Tagged: WWI

The First Balkan War

In the first decade of 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was in decline, and at the time commonly referred to as “The Sick Man of Europe”. Several small states arose in the Balkans among the Christian minorities of the dying Muslim Empire: Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Montengro. To complicate matters, they were interspersed among the Ottoman’s remaining territories. In 1908, the Young Turks rebelled to modernize the Ottoman Empire in an attempt to stem the tide of Slavic and Bulgar nationalism.
 
During the chaos, the Austro Hungarian Empire seized Bosnia Herzegovina, just ahead of a nascent Serbia after it declared its intention to unite all ethnic Serbs. Afterward, about 1/3 of Bosnia’s Muslims relocated to the Ottoman provinces of Kosovo and Macedonia, where instead of providing a check on Serbian aggression, they immediately joined the neighboring Albanian revolt against their Ottoman co-religionists.
 
Stymied in the north by the Austrians, Serbia looked south and hungrily eyed the lands embroiled in the confusion caused by the Albanian revolt. They were not strong enough to take on the Ottoman’s themselves. However, they found willing but tenuous allies among Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro who also sought take advantage of Ottoman weakness. On 10 October 1912, the Kingdom of Montenegro was the first to declare war, ostensibly to unite Serbs but actually to acquire territory from Albania and the Ottomans.
 
The First Balkan War ended in 1913 with the Ottomans effectively thrown out of Europe except for Istanbul and a small slice of Thrace. However, Bulgaria was unsatisfied with their new territorial acquisitions, and felt cheated. (Historically, the land of the Bulgars was much bigger, particularly in the Middle Ages.) This perceived slight would eventually lead to the Second Balkan War which began shortly after the first concluded in 1913.
 
The Second Balkan War was a disaster for Bulgaria, and it lost even more territory. However, its conclusion in 1914 ended the Ottoman threat to the Balkans. As result, Serbia, with its ally Montengro, would again look north to the ethnic Serbs in the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. They were not strong enough to militarily overthrow the Austrians, but their battle hardened armies were strong enough to prevent Austria from invading Serbia. Unable to attack the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Serbia decided upon war of terror against the ruling Austrian Hapsburg elite. In the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in the summer of 1914, Serb nationalists assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the spark that ignited World War I.

How Dangerous Ideas Crumbled France in Six Weeks: The results of relying on the wisdom of man

“As British historian Paul Johnson wrote, ‘The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which have been to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.’

How Dangerous Ideas Crumbled France in Six Weeks

The Third Battle of Ypres, aka the Battle of Passchendaele

Despite local successes such as the Battle of Messines and the Canadian victory at the Battle of Vimy Ridge, 1917 was a disastrous year for the Allies. The Provisional Russian govt was in chaos, and the Russian Army was worse: most units were in the hands of all-powerful “soldiers’ committees” who refused to fight. In July, Russia’s last gasp in the First World War, the Kerensky Offensive, collapsed and the Russians retreated so far and fast that the Germans and Austrians couldn’t logistically advance any further to catch them. The failure of the Nivelle Offensive directly led to widespread mutinies among French units, with entire divisions refusing to attack. Furthermore, although Unrestricted Submarine Warfare brought America into the war, it had also brought Britain to its knees. In June, Prime Minister Lloyd George informed Sir Douglas Haig, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, that unless something changed, Great Britain could not continue the war in 1918. 

Haig wanted to conduct further offensives in Flanders in 1916 and early 1917, but the battles of the Somme and Arras (in support of Verdun and the French Nivelle Offensive respectively) always took priority. However, in June of 1917, he could do so. First, he could ostensibly claim clearing the U-boat pens in the Belgian ports on the North Sea as an objective. Also, he could capitalize on the capture of the Messines Ridge the previous month. There would be no time to dig further mines, but Haig felt that the German Army was at the breaking point, and one more big push was all that was needed. Haig could not have been more wrong. German morale was as high in July of 1917 as it ever would be in the First World War. The Germans broke the Russian Army, or at least they thought so. (Bolshevism did actually and the Germans capitalized on it, but in the end it doesn’t matter because that’s what they believed.) They thrashed the Romanians, were on their way south to do the same to the Italians, and had given better than they got despite everything the British and French had thrown at them. They suffered massive casualties, but the Allies more so. America’s entry in the war was problematic, but even the densest and most myopic feldwebel in the German Army understood that the victorious troops on the Eastern Front would reinforce the Western Front and defeat the British and French before America doughboys could arrive in force. 

