Where have all the young men gone?
In Russia 12 million men were mobilised of which 1.7 million were killed 4.9 million wounded. 2.5 million were taken prisoner or disappeared and thus there were 9.15 million casualties 76.3% of those mobilised.
Where have all the young men gone?
In France 8.4 million men were mobilised and 1.3 million were killed, 4.2 million injured 537.000 taken prisoner of war 6.1 million casualties 73.3 % of those mobilised
Where have all the young men gone?
In Great Britain and Empire 8.9 million men were mobilised, 908000 killed 2 million wounded, 191000 taken prisoner or missing 2.1 million casualties 35.8% of those mobilized
Where have all the young men gone?
In Italy 5.5 million men mobilized with 650000 killed, 947000 injured 600000 taken prisoner or missing 2.1 million casualties 39% of those mobilized
Where have all the young men gone?
In the USA 4.3 million men mobilized, 126000 killed, 234000 injured, 4500 taken prisoner or missing 350000 casualties 8% of those mobilized.
Where have all the young men gone?
In Romania 750000 men mobilized, 335000 killed 120000 wounded 80000 taken prisoner or missing, a total of 535000 and 71% of casualties.
Where have all the young men gone ?
In Serbia 700000 were mobilized. 45000 were killed and 133000 wounded with 153000 taken prisoner or missing, a total of 331000 casualties 47% of men mobilized.
Where have all the young men gone?
In Belgium 267000 men Mobilized 13800 killed 45000 wounded, 34.500 prisoners of war or missing 93000 casualties 35% of those mobilized.
Where have all the young men gone?
In Portugal 100000 men were mobilized 7222 were killed, 13700 injured 12000 taken prisoner or missing involving 33000 casualties 33% of those mobilised
Where have all the flowers gone?
In Greece 230000 men mobilized 5000 killed 21000 wounded 1000 prisoner of war or missing 27000 casualties 12% of those mobilized
Where have all the young men gone?
In Japan 800000 were mobilized 300 were killed 900 injured 3 were taken prisoner or missing a total of 1210 casualties and .2% of those mobilized,
Where have all the young men gone?
Paying the price of victory 42 million men were mobilised
5 million were killed
13 million were wounded
4 million were taken prison or were missing
22 million casualties
52% or over 1 in 2 of every man mobilised
Where have all the young men gone?
Under crosses long long way from home
With sprinkled poppies everyone.
Where have all the young men gone?
In Germany 11 million men were mobilized 1.7 million were killed 4.2 million were injured 1.1 million were taken prisoner or missing 65% of those mobilized became casualties.
Where have all the young men gone?
In Austria 7,8 million men were mobilized 1.2 million were killed, 3,6 million were injured 2,2 million were taken prisoner or were missing 7 million casualties in total making 90% of those mobilized
Where have all the young men gone?
In Turkey 2.8 million men were mobilized 325000 were killed 4000 were wounded and 250000 taken prisoner or missing a total of 975000 34% of those mobilized.
Where have all the young men gone?
In Bulgaria 1.2 million men were mobilized 87000 were killed, 152000 were injured 27000 taken prison or missing a total of 266000 22% of those mobilized
Where have all the young men gone?
The price of being the defeated was
22.8 million men mobilized
3.3 million were killed
8.3 million were wounded
3.6 million taken prisoner or missing
a total of 15 million casualties
67% of those mobilized.
Two out of every three men
Where have all the young men gone?
Under crosses long long way from home
With sprinkled poppies everyone.
Where have all the young men gone?
Under crosses long long way from home
With sprinkled poppies everyone.
Where have all the young men gone?
Under crosses long long way from home
With sprinkled poppies everyone.
Where have all the young men gone?
All together now where have all the young men gone in the Great War?
65 million men were mobilised that is the total population of the British Islands
8.5 million were killed
21 million were wounded
7.7 million were taken prisoner or disappeared
37 million were regarded as casualties
That is 57%
Where have all the young men gone?
Under crosses long long way from home
With sprinkled poppies everyone.
Where have all the young men gone?
Under crosses long long way from home
With sprinkled poppies everyone.
Where have all the young men gone?
Thursday 9 April 2009
1209 Some Experiences in Italy and Great War considerations and A Room with a View
Tonight I watched an Andrew Davies scripted version of E M Foster's A Room with a View, more pulsating than the Merchant Ivory film, passion fired by an encounter in pre Great War Italy, reaching fulfilment in marriage, but ending separated and cold on a Flanders field, but with hope offered, of something new, on the same Tuscan hillside field where the woman's experience of the extremes of life began, and she had learnt not to fear, but to embrace them. The extraordinary aspect of this beautiful tragic story is that twenty four hour ago I first viewed a documentary account of the Italian front in the Great War, and then sat up until five in the dawn reliving my first visit to Italy when I drove from the Grossglockner Pass, travelling from Heidelberg to the Venice, through the mountains and hills where the battles raged and then had an amazing series of experiences travelling through Italy to Rome and Sorrento.
Prior to reaching Italy, a male work colleague and I had driven fast through the fields of Flanders to a beer festival on the banks of the Rhine, and on through Munich, and the Black Forest on our way to Student Prince county and a stop over at Salzburg before taking the Brenner Pass and what remains for me one the wonders of the modern world, the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, completed in 1935, and for three decades the only way through to Italy on this side of the Alps. Although I had seen something of wild places in the area of Holy Loch in early sixties, and the Swedish landscape of water and forest in 1963, I was unprepared for the grandeur, the beauty, the force of nature, of being surrounded by snow covered peaks, and then, the heart in mouth experience of the hairpin bends and sheer drops which prevented enjoyment of the spectacular views as we descended onto the Venetian plain.
When the war commenced in 1914 Italy was involved with a Treaty which could have required active support for Austria Hungary and Germany, but maintained neutrality, until persuaded by Britain and France to join them with the promise of territorial improvements which I assume involved transfer of the foothills and south side peaks which provided Austria with command over Northern Italy. Austria with German assistance, built a line of fortifications on mountain tops over 12000 feet 3750 metres, tunnelling into rock and glacier where avalanches consumed tens of thousands of soldiers whose bodies have never been seen again. You have to have been there to understand one kind of miracle of war.
That Italy first contemplated, and then attempted to storm the heights, showed unequalled courage, because they were fully observed by the other side, and when the shells burst it was not a mixture of metal and mud, but the more deadly metal and rock. When with German support defence turned into offence and Venice prepared for the worst, it is not surprising that heart went out of the fighting and of the population in general throughout Italy. With the help of British and French forces it was possible to change the position and in 1917 and 1918, especially when Germany was stretched on the Western front and unable to provide the support of its highly trained and motivated manpower.
After discovering the extraordinary magic of Venice we had travelled to the Adriatic coast where the adventure nearly ended abruptly in disaster. We pitched our small tent in a large sun baked official camp site outside of town and the beach, and had some alfresco food before darkness descended and my colleague retired for an early night while I decide to find out what the town was like. Alas a woman cyclist without lights came before me from a side road, her backside damaged the windscreen, but she appeared unhurt, There appeared to be no other vehicles or immediate witnesses in the darkness of a badly lit on unlit road, and although she appeared amazingly to be unhurt, because I had been travelling slowly, medical help and the police were called together with an English speaking interpreter. I was required to wait while she was checked out at the nearest hospital and confirmed that she was not injured and that our accounts of what happened matched, I was allowed to go, with my insurance paying for the damaged bicycle and replacement windscreen.
