Countdown on the Great War, November 4, 1918: The last major battle on the Western Front and the Kiel Mutiny grows.

 New Zealanders scale the Sabre-Oise Canal wall in their last major action of World War One.  NOte that in this painting at least the officer at the bottom of the stairs is carrying a German P.08 and the one at the top appears to be as well.

1.  The British and French forces capture the Sambre-Oise, Le Qesnoy, and the towns of Guise  and Origney en Thierache in a series of abbltes known as the Battle of Sabmre, Second Battle of Guise and the Battle of Thierache.  Resistance was serious and heavy, but uneven, by the Germans and the British lost 1,150 men in the crossing of the canal.  Included in the causalities was the then unknown poet Wilfred Owen, whose poetry was actually not published until many years later.

The battles, featuring English, Canadian and New Zealand troops on the British side, French troops, and a few American troops, involved 28 Allied Divisions.  It was the last major battle for the Allies.  Following the battle Allied forces began to advance up to five miles per day.

This does not mean, however, that fighting had halted.  The Germans continued to resist, and sometimes stoutly.  And in the Meuse region the river had not yet been crossed.

2. American and French forces take Stenay and Dun sure Meuse

3. The Allies occupied the Tirol in Austria pursuant to the Armistice of Villa Giusti.  The Austrians further withdrew from Montenegro.

4.   German reservists were deployed to Kiel to put down the sailor's rebellion but large numbers of them joined the uprising upon reaching the city.  By the day's end the number of men declaring allegiance to the revolution number 40,000 and they issued fourteen demands upon the German government. The demands did not, interestingly, include the end of the monarchy, but they did demand that further defensive measures in the war not include bloodshed, which was tantamount to demanding a surrender.

5.  A massive late war dogfight over the western front occurred when forty German aircraft attacked nine British Sopwith Camels of No. 65 Squadron southeast of Ghent.  The British No. 204 Squadron joined the fight resulting in the loss of twenty two German aircraft.

6.  The Glacian region of Komancza (Eastern Lemko) declared itself a state with the intent of uniting itself to the West Ukranian People's Republic.  It would become part of Poland at the end of the Polish Ukranian War and today is part of Poland, Ukraine and Slovakia.

7.  The British ship War Roach collided with a mine and had to be beached off of Port Said, Egypt.

The Army is in its final push toward a decision on the iconic ‘pinks and greens’ uniform

Hmmm. . . back to this:

The Army is in its final push toward a decision on the iconic ‘pinks and greens’ uniform: The Army is working on a new dress uniform. A final decision is days away.

Iconic?

Well, sort of.

The "pink and green" uniform was an officer's uniform only, back in the 1920s through 1950s when it was last a dress uniform of the U.S. Army.  Enlisted personnel wore a single color olive uniform that was supposed to double as a combat uniform.  It lost the latter role just prior to World War Two but carried on as the dress uniform for enlisted men throughout the war and on through the Korean War, before it was phased out post Korean War for the "green pickle suit", which in turn was phased out for a blue dress uniform.

Not to criticize. The pink and green uniform is sharp looking and looks better, in my view, than the blue dress uniform.  So, I'd be in favor of this change.

If it is made, it should be noted, the U.S. Army will be in second position to the Canadian Army, which reintroduced the same uniform, in the same fashion, for its special forces troops awhile back.  The Canadian Army, being based on the British Army, is more comfortable with individual dress uniforms for individual units, and brought it back with jump boots in recollection of the joint US/Canadian 1st Special Service Force, which had been American equipped.

Will the U.S. take this uniform route? Well, we'll soon see.

Interesting, isn't it, how the best looking dress uniforms are now deemed to be the ones we wore in the 1940s during the biggest war we ever fought. The 1940s. . .bloody but sharply dressed?

The 100 Days Offensive: Arras

On this day in 1918 the British Commonwealth forces expanded the Second Battle of the Somme with a Canadian night attack at Arras.  All four Canadian divisions would participate in the assault which would carry through until September 3.

The 100 Days: The Second Battle of the Somme commences.

The Casper Daily Tribune for August 21, 1918, which also noted the results of the prior day's primary election.

On this day in 1918, the British resumed advancing, after having halted to regroup and reorganize.

New Zealnders during the Battle of Bapaume in a scene that could easily be mistaken for one from the Second World War.

The offensive resumed with a New Zealand assault at Bapaume, part of the Second Battle of the Somme, in what is known as the Second Battle of Bapaume.  The first day's assault was successful but the following day was slow, which was to characterize the overall progress in the region over the next several days. The Kiwis were continually on the assault, but the battle did not feature the breakthroughs seen earlier in the 100 Days Offensive.  The effort lasted through September 3, with the town being taken on September 29.  That was only a phase of the massive large scale offensive, however.

