Line after stopping Rommel’s Riposte in response to their over-extension during Operation Crusader the winter before. After months of digging in and preparing to renew the offensive, the British, Commonwealth, and other Allied troops defended brigade sized defensive boxes or sand forts reinforced by mines and barbed wire along the forward edge of the battlefield. These boxes ran from the coast road along the Mediterranean south into the desert with the areas in between patrolled by the garrisons. The box furthest south was held by the Free French at the oasis near Bir Hacheim.

Up to this point in the war the Free French were still tainted by the surrender of France two years before and the Vichy French collaboration with the Germans. The determined Vichy defense of Syria and Lebanon the previous summer especially stung. Additionally there were few purely ethnic French formations in the Free French units (most surrendered in 1940) and the majority were French colonial troops or Foreign Legionnaires, considered unreliable or freebooters by the other Allies. The Battle of Bir Hacheim would change all that.

The Free French consisted of two battalions of Legionnaires, a colonial battalion from Central Africa, one battalion from Indochina and the French Pacific possessions, and a motley crew of Arabs, Bedouins, and French sailors and marines. The Free French box at Bir Hachiem suffered the brunt of Rommel’s attack. The fort of Bir Hacheim was the only position preventing Rommel from flanking the entire British line. Rommel expected the fort to fall in one day, but General Marie-Pierre Koenig’s Free French brigade at Bir Hacheim disillusioned him of that notion. The British just north fell back, and Rommel ended up sending the bulk of his five best and most powerful German and Italian Divisions at the French. The German attacks repeatedly bogged down in the face of tenacious French resistance and options for maneuver were limited by what Rommel came to call the “mine marsh” of Bir Hacheim. For sixteen days, Koenig’s Frenchmen held off the best Rommel could throw at them and gave the British to the north the needed time to prevent themselves from being encircled and counterattack.

Only overwhelming firepower from German Stuka dive bombers and a lack of ammunition forced the evacuation of the fort on 10 June. During the escape, the only female French Foreign Legionnaire in history, the Englishwoman Susan Travers, was awarded France’s Croix de Guerre and the Legion’s highest honor, the Legion d’Honneur. She reconnoitered a gap in the Axis encirclement which allowed more than 2/3rds of the French strength, including equipment, to escape back to Allied lines to fight another day.

The Battle of Bir Hacheim lessened the stigma of the French defeat in 1940, delegitimized the Vichy French regime, and proved that Free France was a real partner in the Allied fight against the Germans.

Operation MI

On 24 May 1942, Admiral Isokuru Yamamato was a troubled but confident man. He and his staff had just finished up his final wargame for Operation MI, the invasion of the Aleutians and Midway Island. It was a resounding success… but only because his chief of staff declared the results of two Japanese carriers sunk as unrealistic. That was half of his current force of four carriers. He was troubled not because of the result of the game but because he only had four carriers: the Kido Butai should have six. Unfortunately, the Zuiakaku and Shokaku inexplicably returned to Japan after the Battle of the Coral Sea instead of returning to his main base at Truk, the Japanese version of Pearl Harbor in the Central Pacific where they could make repairs and cross level planes. And they could not be called back without delaying the operation. He had lost 1/3 of his main strength before the battle even began.

Yamamoto still had many advantages. His aircrews had infinitely more experience than the green American airmen. Also, even without his two wayward carriers, he still outnumbered the Americans 2 to 1 in that all-important class of ship. But most importantly, he believed he would have the element of surprise in the coming battle. Yamamoto was sure the Americans would react to an invasion of Alaska and he would ambush them at Midway as they did so. Four carriers should be more than enough. On the morning of 25 May, 1942, the various Japanese task forces would begin leaving their home ports for the intricate and complicated Operation MI.

Up to that time, Admiral Yamamoto’s Japanese Combined Imperial Fleet of four fleet carriers, seven battleships, and 174 other ships was the largest and most powerful naval force ever assembled for a single purpose in human history. The vast majority of it was headed directly for the Hawaiian Islands, specifically the tiny island of Midway.