Haig’s thoughts on the state of the German Army were rooted in the belief that he won every battle so far in the war. He did this by “moving the goal posts” during each battle, i.e. changing the conditions by which he could claim victory. Each offensive’s final objective started out as a breakthrough and destruction of the German Army. When that didn’t happen, he narrowed the focus for victory, almost always to a tactically important piece of terrain, that only had strategic significance because he said so. Then he threw more and more troops into battle to achieve what eventually amounted to a face saving “victory” for the newspapers. He would continue an offensive despite the casualties until he felt he could claim victory. For example, his latest claim to a meaningless victory was the Nivelle Offensive, where he claimed victory after the Canadians captured Vimy Ridge despite the lack of a breakthrough and complete and bloody failure everywhere else. In essence he sacrificed long term success for short term headlines, even though the millions of British and Commonwealth casualties and near static trench lines since 1914 would have had anyone else fired long before.

At the end of July 1917, Haig was going to do it again.
On 31 July 1917, twelve British, Australian, Kiwi, and French divisions, nearly 150,000 men, went over the top in the already tortured, blood soaked, and pock marked moonscape of Flanders around the Ypres (pronounced “E-priss”) Salient.

The hard learned reforms by the Canadians proven on Vimy Ridge had not reached the rest of the force, and the Third bloody Battle of Ypres began after a massive week long area artillery barrage. Surprise was lost, and the barrage just enlightened the prepared Germans as to where to place their reserves. The Allies made almost no gains (they captured only a small portion of the hard fought Plickim Ridge) and incurred massive casualties on themselves.

True to form, Haig reinforced the offensive and ordered it continued. But even Haig had no control over the weather, and unseasonal rains flooded the area. The heaviest rainfall in August in Flanders in 30 years turned the battlefield into a swampy morass. That the bombardment ruined what was left of the any drainage systems didn’t help. Tanks were stuck, supply lories immobilized, and men lived and fought in a sea of mud, which was a ghastly stew of earth, the abandoned or discarded accoutrements of war, and the remains of tens of thousands unburied casualties from the previous two Battles of Ypres. Nonetheless, Haig continued the battle into August and September to little gain.

In mid-September, Haig replaced the local British commander, and the new commander, Gen. Herbert Plumer, understood his superior. He pushed for small, local, intermittent gains; just enough for Haig to signify progress. But by October, Plumer’s gains were not enough and his men were worn out. Plumer stalled in the face of Passchendaele (pronounced “Pa-shin-dolly”) Ridge. 

Haig brought up his only troops proven to be able crack a strong German position: the Canadian Corps. LieutGen Currie, the brains and drive behind the success at Vimy Ridge and now the commander of the Canadian Corps, demanded time to prepare the assault. With Plumer’s backing, (Plumer was one of only a few British commanders Currie trusted), Haig relented. 

Currie didn’t have the time to dig saps and assault bunkers, but he was permitted to employ his other reforms, namely the planning and preparation down to platoon level and the creeping barrage. With Plumer’s encouragement, Currie began a series of “bite and hold” operations that slowly but consitently devoured Passchendaele Ridge.

However, time was working against Currie and the Canadians. Haig was forced to send badly needed men and material to Italy after the Italian Army’s collapse at the Battle of Camporetto, aka the Twelfth Battle of Isonzo. Moreover, German troops were released from the Eastern Front after the October Bolshevik Revolution and they went directly into the line opposite the Canadians. The German counterattacks grew more fierce and several employed mustard gas, whose burns were much more efficient than the chlorine gas used previously. Still, the Canadians held their hard won gains.