Bapaume on August 30, 1918.

The town of Albert was taken during the resumed offensive on its second day, August 22.  The British forces expanded the assault thereafter with what is referred to as the Second Battle of Arras on August 26.  Bapaume was taken by the Kiwis on August 29.  The Australians crossed the Somme on August 31 and then fought the Germans and broke through their lines at Battle of Mont S. Quentin and the Battle of Peronne.  Australian advances between August 31 and September 4 were regarded by General Henry Rawlinson as the greatest military achievement of the war.

British Whippet tank, August 1918.

The Canadians Corps seized control of the western edge of the Hindenburg Line on September 2, with British forces participating.  Following this came the famous Battle of St. Quentin Canal which would feature all of the Anglo American forces under Australian General John Monash.  Cambrai would follow that.

Laramie Boomerang for August 21, 1918, also noting that Carey and Houx were advancing to the general election.

Things were clearly starting to fold in for the Germans.

The New York Herald, August 21, 1918.

The 100 Days. The Battle of Amiens. August 8-13, 1918. The Black Day of the German Army.

On this day in 1918 the beginning of the final campaign of World War One began with the commencement of the Battle of Amiens.

"August 8, 1918", showing German troops marching into captivity.

Readers here have been reading about the combined Allied attack at Soissons.  That counteroffensive could be regarded in some ways as the commencement of the Allied advances that would result in the November 1918 termination of the war, but it was in truth a local counteroffensive, on a massive scale, designed to reduce a salient that had been created by the German advances in their 1918 Spring Offensive. This was distinctly different in that it was the commencement of a large scale Allied campaign designed to do the very thing the German 1918 Spring; bring the war to a successful conclusion.

The plan to attack at Amiens was first proposed on July 23 after the successful initial stages of the Franco American assault of Soissons.  Unlike Soissons, which had been a Franco American effort with British support, this effort would be a combined British Empire (Canadian, British and Australian) and French effort.

The initial assault plan followed on lessons that had been learned by the Australian assault at Hamel, which featured American combat troops as well, and which is regarded as the first real combined arms assault of the modern type.  The assault featured large-scale use of armor and no pre assault bombardment, but instead immediate artillery support at the time of the attack.  That attack commenced at 0420 in dense fog.

On this day, seven British divisions, supported in the north by the American 33d Division, launched that attack and achieved complete surprise.  German reaction was quite slow as a result.  By the end of the day Empire forces and French forces were both engaged and the Germans sustained 30,000 losses of all types.  The losses were so severe that Eric Ludendorff later characterized the day as the "the Black Day the German Army."

Hindenburg, on left as viewed, and Ludendorff.

Ludendorff's observation came not because of his lamenting the fate of the German's on the field, but because huge numbers of German soldiers simply gave up and surrendered.  It was a Black Day, as the honor of the army, in his viewed, was tainted.  And indeed, German moral was simply destroyed, although not just by this day alone.  German troops refused to rally and yelled back to their officers that they were "prolonging the war".  They also yelled at reserves coming into the line that they were "Blacklegs" (strike breakers).  The German army had simply broken.

The attack continued the next two days, but without the spectacular successes of the first day.  Allied advances continued but support problems developed with contested roads and with infantry units outrunning their artillery support.  Marshall Foch, given the advances, requested that British Field Marshall Haig continue the offensive but Haig declined, given the problems he was facing of this type, and the operation halted on August 13.

By the end of the attack the German lines had significantly contracted and they had sustained a loss of 75,000 men which they could ill afford to lose. Tellingly, 50,000 of those losses were due to men surrendering.  The Allies had lost 44,000 men, of which approximately half were British Empire forces and half French.  The offensive didn't end the war, but it did indicate that something new was going on. The German Army, which had nearly won the war a few weeks over, has so strained its own soldiers that they were basically done.  Only the extraordinary discipline present in the German military overall kept the war from concluding in the summer of 1918, not that the Allies were expecting that to occur.

The Allies Intervene In Embattled Russia

Finding an actual date, at least on the net, for the commencement of the Allied intervention in Russia is difficult.  Generally, you'll just get "July, 1918".

Well, whatever the actual date was, it was obviously close to this day in 1918, as the Soviets were complaining about Allied landings on Murman Coast, near Murmansk.  That was in fact one of the two three locations for the Allied intervention and it may well have been the first location.

The landings near Murmansk would be made up of a joint Anglo American force of which 5,000 men were American troops.  6,000 were English, 1000 Canadian and approximately another 1,000 or so were French.  The force was under the overall command of an English commander and it actively participated in combat in the region, which was generally contrary to the vague instructions that the Administration had issued to the American forces that were going into Russia.  The fact that they were engaged in combat was not due to insubordination so much as it was due to poor communication of the intended restrictions on American troops.