The First Expeditionary Division

On 10 May 1917, President Woodrow Wilson named Major General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing as the commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to France to fight alongside the Allies in the Great War in Europe. Pershing at the time was the commander of the US Southern Department, and because of his Expedition in Mexico to capture the outlaw Pancho Villa, was the only officer in the US Army that commanded a unit larger than a regiment. That his command was also deep in foreign territory which gave him a unique insight into the political and logistical difficulties of such an endeavor, only convinced President Wilson that Pershing was the right man to select, despite many more senior officers. He was promoted to full general, the first since Phillip Sheridan in 1868, and given wide latitude to organize and train the AEF.
 
At the suggestion of the Marshal Joffre, the victor of the Battle of the Marne and part of a French delegation to assist America’s entry into the war, Pershing was ordered to select four infantry regiments and an artillery regiment to constitute a division for immediate deployment to France. It would take at least a year to raise and train the numbers of American troops needed on the Western Front, but the initial arrival of even a token force would boost the flagging morale of the Allies. (The closest the Allies came to defeat on the Western Front occurred in May of 1917 after the failed Nivelle Offensive. The French Army suffered widespread mutinies, but the Germans failed to take advantage of the situation.) For two weeks, Pershing built his staff, and working with the British and French delegations, reorganized the American formations to better reflect the modern realities of fighting on the Western Front.
 
On 24 May 1917, Pershing chose regiments that he was experienced with from his Southern Department for the new division: the 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Infantry Regiments and the 6th Artillery Regiment. The new “First Expeditionary Division” was placed under the command of a well-respected engineer officer (and builder of the Panama Canal) Brigadier General William Sibert. Pershing took a direct hand in choosing most of Sibert’s staff and subordinate commanders, including but definitely not limited to: Colonel Robert Bullard, the commander of the 2nd Brigade, Major Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the commander of the 1st Battalion 26th Infantry and former president’s son; Major Leslie McNair, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Training; Major George C Marshall, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations; and Colonel Campbell King, a trusted infantry officer to serve as Sibert’s Chief of Staff. Sibert, to his credit, protested his appointment as division commander because he was not a line infantry officer, but was overruled due to the need for his experience. He was singularly qualified for transporting the division’s units from the American Southwest to New Jersey and eventually France, and the building the facilities and expansion of regiments to transform them into a “Square Division”.
 
Pershing’s “Plans” staff determined that the First Expeditionary Division would consist of two infantry brigades, the 1st and 2nd, which consisted of two infantry regiments apiece, the Square of four regiments, in this case, the 16th and 18th, and 26th and 28th respectively, with an artillery regiment, the 6th in support. However, the largest changes came in the expansion of the infantry battalions that formed the regiments. The Square Division’s table of organization and equipment required infantry companies to expand from 60 to 250 men, and each battalion to raise a fourth company. Furthermore, each battalion would have a machine gun company attached, and to accomplish this required just about every machine gun battalion in the National Army to break up into its component units to be attached, with their staffs and field grade officers augmenting the brigade and division staffs. The Division was also augmented by an engineer, signal, and medical battalions, and a supply train. Finally, it was quickly determined that a single artillery regiment provided insufficient fire power for current operations on the Western Front, so the 5th and 7th Artillery Regiments were also ordered to New Jersey for deployment to France.
 
Despite material shortages of every kind, including rifles, machine guns, tents, gas masks, and artillery pieces etc., the men of the First Expeditionary Division were required to be prepared to board ships at Hoboken, New Jersey, by the second week of June, where transportation to France was being coordinated by Captain George S. Patton. That date was just two weeks after the First Expeditionary Division was constituted.
 
As the US Army quickly expanded in 1917, the First Expeditionary Division’s name eventually changed to the 1st (US) Infantry Division, and came to be known the world over as,
 
The Big Red One.

WAACs

On 15 May, 1942, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was created in the United States Army. Initially the WAAC was open to just 10,000 women to serve in jobs to free up men for combat duty. Eventually over 150,000 women would serves as “WAACs” or “WACs” for Women’s Army Corps as it was known in 1943. They were the first women to serve in jobs other than nursing in the US Army. The program was so successful it eventually spread to the other services: the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the Coast Guard SPARS (Semper Paratus, Always Ready), the Air Corps civil WASPS (Women’s Air Service Pilots) and the Marine Women’s Reserve. Gen MacArthur called the WACs “my best soldiers”, adding that they worked harder, complained less, and were better disciplined than the men.