But Haig needed a victory before the onset of winter and ordered the Canadians to attack and seize the ridge. There was no time for any further extensive life saving preparations. The Canadian Corps went over the top and into the teeth of the German machine guns and artillery fire. After three bloody direct assaults, British and Canadian troops seized Passchendaele Ridge on 6 November 1917. Haig ended the battle shortly thereafter, and claimed victory.

The Allies gained just nine miles at the cost of 450,000 casualties.

The Canadians, whose soldiers’ exploits months before brought together a country, suffered their first national disaster. The cream of the Canadian youth lay dead on “The Passchendaele”. Because of the their sacrifice and face saving limited victory, the Third Battle of Ypres is more commonly known today as The Battle of Passchendaele, despite Passchendaele Ridge comprising only a small part of the fighting from July to November. But all of the propaganda couldn’t cover up the loss of so many for so little gain. The Battle of Passchendaele was the last and most iconic of the great attrition battles of the First World War. Even more than the Somme, “Passchendaele” became a watchword for a great expenditure of men and material in the name of pride. 

For the next thirty years “Passchendaele” would be invoked to stop the senseless slaughter of an entire generation of men in a vain attempt at victory.

Lafayette, We Are Here

The first combat troops of the U.S. First Expeditionary Division arrived at the port of St. Nazaire, France on 26 June 1917. They were destined for transport to a training area at Gondrecourt in Lorraine, about 120 miles southwest of Paris.

Rumors of the widespread mutinies in the French Army were beginning to spread, and French civilian morale was low. The French government requested that a regiment of American soldiers march through Paris as a show of American support and a visible reminder that more Americans were on their way.

General Pershing initially balked at the idea. The American regiments in France were not the same as the ones initially chosen from the Southern Department months before. In the interim they were stripped of most of their experienced officers, NCOs, and soldiers, who would form dozens of cadres for the rapidly expanding U.S. Army, and were backfilled with raw recruits. Pershing was worried they would not be able march correctly and would disgrace the United States in the eyes of her Allies. Moreover, Pershing was concerned that if they looked unprofessional, it would give ammunition to the British and French generals who were pushing to have American troops serve directly in their armies as replacements, or at the very least have American regiments serve in their divisions, with no larger American formations. However, Pershing relented in the face of the desperate need for a demonstration of American resolve. In any case, he had nothing to worry about.

With the regimental colors and band in the lead, the U.S. 16th Infantry Regiment paraded through the streets of Paris on 4 July 1917. If they marched out of step, no one noticed because the people of Paris mobbed the American soldiers as they wound their way through the streets. The joyous Parisians cheered, wept, and threw flowers at the mostly green American troops parading through their city. But the tall, young, well fed, and eager American soldiers were a stark contrast to the weary and exhausted French soldiers, drained by three years in the trenches, that the Parisians were used to seeing. The men of the 16th Infantry marched on a five mile route through the city to the Picpus Cemetery, the burial place of Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette. At 19, Lafayette was the youngest general ever in the American army and so beloved by George Washington’s that he referred to the young Frenchman as his son. Lafayette arrived to fight for the American Cause almost exactly 140 years prior.

Pershing was asked to address the crowd at tomb of the hero of the American Revolution, but since he didn’t speak French, the task fell to Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stanton, a quartermaster officer on his staff who spoke the language. At the end of his speech, Stanton said, “Lafayette, We are here”. Though often misattributed to Pershing, Stanton’s message expressed the sentiment common among many Americans and Frenchmen at the time – that America was coming to the aid of France in a time of her direst need, just as France did for America in 1777.

After the ceremony, the 16th Infantry Regiment marched back through Paris to their staging area on the other side of the city. There they were billeted in civilian houses and barns as they awaited transportation to Gondrecourt where they began their much needed training to fight the Germans.