A little over 160 Americans would loose their lives in the intervention, far fewer than the British loss which amounted to over 500.  It's always been speculated that some Americans may have been left behind due to the hasty nature of the withdrawal in 1919.  Following that withdrawal, White resistance in Northern Russia, which was not doing well by that time in any event, collapsed.

The German Navy's U86 commits a high seas atrocity. June 27, 1918.

On this day in 1918 the U86 torpedoed and sank the HMHS Llandovery Castle, a Canadian hospital ship.  Hospital ships were not targets of war under international law and targeting them was further against the standing orders of the German Navy.

When the submarine's crew realized what had occurred, U86's commander ordered the boat surfaced and they in turn began to ram and machinegun the survivors.  Only 26 individuals in one life boat survived the combined sinking and murders.  The loss of life included fourteen Canadian nurses.  Only six of the ninety seven hospital personnel on board survived the event.

The sinking was used in British posters for victory bonds after it had become learned of.

"Llandovery Castle!" became the battle cry of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division as its commanding officer was from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where two of the nursing sisters from the ship were also from.

After the war U86's Lieutenant Helmut Patzig, and two of his officers, Ludwig Dithmar and John Bold, were put on trial for war crimes.  Patzig fled the country and avoided extradition. Dithmar and Bold were convicted and sentenced to four years, from which they escaped, but their sentences were reversed on appeal on the basis that the commander of the U-boat bore full responsibility for the illegal actions.  Patzig lived for a time under an assumed name but returned to German naval service, in the U-boat branch, as a training officer and lived until 1984.

A Canadian opera on the sinking opens today.

Poster Saturday, L'Emprunt de la Victoire

Mid Week At Work: The Canadian Piper - #WeAreNATO

Lex Anteinternet: The Kaiserschlacht Commences. Operation Michael. The First Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Battle of Moreuil Wood

Lex Anteinternet: The Kaiserschlacht Commences. Operation Michael

 The First Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Battle of Moreuil Wood

On March 30 the Germans none the less tried again, launching an assault south of the new Somme salient towards Amiens resulting in two significant battles, one of which is very well recalled today.  The Germans gained some ground but it was slight, and German troops lost discipline when they hit Allied supply depots.

The resumed German offensive opened up near the town of Le Hamel but was turned back, although the Germans took ground near the Hangard Wood.  This resulted in a five day pause in the German effort in this location until they resumed their attack towards the town of Villers-Bretonneux.  The French fell back upon the German resumed attack but British and Australian troops generally held well but were ultimately forced to retire due to a two stage retreat by the 14th (Light) Division. which ultimately fell back some 3500 yards to a new position.  Australian troops restored the line and counterattacked, pushing the Germans back out of the town.  This was followed up by flanking advances by British cavalry and Australian infantry which consolidated the line for the time being.

This phase of the German offensive also saw the remarkable Canadian cavalry charge in the Battle of Moreuil Wood in which the Canadian Cavalry Brigade conducted a mounted assault near the village of Moreuil, taking the wood against the prediction of failure of a nearby French unit, receiving assistance from the RFC in the assault.  The Germans retook the wood the following day, March 31, but the Canadians then took it back. The Germans ultimately retook the wood, showing the intense nature of the fighting, but the overall offensive was called off shortly after that.

 The charge at Moreuil Wood.

Operation Michael had gained a lot of ground, but it had ground to a halt.  By April 5 the Germans were exhausted and an effort to resume the offensive against the British failed.  Moreover, German casualties had been massive, and many of those casualties came from their very best units.

The Easter Riots Commence in Quebec City, March 28, 1918.

Several days of rioting, which would run through April 1, commenced on this day in Quebec City in 1918.

 

An example of a Canadian recruiting poster directed at the residents of Montreal (with which my family has a connection). Such efforts were not entirely successful.  This unit sought to recruit members of the fairly large Irish Canadian community of Quebec.

The underlying cause of the riots was conscription, which was deeply unpopular in Canada in general and hugely unpopular in Quebec, which saw the war as a European affair that they had very little stake or interest in.  404,385 Canadian men became liable for military service under the Military Service Act, which became law on January 1. 385,510 sought exemption and, given the vague nature of the statute, most succeeded.

The immediate cause of the rioting was the arrest of a French Canadian man who failed to present his exemption papers.  He was released, but things soon were totally out of control.  Soldiers had to be called into the city under the War Measures Act of 1914.  The deeply unpopular act and the riots lead to the proposed Francœur Motion under which Quebec was proposed to declare that it would be happy to leave the Canadian union if the rest of the then very English country found Quebec to be "an obstacle to the union, progress and development of Canada".  The motion was not introduced in the end out of a fear of what it would lead to.