Objective A-F

In spring of 1942, US cryptanalysts had great success reading the Japanese naval code but so far in the war, the results have been mixed at best. Still, the cryptanalysts continued to decode Japanese radio transmissions and they knew the next Japanese target was “OBJ A-F”. With only two remaining American aircraft carriers operational, the USS Enterprise and the USS Saratoga (the USS Yorktown was still limping back from the debacle in the Coral Sea) Admiral Nimitz had to know where OBJ A-F was so he could ambush the six fleet carriers he expected to participate in the next Japanese operation. The list of possible targets included another raid on Ceylon (Sri Lanka), American Samoa, Hawaii, the Aleutian Islands, and several others.

Cmdr Joseph Rochefort, the senior intelligence officer of the Pacific fleet, thought it might be Midway Island and used a radio deception to confirm. He sent a cable to the garrison to tell them to send a radio transmission in the clear stating that their freshwater distillation system was broken and they needed freshwater as soon as possible. The confused radioman at Midway, who walked past the fully functioning system all the time, initially questioned the order but sent the message anyway. On 15 May 1942, Cmdr Rochefort’s cryptanalysts decoded a Japanese message saying that OBJ A-F requests freshwater. Nimitz immediately began preparing his ambush of the Japanese carriers as they approached Objective A-F, Midway Island.

The First Americans Arrive in Europe

Just after America declared war on Imperial Germany April 1917, French and British delegations arrived in America to secure loans for their depleted war chests and offer advice and assistance in expanding the US Army. The French Field Marshal Joseph Joffre suggested an American division of one artillery and four infantry regiments deploy immediately to Europe to lift morale. MG John J Pershing, Commander of the Army’s Southern Department in Texas and freshly returned from chasing Pancho Villa in Mexico, chose the 6th Field Artillery and the 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Infantry Regiments for the new organization. Pershing was told to report to Washington DC to take command of the eventual American Expeditionary Force to France and oversee the planning staff responsible for its development. Pershing arrived in DC in early May 1917.
 
Among other requests, the British delegation asked for immediate help with securing the Atlantic. The British and French navies that were fighting a losing war against German U-boats in the Atlantic. In particular, the shipping channels through Irish waters were a killing ground and the Royal Navy was in desperate need of assistance. President Roosevelt agreed. On 4 May 1917 after a nine day trip, six US destroyers of Destroyer Division 8 arrived in Cork Harbor, Queenstown, Ireland under the command of Commander J.K. Taussig. They were the first American fighting forces to arrive in Europe after the US entered the First World War.
 
Upon meeting the Americans, Vice Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, Commander in Chief of the Coasts of Ireland and Taussig’s soon-to-be immediate superior, asked “When will you be ready to go to sea?”
 
Taussig replied, “We are ready now, sir… that is, as soon as we are finished refueling.”
 
After a round of office calls, dinners both official and unofficial, meetings to discuss best practices and common operating procedures, Taussig and his men departed on their first war patrol just three days later.

The Ride of Sybil Ludington and the Battle of Ridgefield

In late 1776, the Continental Congress established a supply depot at Danbury, Connecticut to support American efforts to repel the inevitable British invasion down the Hudson Valley from Canada. After the capture of New York, the British learned of the depot from loyalists. With near complete command of the sea they sent a raiding force to destroy the cache, before the Americans massed too many troops in the area which would surely happen after the snows melted in New England. (In fact, MG David Wooster, and BGs Benedict Arnold and Gold Silliman were in the area to do just that.)

On 25 April 1777, a Royal Navy flotilla landed a British/loyalist raiding force which marched on Danbury, not unlike the march on Concord two years before. That evening, a wounded and exhausted messenger arrived at the house of COL Henry Ludington, the local militia commander. Ludington immediately began organizing his men but the messenger could not go on, and like Paul Revere’s and Williams Dawes’ ride in 1776, it was necessary to alert the countryside to fully assemble the militia.

The task fell to Ludington’s sixteen year old daughter, Sybil, who mounted a horse and rode off into the rainy night to warn of the British advance. She first alerted Danbury, and then rode through Putnam and Dutchess counties in New York. Unlike the rides to warn of the British advance on Concord, Sybil’s ride was made in the face of constant loyalist danger. In all she rode 40 miles over eight hours (twice as long as Paul Revere), rallied the militia, avoided loyalists, and in at least one instance fought them off as she did so. 400 minutemen responded to Sybil’s call to arms, and she alerted the Continental Army generals.