The Battle of Messines

The failure of the Nivelle Offensive and the widespread mutinies in the French army forced the hand of the British Army. Sir Douglas Haig ordered his commanders to launch attacks along its front to draw away the German reserves, lest they exploit the French situation. The first operation was to reduce a small German salient on Messines Ridge opposite the British Second Army. The British and Canadians of the Second Army had been preparing for an offensive since the trenches stabilized after the Second Battle of Ypres nearly two years before. Recently reinforced by the Australians and New Zealanders, the Second Army had more than twenty mines painstakingly dug underneath Messines Ridge. Because of the geological conditions of the area, the mines took nearly a year to complete.
Due to the high water table of Flanders, each mine had to be dug straight down about 150 feet through the waterlogged “sandy clay”, to the “Bastard” clay mix, or “Paniselien Clay” which was impermeable to water. Then the mines had to be dug horizontally underneath No Man’s Land to the German lines. The issue was the great force the sandy clay placed on mine shafts. The tunnel companies of the Second Army lost more than a few men before they figured out that the vertical shafts had to be lined with specially made steel walls to prevent “flooding”. If one ruptured, then it would fill the entirety of the shaft and mine with thick oozing sandy clay, killing everyone inside, and requiring the tunnelers to start over in a different spot.

Throughout 1916 and 1917, the British mined underneath the Messines Ridge, and the Germans countermined, though the Germans did not realize how the extensive the British mining operation was. As the British dug horizontally, the Germans in several places dug vertically. Where they intersected involved vicious hand to hand combat with shovels, knives, and pick axes that would not have been out of place in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The biggest danger was flooding by the Germans, inadvertently at first but deliberate later on: the Germans used timber for their shafts through the sandy clay, which ruptured regularly. If a German shaft connected with a British mine, the timber virtually guaranteed the entire British effort would be eventually flooded with the sandy clay “ooze”. By June 1917, the British had 25 mines underneath the Messines Ridge which the Germans were unaware of. They packed them with nearly 600 tons of explosives.

The British planned to detonate them on 7 June 1917 to seize the ridge as part of the reduction of the Messines Salient. This assault was a prelude to a general offensive in July. The night before, the chief of staff of the Second Army told the press, “Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography”.

Due to the heavy preparatory bombardment, the Germans were expecting the attack. However, they weren’t prepared for what came next. At 3:10 am on 7 June 1917, 19 of the mines were detonated. The other six were packed with explosives, but “lost” in the tunnel warfare, couldn’t be detonated, or were underneath positions that were evacuated (These would pose significant problems after the war, and several still haven’t been found). The resulting explosion was heard by the British Prime Minister as he toiled away at his desk in London, and as far away as Dublin, Ireland. It was the loudest recorded event in history until the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima 28 years later. The explosions knocked over just about every soldier and officer in the Second Army. They opened great craters in the Messines Ridge, and instantly killed nearly ten thousand German troops.

The remaining stunned Germans were in no shape to resist the subsequent assault. The British, Canadians and Australians all incorporated the lessons learned from the Canadian assault on Vimy Ridge. The Allied troops at the Battle of Messines seized all of their initial and subsequent objectives within hours. The Germans counterattacked but were unsuccessful.

The Messines Salient was in Allied hands, but there was no plan to exploit the success. Nonetheless, the Battle of Messines was the first Allied victory in the Great War where defensive casualties outnumbered offensive casualties and was a much needed boost to Allied morale.

Of the remaining mines, a thunderstorm detonated one in 1955, luckily killing just a cow. The remainder are still being located.

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 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.

The Marian Apparitions of Fatima

In the spring and summer of 1916, three children Lucia De Santos (10) and her two cousins, Francisco (9) and Jacinta Marto (7) reported speaking to an The Guardian Angel of Portugal, St Michael, who said the Virgin Mary would appear to the three shepherds when the end of the Great War was near. Lucia’s mother told her to stop “spreading childish nonsense”, her father took a physically violent route to silence the children in the face of scorn of even the faithful in the small town of Fatima, Portugal.
 
Following America’s lead on 21 April 1917, Portugal entered the First World War on the side of the Allies. Two weeks later on 5 May Pope Benedict XV wrote a pastoral letter to the world asking for the veneration of the Virgin Mary to bring an end to the war.
 