In some ways the rioting strongly recalls the reaction that the Irish had to conscription which lead to the Easter Rebellion of 1916. England itself had no tradition of conscription for land service (it did for sea service) and conscription was actually more strongly established in the United States which had required militia service by state in all states up until after the Civil War, with there being outright conscription during the Civil War.  The English accepted it however.  None of the Dominions took well to it and Ireland, part of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, was massively opposed to it.  Originally the Irish were exempted from English conscription but when that was repealed in 1916 it lead to the Easter Rebellion and ultimately to the Anglo Irish War and Irish independence.  Australia rejected attempts to impose conscription in that Dominion in a national plebiscite, while New Zealand on the other hand adopted it.  Canada too adopted it after a prior failed attempt, but as can be seen, it was not a success and it fueled early thoughts of Quebec separation.

The irony of this is that while this was occurring, Ireland, Australia and Canada all contributed large bodies of men to the war voluntarily.  So,in the end, efforts to impose conscription in those localities were at best a waste of time and effort and at worst a cause of net manpower loss.

It's worth noting that conscription remained unpopular in Australia and Canada during World War Two and while both nations imposed it, only late in the war were conscripts required to serve overseas.  In Australia's case disgruntled conscripts were a source of poor units that otherwise stand apart from the really notable fighting qualities of the Australian Army.  Canadian conscripts seem to have accepted their late war fate and generally have worked out well when they were finally required to go overseas.  Ireland was of course independent , although a dominion, by World War Two, and it refused to declare war but once again supplied a large number of troops to the British forces.  Surprisingly Australia twice imposed conscription post World War Two, once during the Korean War and again during the Vietnam War.  Canada briefly followed the British example of Cold War conscription but phased it out very quickly and has never resumed it.

The Kaiserschlacht Commences. March 21, 1918. Operation Michael

Afternoon edition of Cheyenne's Wyoming Tribune, March 21, 1918.

It was a momentous day, to be sure.

Excellent map showing all five expressions of the Kaiserschlacht, the massive German campaign to end the war in 1918.  Every single part of the offensive was a tactical success for the Germans. . . but not enough of a success to win the war.

And so, on this day, the German Army began its last great, and nearly successful, offensive the Great War.  An offensive, however, whose result was foreordained by the lack of German horsepower.

 What the Germans were lacking by this point of World War One.

There will be a lot of "100 Year Ago" type history venues on this event, as it is a big one.  It was, truly, the German's last big gasp of World War One.  It wrecked the offensive abilities of the German Army for the duration of the war, but it was something they had to try. After the Kaiserschlacht the Germans could only defend and their strategy changed to that.  It wouldn't work long as the home front crumbled behind the German front, to include the crumbling in moral of the German Army and Navy at home.

The offensive, made up of a series of operations that would take place over the next two months, commenced with Operation Michael, a massive offensive against the British Expeditionary Force.

Operation Michael

 

Repeat of the map above.  Operation Michael is the "First German Drive" of the mpa.

The Kaiserschlacht, it not Operation Michael, was somewhat obvious in that it had been known for months that the Germans would try a giant 1918 offensive.  As early as February the American soldier's newspaper Wadsworth Gas Attack and Rio Grand Rattler had published an issue was a drunk Mars "waiting for spring".  It was coming, and everyone knew it.

Everyone with any military savvy also knew that with Russia having now surrendered to the Germans, and the Germans having been sensible enough to accept a negotiated peace, something they failed to do in World War Two, millions of German troops should have now been available to fight in the West.  However, what hadn't been counted on with Trotsky's blundering, which delayed the onset of peace by a month, and German avarice, which caused t he German's to use Trotsky's error to absorb huge areas of Russian territory and former Imperial territory they were now left garrisoning as if they had the spare manpower to do it.

The Germans should have poured out of the East, taking every horse they could "conscript" with them.  German troops did come, but not in the numbers they could have.

So the Allies braced for an offensive they knew was coming.  They were not idle.  The British, operating partially on intelligence gathered from two German deserters, not only anticipated the attack, but placed the probable date of the attack on this very day, although they anticipated it could be slightly earlier.  As a result, the British had been engaged in nightly artillery strikes on German positions since March 18.

On this day, the offensive commenced with the assault on the BEF.

A closer view of the successful German drive on the Somme.  Over a three week period the Germans wiped out British gains on the Somme and seriously threatened the position of the BEF in Europe.