This was bad enough but on returning to the campsite which was crisscrossed with carways and pathways I took a wrong turning and the front of the vehicle ended in a storm ditch. My friend who was asleep was none too pleased, but quickly rallied and we called upon three young men who were still up in their tent to assist in rescuing the car from the ditch. The following morning was taken with clearing out the car and locating a replacement windscreen which we would be able to pick up and have fitted on our way to Rome, after the weekend. Thus the greater part of the day planned for relaxing on the beach passed by and soon after being able to do so a great came our way so we retreated to the nearest cinema, subsequently discovering the need for the ditches which surrounded every group of tents.
This was closest I came to Yugoslavia although at one point we had considered spending less time at individual places of interest, continuing through Italy to Brindisi for a Ferry to Greece and returning via the Balkans to Trieste
The Great War had started in the Balkans with Serbia seeking independence and where the response of Austria to the assassination of the Crown Prince was to crush the rebellion as a warning to others with similar inclinations. However to do this Austria needed Germany and the involvement with Germany meant war against the manpower wealth of Russia. It was after Russia made significant advances into Austrian controlled territory that the Germany had doubts about their allies. Austria was fortunate that Bulgaria joined on its side, doing so because of historical issues with Serbia, but in turn this involved Rumania who had issues with Bulgaria and hoped to resolve territorial issues by siding with the allies. However Rumania was not prepared or equipped for war and was eventually forced to seek peace. Greece, with Turkey on one border and who were allies of Germany, and the Balkan territories of Austria Hungary on the other attempted neutrality, but was forced by Britain to joining the allies who then led a mixed force which attempted to aid Serbia but which for a time was held to a front which stretched from Adriatic to the Aegean.
Whereas those fighting in the Palestine and Mesopotamian campaigns, and the ill fated Gallipoli enterprise, had to contended with extreme heat and the associated illness, those fighting in the Tyrol had to deal with the extreme cold and frostbite. Those fighting in the Balkans had to contend with both malaria with some 150000 cases in three years as well as significantly below freezing temperatures. It is not unfair to record that the position of the fighting forces in the Balkans were the least consideration to the generals and politicians of the main belligerent powers so that when the allies advanced, Germany was unwilling to divert forces from its main front in the west, even after the Eastern front had collapsed with revolution in Russia. When the allies were willing to expand their forces it was possible to penetrate through the mountains and with the collapse of the Bulgarian defences the way was open to free Serbia and to take on Austria and Constantinople as 1918 progressed. The allies had been supplemented by 100000 Serbians who had taken refuge in Corfu and Island I was to visit over three decades later and take ferry to the Greek mainland.
Had it not been for the tonight's TV film of A room with a view, (the lack of such a room led to an exchange offered by a father and his son which led to the intoxication of passion and its ending in wartime tragedy), I would have been inclined to leave the rest of my young man's Italian adventure to another day and especially as there was no Dolce Vita of drugs, excessive drinking, or sex. Which it could be argued is what all those young men of both sides had really died for. It seemed to me then, reinforced by my only other visit, four decades later, that Italy casts a spell on travellers, particularly the British unlike that of other countries, although I could also have lost myself in the islands of Greece.
My experience of Rome was primarily a spiritual one although when I set off from the hillside campsite walking into the city it was an explore without a plan. In part to make amends for the near disaster of the previous weekend and to regain my confidence in driving I had driven into the city during the 1960's rush hour and around the ancient. Sites and this was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life, as vehicles seemed to come at you from every direction, and I had no intention of driving back into the centre the following day.
I came upon the Vatican shortly before the Pope was to hold a public audience and blessing and he then celebrated mass at St Peters, which I attended. I had purchased a cross, a statue and a picture for my mother which were blessed and I knew this would please her and the two aunts with whom she lived greatly. I had some unanswered questions about the role of the Pope during the Second World War, but these were not to the fore. I found an attractive restaurant and enjoyed a delightful meal which had ended with a bunch of grapes, and arrived back at the campsite early evening, after throwing coins into the Trevi fountain, ( I had seen the film) to find that my colleague was helping two well spoken English girls who had spent the previous evening sleeping in their car because the lock on their boot had failed. The colleague managed to fix the problem and in exchange for this good turn we were told of a great camp site among olive groves on a hill at Sorrento, and the promise of a joint trip to Capri was planned when they would join us after they had done Rome.
The Sorrento camp site was as good as promised and on the evening exploration of the town we noted that it was the week of the Sorrento film festival. The story has become a little hazy after this although somewhere, there is a film of part the subsequent adventure. If I remember the sequence correctly the two well spoken English girl did arrive and did go to Capri but with other male friends encountered on their visit to Rome, and disappointed we set off to visit the ruins of Pompeii and the Volcanic mountain of Vesuvius. It was at this point my tale has an unbelievable twist (except that there is the film which was subsequently shown at a party of other work colleagues), for we stopped for two female hitchhikers, Wrens who were making their way back to Malta after failing to meet up with the parents of one of them, the evening before. They decided to detour with us before continuing on their journey. Close on four decades later I visited Pompeii again and discovered a tourist crush second only to that of the Vatican, while we had been able to wander an almost deserted site at leisure.
We then voted against paying an admission charge to go up the main road to the volcano and found a local who explained that if we went up the back way, usually used as the down way we could avoid payment, As we went up a few other vehicles did pass down which required waiting at stopping points and at one of these we were passed by a Jaguar which led to one of the young women shrieking out Daddy.
It is as this point that having a small car proved an advantage because we were able to turn and chase down the parental vehicle and reunite daughter and friend who departed to the parental hotel while we continued back up the mountain to explore the volcano. We did meet up with the two girls and the parents the following day and did have a meal at the water's edge and take a ride an a horse drawn carriage and the amazing coincidence of timing has by now been passed to several generations in the four families and their friends, although what happened next was relayed only to those of my companion and I. I cannot remember the sequence accurately but I think that before our visit to Pompeii my colleague had returned from a solo trip into town with two invitations tickets for the gala performance at the film festival at the end of the week, on the basis that he was the President of the Oxford Film Festival. The two well spoken English girls from our Roman encounter were much impressed with this and my friend then secured two more invitations which impressed them even more, although not as impressed as we were and which is the reason why I have emphasised the well spoken aspect because when we called at their tent, their sophisticated appearance was appropriate for a gala night of Hollywood babes at Cannes. Alas although I had done by best with a crumbled jacket and tie, my colleague was even more casual, which was embarrassing given the quality of clothing, hair and make up achieved by the young woman at what was a primitive encampment by contemporary standards. This however was nothing like the reaction of the reception party with greeted guests for what was evidently regarded as the social event of the town and region for the year, and where everyone else who were ushered to the front rows of the had dinner jacket and black tie!
At the interval the full house lights came on and various quests around us in the front rows of the circle were shepherded away and later appeared on the stage, followed by speeches and then references made to various Italian, French and German Film Festivals, fortunately not the Oxford, although my colleague would have risen to the challenge dad he been called to take a bow. I speculated the lack of a black, or any other form of tie did it. Afterwards the black tie guests and their ladies streamed off to what I presumed was the Gala party mentioned in the invitation but I counselled against pushing our luck and we eat take away pizza in a moonlit square, talking about our work into the early hours and which interested our companions greatly.
While this concluded our Italian adventure, with the moral of the tale, 'always take with you appropriate clothing for any situation,' was underlined during our stay with a German friend from college who lived and worked in Geneva. One evening her boss called to collect some work after our evening meal, we were introduced, and he suggested that we go out for a drink, although my friend added that we should bring our passports. We were taken to a bar at the top of best hotel in the city where it only seemed right that I should, on behalf of my colleague offer to buy one of the rounds of drinks, although my college friend had advised me strongly against doing this. I quickly realised what she meant as I parted with nearly all my remaining spending money. We then set off on a long journey, passing through a frontier into France continuing until we reached a country house Casino where my colleague had to be loaned a jacket and tie. Our friends from Rome and Sorrento would not have been out of place among the array of wives and girlfriends, or the car park full of powerful and new cars.