Wooster’s Continentals and Ludington’s militia arrived in Danbury too late to save the depot. On the 26th, the raiding force destroyed the giant cache, and to teach the rebels a lesson they fired the town, completely destroying it. This infuriated the countryside, and more men flocked to Wooster and Ludington, who vowed to destroy the redcoats or chase them out of Connecticut.

The next day, several small skirmishes were fought with the withdrawing British, as more men descended upon the coast. Wooster caught up with the rear guard outside the town of Ridgefield. As the 67 year old Wooster led the attack, he yelled the famous last words of “Come on my boys! Never mind such random shots!” and as fate would have it, was mortally wounded. The unsuccessful attack however, did slow the British enough for a flanking party led by Benedict Arnold to establish a road block in town. The redcoats scattered the defenders with cannon fire, but Arnold took up command and with his characteristic energy drove the British out in disorder with a running gun battle down Main Street. After sniping and probing the British march the entire way, Arnold made one last attempt to attack the British on the beach, but the waiting ships’ guns and a timely bayonet charge allowed the British to escape.

The British destruction of Danbury and the use of cannon on Ridgefield infuriated the citizens of Connecticut and upper New York, whose population was previously divided evenly between rebels, loyalists, and undecideds. The destruction of the depot was a blow to Continental efforts in the area, but was quickly replaced with donations by patriots and fence sitters who were now dedicated to the American cause, and stores confiscated by patriots as the loyalists were driven out. Over 3000 Connecticuters volunteered for service in the Continental Army in early 1777, more than three times what Arnold was expecting to recruit from the area for the upcoming Hudson Valley campaign. The redcoats would no longer be able to raid so far inland in Connecticut. Future raids would be confined to the coastal towns.

Miyamoto Musashi Defeats Sasaki Kojiro

Miyamoto Musashi, considered by many to be the finest swordsman ever, and the author of “The Book of Five Rings” fought his most famous duel on an island in the straits between Honshu and Kyushu, Japan on 13 April, 1612.
 
He defeated his rival by arriving “late” which gave him three advantages over the hot tempered Sasaki Kojiro. First, his tardiness angered and unnerved his opponent (though he himself didn’t feel tardy). Next, when Kojiro inevitably executed his famous move, the “Swallow Cut”, the sun would be in his eyes, and Musashi could then fatally strike. And finally, Musashi would be able to use the tide to help escape Kojiro’s many students who would undoubtedly attempt to kill him when he won.
 
The duel unfolded exactly as planned. After escaping, Musashi felt a deep sadness that one of the world’s greatest swordsmen was gone, and his instruction lost forever. He vowed to never fight to the death again. It was Miyamoto Musashi’s last duel in which there was a fatality.

The Fall of Bataan

In March 1942, LtGen Homma’s Japanese 14th Army was reinforced by troops from the successful operations in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, after being stopped at the Orion-Bagac Line in Feberuary. On 31 March, Gen Wainwright, Gen MacArthur’s successor after he was ordered to Australia, put the 80,000 remaining Filipino and American defenders on the Bataan peninsula on quarter rations. With dwindling food and water, nonexistent medical supplies, no hope of relief, 27,000 sick and the rest exhausted and starving, the end was near.

On 2 April Homma launched his final offensive. He cracked the line within three days, and swept aside the feeble, if courageous counterattacks. From Australia, MacArthur ordered a counterattack by every available soldier, but this was more for media consumption, and completely disregarded the actual situation on Bataan.

On 6 April, Japanese troops occupied Mount Samat, the critical piece of key terrain that dominated the peninsula, and unhinged any remaining defensive lines. American and Filipino troops fled to the rear. On 8 April, MG Edward King, out of contact with Gen Wainwright on Corregidor and the senior surviving officer on Bataan, recognized the futility of any further resistance and requested a surrender. The next day, 60,000 Filipino and 15,000 American exhausted and emaciated soldiers and sailors, and 25,000 civilians surrendered to the Japanese.

Homma was expecting no more than 25,000 prisoners and was surprised to find that he had four times that number. He didn’t give it a thought after the initial reaction and left the details to his staff. His mind was already on the next objective, the island of Corregidor, and that night ordered his artillery to pound the island fortress, as he began planning for its assault.