The Battle of St. Quentin, the Somme Crossings and the First Battle of Bapaume

It commenced with an artillery barraged at 0435 on British positions near St. Quentin (and it also saw the commencement of German artillery strikes on Paris). While our memory of it has become skewed due to the intense British focus on World War One, the British were a small army compared to the French, but they were also in much better fighting shape than the French overall.  While the bombardment was massive, it did not leave the British incapable of resisting.  Nonetheless, after extremely intense infantry combat, which started with a German assault at 0940, the British had yielded in some places and began to retreat. Already on March 21 the British had lost ground.  This continued to be the case through March 23.

British artillery in retreat.

The British broke at St. Quentin, but their resistance had already worked a toll on the German forces which had begun to slow down. Nonetheless the British lost their lines on the Somme on March 24.  The same day the British lost the town of Bapaume and the French began to be concerned that the British had been irretrievably beaten.  Ironically the German capture of British supplies caused despondency in the German rank as German troops realized, from what they captured, that the British were very well supplied and even had stocks of Champagne in their stores.  The French, however, began plans for an offensive operation against the Germans out of a fear that the British situation could not be restored.

By the 25th the French were in fact engaged, but in defensive operations, and the overall situation was confused. Fighting was occurring everywhere but what was occurring was not clear to anyone.  British cavalry was in action in rearguard operations slowing German advances and the RAF was busy as well, as both the oldest and newest forms of mobile warfare combined against the Germans.

 British 6 Inch Gun firing on March 26 near Ancre.

Nonetheless a council of war was held on the 26th with the result that General Foch of the French Army was made the supreme Allied commander.

The Battle of Rosieres and the Battle of Arrars

On the 26th and 27th the British fought the Battle of Rosieres in which the British committed tanks. Nonetheless the Allies continued to lose ground and lost the town of Albert during the night.  Throughout the retreat phase that went  through the 27th Tommies occasionally panicked and took up defense positions at the report of German cavalry being just over the horizon.  Still, while they retreated continually they did not disintegrate and both the British and the French remained in action throughout.  On the 28th a German assault only a handful of miles, showing that the Germans were slowing.  A primary factor was that the German cavalry that was needed to exploit the breakthroughs in the Allied lines that continually occurred simply didn't exit.

There wasn't any. The Germans were now, in terms of fighting at the front, an infantry force only.  They'd lose the war as a result.  The could exploit gaps in the British lines no quicker than a man could advance, and with each days advance the German troops became more and more fatigued until, at last, they simply refused to move, even under threat of death.

The First Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Battle of Moreuil Wood

On March 30 the Germans none the less tried again, launching an assault south of the new Somme salient towards Amiens.  The Germans gained some ground but it was slight, and German troops lost discipline when they hit Allied supply depots.  This phase of the German offensive saw the remarkable Canadian cavalry charge in the Battle of Moreuil Wood in which the Canadian Cavalry Brigade conducted a mounted assault near the village of Moreuil, taking the wood against the prediction of failure of a nearby French unit, receiving assistance from the RFC in the assault.  The Germans retook the wood the following day, March 31, but the Canadians then took it back. The Germans ultimately retook the wood, showing the intense nature of the fighting, but the overall offensive was called off shortly after that.  Operation Michael had gained a lot of ground, but it had ground to a halt.  By April 5 the Germans were exhausted and an effort to resume the offensive against the British failed.

 The charge at Moreuil Wood.

The initial German advance had been significant, but equally significant is that the  Germans had failed to take any of their objectives and by April 5 they were halted.  The German advance was impressive, but far short of achieving a knockout blow.  German and British losses were nearly equal at 250,000 men but the British were able to make up material shortages so rapidly that loss of material turned out to be relatively inconsequential.  German manpower losses, however, were catastrophic as it had lost a significant number of elite troops in the effort, which it would not be able to replace.

Many of the German troops lost were Stoßtruppen

 German Stoßtrup, Spring 1918.  Trained in individual and small unit combat, this soldier is carrying a MP18 and a P08.  Submachineguns were a brand new weapon at the time.

Stoßtruppen were a late war German innovation created to attempt to restore mobility to the battlefield.  Highly trained light infantrymen, these "Storm Troops" were in some ways the first of their kind. Predecessors of units like the later American Rangers and other similar elite infantry units, they were trained to storm enemy positions and overwhelm them in violent rapidly moving assaults.  They were equipped accordingly, carrying pistols, K98a's, and as seen above, submachineguns.

They were also a bit of a desperate effort on the part of the Germans to make up for the lack of cavalry, something which is evident but rarely discussed.  Unable to take a concentrated enemy position by a mounted charge, the Germans had to resort to infantry, something that had proven to be a failure since 1914.  They sought to overcome this through highly trained specialized infantry.  It worked in part, but only in part.  Stoßtruppen could penetrate. . . but they really couldn't advance.  And by April 5, the Germans weren't advancing.