I invested two pounds on two separate 36:1 or whatever the long odds were, turns of the roulette wheel. My college friend invested more, but only played 2:1 odds such as red or black and ending the night with a little more money than she arrived and which I understood was not unusual and once more I wished I had taken her advice. Alas my ambitions have always been greater than ability, but I have always drawn the line when appropriate. I then spent what was between half an hour and an hour watching the table of high rollers and one Asian young man attracted my attention, and that of others, as within a very short period he had won several thousand pounds probably running into tens of thousands today. What affected me greatly is not that he then lost it all, but throughout his stay at the table he had tipped its manager regularly with chips to the value of approximately £50 and £75 pounds. For this we fought and died in two World Wars I hear voices all around me cry.
Life is often very curious and confusing. Within a few days I have experienced children dressing up with parental permission to celebrate an essentially dark pagan event , later today, for it is another new day we celebrate the failed attempt to blow up Parliament using gunpowder and the symbolic burning of a live human body, and then we stand in silence for only two minutes to remember the multi million dead of two Great Wars and the 16000 British men and women who have given their lives in service since.
Given my re-experiencing of the Great War over the past three weeks, with the DVD's of the Second to follow after a short break, and the daily worries and fear for the future the subsequent generations, I remain optimistic and full of hope. It was good to remind myself that less twenty years after the end of World War I was able to travel freely around Europe without the need for visas and waved through on the flash of a British passport. I had been invited by German strangers whose language I could not speak to join their table at a beer festival on the Rhine, linking arms for songs. I was welcomed into an Austrian Inn in the middle of nowhere and provided a meal very late one night. I was treated with respect and given help by Italian Police in what could have been a serious incident, found a small garage where two Italians went out of their way to quickly replace a windscreen on a British made car, and concluded the adventure by being entertained by Germans in Switzerland who nipped over the border into France to give away some money, having encountered two brave young women serving the UK in Malta, and two remarkable young women who were adventurous, liked fun, but also showed a depth of understanding and caring for others without the advantages of their education and upbringing.
That the rest of Europe and many from the former empire and elsewhere want to come and live and work, as well as visit, the UK is not something we should fear, but welcome and learn how to adapt. That it what they all died for, and it should not have been in vain.
1208 The Great War creates Middle East conflict
The Great War was fought by millions of Men in Europe and remembered in the United Kingdom for the battles of the Western front, particularly the Somme where so many from these Islands perished, alongside those from Canada, Australia and America, although the greatest loss was by the sons of France, shared with those from Belgium. Less attention has been given to the Eastern Front where millions more Russians, Germans and the combinations of peoples which formed the Austrian Hungarian Empire which included those of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia. However there were other fronts and campaigns, in the Middle East, on the Italian Austrian Border which came within 15 miles of Venice and also elsewhere on the African continent.
The twenty fourth of the twenty six Great War DVD's, given away to their eternal credit by the Daily Mail, concentrates on the two campaigns in the Middle East. These battles were at first fought with comparative small armies, often covering vast territory within days, compared with the often static areas of the Western front, and were dependent on the bravery and skill of the officers and their men rather than the output of the industrial machines of the belligerent homelands.
I do not know which was regarded as the most important of the two expeditions to secure the Suez canal in Egypt or the new oilfields of Persia, but given the present involvement of Britain and America in Iraq and in trying to resolve the future of Palestine - Israel, to argue these campaigns were of greater significance to the cause of present day peace than other fronts has some justification. I begin with the campaign in Egypt which although commencing with a battle for the defence of the Canal in 1915 led to the request of Lloyd George to General Allenby to capture Jerusalem before the end of 1917, and he did this with two weeks to spare.
Although the Suez Canal was the gateway to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Far East interests, the greatest concern was for the Indian sub continent, which German support for the Turkish Empire hoped would lead to its loss from the British Empire, and its my understanding that the Palestinian campaign was fought primarily with British led Indian troops, a point which was brought out in the film Lawrence of Arabia.
Present day Egypt has a population not significantly greater than the UK but covering a vast area of over a million square kilometres, although the greatest area is desert and the population centred on the cities of the Nile delta where the only arable land is located. Egypt has not only been the bridge between Europe but was the first cultural civilization and one perspective is to remember that the pyramids were created more years than have elapsed since the birth of Christianity, between 2000 and 3000 years ago. Between 1500 and 1000 years BC the most well known of the Pharaohs and their wives ruled, Tutankhamen, Remises and Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaton Throughout these Millenniums the Egyptians remained in charge of their destinies, until 343 BC when first the Persians, then the Greeks and then Romans commenced 2000 years of foreign domination, such was its significance and strategic position.
However the governing influence was not to be military, political or economic but spiritual. It was several hundred years after Christ before the New Testament was translated into Arabic and the Coptic form Catholicism became the dominant religion in Egypt for a time. Then for six centuries in the period the west regards as the Middle Ages, it was Muslim Arabs who dominated with the Sunni form of the Muslim faith, and then it was the Turkish Muslims of the Ottoman Empire around 1250 who brought their form of Muslim worship and apart from the brief Napoleonic expedition the dominant Turkish influence remained until Britain seized control of the government in 1882 and until 1914 the dual influence of Westminster and Constantinople remained. In 1914 the opportunity was taken to attempt to remove Turkish involvement and it was primarily Britain and France that was to re-draw the map of the Middle East creating separate states according to their respective interests rather than those of the people or the promises made, sometimes in bad faith in order to gain Arab support for the overthrow of the rule of the Turks.
This is said within the context that as the Great War commenced after for 2000 years of making homes in the lands of Europe and America the former tribes of Israel had begun to make their way to their original birth lands. Thus there was the ingredients of what is the second great issue of the twenty first century AD, the place of the multitude of Jewish Christian and Muslim sects, often at war within each other as well as between each other, overshadowed by the god of oil and the system of capitalism. And the first will be mentioned in a moment.
The second expeditionary force was primarily from Australia, New Zealand and India assembled at the Port of Basra in the land which was then known as Mesopotamia. It is this often forgotten fact which helps the explain the present British involvement in Iraq and the agreement with the U.S.A to 'manage' the peace and establishment of democracy in this province, It also explains the concern over the Turkish interest in maintaining their present borderland with the threat of their own military intervention into Northern Iraq thus threatening the integrity of Iraq within its present borders. The possibility of Turkey and Iran seeking to incorporate parts of Iraq to protect and further their own interests mirrors much of the involvement of the Balkan countries in the First World War as they wanted to add and consolidate territory and borders.
Then the oilfields were recently discovered in Persia which we now know as Iran, and the purpose of the venture was to use Mesopotamia as a British controlled buffer between Turkey and Persia. It was the early days of recognising that the future prosperity, power and influence of the capitalist economies would be based more on oil, and gas than coal. Without oil and gas, or the development of nuclear power, we quickly revert to the conditions of the Middle Ages when wealth and power were controlled by a tiny minority with the rest of population condemned to a poor expendable serfdom. Our survival is dependent on having something to trade with the rest of the world, cultural, educational and technological. We do not have the energy which the great nations of this Millennium need, China, the foremost, India and USA, and Russia because of their land space and people volume, and none of these countries have need for our industrially manufactured goods, especially as they are able to produce them at significantly less cost. It is unfortunate that the majority of the older generation of British residents, and I suspect this also applies to those in the United States do not understand this reality, especially that we have no alternative but to become part of, one of many parts, of an integrated Europe, with shared political and military values, as well as economic. Separate or divided we do not survive. That is the reality which the votes now cast for out entries in the Euro song contest is but one indication.