On 13 May, 1917, in a small open field known as the Cova de Iria (The Cove of Irene) the three children watched the sheep and sped through their daily Rosary so they could play. The three children said they met “a lady dressed all in white, more brilliant than the sun” who appeared to them above the lone tree in the field. Francisco said he could see her, Jacinto said she could see and hear her, and Lucia said she could, see, hear and speak to the Lady. The apparition told the children to come back to the spot on the 13th of every month.
The children told their parents and soon the town, and increasingly larger and more skeptical crowds accompanied them over the months. On the second visitation in June, the apparition revealed that Francisco and Jacinta would go to Heaven soon (they would both die of the Spanish Flu after the war, but Lucia would stay on Earth for a long time (Lucia would only die in 2005). On July 13th, the apparition, who had finally identified herself as the Virgin Mary to Lucia and Jacinto, revealed the Great Secret (too long to cover in this post), and that she would perform a miracle in October for all the world to see. Growing crowds reported changes in the atmosphere and temperature, and a small cloud over the tree with the children.
 
The popularity of the visions was becoming too much for the secular, if conservative, local government. In August the local mayor kidnapped the children to prevent them from going to the Cova de Iria at the appointed time. Despite, threats of torture and imprisonment, the children wouldn’t recant their story. The justifiably angry parents roused the townspeople. Fearing further incident, the mayor released the children. The Lady appeared to them again on the 19th of that month, this time privately since everyone thought they missed the date. The next month, the crowds grew larger due to the mayor’s actions, and many reported a “pillar of clouds” above the tree, and being showered with “snowflakes” or “rose petals”. To the children, the Lady promised a miracle for “all the world to see”.
 
On the 13th of October, at least 70,000 people, faithful and skeptics alike, flocked to the field in the driving rain. The children reported seeing the Virgin Mary, her husband Joseph, and the Baby Jesus. The people in the crowd reported seeing everything from the rain stopping to seeing the Holy Family.
 
At one end, Francisco and Jacinto’s father, now a firm believer reported, “We looked easily at the sun, which did not blind us. It seemed to flicker on and off, first one way and then another. It shot rays in different directions and painted everything in different colors…What was most extraordinary is that the sun did not hurt our eyes at all. Everything was still and quiet; everyone was looking upwards…”
 
The editor of the secular and vehemently anti Catholic newspaper, O Seculo, wrote, “One could see the immense multitude turn toward the sun, which appeared at its zenith, coming out of the clouds,” he wrote…. Before their dazzled eyes the sun trembled, the sun made unusual and brusque movements, defying all the laws of the cosmos, and according to the typical expression of the peasants, ‘the sun danced’… (the sun seemed) to be a living body…It looked like a glazed wheel made of mother-of-pearl.”
 
Whether it was a miracle or not is open to debate, but one thing everyone that was there agreed on was that something happened in that field. Today, it is known among Catholics as “The Miracle of the Sun”.

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 Battle of Vimy Ridge

By the time the Battle of the Somme ended in November 1916, it was by far the most deadly battle in British history. For six miles of territory, the Allies suffered nearly 650,000 casualties. Just to the north, the British prepared for their spring offensive in 1917 around the French city of Arras. The offensive itself was just a diversionary attack for the French Nivelle Offensive which was supposed to break the Germans. The Arras attack looked to be no different than the failed Somme offensive of the previous year.

By some unknown administrative fate, all four divisions of the Canadian Corps came on line opposite the heavily fortified Vimy Ridge. The Vimy Ridge was originally captured in 1914 by the Germans and over the previous two years the French and British suffered 200,000 casualties trying to take it back. Vimy Ridge was just one objective for the Arras Offensive. But for the first time in the war, the Canadians on the Western Front were going to fight for it together.
 
The commander of the Canadian Corps, LtGen Julian Byng, a Briton, and Maj Gen Arthur Currie, the 1st Canadian Division commander and senior Canadian in theater, were keenly aware that any mass casualties in the assault on Vimy Ridge would have a disproportionate effect on the small population of Canada. They had to figure out a way to take the Ridge without the mass casualties that characterized the Somme or Verdun. There was little formal aristocracy in Canada, and unlike Great Britain where the officer corps was primarily based on wealth or title, the officers from Canada were mostly of the same social classes as their men, and even in many cases of the same educational level. The officers and NCOs from Canada were chosen because of their ability to lead, accomplish the mission, and get shit done. For example, Currie, a major general, had just a high school education and was a real estate agent when not in uniform. But unlike his college and public (read: private) school educated peers whose commands were annihilated in the Somme, he knew he had to figure out a better way.
 