But they couldn't stop.  To do so was to conceded an inevitable defeat. So, ground to a halt against the British though they were, they determined to renew the offensive elsewhere.  

Dr. (Lt. Col.) John McCrea dies of pneumonia while serving in France, January 28, 1918.

Funeral of Lt. Col. John McCrea who died on this day in 1918.  This Canadian work is in the public domain in Canada because its copyright has expired due to one of the following:it was subject to Crown copyright and was first published more than 50 years ago, or it was not subject to Crown copyright, and it is a photograph that was created prior to January 1, 1949, the creator died more than 50 years ago. 

McCrea was a Canadian physician serving in the Canadian forces (a relative of mine served in the same hospital and mentioned him by name in her correspondence).  While serving in that capacity he contracted pneumonia and passed away on this day, in 1918.

McCrea is most famous for the poem In Flanders Fields, arguably the most famous poem to come out of the Great War, in what was a very poetic age it seems.

The Battle of Cambrai opens, and Villa back on the front page. November 20, 1917.

As Wyomingites were headed towards Thanksgiving this week, they learned that the giant surprise British attack at Cabrai had been launched. The battle would feature British tanks in a major way.

And Pancho Villa was back in the headlines for the success of his old occupation, as he battled Carranza near the US border.

Second Passchendaele, October 26, 1917

Today is the anniversary of the commencement of the Second Battle of Passchendaele.

Canadian stretcher bearers at Passchendaele.

The battle of was the final stage of the Third Battle of Ypres.  The first Passchendale, discussed here on its recent anniversary, had resulted in limited British Empire gains, but had also resulted in the bloodiest day in the history of the New Zealand army, for which it is still remembered.  

Like the first battle, the second one was plagued by mud, but it did result in British advances (as had the first).  And like the first battle, this one relied heavily on Dominion troops, although in this case the primary burden fell to the Canadian Army (although Australian, British, French and Belgian troops all had a role in the battle).  

Canadian machine gun company holding defensive positions after advancing.

The battle resulted in a British Empire victory, but a limited one, and partially for an odd reason.  The British forces were already stretched to maximum capacity in the war but were forced, due to the Italian defeat at Corporetto on October 24 to transfer men to the Italian front.  Gains had been made, but the transfer of troops brought the battle to a halt short of its original goals.  The gains, as well as the resistance by the Germans, resulted in large casualty figures for all sides.

The Army considers a new uniform fabric made out of that super high tech substance. . . .

wool.

Gates Frontiers Fund Wyoming Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Here's the story, in part, as reported by Kit Up! the blog that tracks the latest and greatest in military gear:

U.S. Army researchers want to improve the service’s flame-resistant, protective apparel by developing a U.S.-manufactured, wool-blend uniform.

The Army has developed a wool-blend uniform composed of 50 percent wool, 42 percent Nomex, 5 percent Kevlar and 3 percent P140 antistatic fiber, according to a recent Army press release.

One goal of textile research and development effort is to create a flame-resistant combat uniform made solely from domestic materials, said Carole Winterhalter, a textile technologist with the Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center.

 The research reveals all sorts of nifty stuff regarding wool:

“We have a lightweight fabric that is inherently flame resistant; no topical treatments are added to provide FR,” Winterhalter said. “We are introducing a very environmentally friendly and sustainable fiber to the combat uniform system. We don’t have other wool-based fabrics in the system right now. This is a brand new material.”

Soldiers were issued the new wool blend and sent to summer maneuvers. They liked them.

Hmmmm.

Seems like we issued wool uniforms for field use once. . . .

 

World War One Sheep Club poster.

Indeed, wool uniforms remained standard throughout World War Two in the European Theater of Operations.  It was only after WWII that the combat uniform became cotton. . . which may very well change soon.

Washable wool would be the reason why.  Washing wool has never been easy.  Washing cotton is. But they've been working on that and washable wool hunting clothes were introduced a few years back. The same may become to the military soon.

On wool uniforms, the Army is thinking about going back a "pink and green" dress uniform.  This was the dress uniform worn by offices, but only officers, in the 1930s through some point in the 1950s, and is uniformly regarded as a pretty sharp uniform.  Enlisted men at the time wore a less spiffy Army Service Uniform, although it was still a lot better looking than the ones that came after it.  In the 1950s the Army went to the Army Green Uniform which was the dress uniform for many ears. At first, when it was a wool uniform with a khaki shirt, it looked pretty good but in later years it became a polyester uniform with a mint green shirt and was pretty bad.  That gave way to an equally bad blue dress uniform with white shirt that nobody has ever liked.  The Army's now pondering reintroducing the pink and green uniform, which is actually a green and khaki uniform, and I hope they do.