According to the author of the Great War DVD there is an Arab saying that when God made Hell he decided it was not nasty enough and added flies thus creating Mesopotamia, and although the force made great strides after landing at Basra and decided to press even further for the city of Baghdad, which until the development of Constantinople had become the largest city in the Middle East, and therefore the strategic capital of Turkish rule in Arabia. However although Britain developed and strengthened Basra as a seaport making it the principal port of Iraq, the problem with the force was that it faced the same difficulties as all armies who move forward quicker than their supply lines: they become subject to shortages of food and water in conditions where the daily temperature can average over 120 degrees. Malaria, dysentery, cholera ravaged the troops, and eventually 13000 men were cut off and forced to surrender after what became the siege of Kut-al-Almara. This 1915 defeat led to a change in command and during 1916 and 1917 there were a series of successful battles, including the taking of Baghdad in March 1917, culminating in the taking of full control of the region in 1918.
It became necessary to switch from the small scale to the major and overall some 2 million men are said to have been involved in Great War fighting in Mesopotamia and Palestine. In order to ensure Arab support for the British French alliance the natural Arab quest for independence according to traditional cultures and boundaries was encouraged and promises made which the two major powers had little or no intention to honour, and one man was to make his reputation by inciting and unifying Arabia to rebel against the Turkish rule. Major T E Lawrence.
Of course we now know what happened after the war in Europe was won. British and French interests dominated decisions on how the map of the Middle East was to be redrawn. The sins of the fathers.
The twenty fourth of the twenty six Great War DVD's, given away to their eternal credit by the Daily Mail, concentrates on the two campaigns in the Middle East. These battles were at first fought with comparative small armies, often covering vast territory within days, compared with the often static areas of the Western front, and were dependent on the bravery and skill of the officers and their men rather than the output of the industrial machines of the belligerent homelands.
I do not know which was regarded as the most important of the two expeditions to secure the Suez canal in Egypt or the new oilfields of Persia, but given the present involvement of Britain and America in Iraq and in trying to resolve the future of Palestine - Israel, to argue these campaigns were of greater significance to the cause of present day peace than other fronts has some justification. I begin with the campaign in Egypt which although commencing with a battle for the defence of the Canal in 1915 led to the request of Lloyd George to General Allenby to capture Jerusalem before the end of 1917, and he did this with two weeks to spare.
Although the Suez Canal was the gateway to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Far East interests, the greatest concern was for the Indian sub continent, which German support for the Turkish Empire hoped would lead to its loss from the British Empire, and its my understanding that the Palestinian campaign was fought primarily with British led Indian troops, a point which was brought out in the film Lawrence of Arabia.
Present day Egypt has a population not significantly greater than the UK but covering a vast area of over a million square kilometres, although the greatest area is desert and the population centred on the cities of the Nile delta where the only arable land is located. Egypt has not only been the bridge between Europe but was the first cultural civilization and one perspective is to remember that the pyramids were created more years than have elapsed since the birth of Christianity, between 2000 and 3000 years ago. Between 1500 and 1000 years BC the most well known of the Pharaohs and their wives ruled, Tutankhamen, Remises and Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaton Throughout these Millenniums the Egyptians remained in charge of their destinies, until 343 BC when first the Persians, then the Greeks and then Romans commenced 2000 years of foreign domination, such was its significance and strategic position.
However the governing influence was not to be military, political or economic but spiritual. It was several hundred years after Christ before the New Testament was translated into Arabic and the Coptic form Catholicism became the dominant religion in Egypt for a time. Then for six centuries in the period the west regards as the Middle Ages, it was Muslim Arabs who dominated with the Sunni form of the Muslim faith, and then it was the Turkish Muslims of the Ottoman Empire around 1250 who brought their form of Muslim worship and apart from the brief Napoleonic expedition the dominant Turkish influence remained until Britain seized control of the government in 1882 and until 1914 the dual influence of Westminster and Constantinople remained. In 1914 the opportunity was taken to attempt to remove Turkish involvement and it was primarily Britain and France that was to re-draw the map of the Middle East creating separate states according to their respective interests rather than those of the people or the promises made, sometimes in bad faith in order to gain Arab support for the overthrow of the rule of the Turks.
This is said within the context that as the Great War commenced after for 2000 years of making homes in the lands of Europe and America the former tribes of Israel had begun to make their way to their original birth lands. Thus there was the ingredients of what is the second great issue of the twenty first century AD, the place of the multitude of Jewish Christian and Muslim sects, often at war within each other as well as between each other, overshadowed by the god of oil and the system of capitalism. And the first will be mentioned in a moment.
The second expeditionary force was primarily from Australia, New Zealand and India assembled at the Port of Basra in the land which was then known as Mesopotamia. It is this often forgotten fact which helps the explain the present British involvement in Iraq and the agreement with the U.S.A to 'manage' the peace and establishment of democracy in this province, It also explains the concern over the Turkish interest in maintaining their present borderland with the threat of their own military intervention into Northern Iraq thus threatening the integrity of Iraq within its present borders. The possibility of Turkey and Iran seeking to incorporate parts of Iraq to protect and further their own interests mirrors much of the involvement of the Balkan countries in the First World War as they wanted to add and consolidate territory and borders.
Then the oilfields were recently discovered in Persia which we now know as Iran, and the purpose of the venture was to use Mesopotamia as a British controlled buffer between Turkey and Persia. It was the early days of recognising that the future prosperity, power and influence of the capitalist economies would be based more on oil, and gas than coal. Without oil and gas, or the development of nuclear power, we quickly revert to the conditions of the Middle Ages when wealth and power were controlled by a tiny minority with the rest of population condemned to a poor expendable serfdom. Our survival is dependent on having something to trade with the rest of the world, cultural, educational and technological. We do not have the energy which the great nations of this Millennium need, China, the foremost, India and USA, and Russia because of their land space and people volume, and none of these countries have need for our industrially manufactured goods, especially as they are able to produce them at significantly less cost. It is unfortunate that the majority of the older generation of British residents, and I suspect this also applies to those in the United States do not understand this reality, especially that we have no alternative but to become part of, one of many parts, of an integrated Europe, with shared political and military values, as well as economic. Separate or divided we do not survive. That is the reality which the votes now cast for out entries in the Euro song contest is but one indication.
According to the author of the Great War DVD there is an Arab saying that when God made Hell he decided it was not nasty enough and added flies thus creating Mesopotamia, and although the force made great strides after landing at Basra and decided to press even further for the city of Baghdad, which until the development of Constantinople had become the largest city in the Middle East, and therefore the strategic capital of Turkish rule in Arabia. However although Britain developed and strengthened Basra as a seaport making it the principal port of Iraq, the problem with the force was that it faced the same difficulties as all armies who move forward quicker than their supply lines: they become subject to shortages of food and water in conditions where the daily temperature can average over 120 degrees. Malaria, dysentery, cholera ravaged the troops, and eventually 13000 men were cut off and forced to surrender after what became the siege of Kut-al-Almara. This 1915 defeat led to a change in command and during 1916 and 1917 there were a series of successful battles, including the taking of Baghdad in March 1917, culminating in the taking of full control of the region in 1918.