Like Brusilov did on the Eastern Front in the previous spring, Currie set out to find a new way to break the German trench lines without slaughtering his men in the process. When the Canadian Corps took the lines opposite Vimy Ridge in October 1916, he sent several officers to the British and French who were then at the end of their respective and disastrous offensives. These officers interviewed the staffs and commanders and conducted their own objective after action review of the Somme and Verdun battles. Needless to say, they weren’t very welcome in many cases, but they learned a great deal from the experiences of their Allies. They came to almost the same conclusions that Bruislov’s staff did the year before, although with some slight differences, mostly due to cultural differences between the armies of both fronts. And Currie, with Byng’s full support, unleashed his staff and the staffs of the other three Canadian divisions to come up with solutions to the problems that plagued the British and French attacks.
 
The first was reconnaissance, or more specifically targeting data for the artillery. The Somme attackers used their artillery directly against the trench lines which was ineffective because the Germans just hid in massive dug outs during the bombardment, only to emerge once the bombardment stopped, or against map coordinates of possible but unconfirmed targets. Currie proposed to use his artillery in a different manner. He wanted to target more exposed German positions, such as artillery concentrations, strongpoints, counterattack assembly areas, and communications hubs instead of churning up earth that would only be immediately reoccupied by the troops from the dugouts. Only the strongpoints would receive the same attention that the trench lines received in the Somme Offensive. But to do that he needed to know where these new targets were. He stepped up the trench raids in the winter of 1916/17, but instead of doing it just to keep his men and the Germans occupied, his trench raids had reconnaissance objectives, and the requirement for prisoners and documents. He did the same with his flyers, and incorporated French techniques for aerial photography which were far superior to the British techniques, and on a much larger scale. Furthermore, he brought on civilian scientists to “sound range” and “flash spot” the German artillery. They set up listening posts that had equipment to measure the strength and direction of their sound waves, or observe artillery flashes on the horizon. These were then triangulated, and the artillery positions identified, which were then confirmed by other means.
 
The wide ranging use of photography and reconnaissance allowed Currie’s men to build large and almost excessively detailed scale models of the terrain on the objectives and in the assault zones. These were then used by the subordinate commanders to plan their assaults in detail, down to platoon level. This was unheard of on the Western Front where the Somme was planned down to battalion objectives with the company as the primary regimental or brigade maneuver unit. By pushing for company objectives with the platoon the primary maneuver unit, this empowered the young platoon commanders and squad leaders, who could actually see and communicate with most of their men. Moreover, the Canadians were a different sort. Like soldiers from the United States, Canadians were a bit more individualistic and free thinking than your average Englishman or Frenchman around the beginning of the 20th century. Currie leveraged this in his push for independent action at the platoon level. As we know now, battles are won by junior leaders. Currie’s detailed terrain models and objectives allowed those junior leaders to walk the terrain and even rehearse movement routes and actions on the objectives with their men, so they all knew what they had to do, down to the lowest private. Moreover, firepower was pushed down closer to the platoons, and even into them. Companies were given trench mortar sections and Lewis (machine) guns in special slings, which proved invaluable in suppressing German machine gun positions, and breaking up local German counterattacks. Currie’s focus on platoons essentially turned the entire Canadian Corps into the equivalent of Brusilov’s specially picked and trained stormtroopers.
 
Prior to the attack, the assault troops were housed in massive “subways” dug out of the soft chalk escarpment that Vimy Ridge and its approaches were part of. (This was also why targeting the defending troops directly with artillery was futile, the German dug outs were numerous and deep.) The subways were had air ventilation, electricity, and some had running water. These subways were close to no man’s land, and had “saps” or small underground tunnels that led toward the German trenches from which the assault troops would emerge. Some of the saps went all the way under no man’s land to the German trench line. Digging the saps was a dangerous business, because of countermining by the Germans and would only be given to the best and toughest tunneling engineers who came to be known as “sappers”. In all 14 subways and their ancillary saps were dug, the smallest subway was 265m long and the longest, 1706m.
 