If they do however, they'll be right behind the Canadian Army which has reintroduced the same uniform, with tan beret and black paratrooper boots, for their special forces. This recalls the First Special Services Brigade which was a joint American and Canadian special forces until during World War Two which was equipped with American uniforms.  This would likely be the first time, should the Americans follow suit, since World War Two in which some units of the Canadian Army and the American Army would be wearing the same dress uniform.

Conscription in the English Speaking World. Passing an Anniversary

We've been posting some on conscription and today is a World War One conscription anniversary.

 

The Irish Canadian Rangers, a unit raised, but not fully filled, in Quebec, drawing from Irish Canadians.  It had to be filled out by Irish recruits from Ireland, and then was folded into another Canadian unit.  In some ways, its story is emblematic of the situation in Quebec during the Great War.

Not in the United States, however. Rather, its the centennial of the Military Service Act which, ineffectively, ushered in conscription in Canada for the Great War.

Canada was a country with a population of only 8,000,000 people during the great war.  It's almost a shock to realize how small the population really was.  23% of that population was made up of the Quebecois.  During the war 400,000 Canadians, more than a few of whom were English immigrants, although the majority were not, volunteered to serve in Canadian army.  Full mobilization, for countries with universal conscription, is usually regarded as 10% of the population, all male in the traditional form of conscription.  So Canada mustered men at the rate of 5% of the population.  Pretty darned impressive really for an all volunteer force. And that doesn't include those contributions from Prince Newfoundland, and Labrador, which were not part of Canada at the time.

Royal Newfoundland Regiment crossing the Rhine, 1918. This is not the Canadian army.

By 1917 the well had somewhat run dry in Canada. And in these regards it was facing the difficult choice that other English speaking countries had already faced.

Conscription was not a strong land army tradition in any of them.  The English had never had conscription for ground troops in modern times, although it did have it for sailors in the 18th and early 19th Century.  Indeed, conscription of sailors gave rise to the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom as the Royal Navy felt free to remove Englishmen from American ships to serve in the ongoing war with Napoleonic France.  There's more to that to be said, but given as this isn't an entry on the War of 1812 of the Napoleonic Wars I'll forgo telling it.  Anyhow, that did mean that England had a bit of a tradition of conscription, but not for land armies. That came to an end with the British Military Service Act of 1916 which made men from age 18 to 40 liable for service in the English Army.

The application of that act, of course, gave rise to the Easter Rebellion in Ireland which ultimately lead to the Anglo Irish War and an independent Ireland.  Conscription in Ireland was pointless, really, as the Irish were already serving in such high numbers.  In the end, conscription was likely necessary for the British in the war, but the cost proved to be great in terms of permanently severing the UK's political ties with Ireland.  Perhaps an added element of irony in regards to that is present however as the UK would resort to conscription very early in World War Two and the Irish, now citizens of the "Free State", once again volunteered to serve in the British Army in high numbers.  Very unusually, and in recognition of the Cold War, the UK would reinstate conscription in peacetime in 1948 but would phase it back out a decade latter and official end it in 1960.

Australia put conscription up for vote twice during the Great War, and both times it was defeated, although narrowly.  Australia would contribute 416,809 men to the Australian army during World War One, a massive contribution given its also small population.

An Australian pro conscription poster.  The Australians weren't persuaded and while plenty of Australians went to help, they were all volunteers.

Australia's conscription story was more complicated for World War Two during which it first made all unmarried men of 21 years of age liable for military training.  In 1942 it introduced conscription, but it wasn't until the end of the war that Australia deployed conscripts overseas.  Australian soldiers who were conscripts stand apart ab bit, during World War Two, as they did not measure up to the same aggressive quality, at first, that Australian volunteers did.  Australia twice reintroduced conscription after the World War Two, once for the Korean War and once for the Vietnam War, but unlike other nations that kept prolonged peacetime drafts, they kept them tied to the wars themselves.

New Zealand had a friendlier view towards compulsory military training than Australia, having had a militia history that is somewhat analogous to that of the United States. While almost every English Commonwealth nation had been looking at compulsory military training prior to World War One, that movement was fairly well received in New Zealand. New Zealand, therefore, had started compulsory military training for teenagers in 1909, exempting conscientious objectors.  Conscientious objectors, however, were not well regarded.  Having already established compulsory military training and having effectively created an army reserve prior to the war, it is not surprising that New Zealand followed the UK by enacting conscription in 1916.

That brings us back to Canada.

Canada had a vigorous militia system prior to the Great War and readily adapted that enthusiastically to its army that went overseas in World War One.  It was an all volunteer system, however.  Noticeably absent amongst the volunteers were the Quebecois.