It became necessary to switch from the small scale to the major and overall some 2 million men are said to have been involved in Great War fighting in Mesopotamia and Palestine. In order to ensure Arab support for the British French alliance the natural Arab quest for independence according to traditional cultures and boundaries was encouraged and promises made which the two major powers had little or no intention to honour, and one man was to make his reputation by inciting and unifying Arabia to rebel against the Turkish rule. Major T E Lawrence.
Of course we now know what happened after the war in Europe was won. British and French interests dominated decisions on how the map of the Middle East was to be redrawn. The sins of the fathers.
1205 The Great War The Yanks came but only after Paschendale and all those blank blocks of stone
There was an inevitability about the Great War of 1914 to 1918 or so it seems in hindsight, although it was precipitated by an assassination and what followed was a combination of long standing ambitions and fears, treaties entered into in different times and circumstances, and as with all conflicts, the agendas of participants changed. In the beginning millions of men went off to war because they believed they would be victorious and would benefit and because they believed their cause was just and that God was on their side.
During 1915, 1916 and until the summer of 1917 the Western front of 400 miles moved back and forth within a narrow area, consuming a generation of men in their million and those who survived that summer could see no change except for their death or serious injury. The Eastern front changed over a greater distance and consumed men in their millions until the Russian will collapsed and with the October revolution an armistice of defeat had to be agreed. This changed everything because for the first time Germany would have a superiority of numbers on the Western front and over the Winter of 1918 began the build up forces and munitions for a win or lose plan to break through the British lines and drive them back into the channel, and then push the French army until Paris could be taken, and all before the American Army became activity involved.
During 1915, 1916 and until the summer of 1917 the Western front of 400 miles moved back and forth within a narrow area, consuming a generation of men in their million and those who survived that summer could see no change except for their death or serious injury. The Eastern front changed over a greater distance and consumed men in their millions until the Russian will collapsed and with the October revolution an armistice of defeat had to be agreed. This changed everything because for the first time Germany would have a superiority of numbers on the Western front and over the Winter of 1918 began the build up forces and munitions for a win or lose plan to break through the British lines and drive them back into the channel, and then push the French army until Paris could be taken, and all before the American Army became activity involved.
The allies were aware of the plan and short of manpower feared defeat. The French were only able to replace one third of their ongoing losses while the British army needed replacement in their tens of thousands. The Americans were still getting ready and so it became a matter of time, in which the allies had to hold the line and the Germans had to advance, and at first it looked as if the German plan would succeed. The British line was breached and the retreat of men and of refugees commenced back to positions of 1914 and 1915. Then the decision was taken by the French and the British to hold position to the last available shell, the last bullet and the last man.
The halting of the German Spring offensive had been costly for the allies with 240000 British casualties and 100000 French, but it had also cost the Germans more, some 350000 casualties and it had also cost them 40 days during which the American build up progressed to the point of readiness.
Since the declaration of war by the Americans it had been over a year before they were ready to participate in active combat and given how long it had taken the British to get ready in 1914, the only grounds for questioning the American delay was that if they did not come soon there would be no war to fight, as allies would have lost. The concern of the allies was that unlike the British who had to create an organised industrial war machine, American industry had several years of gearing up to supply the allies with their weapons. There were two factors which governed the American approach. The first was that this was a war to be fought a long way from home and the public would not tolerate massive loss of life if its men were not properly trained, equipped and supported. The Commander in Chief, Pershing, was also determined that this would be an American army fighting under an American Flag, and he did not want to simply become a recruiting sergeant for Americans to fill the increasing gaps in the British and French armies and lines.
The beginning of the end came when the German command decided to make a temporary switch from the drive on British lines to those of the French in the champagne country, and such was their initial surprise and success that the capture of Paris became such a possibility that the effort was concentrated here and the original plan to first push the British armies into the Channel was deferred. It was around this period that Pershing yielded to pressure from the allies and agreed for men to be sent to France and to rely on artillery and material of the allies although this had its own problems when guns were provided on which they had not been trained. However the impact of the first American Division entering active combat, and then the second, third and fourth cannot, and should never be underestimated. The allied armies, the British) which covered the UK, the Australians, the Canadians, the New Zealanders and others, the French and the Italian, were stretched to breaking. The replacements were either battle weary men returning from injury whose expectation was death without glory, and young men just out of school or apprenticeships who had been badly nourished over three years, and the longer they could be prepared with better diets, organised exercise and fresh air, the more they could become an offensive force instead of cannon fodder. The Americans had been well nourished, they were fit, they were well trained and they were ready without the experiences of defeats and the months of battles in which they saw those all around them killed or injured.
The impact on the morale of the allies and the civilian population was also a significant factor in leading to the belief that instead of just holding the German offensives, it was possible to make small scale counter attacks. One of these was planned for July 4th using American troops alongside an Australian force with a record of success. At the last moment the American troops were nearly withdrawn but pressure from the Australian commander led the decision to being reversed and with the space of an hour and half the goals of offensive was achieved with a small number of casualties 750 Australians and 130 Americans and some 1500 German prisoners taken. This was first allied offensive success for a year. There was then two battles which effectively brought the end. The first was the battle of the Marne in August 1918 which led to the retreat of the German army which not only meant that Paris was saved but meant that the failure of the German decision to deal fatal blows before the American involvement strengthened.
The second development was a secret British plan the launch an offensive at Amiens. The build up was possible because the industrial machine had been able to replace the 1000 guns lost during the German spring offensive before it ended and in fact to improve upon the position. During the next two months the strength of the men improved with the number of British divisions increased from 45 to 52. But what made the offensive such a success was its secrecy with 2000 guns, over 500 tanks and a Calvary of 15000 brought to position and 1000000 French army brought up to the support British Australian and Canadian forces. The Germans were caught unprepared and the on the first day all the objectives were achieved and such was the success that the press had to admit that the pubic were as surprised as the enemy.
The German Command realised that it was moving into a position that it had to think of peace, just as the Austrians, the Bulgarians and the Turks wanted peace, but their view was of peace with honour whereas the allied leaders, in the US, in France and in London were in no such mood, but wanted and needed outright victory. Haig's third army of New Zealanders attacked and took prisoners, two further battles achieved more prisoners and throughout the rest of August the headlines were all of advances and victories. Now the issue was could the German's hold their Hindenburg Line. As the advance progressed during September ti was realised that only an offensive involving the whole line would achieve this objective.
On September 26th the major advance commenced. On the following day British Armies made a 12 mile breach of the Hindenburg line. On the 28thAmerican and Belgium army at Ypres crossed Passendale in one day which previously had taken three month. The momentum was such that the German Command understood that the end had to come as soon as possible, but how?
I can understand the growing euphoria among the allied commanders and the public across the British Empire, in Italy and above all in France and Belgium. To day as the anniversary of that end approaches once more, I begin think of the relationship between this time and the Great War of my childhood. Recently a memorial has been created in England for the 16000 British service men and women killed in action since the end of World War 2. For every family, their parents, their wives or husbands. Lovers and sweethearts, their children and friends each of those lives is not just a blood sacrifice to be remembered and honoured but a personal loss to be mourned, and yet one has to put the total into the perspective of three times this number being lost in one day of the great war by British forces alone. These days whenever the Prime Minister begins his Question time the names of each individual killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, or elsewhere is read aloud to ensure there is national recognition and national record, where as in the Great War there was page upon page upon page of lists in order of rank. In the new memorial there are list of names regardless of rank. This is progress. There are also blank areas of stone.