Unlike Brusilov, Currie had more than enough artillery shells, but unlike the Somme, he wanted to use them in direct support of his assaulting troops in the form of a creeping barrage. Creeping barrages had been used before, but Currie’s had two significant differences. His detailed reconnaissance allowed him to plan the creeping barrage with much more fidelity, and with the terrain models could be rehearsed. These rehearsals brought together the gunners who would fire the barrage with the men who would be walking behind it. This gave the artillerymen much more motivation to be prompt and timely with their adjustments and accuracy, and the heavily laden infantrymen the motivation to keep pace with the barrage, and maintain his part of the unspoken social contract between supporter and supportee not to waste the provided resources. The second difference was a new fuse developed specifically to cut wire. Currie’s investigators into the Somme offensive found that much more often than not, the barrage did not cut the wire. So when the infantry became stuck cutting through the wire, the creeping barrage continued on since there was no real timely communication between the infantry and the artillery directly supporting them. Eventually, the creeping barrage would stop, the defenders would get out of their dugouts and find the infantry still stuck in no man’s land, and massacre them. There were numerous instances in the Somme of a single well placed machine gun that wiped out an entire British battalion in this manner. The wire wasn’t cut because the fuses on the shells didn’t detonate until they burrowed fairly deep into the ground. The ground would then force the explosion upwards and this rarely had a great effect on the wire. The new “106 Instantaneous Fuses” detonated the shells as soon as it struck an object, whether the ground or the wire, and cause the explosion to expand horizontally, which unhinged and cleared the wire.
 
On 20 March, 1917, the initial preparatory bombardment began for the combined Arras Offensive but it was intermittent in order to confuse the Germans as to the main objectives. On 2 April, the main bombardment began as the Canadian Corps’ uncannily accurate artillery pounded the German defenses in what the German on Vimy Ridge came to call the “Week of Suffering”. The German commander wanted to bring up his reserve divisions, but found that as he did, their assembly areas were targeted, so he was forced to keep them 24 km behind the ridge. If the Canadian assault was in any way more effective than the British in the Somme, his counterattack forces would not be able to get there in time.
 
On Easter Monday, 9 April, 1917, several saps and mines were detonated across no man’s land into the German trenches and underneath strong points. Emerging from the subways into a sleet storm, the Canadian soldiers moved behind the meticulously planned creeping barrage. They didn’t need to maneuver or run. They just walked behind the barrage at a quick pace, 100 yards every three minutes. After the creeping barrage finished, the guns moved to counterbattery fire, which according to German estimates, suppressed 83% of all of German batteries.
 
In less than two hours, three of the four Canadian Divisions had captured their initial objectives, and fresh troops were well on their way leap frogging to the next, as the initial assault troops consolidated their positions. Almost immediately, Currie had two “labour” battalions build roads through no man’s land, even though the exploding saps in the initial attack made excellent communication trenches to the ridge. These allowed Currie to reinforce Vimy Ridge and maintain the momentum of the attack.
 
The speed of the assault on Vimy Ridge overwhelmed the German defenses. With the exception of the 4th Canadian Division who had difficulty with several strongpoints unaffected by the initial attack, particularly from a hill nicknamed “The Pimple”, the Canadian Corps seized most of the Ridge by the next day. The Pimple fell two days later on 12 April. The Canadians captured Vimy Ridge at the cost of about 10,000 Canadian casualties, far below the 200,000 casualties of the previous attempts. The Germans considered the battle a draw since there was no exploitation or breakthrough of the Canadian victory. But to the Canadians, the Battle of Vimy Ridge was an all Canadian affair, planned and led by Canadians, and brought to a successful conclusion by the spilt blood of men from all parts of Canada.
 
Before Vimy Ridge the people of the Canadian Confederation were part of the First Dominion in the British Empire. In its bloody trenches, Canadians came of age and became their own nation. After Vimy Ridge, they were citizens of a new country — Canada.