There are undoubtedly a variety of reasons for this but chief amongst them were that the Quebecois, a sizable minority of the Canadian population at 23% of that population, but concentrated in Quebec where they were a majority, did not regard the United Kingdom as the mother country and had a distance and separate history from France, having been severed from Imperial France during France's royal Bourbon period.  They did not see the war in Europe as their war and were not keen in serving in it.  Their view cannot be regarded, quite frankly, as unreasonable.  By 1917 the Canadian government was ready to attempt to force the issue which was largely unsuccessful. There was large scale opposition to conscription in Canada and in the end only 24,132 conscripts were sent to France.  The word "only" has to be used with some caution, of course, as that's over a division of men and 124,000 men were drafted and therefore added to the army.  Not everyone in a North American army in any war has made it overseas, so perhaps this contribution was more significant than supposed.

Canada would repeat this history during World War Two. Canada enacted conscription at the start of the war but it was overwhelmingly opposed in  Quebec.  As a compromise Canadian conscripts were not liable for overseas service at first but by late 1944 this was changed.  During World War Two only 12,908, contemptuously called "zombies" were sent by order overseas, although quite a few draftees volunteered for overseas service.  The repeat of conscription during World War Two, however, served to worsen relations between the Quebecois and English speaking Canadians which would have an impact after the war.  Canada has not attempted to enact conscription since the war.

Other Commonwealth nations had other experiences with conscription.  I do not believe that it was attempted in the Union of South Africa during World War One or Two, no doubt because of lingering resentment against the British amongst the Afrikaans population during that period.  In 1967 the country started to conscript white men over the age of 16, a young age for conscription by that time, and then phased it back out in 1993 after the collapse of apartheid. The country has toyed with reintroducing it in recent years.  It's neighbor to the north, Rhodesia, enacted conscription following its declaration of independence from the UK modeling it on the British system.  I don't know if Zimbabwe retains it today.

Which leaves us with the US.

We've explored that a bit in recent posts.  Conscription was not a popular concept going into World War One by any means, having only strictly existed during the Civil War.  The Wilson Administration was so concerned it would be poorly received that it attempted to camouflage its nature by calling it "Selective Service", a name it still officially retains in the United States, under the theory that the country would be fooled that the country was simply selecting volunteers, more or less.  Nobody was fooled.

 Selecting the first U.S. draftee during World War One.

Generally, Americans volunteered enthusiastically, and enthusiastically accepted the draft, during the Great War.  Nonetheless that well known story isn't as simple as it is often related to be. There were two uprising amongst southern yeoman populations against conscription during the war, one of which we've already discussed.  These were serious armed uprisings, not mere protests.  And hard left organizations, which were in some ways at the peak of their popularity in the country, were dead set against conscription.  Organizations like the IWW actively campaigned against it.

The US did have compulsory militia duty on the part of military aged males from the colonial period up until after the Civil War, and that's a type of conscription, so this story isn't quite as clear as it might at first seem.  That had passed away by the late 1800s, however, and the memory of it seems to have been largely forgotten.  So the World War One draft was an unusual event.  After the war conscription was halted, only to be reintroduced just prior to World War Two, but with very narrow support.  It went away again after World War Two but, just as in the UK, it came back in 1948 with the need to form a large Cold War Army.  It was retained in the US up until 1975, although nobody was conscripted after 1973.

Jeffrey Mellinger, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1972 and who remained in the Army until he retired in 2011, making him the last American serving who entered the military as a conscript.

Canadian Pacific hospital car, April 7, 1917.

Canadian Pacific hospital car, April 7, 1917.

Blog Mirror: The Winter of ’16-17

An interesting item on the winter of 1916-17, in Europe:

The Winter of ’16-17

January 9, 2017 by Robert Mackay Leave a Comment

This is an extraordinary winter in Canada, where even on the west coast there have been weeks of freezing weather. In Europe, the cold and snow is reaching as far south as the Mediterranean.

Military Small Arms of the 10s: Small Arms of WWI Primer 014: Canadian Ross Rifle Mark III.

I've been dealing, of course, with the 10s a lot recently.

Well, always actually.

But more specifically, starting in March, I started dealing with 1916 a lot, and now with 1917.  And more specifically than that, while I've been trying to give a lot of contemporary events from a century ago, a lot of those events were military events. 

So, I may provide a few details on the weapons of the period, which were making a lot of noise, literally and figuratively, and for no particular reason, I'm starting here, as it was an easy video to find.

Yes, this doesn't have much to do with any store we've followed closely, except slightly with the Irish Canadian Rangers, but I'll add more details on that later.