Monday 6 April 2009
1202 The Great War Russian and Russian Culture
I have never visited Russia but its people, its culture and its history has been an influential part of my being. I felt an empathy with the plight of the people, like no other land to my own. I cannot remember how my interest came about because as a Catholic child Russia was regarded as the enemy. One of my earliest political recollections is the standing for Parliament in the area of my childhood, a socialist, who appeared in the main street in his working clothes as a miner, and listening to the priest at mass advising the congregation about the threat of communism and the choice which parishioners faced at the General Election between candidates who were Christians and those who were not. Russia, communists, socialists were the threat, the wicked witch of the North, the Big Bad Wolf and the Giant of Jack and the Beanstalkland. Even at the height of the cold war, the blockade of Berlin and the development of ballistic nuclear missile to obliterate mankind, I had this feeling which applied to Tsar and fellow aristocrats, the landed and educated gentry and the mass of the 170 million peasants.
Nor can I remember when I first read or saw a play by Chehkov, the Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and the Seagull but did see a play on TV in my prolonged adolescence and it had an effect similar to those of Ibsen as echoing what I felt and thought without being able to express what I thought or felt to anyone else, in anyway. This attraction led to buying a volume of the plays and two of short stories. While I was also interested in American, French and Italian literature, it was the Russians whose literature I immersed my psyche: some unknown, some internationally, Bulgakov, nine volumes of Dostoevsky, two of Gogol, four of Gorky, Lermontov and Leskov, two Nabokov two Pasternak, Popov and Puskin Schdedrin two Solzhenityan, seven Tolstoy four Turgenev. These books are primarily about a landed gentry, an aristocracy, a middle class before revolution and the overall feeling is a kind of melancholia about unwanted and unavoidable change, and a sense of loss which is never leaves one, whatever subsequent circumstances and fortune.
When studying Political Theory I tried to read Daz Capital, and I have a Moscow edition of Marx and Engels Manifesto, A Lenin work on Materialism and Empiro Criticism and a monster primer on the Fundamentals of Marxism Leninism, but as with the Bible, the Koran, and everything else I did not progress beyond a page or two before questioning and disagreeing. I also have a translated and edited view of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky and Alan Moorhead's view, together with a background volume, The Rise of Russia through to the time of the Peter the Great.
And then there is has been the pictures with the most influential Dr Zhivago, full of tragedy, the sense of loss, of a brief period of adult happiness, knowing it would not last, but never anticipating the pain of what was to come. Images from the film haunt me, Rita Tishingham, the child of the revolution, describing the moment when her mother let go of her hand, the love of his wife as she sent him off to the love of his life, knowing she would never see him again as she went with his child/children and her father to America, the moment he is taken from his family to work in the war, the moment he knows their future is not together and that moment when they nearly meet once more in the streets of Moscow after years of separation. This film, like no other work, communicated one of the great dilemmas for the creative artist, the drive and need to self express freely, and to love and to experience all aspects of life, pleasure and pain, the good and the bad, but how can any one life matter when set against the plight of the general population.
At the time of Great War, the fate of the millions of Russians was held by one man, the Tsar, whose wife was German born and a niece of Queen Victoria, and under the influence of Rasputin. He and his Ministers and Generals are believed to have led between five and eight million men to their deaths, although no one knows, especially as hundred's of thousand are believed to have abandoned the front line, many to join in the revolution and to perish subsequently or change their identities and memories.
Great works have been written by great men and women about the cause of what many regard as one of the most significant events of the twentieth century and I hope that I am right is stating that the revolution was foremost against the war and poverty and autocratic rule. Brave poor people of no education or prospects went to fight for their homeland, their families and for each other but after their experience between 1914 and 1917 they had had enough. Unfortunately as often the situation in life they were then used and exploited by two interest groups in direct conflict. Lenin saw the war as a waste of Russian blood on behalf of Capitalists and Imperialists and tried to reach an agreement which would enable a revolution in Russia as the first stage in world revolution.
He was therefore willing to negotiate a peace which would remove German troops from Russian borders because Germany needed their forces to accomplish a victory in the West. However it was political, capitalist and military men of the middle classes who deposed the Tsar and took power, and they wanted to control a strong and powerful Russia, and to do that they needed to win the war against Germany, so from the viewpoint of the Western front allies, if these forces within Russia were not going to win, then the longer the civil war went on, the longer German forces would be tied down in the East. Moreover because of the allied blockade the first priority of Germany was food and in the absence of a settlement with Russia and separate peace was negotiated with the Ukraine, which together which issues involving Rumania and Finland further delayed the extent of the transfer of Germany forces from the East to the Western Front. On the Western Front a new life and a new land had been created.
It was a land 480 miles in length, which alternated between a sea of mud filled craters in which man and beast could disappear for ever, or sun dried landscapes of pink or white blanched mud which those with an artistic eye could find beautiful. It was as if a rift had opened and divided the earth. It was a life separate from the rest of humanity which you shared with others, including the enemy, but which you could not share when back at home, and back home you felt a stranger, an alien, and longed to return to what had become your home. You dreaded being there at the front, knowing that your time was short, hoping for a wound which would not hurt too much, heal and not debilitate for life, and yet you were happier here than when you returned home, because of the comradeship of those like you stripped to essentials of being, there was no place for pretence, for one man considering themselves better than the other because of their education, their previous work, their wealth, their family and friends and way of life. All that did not matter, and does not matter when you walk with death, witness its call on others, and you know it is only a matter of time when the call is for you.
But although many felt this alienation with those at home, as it was to be with those returning from POW camps three decades later, or those who disappeared into the American countryside after their ordeals in Vietnam, the people of the respective homelands were being moved from the cheerleaders proudly sending their sons to a foreign field, issuing white feathers to any male left who they considered should be with them, into populations starving to feed the front, those in war production and their children and which in turn led to more and more horrific ways to avenge the deaths and mutilations on men and non combatants as no one seemed able to break the stalemate of the Western Front.
At the front poison gas was tried and then in 1917 mustard gas, a little of which on a shoe could destroy those around in the trench, there was then flame thrower and then the tank, then the Zeppelin and hen the fighter bomber. But if the will of the will of the men and their generals at the front could not be broken, attention was directed to the civilian population. The more the blockade of allies prevented food supplies reaching the German population, the greater the effort on destroying any vessels approaching the shores of the United Kingdom and the ports of allies, 100000 thousands tons a month sunk turned into 250000 and then 500000 until the allies worked out how to detect and destroy. Then a dozen Zeppelins monster craft hundreds of meters in length with bombs to drop on civilian populations brought a new kind of war and fear to the population, and then when there were blown burning from the skies, the aero plane brought the sound of the siren which was the significant memory of my childhood and more fear. Then there were explosions in Paris, but how was this possible until it was revealed the German's had created three huge guns capable of delivering a shell a distance of seventy five miles.
And then the daughters, the wives and the mothers went to war, the Wrens, the Wrafs, the Waacs, as well as working in industry, driving public transport, getting the vote and being able to stand for Parliament. In the factories, the canteen became established as a means of ensuring the workers were mutinously fed within the limits of availability and wages rose with production to overcome the shortages in the changing priorities. Everything and everyone on both sides became more determined and committed to an all out victory as the battle lines and defences of the Western Front appeared to have become invincible and God was on both sides as was the devil.
Nor can I remember when I first read or saw a play by Chehkov, the Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and the Seagull but did see a play on TV in my prolonged adolescence and it had an effect similar to those of Ibsen as echoing what I felt and thought without being able to express what I thought or felt to anyone else, in anyway. This attraction led to buying a volume of the plays and two of short stories. While I was also interested in American, French and Italian literature, it was the Russians whose literature I immersed my psyche: some unknown, some internationally, Bulgakov, nine volumes of Dostoevsky, two of Gogol, four of Gorky, Lermontov and Leskov, two Nabokov two Pasternak, Popov and Puskin Schdedrin two Solzhenityan, seven Tolstoy four Turgenev. These books are primarily about a landed gentry, an aristocracy, a middle class before revolution and the overall feeling is a kind of melancholia about unwanted and unavoidable change, and a sense of loss which is never leaves one, whatever subsequent circumstances and fortune.
When studying Political Theory I tried to read Daz Capital, and I have a Moscow edition of Marx and Engels Manifesto, A Lenin work on Materialism and Empiro Criticism and a monster primer on the Fundamentals of Marxism Leninism, but as with the Bible, the Koran, and everything else I did not progress beyond a page or two before questioning and disagreeing. I also have a translated and edited view of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky and Alan Moorhead's view, together with a background volume, The Rise of Russia through to the time of the Peter the Great.
And then there is has been the pictures with the most influential Dr Zhivago, full of tragedy, the sense of loss, of a brief period of adult happiness, knowing it would not last, but never anticipating the pain of what was to come. Images from the film haunt me, Rita Tishingham, the child of the revolution, describing the moment when her mother let go of her hand, the love of his wife as she sent him off to the love of his life, knowing she would never see him again as she went with his child/children and her father to America, the moment he is taken from his family to work in the war, the moment he knows their future is not together and that moment when they nearly meet once more in the streets of Moscow after years of separation. This film, like no other work, communicated one of the great dilemmas for the creative artist, the drive and need to self express freely, and to love and to experience all aspects of life, pleasure and pain, the good and the bad, but how can any one life matter when set against the plight of the general population.
At the time of Great War, the fate of the millions of Russians was held by one man, the Tsar, whose wife was German born and a niece of Queen Victoria, and under the influence of Rasputin. He and his Ministers and Generals are believed to have led between five and eight million men to their deaths, although no one knows, especially as hundred's of thousand are believed to have abandoned the front line, many to join in the revolution and to perish subsequently or change their identities and memories.
Great works have been written by great men and women about the cause of what many regard as one of the most significant events of the twentieth century and I hope that I am right is stating that the revolution was foremost against the war and poverty and autocratic rule. Brave poor people of no education or prospects went to fight for their homeland, their families and for each other but after their experience between 1914 and 1917 they had had enough. Unfortunately as often the situation in life they were then used and exploited by two interest groups in direct conflict. Lenin saw the war as a waste of Russian blood on behalf of Capitalists and Imperialists and tried to reach an agreement which would enable a revolution in Russia as the first stage in world revolution.
He was therefore willing to negotiate a peace which would remove German troops from Russian borders because Germany needed their forces to accomplish a victory in the West. However it was political, capitalist and military men of the middle classes who deposed the Tsar and took power, and they wanted to control a strong and powerful Russia, and to do that they needed to win the war against Germany, so from the viewpoint of the Western front allies, if these forces within Russia were not going to win, then the longer the civil war went on, the longer German forces would be tied down in the East. Moreover because of the allied blockade the first priority of Germany was food and in the absence of a settlement with Russia and separate peace was negotiated with the Ukraine, which together which issues involving Rumania and Finland further delayed the extent of the transfer of Germany forces from the East to the Western Front. On the Western Front a new life and a new land had been created.
It was a land 480 miles in length, which alternated between a sea of mud filled craters in which man and beast could disappear for ever, or sun dried landscapes of pink or white blanched mud which those with an artistic eye could find beautiful. It was as if a rift had opened and divided the earth. It was a life separate from the rest of humanity which you shared with others, including the enemy, but which you could not share when back at home, and back home you felt a stranger, an alien, and longed to return to what had become your home. You dreaded being there at the front, knowing that your time was short, hoping for a wound which would not hurt too much, heal and not debilitate for life, and yet you were happier here than when you returned home, because of the comradeship of those like you stripped to essentials of being, there was no place for pretence, for one man considering themselves better than the other because of their education, their previous work, their wealth, their family and friends and way of life. All that did not matter, and does not matter when you walk with death, witness its call on others, and you know it is only a matter of time when the call is for you.
But although many felt this alienation with those at home, as it was to be with those returning from POW camps three decades later, or those who disappeared into the American countryside after their ordeals in Vietnam, the people of the respective homelands were being moved from the cheerleaders proudly sending their sons to a foreign field, issuing white feathers to any male left who they considered should be with them, into populations starving to feed the front, those in war production and their children and which in turn led to more and more horrific ways to avenge the deaths and mutilations on men and non combatants as no one seemed able to break the stalemate of the Western Front.
At the front poison gas was tried and then in 1917 mustard gas, a little of which on a shoe could destroy those around in the trench, there was then flame thrower and then the tank, then the Zeppelin and hen the fighter bomber. But if the will of the will of the men and their generals at the front could not be broken, attention was directed to the civilian population. The more the blockade of allies prevented food supplies reaching the German population, the greater the effort on destroying any vessels approaching the shores of the United Kingdom and the ports of allies, 100000 thousands tons a month sunk turned into 250000 and then 500000 until the allies worked out how to detect and destroy. Then a dozen Zeppelins monster craft hundreds of meters in length with bombs to drop on civilian populations brought a new kind of war and fear to the population, and then when there were blown burning from the skies, the aero plane brought the sound of the siren which was the significant memory of my childhood and more fear. Then there were explosions in Paris, but how was this possible until it was revealed the German's had created three huge guns capable of delivering a shell a distance of seventy five miles.
And then the daughters, the wives and the mothers went to war, the Wrens, the Wrafs, the Waacs, as well as working in industry, driving public transport, getting the vote and being able to stand for Parliament. In the factories, the canteen became established as a means of ensuring the workers were mutinously fed within the limits of availability and wages rose with production to overcome the shortages in the changing priorities. Everything and everyone on both sides became more determined and committed to an all out victory as the battle lines and defences of the Western Front appeared to have become invincible and God was on both sides as was the devil.
1199 Great War Forces gather for Spring Offensive
The last remains of summer ended this morning and it has remained a grey cold day, an appropriate mood for the next two DVD episodes of the Great War. These featured the position of the warring nations as the third winter approached in 1916. For the first time there was talk of negotiating a peace. Foremost was the position of the Russian people where the estimated losses were over four million dead or injured and another two million taken prisoner. There was little patriotism and considerable unrest at home which was suppressed by the traditional ruthless methods of the Tsar and the Russian aristocracy.
It is also estimated that one in twenty five of the French nation had been killed, wounded or was missing and everywhere there were women wearing black. 17 year olds were being conscripted into the front line. In England the names and photos of 15000 dead officers were presented in the pages of the London Times, and although there were some calls for an honourable settlement the majority were for pressing on for outright victory. This led to Lloyd George taking over with his concept that victory was only possible if everyone participated and made great effort as well as sacrifice. There had been two terrible blows to morale in addition to the failure to penetrate German defences on the Western front. The first was the consistent loss of shipping to the submarine which was being built larger and stronger and where only a quarter of the new vessels destroyed, thus increasing the fleet by fifty percent. Thus contrasted to the building of new ships in the UK where the increase was only one third of losses.
Then the worst development of all, the German Navy came out of its protected safe harbours and took on the British fleet which had not suffered a battle loss over four centuries, but now faced major losses before the German returned to port. Although the German Fleet had retreated, what happened felt like a defeat in Britain.
For the central European axis, it was the Austrians, who had initiated the conflict, that suffered temporary defeats by the Russians, and where commitment among the mixed races of the Austrian Hungarian empire varied, and the death of Franz Joseph undermined the position of Germany who had broadly held their positions on the Western front, and with Winter approaching had created a second major defensive position designed to withstand any new allied offensive. The American President and the Pope called upon the belligerents to state their terms for peace.
However in France and in Germany as in the Britain new leaders were of no mind to compromise especially when Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare making no distinction about the nationality of any vessels supplying the allies. This alienated American public opinion into moving away from neutrality towards supporting the allies. The German command also decided to move the Western front back to the newly created defensive position. In France the command also went back to its original 1914 strategy of launching an all out early spring offensive in 1917 to smash through the German lines, in a situation where the blockade was having its accumulated effect on the condition and moral of the German people. In the British Empire the creation of an even larger fighting force was underway, after Lord Kitchener of Khartoum was lost at sea on his way to a meeting in Russia, and the only reason the British PM was not involved was his need to be in Ireland where a revolt was ruthlessly put down in an attempt to re-establish stability. The force required the conscription of single men and then married men, and these preparations were matched by a drive to increase productivity in the mines, in shipping and in war materials. To reduce the need for more tonnage every piece of garden and land was converted to the production of food. The biggest problem was the strengthening of the depleted army where although several million men were available to be called up, the majority were required in reserved occupations, especially the coal mines where whole labour forces such as the Durham miners had previously enlisted.
It was in Russia that they main problem lay and as a consequence of revolution the Tsar abdicated, so that Russian troops which had come by sea via Marseilles to join the Western front took a vote to decide if they would join the offensive. It is estimated that 14 million men formed up along the various fronts of the allied offensive against some 9 million of the German Austrian axis. Thus the seen was set for what was to be another year of carnage without resolution.
To compare individual troubles and feelings against these statistics and the individual suffering with the misery of loss, deprivations of food shortage and everything else shortage, and the hardship of long hours of unsatisfying work, would be a perverse, and yet I have known aspects of such feelings and experience in my life, and which makes the reality of the Great War that much more difficult to bear, especially as I lack the ability to create reminders and warnings which will be value to others. I am disturbed by the experience as I have been about other matters and this has led top restlessness and a lack of sleep so after staying up until two am and trying to sleep I got up, made myself a milky coffee, narrowly won some games of stage two computer chess and write hoping to become tired and achieve a few hours of sleep sufficient to undertaken some good work tomorrow.
Earlier I watched Newcastle on Satanta push the manager of Spurs closer to the changing room door and also rejoiced at being able to do so out of the cold night air and what was not a memorable game of football although there were good goals, and the array of new players suggests this could be a good season. But the overwhelming feeling is of harsh winter of much discontent.
1196 World War ! Duty and honour, the price
Last night, during the night and dawn I was fixed on the reality of being a young officer in the World War 1. Of young men, boys really, of good middle class families with Victorian values, educated in public schools, brought up with the belief in the greatness of the Empire, of personal achievement and competitive success and then asked to lead a group of other young men into battle, some married, some with children, most with living mothers, sisters, fathers and brothers, and to do so knowing that you had inadequate resources of guns and ammunition, that the enemy were in effect first cousins, from similar backgrounds and beliefs, who you may have known because of relatives, family business associations or from travels or educational exchanges, and worshipping the same God.
Back home, you knew of deaths and injuries, but you also knew the rightness of the cause and where your duty lay, to obey orders whatever they were, to do your duty whatever the implications, and then you came to face with the moment of truth, on one cold morning without any sun, and you heard the noise of the enemy's guns, and you heard the screams as men were blown apart around you, and you felt the fear of those standing with you, as you said go and took those steps up the ladder out of the trench, moving forward as quickly as you could, waiting, expecting to hear your own scream, feel your own pain, see bits of you splattering the men and bits of them splattering you, and you knew there would be no going back, and you hoped the end would be quick and soon.
But there was to be no end of this, for the Serbian people, for example, whose ambitions and intrigues it could be said had precipitated the damnation of a generation. The German army with Austrian assistance controlled a line from the Channel coast across France to Gallipoli and across through Turkey back through Russia so that the central powers as they were called controlled all of central Europe . The efforts of the Russian armies with what had appeared unlimited resources of men, was close to chaos and extinction with as the second year of the war ended and the winter of 1915 approached 2 million men dead, wounded or missing in action and 3000 heavy guns destroyed. French efforts led to more deaths than the whole of the British Expeditionary forces. It was with the allies held or beaten that the might of the German forces turned on Serbia and seizing the opportunity Bulgaria attacked with realistic ferocity so that as the year ended one in sixth of the Serbian population were dead and only one quarter of its army remaining in being, of a kind. It was at this moment the allies met and decided that if there was to be any new attempt to regain the lost territory and defeat the enemy there would have to be a combined and coordinated offensive on every front involving every man and resource and thus the war, the killing and the suffering was to indeed become total in the following spring.
For the name of this war became Verdun, and the cry went up. Hell cannot be so terrible. The original German objective was to attack the area leading to Verdun, the French barrier to Paris, fortified by 20 large and 40 smaller forts, but which unknown to the Germans had been denuded of guns and men to fight elsewhere. The Germans created a score of railway lines, moved in over a thousand guns and over 100000 men. Over a thousand trains moved in two and half million shells,
Then in February 1916 for three hours the town was attacked and then the lines and the roads leading to them so that those who survive believed that no one else was living. Two and half times the French defenders followed on behind, first fighting patrols with the latest weapons, the flame throwers and then the assault troops. Realising that Verdun itself was under threat every attempt was made to bring up reinforcements and materials so that when spring appeared a quarter of million lay dead or wounded, 120000 Germans and 133000 French. But this was only the beginning. By the time what proved to be one of the longest battles in history ended the total dead was a quarter of a million and the total wounded half a million. Despite the losses it was the French who felt a sense of Victory following the immortal words of their general, they shall not pass, and German acceptance that they were unable to capture the town, because before the battle had ended, another had commenced, this time involving the British expeditionary force and another name, the Somme.
The first day of the battle was the bloodiest in British Military History. In 1914 the expeditionary force totalled some 100000 men and later it was increased to 300000 and then the big recruiting drive increased to over a million and by the time of the big push at the Somme there were over two and a quarter million men, all volunteers. The middle and upper classes had joined the war forming whole battalions such as that formed from Sheffield made up of businessmen, teachers, accounts, craftsmen and bank clerks, or the sportsmen battalion. However they needed to be trained and equipped and the Germans had attacked first and the capture of Verdun could have signalled the collapse of French morale and its army. The French Commander pleased with General Haig for his force to commence battle, so as to relieve pressure away from Verdun, and so reluctantly the date was set at July 1st over a month before the General he was ready.
On that day of summer in 1916 there were nearly 60000 British Empire and French casualties and of which close on 20000 had died. Before it commenced there was seven days of shelling of German positions using 1.7 million shells. But the Germans were ready with two lines of trenches and bomb shelters, with strong communication links to the forts and command positions which had been prepared in the villages and forests behind the front. At the end of the day the German looses were only a seventh of their attackers and at Ovillers the losses of the British 8th Division was 5121 while the German was 280, 18 to 1. It was during the last allied effort to achieve a breakthrough the German defensive lines that the tank was introduced and the battle at which one of the great uncles of Sir Matthew Pinsett is officially recorded as having committed suicide after failing to reach the stated objective.
Before the winter set in again the allied forces had gained 12 kilometres of ground and the price an estimated one million killed and wounded of which the Germans were half a million, the British 420000 and the French 200000. The price of honour and duty.
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